Al Qaeda and other radical groups have dramatically increased their use of the Internet in recent years to lure and train recruits worldwide, a U.S. Senate report warned on Thursday.

The report by the Senate Homeland Security Committee found that these groups run production houses and distribution centers that digitally send anti-American messages to thousands of Web sites around the globe.

Top US state attorneys announced Thursday that Facebook has agreed to get tougher on keeping its young website users safe from bullies, porn, pedophiles and other online hazards.

Facebook has agreed to a child protection pact similar to the one sealed with leading social-networking website MySpace in January, according to Connecticut attorney general Richard Blumenthal.

A TorrentSpy lawyer vowed Thursday to appeal a 110-million-dollar legal judgment against the website for directing people to unauthorized online copies of films and television shows.


Valence Media shut down its TorrentSpy website in March and filed for bankruptcy last week in the face of a lawsuit brought against it by the Motion Picture Association of America.

Police officers practice their firearm skills on a shooting range, so why should government computer security experts not have the same kind of training ground?

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, on Monday issued a call for research proposals to develop the National Cyber Range, or NCR, a virtual network environment for cyberwar simulation.

software dealer who Microsoft charged with engaging in the sale of pirated software is vowing to fight back. Next week he plans to file a complaint with the European Commission alleging abuse of power and anti-trust violations.

Microsoft this past Monday filed a legal complaint against Samir Abdalla, an entrepreneur from The Netherlands, claiming that he illegally sold software in the U.S. that was intended for educational markets outside the United States. He is alleged to have made US$3.6 million from the business. The suit was filed in Los Angeles, together with seven complaints against other software dealers from Canada, Egypt and the U.S.

The software maker is asking for damages as well as an injunction that prevents Abdalla from importing software that is intended for students.

Internet security experts say the Web has become so overrun with identity thieves that users have no way of knowing which sites are safe.

The San Francisco Chronicle said last Wednesday that even the largest and most-familiar destinations are vulnerable to thieves who swipe identification numbers, business e-mails and medical records.

The Internet Archive revealed Wednesday that the FBI dropped an effort to secretly obtain information about the online activities of one of the digital librarys users.
The Archive revealed that it had been served a National Security Letter by the FBI last year about one of its patrons. The San Francisco-based nonprofit organization prevailed after enlisting the help of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union.

U.S. senator accused the Chinese government on Thursday of ordering U.S.-owned hotels in China to install Internet filters that can spy on international visitors coming to see the summer Olympic games.


Sen. Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican, made the charge at a Capitol Hill news conference where he and other lawmakers denounced Chinas record of human rights abuses and urged President Bush not to attend the Olympics opening ceremonies in Beijing.

Even criminal hackers want to protect their intellectual property, and they have come up with a method akin to copyrighting — with an appropriate dash of Internet thuggery thrown in.


Professional virus writers are now selling a suite of software on the Internet with an unusual attachment: a detailed licensing agreement that promises penalties for redistributing the malicious code without permission.

A Woodbury, Connecticut, man has been sentenced to 30 months in prison for operating Web sites where users could download unauthorized copies of movies, music and software titles, the U.S. Department of Justice announced.

David M. Fish, 26, was sentenced Monday on criminal copyright infringement and circumvention charges in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Jose, the DOJ announced late Tuesday.

Pack up the image of the lone hacker. Internet crime is highly organized -- outsourcing complex work and using sophisticated pricing, like bulk discounts for stolen credit cards.

What should be particularly worrisome to legitimate businesses is a shift in tactics. Rather than targeting computer networks, which have strengthened defenses considerably, Internet criminals now try to get to individual computers and customers of Internet services and sites with Web-based attacks. One reason: Few Web sites address their vulnerabilities, and the few that do, react slowly.

Microsoft Corp. denied the recent incident, in which more than half a million websites were hacked, was caused by vulnerabilities in its Web and SQL Server software, according to U.S. media reports Monday.

Earlier last week, more than 500,000 websites, including several hosted by the United Nations and the UK government, were hacked and modified in order to download malware to visitors computers, according to Finnish anti-virus maker F-Secure, which caused numerous governmental and commercial Web pages were shut down. Security researchers said those websites were hacked by SQL injection attacks.

A dangerous flaw in Hewlett-Packard Software Update, a tool that automatically updates HP software and drivers, could be exploited by an attacker to read sensitive information or gain access to a system.

The tools contain several ActiveX flaws that could be exploited by tricking Internet Explorer users into visiting a malicious website.

Chinese police have seized $750 million worth of pirated computer software and broken up a piracy ring in southern China, state media said as Beijing vows to crack down on a problem which has soured trade ties.

The Internet is slowly inching closer to ratcheting up the security of its Domain Name System (DNS) server architecture: The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN ) plans to go operational with the secure DNS technology, DNSSEC, later this year in one of its domains.

ICANN officials said the organization plans to add DNSSEC to its .arpa Internet domain servers, and that the .org domain servers (run by PIR) as well as the .uk servers also will go DNSSEC soon. Country domains .swe (Sweden), .br (Brazil), and .bg (Bulgaria ) already run the secure version of DNS for their domain servers.

DNSSEC, which stands for DNS Security Extensions, digitally signs DNS records so that DNS responses are validated as legitimate and not hacked or tampered with.

By some measures, China has tied the United States as the online population leader with its government reporting that the number of Internet users there has soared to 221 million.

U.S. company Raytheon announced last week that it bought the software security company SI Government Solutions.

SI Government Solutions has been a major supplier software security expertise to U.S. intelligence agencies. The amount Raytheon paid for the company was not revealed.

Chinese police have seized $750 million worth of pirated computer software and broken up a piracy ring in southern China, state media said as Beijing vows to crack down on a problem which has soured trade ties.

Google engineers have adapted a software program to help track child sex predators and search for patterns in images of abuse on the web.

Google has created the technology for the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).

It was originally developed to block copyrighted videos on the company's YouTube division.

The program uses pattern recognition to enable analysts to sort and identify files containing child sex abuse.

