SecurityWeek

Government, Industry Organizations Unite to Launch "Anti-Bot Code of Conduct" for ISPs

In late January 2012 and earlier this month, hundreds and perhaps thousands of WordPress-based domains were compromised in a series of automated attacks. Though there was no official number given, the reason for the compromises has made itself known. They are being used as the final stage in a spam run, likely from the Cutwail botnet, to spread malware.

2011 Cost of Data Breach Study Shows Organizations Employing a CISO With Overall Responsibility for Enterprise Data Protection, Paid Less after a Breach, Saving as much as $80 per compromised Record

eEye Digital Security released a new piece of freeware today for checking system configurations in the name of security.The tool was released on the back of research by eEye about best practices. Among the company’s findings, disabling WebDAV and Microsoft Office document converters prevented 20 percent of Microsoft vulnerabilities in 2011. In addition, eEye also found that users should also limit administrative privileges, use proxy servers, encrypt traffic on VLANs and IPsec and deny access to Windows subsystems.

Attackers are adapting their techniques as software vendors get better at patching vulnerabilities, according to a new report from IBM. In its X-Force 2011 Trend and Risk Report, IBM notes that the amount of vulnerabilities left unpatched in 2011 dropped to 36 percent from 43 percent in 2010. But improvements in securing Web applications may have led attackers to change tactics, sparking an increase in automated password guessing and shell command injection attacks against Web servers, the firm reported.

Hacktivism dominated more than just the headlines in 2011; according to Verizon, it also dominated the world of data breaches.In its 2012 Data Breach Investigations Report, hacktivism was linked to 58 percent of the data that was stolen in 855 incidents last year around the world.

Who will it be this week?

New Duqu Variant Discovered in IranIt’s been an interesting week in developments related to Duqu, the complex cyber-espionage malware often referred to as “Son of Stuxnet.”

The assistant secretary of defense for global strategic affairs, Madelyn Creedon, told the House Armed Services Committee’s subcommittee on emerging threats and capabilities on Tuesday that the U.S. Department of Defense is developing rules of engagement for cyberspace.

On Tuesday, Russian law enforcement arrested eight men in Moscow for allegedly boosting millions of dollars from the nation’s banks by installing the Carberp Trojan on their victim’s computers. According to a press release by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the group’s crime spree was first discovered by law enforcement last October.

Security researchers at BitDefender have identified an attack campaign that enlists multiple banking Trojans to help compromise bank account information.

A new survey of developers and security professionals revealed that many organizations are still not baking security into the application development process.According to research by Security Innovation and the Ponemon Institute, 80 percent of the developers and two-thirds of the security personnel surveyed do not have a process where they build security into their software applications. In addition, 47 percent of developers state that there is no formal mandate in place to remediate vulnerable software code.

Symantec today announced its plans to acquire Nukona, Inc., a privately-held provider of mobile application management (MAM) solutions.Nukona's technology enables IT administrators to protect and control iOS, Android and HTML5 apps by "wrapping" both native and web-based apps with a management layer, and allowing them to apply security policies without having to modify the applications.

It has been close to four years since the birth of the Microsoft Active Protections Program (MAPP). The program is meant to give security vendors vulnerability information early so that they can provide updated protections to customers, and up until recently, seems to have functioned without a hitch.