In February, Pfizer, the world’s leader in biomedical and pharmaceutical research, reported stolen a laptop computer which carried classified information for 800 contractors as well as current and past employees. The individuals in question may be subject to identity theft.

The information on the laptop computer included names, credit card numbers, various addressses, phone numbers and hotel loyalty program numbers and other information.  It did not appear any social security numbers or PIN codes were revealed.

The laptop computer, stolen by burglars from the home of a contractor arranging travel and meeting plans for Pfizer, was password protected.  Many operating systems store application data in numerous locations on your computer.  Full-Disk encryption is the only means to protect your entire hard-drive.

Full disk encryption benefits outweigh those of regular file or folder encryption and vault encryption.

Full-Disk Encryption:

• Swap space and temporary folders are files which could reveal confidential information, but now can be encrypted along with most all other data, with full disk encryption
• Pre-boot Authentication (PBA) which keeps the operating system from booting until the right password is entered
• If you need it there is data destruction by ridding of the cryptograph key

In light of publicized lap-top thefts and security breaches, it is important for all users to enlist full data encryption solutions to protect all confidential data on their machines. This is the precise reason that the United States Government is in the process of comparing different FDE solutions in order to choose and implement the best one. If you have confidential data in high risk locations consider full disk encryption to protect your data.

Author: Christopher

(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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Symantec’s Monthly State of Spam report for March showed an increase in bounced messages that found spammers forging sent email addresses and using them in the “From” header of their own Spam messages.

Reminiscent of Backscatter, spammers are taking advantage of mail transfer agents configured to send back a list of failed email recipient addresses, an explanation of the cause of failure, and a copy of the original email. This opens a window for Spam attacks, as anti-spam filters do not block most “failed email” replies. Since spammers forge the sender’s address, this mail is going to be received by people who have nothing to do with the Spam.

Corporate networks will feel the greatest burden of the increased attacks. Using increased bandwidth and an increase of unwanted Spam messages in users’ inboxes will result in lost productivity. Networks are encouraged to configure mail transfer agents to not send back a copy of the original failed messages and require signatures for outgoing emails.

Author: Christopher

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Almost 300,000 web sites hosted with Internet Information Services are infected with a new malicious malware according to PandaLabs. By injecting SQL code in all pages hosted on the same IIS server, this vulnerability allows hackers to inject SQL code and redirect the visitor to a malicious site. The malicious page scans the visitors machine to find ways to compromise the visitors machine. Exploits are then downloaded and used to infected the redirected visitor based on the information found on the scan.

If your site is hosted with Internet Information Services it is highly recommended you check to see if your site is compromised. To check if your site is compromised, search your source code for the following IFRAME reference: “<script src=http://www.nihaorr1.com/1.js>”. If this IFRAME reference is found, remove them immediately and notify your IIS admin right away.

Author: Christopher

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Lifeblood - Memphis, TN
Over 320,000 blood donor records missing and assumed stolen.

Tenet Healthcare Corporation - Dallas, TX
An ex-employee was confirmed to have stolen 37,000 records with patient names and personal information.

Long Island University - Brookville, NY
30,000 tax records are considered compromised because of defective mailers with missing adhesive on one side.

Source: Privacy Rights Clearinghouse

Author: Christopher

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HP Australia has warned that optional USB keys shipped with some of its Proliant servers are infected with malware, bringing attention to the growing use of USB drives as a means to distribute viral infections.

The low risk worms, Fakerecy and SillyFDC, were found in a batch of 256MB and 1GB USB keys that shipped with the servers. It is undetermined how many infected keys, used for installing optional floppy-disc drives to servers, were distributed. An infected machine in the manufacturing factory is the likely cause of the incident.

The malware distributed is not considered an enormous threat, due in part to the low number of estimated users still utilizing floppy disk drives for data storage and that most hackers don’t find the virus valuable.

This is not the first incident of infection to come out of the factory; others have involved digital photo frames and similar products. Anti-virus software, if up to date, should detect both of the viruses involved in the Proliant USB attack as long the computer security software was installed after the floppy disk was added. Disabling autorun thwarts both Fakerecy and SillyFDC and may be the better option.

HP’s advisory, via local security clearing house AUSCert, can be found here. The SANS Institutes’s Internet Storm Centre has advice on avoiding USB malware-related peril here.

Author: Christopher

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1,800 attacks were registered throughout the United States throughout the last month, almost 20% higher than the previous month.  Foreign based attacks showed a decline of 4.5% resulting in over 2,800 attacks originating from a Foreign IP space.

Top 5 attacks used by U.S. hackers

• Cisco IOS HTTP Server HTML auto-view exploit
• Hacktool FxScanner detection
• PerlCal CGI reconnaissance directory traversal
• PHPNuke reconnaissance directory traversal
• Cisco IOS denial of service attack using non-standard protocol

Top 5 attacks used by foreign  hackers

• Generic File Inclusion Attack
• Mambo register_globals Emulation Layer Overwrite
• HTTP overflow attack
• phpBB Activity Module File Inclusion
• WebDAV Overflow Attempt

Author: Christopher

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