Google says its aim in teaming up with the centres Technology Coalition Against Child Pornography is to develop solutions that would make it harder for people to use the web to exploit children or traffic in child pornography.

complete article

Web payment firm Paypal has said it will block unsafe browsers from using its service as part of wider anti-phishing efforts. Customers will first be warned that a browser is unsafe but could then be blocked if they continue using it.

Paypal said it was an alarming fact that there is a significant set of users who use very old and vulnerable browsers such as Internet Explorer 4.

Web designers making very old mistakes are letting malicious hackers hijack visitors to their sites, say experts.
Many of the loopholes left in the code created for websites have been known about for almost a decade say the security researchers.

The poor practices are proving very attractive to hi-tech criminals looking for a ready source of victims.

According to Symantec the number of sites vulnerable in this way almost doubled during the last half of 2007.

complete article

Despite all the antivirus software, all the extra security features in your computers operating system and all the government regulations intended to make the Internet a safer place, your personal computer and your personal data are as threatened as ever.

Cybercrooks Winning Web

Performing and perfecting search engine results can save web surfers lots of time and energy. Understanding the nuances of searching allows researchers to immediately drill down and locate the information they are seeking, without having to wade through a myriad of irrelevant search results in the process. The increasing complexity of search engines has made understanding search engines a necessity for those who spend any amount of time online. The following search tips are standards that will work in most of the major search engines.

Performing Better Searches

HTML Web templates for security firms and online security consultants. This website has a number of web templates specifically for security firms.

While it may still be debatable whether all the major search engines currently employ a duplicate content penalty, all have made it abundantly clear that they do not have any desire to provide search results that rehash the same content over and over. Actively avoid any potential penalties by taking a proactive approach to building unique content.

Avoid Duplicate Content Penalties

Shifting to a hosted software model can cut IT costs and ease administration and upgrades, but managers must prepare users for its significant effect on work processes and job roles, said CIOs sitting on a panel at Computerworld USs recent SaaSCon conference.

Lane said IT managers should hammer prospective hosted software providers with questions about their security tools, datacentre location, backup and recovery capabilities, and how the hosting facility is set up to deal with unexpected outages. He also suggested that the audience look closely at the vendor's service level guarantees.

The former Manhattan hospital employee accused of stealing the records of nearly 50,000 patients sold the information, prosecutors said Saturday.
Dwight McPherson, 38, used his position in the admissions department at New York-Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell to obtain lists of patient names, phone numbers and Social Security numbers over a two-year period, according to a complaint filed yesterday.

He confessed to his role in the identity theft scheme when he was arrested Friday night, the complaint says.

The last time a pope visited the United States in 1999, an audiotape of an Islamic extremist that accused the pontiff of leading a crusade against Muslims would not likely have created a huge stir.

But that was before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, after which people worldwide became aware of the murderous threat of Osama bin Laden.

So the release last month of bin Laden's comments about Pope Benedict XVI probably heightened further the awareness of those assigned to protect the pope during his six-day visit to Washington and New York that begins Tuesday, a former Secret Service agent said.

They wear bright blue tracksuits, and Beijing Olympic organizers call them flame attendants. But a military bearing hints at their true pedigree: paramilitary police sent by Beijing to guard the Olympic flame during its journey around the world.

Torchbearers have criticized the security detail for aggressive behavior, and a top London Olympics official simply called them thugs.

They were barking orders at me, like Run! Stop! This! That! and I was like, Oh my gosh, who are these people? former television host Konnie Huq told British Broadcasting Corp. radio about her encounter with the men in blue during Londons leg of the relay last week.

Beijing will have at least 94,000 security staff – but only 10,500 athletes. After the protests that greeted the torch relay, China is getting ready to put on the greatest show of security the world has ever seen. What used to be called the Olympics are likely this summer to become the Paramilitary Games. China is planning to deploy more than 94,000 security personnel at the Beijing celebration in August, which means that uniformed and plain-clothes operatives will outnumber the 10,500 athletes by nearly nine to one.

Nearly $250 million worth of individual losses from Internet fraud was reported by Americans to the FBI last year, the bureau said.

The figures were released by the Internet Crime Complaint Center, a partnership between the FBI and the non-profit National White Collar Crime Center, in its seventh annual report on Internet crime this week.

The $239 million loss represents a 20 percent growth from fraud losses reported to the center in 2006, and officials say it represents just a fraction of the total costs of cybercrime to the U.S. economy.

Security has been increased at a Simpsonville middle school after a student was arrested and suspended for wearing a T-shirt with a noose and a reference to the Ku Klux Klan.

Greenville television station WYFF says some students at Bryson Middle School stayed home yesterday. The students say they feared violence after the T-shirt worn by an eighth-grader angered both black and white students the day before.

The student lifted another shirt revealing the racist T-shirt in the lunchroom.

The student has been charged with disturbing school and recommended for expulsion.

Conventional wisdom is that security spending will be sheltered from economic volatility. But not according to a Goldman Sachs survey of 50 chief security officers.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain says he plans to meet with the U.S. Secret Service soon about getting body guards.

The Arizona senator, who has won enough delegates to win the partys nomination, has gone without Secret Service protection. However, agency Director Mark Sullivan testified publicly before Congress this week that McCain had no security detail, prompting the candidate to say perhaps the time has come, the New York Daily News reported Saturday.

Businesses are giving users greater freedom with corporate IT systems, according to a recent report, but many of those users lack the necessary security training.
The study, conducted by a consortium, led by PricewaterhouseCoopers, on behalf of the Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform (BERR), found that firms are placing greater trust in their staff.

Seven out of eight firms now have information security policies in place according to newly released findings from the annual Information Security Breaches Survey (ISBS). Those policies are loosening controls over users.

complete article

Warnings have been issued by a great many online security authorities that Flash has security flaws, yet the warnings have fallen upon deaf ears.

The problems are not with the new versions of Flash files, but with the slightly older ones, made with older authoring programs that were, are full of vulnerabilities. These files are vulnerable to XSS (Cross-site Scripting) attacks.

Shareware Promotions has posted a very important and revealing post about Google and how they want to use Google Analytics data and Adwords!  Anyone with half a brain should have seen this coming.

