SecurityWeek

Taking a break form the normal spin-cycle of security news, assets from the once popular Digg.com have been sold for $500,000, or 0.0005 Instagrams (Instagram was purchased by Facebook for a cool $1 billion earlier this year).At one point, Digg was valued at $175,000,000, but the shift to sites like Reddit (Digg’s longtime Web rival) and Twitter as an instant news source eventually caused the site’s decline.

After Reuters reported that China’s ZTE Corp (ZTEC) had sold monitoring equipment to Iran, in addition to software and technological goods manufactured in the U.S. – something that is forbidden under trade embargos – the Department of Commerce initiated an investigation. Now, according to an FBI affidavit, it has emerged that ZTE Corp went out of its way to impede the Department of Commerce’s inquiry.

Phandroid, a web site dedicated to Android news and discussion, is urging all of its users – more than a million of them in fact – to change their passwords after a server hosting their online forum was hacked earlier this week. News of this latest compromise comes after a string of security incidents this month, leaving some to wonder what’s next.

Using technology to steal high-tech cars is not new. In my book, When Gadgets Betray Us, I use the example of Radko Soucek, a car thief from the Czech Republic who would steal luxury cars off the streets of Prague in about twenty minutes. Soucek used a laptop preloaded with an algorithm for specific makes and models of cars to help him decipher the keyless entry and ignition sequence.

Three months after announcing a partnership with several security companies to provide free antivirus, Facebook has now established a new service Malware Checkpoint for users worried their computer may be infected.

Perimeter E-Security, a provider of email hosting and IT security services, today introduced a new offering designed to provide email users with easy access to their entire mailbox archive on virtually any device, from any location.

Microsoft has issued a security advisory, and encouraged users of Windows Vista and Windows 7 to disable the Windows Sidebar and associated gadgets. The move comes just before a scheduled talk at BlackHat this month, where researchers will explore the types of flaws that exist in existing gadgets, as well as other weaknesses.

Instagram "Friendship" Vulnerability Exposed Users' Private Photos and Profile InformationSpanish researcher Sebastián Guerrero published an advisory on Wednesday, detailing what he called a ‘friendship’ vulnerability in the popular image application, Instagram. The imaging social phenomenon fixed the flaw within hours of his public disclosure.

Hackers Expose More Than 450,000 Accounts Taken From Yahoo! Voices Service

Backupify, a provider of online backup services for cloud application data, today announced that it has secured $9 million in series C funding that will be used to accelerate further development and adoption of its backup tools.

The minds behind the Blackhole exploit toolkit have updated it with an exploit targeting a recently patched vulnerability in Java.

Researchers have uncovered a new Web-based exploit that targets Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X computers.Users visiting a specially crafted website are prompted to run a Java applet that hasn't been signed by a trusted certificate authority, Karmina Aquino, a senior analyst at F-Secure, wrote in a blog post July 10. If allowed to run, the applet checks the user's operating system and delivers a payload customized for that platform, whether it's Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux.

Symantec found two malicious apps on Google Play that may have infected up to 100,000 users before it was removed by Google. The malware posed as two apps, "Super Mario Bros." and "GTA3 Moscow City," and used a remote payload technique to avoid detection, Irfan Asrar, a security researcher from Symantec, wrote on the Symantec Connect blog July 10. Both apps appeared on Google Play on June 24, and racked up between 50,000 to 100,000 downloads in less than two...

Email messaging and Web security solutions firm AppRiver, its mid-year Threat and Spamscape report, noted a significant uptick in malware-laden messages during the first half of this year. The report, which focuses on spam and malware trends, showed strong continued appearances of popular malware including Zeus, SpyEye, and the Blackhole toolkit, and a rise in mobile malware—echoing other recent vendor reports.

How Browser Sync Features Can Pose a Risk to The Enterprise