Threat Intelligence

China: Is It Our Cyber Defense Red Herring?

There are thousands of articles perpetuating the claim that China is out to get us on the Internet. And yet, all these discussions are begging the question, is it China attacking? Also, are they even the "usual suspects"?
While I can point to real facts of China making active use of information warfare, cyber warfare, or whatever else you choose to call it (such as the release of 0 days being patched by Microsoft and originally reported by the Taiwanese government, search Microsoft's site), I can also point to Germany (intelligence Trojan horse), the US (The Farewell Dossier) and other countries such as North Korea (without much detail, so questioned)...

How Do You Do Secure Bank Transactions on the Internet?

Banks love it when their customers do their transactions on line, since it is so much cheaper than when they use a bank-provided ATM, a phone call center, or, perish forbid, a live human teller. Customers like it too, since bank web sites are usually open 24/7, there's no line and no need to find a parking place. Unfortunately, crooks like on line banking too, since it offers the possibility of stealing lots of money. How can banks make their on line transactions more secure?

The Story of Conficker and the Industry Response

On November 2, 2009, Microsoft released its seventh edition of the Security and Intelligence Report (SIR). The SIR provides an in-depth perspective on the changing threat landscape including software vulnerability disclosures and exploits, malicious software (malware), and potentially unwanted software. Using data derived from hundreds of millions of Windows computers, and some of the busiest online services on the Internet, this report also provides a detailed analysis of the threat landscape and the changing face of threats and countermeasures and includes updated data on privacy and breach notifications. The following is an excerpt from the SIR, pp 29-32, about the Conficker worm and the industry response that showed an incredible amount of collaboration across vendors.

The Role of a Cybersecurity Czar

For years now, there have been calls for a high-level cybersecurity official, preferably reporting directly to the president. This has never happened. Indeed, there is a lot of unhappiness in some circles that President Obama has not appointed anyone as "czar" (or czarina), despite the early fanfare about the 60-day cybersecurity review. There are many reasons why nothing has happened...

Compromised Accounts - Are Hotmail, Yahoo and Gmail Seeing an Increase in Spam Sent Out?

Last week, I commented on the the Gmail/Hotmail/Yahoo username and password leak. The question we now ask is whether or not we are seeing an increased amount of spam from those services. On another blog, they were commenting that various experts were claiming that this is the case.

Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail Compromised - But How?

One of the bigger news stories is that of 10,000 usernames and passwords of Hotmail users were posted this past week, victims of a phishing scam... It seems unlikely to me that this would be a hack where someone would break into Hotmail's servers and access the account information that way. It is much more likely that the spammers got the information by social engineering. Why is this more likely? For one, they'd have to get past all of the firewalls and security measures that Microsoft/Hotmail have to keep intruders out.

Securing a Domain: SSL vs. DNSSEC

There has been quite a bit of talk lately about the best way to secure a domain, mainly centered in two camps: using Secure Socket Layer (SSL), or using DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC). The answer is quite simple -- you should use both. The reason for this is that they solve different problems, using different methods, and operate over different data.

The Multinational Nature of Spam

I received a spam message the other day that went to my Junk Mail Folder. I decided to take a look at it and dissect it piece by piece. It really is amazing to see how spam crosses so many international borders and exploits so many different machines. Spammers have their own globally redundant infrastructure and it highlights the difficulties people have in combating the problem of it.

Glaring Weaknesses in Prosecuting International Cyber Crime

I have to tell you -- I'm not really happy about the fact that the majority of serious cyber crime on the Internet happens without any legal prosecution. I spend an enormous amount of time -- far beyond my "day job" and exceeding what some might consider my professional capacity -- tracking cyber crime. I also work closely with law enforcement (both in the U.S. and abroad) to assist in the intelligence gathering process, putting the pieces of the puzzles together, connecting the dots, and so forth. And most of the major criminal organizations are still operating (pretty much) in the open, with fear of retribution or criminal prosecution, for a number of reasons.

Helping Banks Fight Phishing and Account Fraud, Whether They Like It or Not

On Wednesday, Project Honey Pot filed an unusual lawsuit against "John Does stealing money from US businesses through unauthorized electronic transfers made possible by computer viruses transmitted in spam." Their attorney is Jon Praed of the Internet Law Group, who is one of the most experienced anti-spam lawyers around, with whom I have worked in the past.