In fact I wrote a piece about this awhile back, here is an excerpt:

Google Analytics is free, no one can beat the price, but what is the real cost? The cost is your data. While not terribly important when analyzed alone, when aggregated with other information Google has access to, it could be damaging. Data mining has made the collection of data meaningful. It has become easier to find patterns and trends in large volumes of data.

While any of that information independent of other data, might be non-threatening or irrelevant to someone doing analysis, when combined with other data Google has access to, it can paint a very clear picture of how, not only individual companies are performing, but the aggregate data could possibly paint a picture of how entire business sectors or industries are performing.

If you are using Analytics consider yourself warned yet again!

Full Shareware Promotions Blog Post
Full Article Google As Big Brother

The security of the most widely used standard in the world for transmitting mobile phone calls is dangerously flawed, putting privacy and data at risk, two researchers warned at the Black Hat conference in Europe on Friday.

This year, identity thieves are not just trying to gain access to your bank account or to open lines of credit in your name. Scammers are on the prowl for ordinary citizens' identities that they can they can use in filing phony tax returns, and fraudulently claiming refunds, as well as swipe rebates, associated with the 2008 federal economic stimulus package.

The college gossip Web site JuicyCampus.com has criticized a consumer fraud investigation launched by the New Jersey attorney general.

JuicyCampus publishes anonymous, often malicious gossip about college students, with language ranging from catty to hateful and potentially offensive.

Last week the New Jersey Attorney General Anne Milgram subpoenaed the company as part of a fraud investigation.

Expensive legal battles have caused TorrentSpy, the search engine for the BitTorrent file-sharing service, to shut down.

TorrentSpy was a search engine that helped visitors find torrent files on the Web. Torrent files are often music or movie files stored in an easily shared file format. The search engine came under legal fire from the entertainment industry, which in general does not want licensed content to be distributed royalty-free.

People who use software to breach security measures on the Internet and purchase tickets for profit would be fined as much as $5,000 under a proposal advancing in the Legislature.

A security lapse made it possible for unwelcome strangers to peruse personal photos posted on Facebooks popular online hangout, circumventing a recent upgrade to the websites privacy controls.

The Associated Press verified the loophole Monday after receiving a tip from a Byron Ng, a Vancouver, Canada computer technician. Ng began looking for security weaknesses last week after Facebook unveiled more ways for 67 million members to restrict access to their personal profiles.

Steve Jobs is using Apple Software Update to slip his Safari browser onto Windows machines. And Mozilla CEO John Lilly is peeved.
Presumably, Lilly is peeved because Safari browsers on Windows machines would eat into the market share of Mozilla' very own Firefox browser. But Lilly says he is peeved for different reasons. He says he's peeved because Steve Jobs little Software Update trick undermines the security of the entire internet.

Unauthorized software that was secretly installed on servers in Hannafords supermarkets across the Northeast and in Florida enabled the massive data breach that compromised up to 4.2 million credit and debit cards, the company said.

New Security Web Templates have been added. If you need a new security website have a look at these easy to use HTML templates.

Backup Platinum is easy-to-use and powerful backup program designed for Microsoft Windows. Makes a reserve copy of your critical data to hard or USB drives, CD-R/W, DVD, FTP or LAN with 128-bit file encryption and ZIP compression. Can run in service mode under NT, 2000, XP, and 2003.

Backup Platinum is 40% off on Software Deal of the Day

MySpace said that it has launched a new public service announcement campaign focused on Internet safety. According to the social networking sites security head, Hemanshu Nigam, the firm is stepping up its safety education efforts to promote online safety awareness among parents, educators and teens. MySpaces outreach will include 10, 15, and 30 second video spots on Fox broadcast and cable networks, as well as efforts with nonprofit iKeepSafe for online flash tutorials aimed at parents.

Terrorists linked to the al-Qaeda network are increasingly turning to the Internet to spread propaganda against their enemies and convince sympathizers to join their cause.

Diane Russel Ong Junio, an analyst with the newly-launched Philippine Institute for Political Violence and Terrorism Research, said that in the past couple of years, al-Qaeda-funded terrorists have increased the output of videos and other propaganda material on the Internet.

The Pentagon says the Street View feature in Google Maps can compromise military security. It has banned Google vehicles from entering any military installation after detailed images of Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Tex., appeared on Google Maps.

We don't have any issues regarding Google and their products, which are very useful tools, said Gary Ross, a public-affairs officer for the U.S. Northern Command. But the Street View provides clear imagery of control points, barriers, headquarters and security facilities that pose a risk to our force-protection efforts.

Computer files with confidential data on about 5,000 employees at MTV Networks were breached by someone outside the company, the network told employees on last week.

MTV later said in a statement that the security breach occurred after an Internet connection in an employees computer was compromised.

PageGate integrates with many monitoring applications, to offer a level of notification. Alerts can be sent directly to cell phones or pagers, signaling individuals of any anomalies. Integration is typically done by passing messages to PageGate using commandline, or PageGate can poll a predetermined directory for messages.

A computer science student at the University of Virginia asserts that he has found a security flaw in the technology behind the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authoritys CharlieCard system.

German-born graduate student Karsten Nohl specializes in computer security. Nohl and two fellow security researchers in Germany say they have cracked the encryption scheme that protects the data on the card. The team warns that their breakthrough could be used to make counterfeit copies of the cards, which are used by commuters to pay for MBTA bus and subway rides.

The 2008 Software Industry Conference  will be in Boston, Massachusetts at the Boston Marriott Quincy from July 17-19, 2008.

The Software Industry Conference is a three day event, that culminates with the Shareware Industry Awards ceremony. There are also dozens of informative, educational breakout sessions covering a wide variety of topics. And if that is not enough there are three nights jam packed with plenty of time to mingle with other attendees, exhibitors, and sponsors including an Exhibit Night featuring the best software development products and services.

Attendee registration is only $199 if you register before April 1st!

Almost a year after the deadliest shooting on a college campus, Congress is still haggling over legislation that would provide federal dollars to colleges and universities to help pay for improved campus security.

