Security Friday: February 15 2008

Mozilla rolls out patches in FireFox 2.0.0.12

The released update patches several vulnerabilities including the one on the directory traversal. The total patches numbers to 10 including three critical vulnerabilities.

Arun on February 15, 2008 | Filed Under Security | 3 Comments

All About Hackers

Not all hackers are bad. Why? Simple. It’s because only a hacker can fight (and most likely correct the wrongdoings of) another hacker. But first, what exactly does a hacker do?

Hacking, Not Security Cracking

Hacking has always been associated with a far graver offense in the computer field known as security cracking—a skill, quote-unquote, wherein a programmer, specifically a cracker, easily find traces of weak spots and flaws of a system, network, or software, and eventually use them to their advantage, either for profit or for fame. However, hacking is not just about exploitation of the security failures of any virtual property. While it suffers from a negative connotation, hacking still has its positive nuances. But before going there, let’s take a trip down Information Technology’s memory lane to discover what hacking was before it became a staple in virtual criminology.

Loki on February 12, 2008 | Filed Under Security | Leave a Comment

Security Friday: Alerts on the Web

Mozilla bug spreading

Mozilla has escalated the threat ranking for the vulnerability reported last week in the traversal of the directory structure for add-ons. The bug would allow for stealing of session information.

Arun on February 8, 2008 | Filed Under Security | 1 Comment

Security Trends of 2008 Part 2: A New Breed of Spam

One of the Internet threats that made viruses lose their shine is the evolution of spam from mere disturbance to a force to reckon with. Continuing this three-part saga of Internet security trends for this year, we discuss our dearly annoying spam.

The spam evolution first appeared in 2005 in the form of images, like GIFs and JPEGs, what makes sense when you want to deliver an advertisement for stocks, medicines, or even websites. But the real deal behind this change was to easily escape anti-spam programs that sort out text-based content of e-mail messages. Spam advertising also surprised 2006 by including spam using a Word document format in its roster of transformations.

Loki on February 6, 2008 | Filed Under Security | 1 Comment

Security Trends of 2008 Part 1: Spotlights Out For E-mailed Viruses

As I have been dealing with Internet security issues for the last two or three months, I decided to look for and write about possible security issues for this year. So to kick this three-part series off, let’s start with some good news.

We will be missing the three most evident malicious programs this 2008, namely viruses, Trojan horses, and worms. Why? Because programmers of such have taken another virtual road: proliferation of refined and highly developed Internet threats.

Loki on January 28, 2008 | Filed Under Security | 6 Comments

What is Phishing? Part 2: The Lessons to Learn

In the first part of our expedition in the land of phishers, we learned the various methods that they use to deceive unwary victims. Before going on the second part of this phishing journey, let me remind you that I did not publish the first of this two-part article to cultivate the phishers inside us. I am writing this merely to inform you of the dangers such attacks might cause by showing how they work. It is actually in this second part that I will tell you how to avoid any kind of phishing attacks. Having said that, let us begin with a few statistics and cases that I gathered all over the Internet to strengthen your urge towards phishing awareness.

Loki on December 17, 2007 | Filed Under Security | 3 Comments

What is Phishing? An Introduction

The Internet is a vast world, so vast that it somehow is an existence similar to our real world: IP addresses for home addresses, e-mails for snail mails, even calling-enabled messengers for telephones and mobile phones. But a world is not a complete world without its prevailing crimes, right? If so, which crime is as widespread in the Internet as robbery is to the real world? It’s phishing.

Phishing is an act of illegally acquiring sensitive information, like usernames and passwords, from an unsuspecting user. Like fishing, the word it originated from where you use worms as bait to catch fishes, of course, phishing uses trustworthy websites (usually the online transaction types like e-bay and PayPal), e-mails, and online messengers for bait to catch unaware users and get sensitive information from them. But unlike computer viruses, which attack the computer’s internals, phishing deals a more serious damage in a personal, commonly financial level.

There are numerous ways for malicious Internet connoisseurs to phish out sensitive information. People who depend on Internet-based transactions should be wary of these phishing techniques that we will discuss next.

Loki on December 7, 2007 | Filed Under Security | 6 Comments

Of Computer Fires and Firewalls

So there you were, working in the office, tired of the sound of your fingers tapping at your every press on the keyboard. You suddenly grew tired but too lazy to stand up and fetch a cup of coffee at the pantry. You got more bored, so you decided to open an Internet browser and visit your favorite website. However, after clicking on the browser icon, you got something like this:

Surprised, baffled, and wouldn’t spare some time to read and understand what’s going on, you clicked the Unblock button and surfed away. That is the common action taken by people upon seeing such warning messages. However, alerts like this weren’t created for nothing, right? If so, then let’s get to know what this message is all about by knowing what a firewall is and why firewalls block programs.

A firewall, as the name implies, protects you from the “fires” of the computer world. It regulates traffic between computers on a network, and even signals from the Internet. Named from the brick walls of houses of over a century ago that prevent the likely spread of fire, computer firewalls prevent unauthorized access to their hosts’ private networks. But surely, computer firewalls didn’t originate from the physical, fire-preventing firewalls of the olden times. Then where, exactly, did firewalls originate?

Loki on December 1, 2007 | Filed Under Security | 12 Comments

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