April 27, 2007
One of our greatest fears is starting to become a reality. We warned you this was coming and it is going to get worse! You may remember the endpoint security penetration test conducted by a security firm back in June which we covered. Well apparently it served as inspiration to some actual hackers in London. Several USB flash drives infected with USB Trojans were scattered throughout a parking lot. The Trojan application was designed to steal users’ login details from compromised machines, not unlike the USB Switchblade application we saw a while back. Don’t say we didn’t tell you so!
Many security professionals are starting to see attackers favor this attack vector over phishing emails and attempting time consuming perimeter style attacks which are getting tougher. As perimeter security has become more robust, hackers are looking for easier ways to compromise systems. A USB removable media device in the hands of the technologically naive is a recipe for disaster. USB ports are wide open and human beings are curious creatures, finding a free USB flash drive in the parking lot can be too much for some employees to resist. That USB Glue option is starting to actually not sound like a bad idea.
USB Risk Prevention
To mitigate the risk, training employees should be the first line of defense. You might be surprised to learn this, but many folks don’t understand the risks posed by removable media devices. Second, if you are serious about protecting data and blocking unauthorized use of USB ports (as well as Firewire, Bluetooth, CD/DVD drives) on your network you will need a stronger policy in place as well as the endpoint security technology to implement it. Windows does not protect you, not even Vista.
The best technology we know of that enables administrators to get granular access of their endpoints is DeviceWall. There is no other technology solution that provides administrators the ability to decide who has access to these devices and ports, who has read/write access to them, enforces encryption on all USB flash drives and audits all data being written to these drives.
iPods are cute. How can something so cute be a threat? Well, in addition to being a tool of choice for data thieves, you can now add cheating to their list of crimes. A school in Mountain View, California has decided to ban iPods and other MP3 players from campus. The reason being that two kids were overheard plotting plans on how to use an iPod to cheat, by loading recordings of possible exam answers, or written notes which can be included as lyric files. Apparently there have already been several cases in other California schools involving iPods and other MP3 players.
I think banning the devices is a bit much, considering the same technique could be used with any small recording device, so really the threat is not new. Even calculators can be used to cheat as they allow you to store text files. If I were a school network administrator I would be much more concerned with how these devices were being used when connected to my network. From downloading pirated music files which can cause legal issues for my district, to uploading USB based trojan applications which can result in data breaches, or even costly network wide infections.
Source: AP/Yahoo News
April 26, 2007
Two former Scuderia Ferrari engineers who were accused of stealing secrets and giving them to Toyota F1 rivals have been convicted. Angelo Santini and Mauro Iacconi were sentenced to jail terms of 9 and 16 months on charges of industrial espionage.
The information that was stolen from Ferrari was on a CD that contained important data including engineering documents, test data and other undisclosed documents. Both men left Ferrari and joined the Toyota team. Suspicions were then raised when Toyota’s 2003 car the TF103 bore an very strong similarity to Ferrari’s F2002.
Both men continue to deny the charges claiming that in racing industrial secrets have a minimal life span.
April 23, 2007
New figures released by legal firm, Glovers, suggests that UK businesses are losing £40 million every day to fraud, 80 percent of which involves employees. And it’s not just new hires companies need to beware of; 90 percent of fraudulent employees have been with the organization for more than a year, and 20 percent for more than a decade.
As many as 78 percent of IT professionals claimed their employers had suffered unreported internal security breaches.
More from Computing.co.uk
April 19, 2007
New research shows that data theft and regulatory compliance have overtaken virus and access control as IT security managers’ top concerns.
But while 38 percent of respondents cited data theft as their top management concern, it seems that board-level buy-in is still difficult to secure. Forty-three percent of respondents (compared with 33 percent in 2006) said they were more concerned with internal threats, such as staff passing on confidential information or stealing intellectual property.
Undertaken by market researcher, Vanson Bourne, the second annual poll of 100 UK information technology (IT) security chiefs found that viruses, the prime concern of 55 percent of respondents a year ago, were cited by just 27 percent in 2007.