Security is now a top priority at colleges across the nation after a student gunman at Virginia Tech University killed 31 students and a faculty member in April before shooting himself.

Advocates for safer campuses and improved security are frustrated that Congress has not acted to provide federal aid.

College Security

EBay is trying to help chief information security officers (CISOs) build a common front in the war against cybercrime


The company played host to chief security officers and a handful of technology vendors a few weeks ago, holding its annual Red Team security conference at the companies San Jose campus, billing it as a networking opportunity for security professionals where they could discuss areas of common concern.

A large organization decides that blogs cut productivity, provide misleading information and could compromise security. It discontinues access for its personnel, even though information is a key weapon in competition. The question is whether this is a smart policy for a large organization, especially the U.S. Air Force.


According to a report last week in Wired, the Air Force is eliminating access for its troops to virtually any site that uses the term blog. Sites are also being blocked because of a negative review of content by supervising personnel.

complete article

This story presents five mistakes that companies commonly make when writing and implementing security policies. As simplistic as some of these errors sound, they happen often enough and cause heavy damage to companies bottom lines.

Company Security Mistakes

In a move intended to improve the security of its virtualization platform, VMware has provided ways for third-party security vendors to integrate their applications into the platform.

Basically, VMware has provided a set of application program interfaces (APIs) to such security companies as McAfee and Symantec. The APIs, collectively called VMsafe, give the security programs the access needed to monitor and protect the memory, CPU and disk operations, and systems of virtual machines set up with the VMware hypervisor.

AVG Technologies (formerly Grisoft) has released version 8.0 of its security suite, AVG Internet Security. The suite includes AVGs flagship antivirus product as well as spyware protection, personal firewall, antispam, and protection against malicious Web sites.

The University of Hawaii at Manoa is in line for up to $12 million over the next six years to co-manage a research center for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

UH Manoa was selected along with 10 other universities for five new Centers of Excellence. The centers will study such areas as border security, explosives detection, maritime and port security and natural disasters.

MyUSBOnly is a unique product that provides security for USB storage devices that are so prevalent nowadays in any environment. Technically, it acts as something similar to a firewall that monitors the USB ports for any storage device that is connected to the protected computer. The discount offer is only good for a limited time!

Since January, the Bush administration has committed to spending billions to keep the governments computer networks safe from cyber-spies and other malicious hackers. But to keep digital intruders away from sensitive government information, some worry the government will have to do some spying of its own--on the U.S. private sector.

The House Committee on Homeland Security plans to hold the first public hearing Thursday on Presidential Directive 54, a project that could cost as much as $30 billion over seven years as it expands cyber-monitoring of all federal agency networks. Many former officials believe that the plan will go further, extending government surveillance to private companies, such as military contractors, that possess sensitive government information.

Everyone who understands Internet Marketing will tell you to analyze your web logs... but what does that really mean? What particular things should you pay attention to when analyzing your web logs?

Web Log Analysis

Large collection of security related web templates for online security companies. Get a new look for your online security presence!

This years Software Industry Conference will be held July 17-19, 2008 in Boston Massachusetts. The conference attracts industry leaders, software companies, and MicroISVs.

European data privacy regulators confirmed Thursday that Internet search engines based outside Europe must also comply with EU rules on how a persons Internet address or search history is stored.

Lawmakers in the United States and elsewhere should not to try to censor Islamic extremists' use of the Internet, says a new report from a global think tank.

There is no censorship option, Greg Austin, vice president of the East West Institute, told United Press International. Trying to suppress anything (on the Internet) except direct operational use by terrorists is a mistake.

Austin said a careful distinction had to be drawn between extremist sites advocating violent ideologies or asserting the right to use violence in general and terrorist sites that call for or support specific terrorist attacks.

The report urges that, rather than try to close extremists sites, the private sector and religious and community groups should step up, countering extremists propaganda strategy with messages that promote peaceful dialogue and emphasize the human cost of extremist violence.

complete article

These days computer security is very important due to extensive use of Internet. People who use shareware and freeware software and utilities need to be very sure about their computer's security. A firewall is a software package that keeps track of any internet traffic pieces that go in and out of your computer.

complete article

The increasing use of the Internet by political campaigns presents hackers and spammers with growing opportunities for abuse, according to two Internet experts.
Oliver Friedrichs is director of emerging technologies for Symantec.

Oliver Friedrichs, director of emerging technologies for Symantec, a computer security firm, said he has seen attacks of only moderate severity but warns much more damage could be done.Those attacks include: phishing, or e-mails designed to look legitimate but which take respondents to fraudulent sites; adware, or ads that appear through pop-ups or banners on Web pages; and spyware, which secretly monitors computer users. Fraudulent Web sites and plain old lies are also used.

Microsoft Corp. says it will publish more information about how its products work, a move that will help competitors do a better job of building Microsoft-compatible software products. This is a major shift for Microsoft.

The SIIA created a list of titles most pirated by companies last year. They include:

Symantec Norton AntiVirus
Adobe Acrobat
Symantec pcAnywhere
Adobe Photoshop
Autodesk AutoCAD
Adobe Dreamweaver
Roxio Easy CD/DVD Creator
Roxio Toast Titanium
Ipswitch WS_FTP
Nero Ultra Edition

The most frequently pirated software titles on the Internet last year were:

McAfee VirusScan
Symantec Norton AntiVirus
McAfee Internet Security Suite
Intuit TurboTax
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Acrobat
Intuit Quicken Home and Business
Symantec Norton pcAnywhere
Symantec Norton Ghost
Adobe Creative Suite.

A pink MacBook, a computer repair shop, an internationally renowned actor, and eight female pop stars are at the center of what is being described as the biggest Internet sex scandal in China.

It all began last year, when Edison Chen, a star of Infernal Affairs--the movie that inspired Martin Scorseses The Departed, dropped off his custom pink MacBook at a repair shop. Then in late January, thousands of sexually explicit images began appearing on the Internet that showed Chen in rather compromising positions with eight of the regions most popular actresses and singers. Authorities say the images were illegally copied from the computer by repair technicians.

