“Web security company ScanSafe this week plans to announce a new service aimed at protecting instant-messaging channels from viruses, spam, and other threats, as well as enforcing policies across this increasingly popular communications mechanism.”

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C:\Program Files\Microsoft \Visual Studio\VC8

This kind of attack seems to be growing.  So keep those anti-virus and firewall programs up-to-date.

Author:  Tom Olzak

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“‘We just received a report that a particular site uses the vulnerability to install a spybot variant,’ the SANS Institute’s Internet Storm Center (ISC) warned Friday in an alert. ‘It is a minor site with insignificant visitor numbers according to Netcraft’s ‘Site rank.’”

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1. Create documents online
2. Upload documents from Word
3. Publish to the web
4. Post to your blog
5. Participate in online collaboration with people you specify

Yes, it’s a great product with fantastic potential.  And now that Google has purchased the company, Upstartle, things could get very interesting.  There is just one catch; there are no safeguards to protect the content of documents during editing or viewing.

On February 27, 2006, in the Writely blog, Jen, an employee of Upstartle, responded to a thread in which users questioned why SSL protection was not provided. 

 [QUOTE=Jen]OK, now I have to reply ;-}

We don’t have SSL definitively planned as part of a premium service, although that’s certainly possible. SSL will definitely slow the service down, which is why we would likely not make it the default in the basic service. Yes, I know this response is vague, but it’s only because our plans are not final![/QUOTE]

As I posted to the Writely blog, it’s irresponsible for an organization to provide a tool like this without any apparent regard for safeguarding the activities of its users.  I hope that Google takes a different approach with this innovative and, in my opinion, much needed service.

 Author:  Tom Olzak
 

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In this paper we focus on one of the most dangerous types of attack – DNS cache poisoning.  To provide a complete picture of this threat, we’ll explore how DNS works, two ways crackers facilitate cache poisoning, what impact this type of attack can have on your organization, and steps you can take to protect your information assets.

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Author:  Tom Olzak 

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“The flaws lie in the open-source GNU Privacy Guard software, also known as GnuPG and GPG, the GnuPG group said in two alerts. The software, a free replacement for the Pretty Good Privacy cryptographic technology, ships with many open-source operating systems such as FreeBSD, OpenBSD and many Linux distributions” (By Joris Evers, CNET News.com Published on ZDNet News: March 10, 2006, 2:38 PM PT).

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On Monday, March 13, CipherTrust plans to make available for download a free toolbar for Outlook and Lotus Notes email users.  The toolbar will be available from the CipherTrust Research Portal, which will also launch Monday.

This is the way it works:

1. The user clicks on an email
2. The CipherTrust toolbar program sends the IP address of the sender to a CipherTrust hosted server running the TrustedSource reputation engine for analysis
3. The results of the analysis are returned to the user’s desktop causing the toolbar to flash:
1. Green with a happy-face when the email is from a reputable sender
2. Yellow for questionable trustworthiness
3. Red when the user should probably just delete the message

The data used for analysis come from CipherTrust’s global network of more than 4,000 sensors installed in business and government networks.  They’re collected on TrustedSource servers where the trustworthiness of the source is assessed to a very granular level.  The assessment is based on the following criteria:

1. Is this the first time the sender has been seen?  According to CipherTrust, about 30% of IP addresses analyzed fall into this category.  Of those, about 95% are spam, viruses, etc.
2. How much email is the sender responsible for?
3. Does the sender send and receive email, or just send?
4. Does the sender’s behavior seem “bursty” or is it more continuous?

This is one more step in the right direction.  Although not perfect, it goes quite a distance down the path toward a world in which the Internet is a safe place to travel the globe. 

Author:  Tom Olzak

“Symantec posted alerts for the “Hotmatom” and “Maniccum” worms, and ranked both as a level “2″ threat. The Cupertino, Calif.-based security company uses a 1 through 5 scale to label worms, viruses, and Trojans”

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