RSA'08 Unlocked

Security coverage

Old people can sabotage software too
10/04/08 Software teams must act to protect systems and development projects from revenge attacks by disgruntled current and former employees.

Kraken stripped of World's Largest Botnet crown (maybe)
09/04/08 The thing is, other researchers say Kraken isn't new at all. According to Joe Stewart, a cyber gumshoe at SecureWorks, the reported bot army is actually one that goes by the name Bobax and is one of the oldest known botnets used for spamming. Damballa researchers respectfully reject this contention, saying Kraken bots use fundamentally different means to connect to command and control channels, where they receive their spamming instructions.

Demo shows how web attack threatens fabric of the universe
09/04/08 Showing how the web's underpinnings can be abused to attack assets presumed to be secure, a researcher unveiled a website that can log into a home router and change key settings, such as administrator passwords and servers used to access trusted web destinations.

DHS chief goes nuclear on cyber security
09/04/08 The US government is to shut thousands of points from which outsiders can access federal computer networks to about 50, Homeland security chief Michael Chertoff revealed today (Tuesday).

Microsoft preaches togetherness for online security
08/04/08 Six years after scrambling to lock down Windows and having challenged security vendors on home turf with Windows Vista, Microsoft is calling for a "dialogue" over online security and privacy.

Stay focused on fuzzy tests, warn security experts
07/04/08 The idea of throwing random test data at a program to see if it cracks has been around in one form or another since the beginning of software development. A formalized approach called fuzzing, based on Professor Barton Miller's work at the University of Wisconsin in the late 1980s, is undergoing a revival as a means of testing the security of applications.