The best anti-virus software is not free. Here are some fee based options, though they are discounted for a limited time:

Norton Anti-Virus - http://www.software-dod.com/2nd-chance-norton-antivirus.htm

BitDefender Anti-Virus - http://www.software-dod.com/2nd-chance-bitdefender-antivirus.htm

Computer Associates Anti-Virus - http://www.software-dod.com/2nd-chance-ca-antivirus-spyware.htm

New York City prosecutors on last Tuesday endorsed the United States first proposed law to ban registered sex offenders from social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, officials said.

The district attorneys from all five of the citys boroughs announced their support for New York state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's proposal, which would ban thousands of the states sex offenders from communicating with minors online.

CA is seeking beta testers for the 2008 version of its Internet Security Suite Plus, its all-in-one application for protecting against viruses, phishing attacks, spyware, spam and other Web borne threats. The software bundles together CAs other products, including eTrust and the popular PestPatrol program (now known as CA Personal Firewall and CA Anti-Spyware, respectively).

Everyone who understands Internet Marketing will tell you to analyze your web logs... but what does that really mean? What particular things should you pay attention to when analyzing your web logs?

Web Log Analysis

Top 10 Viruses for 2007

According to AVG global security strategist Larry Bridwell, the 10 viruses exhibiting the most staying power in 2007 are:
W32/Detnat
W32/Netsky
W32/Mytob
W32/Bagle
W32/MyWife
W32/Virut
W32/Zafi
W32/MyDoom
W32/Lovegate
W32/Bagz

Business is taking off for a 20-year-old college student who founded an internet security company and the next big plug for his product will soon be here in the heart of Illinois.

Ricky Doyle says portcard.net does basic background checks for people who log onto social networking sites like myspace and facebook.
He says his site verifies the user by asking questions only they know the answers to.

Then it tags the users account on the social networking sites showing they've been approved by his company.

He says it helps increase safety on the internet- especially for teens.

The Web is scarier than most people realize, according to research published recently by Google.

The search engine giant trained its Web crawling software on billions of Web addresses over the past year looking for malicious pages that tried to attack their visitors. They found more than 3 million of them, meaning that about one in 1,000 Web pages is malicious, according to Neils Provos, a senior staff software engineer with Google.

Online auction giant eBay has been implicated in piracy lawsuits. The Software & Information Industry Association is suing several eBay sellers as part of its campaign to stop auctioning of pirated software.

The latest round of lawsuits marks the largest onslaught since SIIA launched its auction-site antipiracy program two years ago. It filed nine separate suits in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on behalf of members Adobe Systems and Symantec.

Apple last Tuesday issued an update for iPhoto 08 that includes a security vulnerability fix.


iPhoto 08 7.1.2 addresses a flaw in iPhoto 08 version 7.1 that could have allowed an attacker to entice a victim into subscribing to a maliciously crafted photocast -- a sort of RSS feed for photos -- and then to execute malicious code on the victims system

In keeping with its mandate to gather intelligence, the CIA is watching YouTube.


U.S. spies, now under the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), are looking increasingly online for intelligence; they have become major consumers of social media.

A Michigan woman has been charged with using the Craigslist classified-advertisement Web site to find a killer for a romantic rival.

The job title? Freelance. The price? $5,000.

According to authorities, Ann Marie Linscott posted two ads in November and received at least three responses, apparently from people who thought the ad was for a freelance writing gig.

In e-mail exchanges, however, Linscott, 48, told the job seekers that she was looking for silent assassins to eradicate a 56-year-old Oroville, California, woman named Carol, according to an affidavit from the FBI agent investigating the case.

The Web site for Indian antivirus vendor AvSoft Technologies has been hacked and is being used to install malicious software on visitors computers, security researchers said last week.

complete article

Police in Spain have detained 76 people acrosss the country as part of what they described Sunday as their biggest-ever probe into Internet fraud.


The suspects defrauded their victions of over three million euros (four million US dollars), police said in a statement.

Direct Access is a powerful speed typing software to create global text templates, available in any application, and define your abbreviation list only once. You just type the abbreviation and Direct Access automatically expands it into the full phrase for you. With Direct Access, any piece of information is always available just by typing a few keystrokes.

FolderClone Pro lets you make an identical copy of a folder tree from one drive to another. It can be used to synchronize files between a desktop computer and a laptop, or replicate data between a workstation and a server. It can also be used to copy important files from your hard drive to another location. (ZIP drive, CD-RW, removable hard disk, network drives, local hard disk).

Create scripts and record macros to automate and control your Windows applications, automate software processes and assign tasks to schedules, desktop shortcuts or hotkeys. Perform complex tasks with a single mouse click, or schedule your computer to perform tasks while you are away.

Windows automation software deeply discounted on Software Deal of the Day.

Security Logos  large collection of security related logos for web designs and corporate brands..

A group of hackers calling itself Anonymous has hit the Church of Scientologys Web site with an online attack.


The attack was launched January 19 by Anonymous, which is seeking media attention to help save people from Scientology by reversing the brainwashing, according to a Web page maintained by Anonymous.

Sweden plans this week to charge the people running Pirate Bay, one of the worlds most visited Web sites, with being accessories in breaking copyright law.

Pirate Bay helps Web surfers share copyrighted music and film files, which is illegal in many countries, including Sweden.

A thief pilfers a laptop computer from an unsuspecting traveler at an airport departure lounge and flits off, unnoticed.

A few years ago, the laptops rightful user would have had little chance of seeing it again.

But today, a handful of security companies offer software and gadgets to recover stolen notebook computers or, at least, make the sensitive corporate data they hold inaccessible to criminals.

The Chinese government said Friday its Internet population has soared to 210 million people, putting it on track to surpass the U.S. online community this year to become the worlds largest.

A decade after the government said that AT&T and other service providers do not have to police their networks for pirated content, the telecommunications giant is voluntarily looking for ways to play traffic cop.

An Islamist Web site often used by al Qaeda supporters carried updated encryption software on Friday which it said would help Islamic militants communicate with greater security on the Internet.

The Mujahideen Secrets 2 was promoted as the first Islamic program for secure communications through networks with the highest technical level of encoding.

A New York-based publishing firm has agreed to pay $500,000 to resolve a copyright infringement suit filed by the Software & Information Industry Association on behalf of several prominent software vendors.

Whittiker Legal Publishing on Wednesday signed off on settlement to resolve a lawsuit brought against it in federal district court in the Eastern District of New York. In addition to the cash settlement, the company agreed to destroy all unlicensed copies of the Adobe, FileMaker and Symantec applications in its possession.

Check out the latest security software titles at a significant discount! Software Deal of the Day offers software at a significant discount for 24 hours. Also check out the 2nd Chance Software Deals, this is designed specifically for those who miss the 24 hour deals but still want excellent software at discounted prices.

More than 100 schools and colleges have turned to the computer software universities use to combat plagiarism because of growing alarm at sixth-form pupils cheating in their coursework.

Plagiarism Detection

The MacSweeper site purports to scan Macs for security issues, then sell users a software fix--but researchers have their doubts.

Some Macintosh users have encountered a security program whose function and Web site have the tell-tale signs of a scam.
Visitors to the Web site selling the program, called MacSweeper, are offered a free security scan of their computers. The scan, which only works on Macs, highlights supposed security problems with the computers. It offers to remove the problems with the purchase of a US$39.99 lifetime subscription.

But the awkward English on the programs Web site, and the way the program operates, have raised doubts over its legitimacy, users and security researchers say.

more on MacSweeper

A British man who was selling £12,000 software for £12 on eBay faces up to 10 years in prison. He pleaded guilty to copyright infringement and will be sentenced in February.

Michael Walton broke an encryption code in the software which allowed him to make copies of it. He sold the copies on eBay, where he reportedly had 80 identities.

Great selection of security logos!

After looking into my crystal ball, I have made a cluster of predictions about what will be hot, and what will be not so hot in technology for 2008.

1. Video
YouTube has not shown any signs of slowing down. With the increasing popularity of portability and the increase of video-viewing technology, the growth of video is unlikely to slow down.

2. Healthy
Healthy is in. It is not only fashionable, but now cool to be healthy. Maybe this will help counter the rise in obesity in the US. Even those who give in to their cravings and indulge agree that it is cool to be healthy. Organic foods are at an all time high with an increase of roughly 20% per year in the US! This may also be a top New Year Resolution.

3. Long Tail
The Long Tail is still hot. Small businesses and big business are all attempting to capture the famed long tail.

Top 10 Winners Predicted for 2008

A company that sells Internet domain names is facing criticisms for holding some in reserve as a consumer-protection measure, a move that also prevents interested parties from shopping around for better prices.


After weeks of testing, Network Solutions LLC began this week to grab names that people search for on its Web site but do not immediately register.
The name is locked up for about four days, during which the person who made the search can buy it directly from the company for $35 a year — a few times more than what many of its rivals charge. After that, the name returns to the pool and can be registered by anyone through any registration company.

Freehold-based Too Much Media, which sells accounting software for adult Web sites, told its customers last month that a security breach on its computers allowed hackers to access various adult Web sites subscriber lists.

At the beginning of each year I like to talk about what did or did not happen during the past year, and what to expect in the coming year. Unlike past years, I will try not to get too emotionally ramped up on all the failures.

Overall, compliance laws (and years of bad press) finally forced most organizations to encrypt more data and laptops by default. Chances are these days that if a thief steals a laptop it will be password protected and its data encrypted. More developers are utilizing SDL (secure design lifecycle) in their programming, taking into account from the beginning the malicious risks posed to and by their applications.

complete article

A Google security engineer says hundreds of thousands of Flash files are vulnerable and a considerable percentage of major Internet sites are affected.

So say security experts looking back on 12 months in which hi-tech gangs took control of the Internets underground.

The economy supporting these groups has matured so much that now everything from virus-writing kits to spam-spewing zombies are available for rent or hire.

It is not just the average net user who is a fan of social network sites, so are hi-tech criminals.

So say security professionals predicting what net criminals will turn to in 2008 to catch people out.

The quasi-intimate nature of the sites makes people share information readily leaving them open to all kinds of other attacks, warn security firms.

Detailed information gathered via the sites will also help tune spam runs or make phishing e-mail more convincing.

If you do not want to lose your spare lithium batteries for your camera, notebook or cell phone, you might want to pack carefully for your next flight.

New rules from the Transportation and Security Administration that took effect on January 1 ban travelers from carrying loose lithium batteries in checked baggage. Passengers are allowed to pack two spare batteries in their carry-on bag, as long as they are in clear plastic baggies.

Key security websites that are oft overlooked but contain valuable information for security professionals or those interested in security in general:

Security Protection - collection of security RSS feeds.

Alarm Tools - security and alarm directory of related vendors.

Password Software - tools for managing and protecting passwords

Security Software - collection of key security software solutions.

Government Feeds - collection of RSS feeds from government agencies.

Take a look at the above websites, they are worth attention!

Privacy made the list, see where:

Top 10 Winners Predicted for 2008
1. Video
2. Healthy
3. Long Tail
4. Buy USA
5. Rich Internet / Interactive Web / Semantic Web / Web Services
6. Aggregate and Attention Data
7. Power of the People
8. Going Green
9. Biometrics and Big Brother
10. Prosthetics / Bionic

Top 10 Losers Predicted for 2008
1. Lead
2. Squat Toilets
3. DRM
4. China
5. Skinny is Out
6. Blockbuster / Netflix
7. Orbo
8. MySpace fell to Facebook
9. Privacy
10. Piracy

What is Hot and What is Not for 2008

The lens through which viewers receive their news has changed. The images of struggle are no longer frozen in time; technology has helped preserve and personalize these conflicts by producing moving tributes to the conflicts of humankind.

The strife and internal conflicts that marred the globe in 2006 continued into 2007: Mynamar (Burma), Palestine and Lebanon all continue to struggle with internal conflicts in their borders. The differences between 2006 and 2007 are not obvious; however, under close examination, it is evident that several external struggles have been transformed into internal conflicts. In 2006, many countries attempted to influence their neighbors. This was evident with Iran attempting to influence the turmoil in Iraq, and Syria attempting to control Lebanon. Both struggles have evolved into internal personal conflicts in 2007.

2007 Reflections, 2008 Predictions

Nearly 30 years after its passage, a once-obscure wiretapping law, and the secret federal court created by it, roiled the waters in Washington, D.C. And the debate is far from over.

The 1978 law in question is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which was enacted in the post-Watergate era as a way to rein in abuses by U.S. intelligence agencies. After September 11, 2001, President Bush authorized his administration to bypass FISA when conducting wiretaps--a mechanism that he defended as necessary but that a chorus of opponents said amounted to a violation of the law, and perhaps the U.S. Constitution itself.

complete article

Threats to personal privacy got more severe in 2007, a report has claimed.

Compiled by Privacy International and the Electronic Privacy Information Center the report details global trends in privacy protection and surveillance.

It found that in 2007 more nations than ever ranked as places where surveillance had become endemic.

The move toward greater surveillance had left the fundamental right to a private life fragile and exposed, the report said.

Six years after the terrorist attacks of 2001, airport security remains a theater of the absurd. The changes put in place following the September 11th catastrophe have been drastic, and largely of two kinds: those practical and effective, and those irrational, wasteful and pointless.

The first variety have taken place almost entirely behind the scenes. Explosives scanning for checked luggage, for instance, was long overdue and is perhaps the most welcome addition. Unfortunately, at concourse checkpoints all across America, the madness of passenger screening continues in plain view. It began with pat-downs and the senseless confiscation of pointy objects. Then came the mandatory shoe removal, followed in the summer of 2006 by the prohibition of liquids and gels. We can only imagine what is next.

The city of Brussels has cancelled its traditional fireworks display to see in the New Year on Monday night due to an ongoing state of heightened security.

The loss or theft of personal data such as credit card and Social Security numbers soared to unprecedented levels in 2007, and the trend is not expected to turn around anytime soon as hackers stay a step ahead of security and laptops disappear with sensitive information.

You know the drill when it comes to safeguarding your identity. Do not give out your Social Security number, do not lend your credit card to anyone and do not surf the Internet with abandon.

But with more credit cards in circulation now than at any other time of the year and online shopping increasingly seen as a better alternative to marching through the crowds, a refresher course in ID protection is in order.

Despite secure Internet networks and the growing availability of insurance coverage for identity fraud, a survey of 500 adults by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners found 57 percent of Americans are worried about becoming a victim of identity theft this holiday season.
The Federal Trade Commission estimates that about 3 percent of Americans are victims of identity theft each year.

Four out of every five children receive inappropriate spam e-mail touting get-rich-quick schemes, loan programs, and pornographic materials, according to a study released by Internet security provider Symantec Corporation. Parents want their children to experience the information and communication channels the Internet provides, but want to make sure they are protected from many of the hazards that are present.

Apple, Inc. has filed for a patent in the U.S. for a Digital Rights Management (DRM) system for controlling where software runs. The method described in the application is one that allows for the injection of code into an applications run-time instruction stream that checks to see if the application is being run on a specific hardware platform, and then repeats that check to see if it is still being run on that authorized platform.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff plans soon to unveil a cyber-security strategy, part of an estimated $15 billion, multiyear program designed to protect the nation's Internet infrastructure. The program has been shrouded in secrecy for months and has also prompted privacy concerns on Capitol Hill because it involves government protection of domestic computer networks.

The SIIA charged in a lawsuit that law firm Fox Rothschild is stealing software made by Adobe, Corel, Sonic Solutions, and Symantec.

In a lawsuit filed last week on behalf of the vendors by the Software Information Industry Association, the firm of Fox Rothschild is alleged to have "engaged in the unauthorized reproduction and use" of software made by Adobe, Corel, Sonic Solutions, and Symantec.

The vendors claim that Fox Rothschild's alleged copyright infringement is causing them repeated and irreparable injury. The suit, filed in federal court in Northern California, does not specify which specific software products the firm is alleged to be using without authorization, or their estimated value.

Microsoft today filed 52 lawsuits in 22 countries against resellers who allegedly sold counterfeit Microsoft software online.

Some 15 of the 52 lawsuits filed involved software traced to the largest-ever commercial counterfeit syndicate, which was broken up earlier this year by Chinese authorities, the FBI and Microsoft. Through its investigations, Microsoft reported it had found that the counterfeit software produced by the Chinese syndicate was distributed in some markets through domestic online sellers.

The head of Britains domestic spy agency has warned that China is spying on the computer systems of British corporations, The Times of London reported.

The MI5 chief, Jonathan Evans, sent a letter last week to 300 executives and security chiefs at banks, accountancies and legal firms, warning them that they were under attack from Chinese state organizations  over the Internet, the newspaper reported Saturday.

A cyber attack launched on the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee could have compromised the personal records of thousands of lab visitors, leaving them susceptible to potential identity theft.

ORNL Director Thom Mason issued an all-staff e-mail earlier this week warning employees that the institution had been a target of a sophisticated cyber attack that appeared to be part of a coordinated attempt to gain access to networks at Oak Ridge laboratories and other institutions across the country.

Those entering online dating forums risk having more than their hearts stolen.

A program that can mimic online flirtation and then extract personal information from its unsuspecting conversation partners is making the rounds in Russian chat forums, according to security software firm PC Tools.

Complete Article

Internet service providers would be given specific responsibilities to report child pornography on their sites and face tough penalties for not doing so under a bill passed Wednesday by the House.


The House also approved a bill to double spending for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a private, nonprofit group created in 1984 with a congressional mandate to act as a clearinghouse for child abduction and sexual exploitation cases.

House Ups Porn Penalties

409 to 2 -- the U.S. House of Representatives passed new legislation on Thursday aimed at making the Internet safer for children. The Securing Adolescents From Exploitation-Online (SAFE) Act was sponsored by Texas Democrat Nick Lampson, one of the founding members of the House Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus.


Among other things, the legislation imposes significant fines on Internet service providers that fail to report evidence of child exploitation to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. According to a press release from Rep. Lampson's office, ISPs would be fined $150,000 per incident per day for first offenses, and $300,000 per incident per day for second and succeeding offenses.

complete article

A security breach has exposed the confidential information of some patients who were tested for such infectious diseases as HIV and hepatitis.
The breach, at the Provincial Public Health Laboratory, occurred Tuesday.

It involved the exposure of files containing patient information through an open Internet connection. Information held by the lab included names, health card numbers, age, sex, physician and test results for infectious diseases, including HIV and hepatitis.

Internet users in France who frequently download music or films illegally risk losing Web access under a new anti-piracy system unveiled on Friday.

The three-way pact between Internet service providers, the government and owners of film and music rights is a boon to the music industry, which has been calling for such measures to stop illicit downloads eating into its sales.

Young people are compromising their career prospects and opening the door to online fraud by posting personal information on social networking sites without thinking about the consequences, a U.K. privacy watchdog warned Friday.

More than 1,000 Internet specialists from government agencies, universities, nonprofits and the private sector are meeting in Brazil this week.
Security is one of the top agenda items at the second U.N. Internet Governance Forum in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, running until Thursday.

Other issues include freedom of expression, the fight against cyber-crime, privacy, multilingualism and diversity, and measures against the dissemination of child pornography and child sexual exploitation, according to a statement from the organizers on the forum's Web site, where most sessions can be monitored live over the Internet.

complete article

The PCI Security Standards Council, the body managing the Payment Card Industry data security initiative, on Wednesday announced that it will anoint a set of best practices developed by Visa Inc. as the new security standard for third-party application software in the payment industry.

The new standard is called the Payment Application Data Security Standard (PA-DSS) and is based on Visas Payment Application Best Practices (PABP).

Over the next few months, the PCI Security Standards Council, together with participating organizations, security auditors, and vulnerability scanning vendors, will offer comments and suggestions relating to the PA-DSS. The security council will then incorporate this feedback and publish a final version of the application security standards in the first quarter of 2008, said Bob Russo, general manager of the security standards council.

Easily find security and protection RSS feeds, by searching or navigating the directory. Security Feeds.

Recent revelations that China-based hackers may have penetrated U.S. computer networks -- including those operated by the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security as well as by major U.S. defense firms -- has heightened concerns about Chinese spying in the United States.

Computer experts believe that the extensive scale of the information operations means they probably involved, to some degree, the Chinese military or intelligence services.

Although U.S. authorities remain concerned by the espionage operations conducted in the United States by Russia, Iran, and Cuba, they consider Chinese spying the most serious in terms of size.

It is a common refrain dashed off in response whenever anyone writes about the sorry state of PC security. In fact, you have probably seen it countless times on this blog alone: Get a Mac!

Well, the times they are a changing. As the Macintosh becomes more popular with users, the inevitable has begun: Macs are increasingly being targeted by malware creators, as the sheer size of that pool becomes more and more tempting.

Just as in earlier times a man was only as good as his family name, today we are defined by the social networks we belong to. So imagine my horror when I learned that I have become a virtual bastard. Earlier this week I logged into Facebook and discovered that without warning my account had been deleted. According to Facebook, I am a fake, a charlatan, a nonperson and all of my more than 200 Facebook friends are the victims of a cruel hoax.

complete article

According to a recent AP article, the Whois service, a series of databases with information about the individuals that register domains, has come under fire from privacy advocates and a new proposal seeks to do away with the service altogether.

Such a move would be a tremendous blow to law enforcement, lawyers and researchers that regularly use the database. However, it may also alleviate some of the spam and privacy concerns that come with the database in its current format.

more information

Over the past two years, data leaks have compromised more than 150 million personal-data records, according to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse.

These breaches come with a high price tag. Forrester Research says that a security breach can cost anywhere between $90 and $305 per record, meaning that the cost of a single, significant breach may run into millions or even billions of dollars. The problem is certainly not going away, and it is no surprise the federal government is considering laws to mandate how sensitive data is handled.

Microsoft took another incremental step in its long-standing anti-piracy program this week when it filed lawsuits against 20 vendors in 13 states for allegedly selling pirated copies of its software.

The company also launched a new educational site, HowToTell.com to help teach buyers tell the difference between legitimate and counterfeit or pirated software.

As the Internet matures, users and governments are struggling to manage controversial issues. Lets face it, the Internet did not exist when the US copyright laws were written;let us not forget, while many countries respect copyright laws, the Internet is global without a governing body. There are not only different laws, rules and regulations, but also jurisdiction issues. RSS didn't exist when copyright laws were written either. While ardent supporters feel any content in a feed can be syndicated, other equally fervent publishers contend that original works are just that--original works, and in many countries protected by copyright laws.

Much of the Internet is uncharted territory. There is no single agencies that has complete control over content or censorship, and it is unlikely that there will ever be a recognized body that regulates and agrees to terms and conditions to govern the online world. At this point, the location of webhosts and companies owning domains dictate what laws that are observed. In other words, if a company in the US or UK is violating a copyright and their host is in the US or UK, it will be easy to enforce copyright laws in the event of a violation and have the website content pulled. If the website is located on a server in a region that does not recognize or acknowledge the rights of a copyright holder, the web host will be less likely to cooperate in removing the offending content.

What is Fair Use?

The possibility that the nation's food supply could be targeted by terrorists has existed since at least the anthrax letters of October 2001, but recent events have underlined just how real the threat is. Suspects in last month's failed car bombings in London and Glasgow, for instance, include physicians, a reminder that terrorists can have biomedical know-how. And imports of contaminated food from China—pet food laced with the chemical melamine, toothpaste with the poisonous compound diethyl glycol and seafood with carcinogenic antimicrobials—show how vulnerable the food supply is to intentional acts of terrorism, too, says Frank Busta, codirector of the National Center for Food Protection and Defense at the University of Minnesota.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said yesterday that the mission of private security contractors guarding individuals in Iraq is fundamentally at odds with the broader U.S. military objective of stabilizing Iraq, and that changes would be required to reconcile them.