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The top commander of the department of Defense network operations  just ordered a crackdown on security. According to a recent article by NetworkWorld on January 16,2006,  Lt. General Charles Croom is quoted as saying, “The attacks are coming from everywhere and they’re getting better.” His talk was the keynote address at the Department of Defense Cyber Crime Conference held on  January 9 - 14, 2005  in Clearwater, Florida.  The event is sponsored by the Defense Cyber Crime Center and the Joint Task Force.  Over 500 computer crime specialists from the FBI and the military attended the event.

The crackdown was related to a recent arrest of a “Computer Virus Broker” named  Jeanson James Ancheta.  On further investigation, a Department of  Justice press release from Nov 3^rd, 2005 offered the  following information on this incident, “In the first prosecution of its kind in the nation, a well-known member of the “botmaster underground” has been indicted on federal charges for profiting from the use of “botnets” – armies of computers that are under the control of the botmaster and are used to launch destructive attacks or to send huge quantities of spam across the Internet.

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Tags: pc security, Department of Defense Cyber Crime

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Spyware is one of the fastest-growing internet threats.  According to the National Cyber Security Alliance, spyware infects more than 90% of all PCs today.  These unobtrusive, malicious programs are designed to silently bypass firewalls and anti-virus software without the user’s knowledge.  Once embedded in a computer, it can wreak havoc on the system’s performance while gathering your personal information.  Fortunately, unlike viruses and worms, spyware programs do not usually self-replicate.    

Where does it come from?

Typically, spyware originates in three ways.  The first and most common way is when the user installs it.  In this scenario, spyware is embedded, attached, or bundled with a freeware or shareware program without the user’s knowledge.  The user downloads the program to their computer.  Once downloaded, the spyware program goes to work collecting data for the spyware author’s personal use or to sell to a third-party.  Beware of many P2P file-sharing programs.  They are notorious for downloads that posses spyware programs.  

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Tags: pc security, National Cyber Security Alliance

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Everyone in the United States has heard of the leading antivirus vendors Symantec, Mcafee, Computer Associates, and Trend Micro. These companies have market-leading presence in the United States.  Microsoft, as well, has plans become a key player in this market.  Microsoft acquired intellectual property and technology from GeCad software in 2003, a company based in Bucharest, Romania.  They also acquired Pelican Software, which had a behavior based security as well as Giant Company Software for spyware and Sybari Software, which manages virus, spam, and phishing filtering. 

A lot of discussion has centered on whether Microsoft with come to own a dominant position in the antivirus market by simply bundling its technologies with its operating systems at no charge.  This is a similar technique applied in other markets such as word processing and Internet browsers. 

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Tags: pc safety, Trend Micro

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"A botnet is comparable to compulsory military service for windows boxes" - Stromberg  (http://project.honeynet.org/papers/bots/) 

Botnets are networks of computers that hackers have infected and grouped together under their control to propagate viruses, send illegal spam, and carry out attacks that cause web sites to crash. 

What makes botnets exceedingly bad is the difficulty in tracing them back to their creators as well as the ever-increasing use of them in extortion schemes.  How are they used in extortion schemes?  Imagine someone sending you messages to either pay up or see your web site crash. This scenario is starting to replay itself over and over again. 

Botnets can consist of thousands of compromised machines. With such a large network, botnets can use Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) as a method to cause mayhem and chaos. For example a small botnet with only 500 bots can bring corporate web sites to there knees by using the combined bandwidth of all the computers to overwhelm corporate systems and thereby cause the web site to appear offline. 

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Tags: pc safety, botnet

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Intrusion Detection System (IDS) are a necessary part of any strategy for enterprise security. What are Intrusion Detection systems?  CERIAS, The Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security, defines it this way:  

"The purpose of an intrusion detection system (or IDS) is to detect unauthorized access or misuse of a computer system. Intrusion detection systems are kind of like burglar alarms for computers. They sound alarms and sometimes even take corrective action when an intruder or abuser is detected. Many different intrusion detection systems have been developed but the detection schemes generally fall into one of two categories, anomaly detection or misuse detection. Anomaly detectors look for behavior that deviates from normal system use. Misuse detectors look for behavior that matches a known attack scenario. A great deal of time and effort has been invested in intrusion detection, and this list provides links to many sites that discuss some of these efforts". (http://www.cerias.purdue.edu/about/history/coast_resources/intrusion_detection/) 

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Tags: intrusion detection systems, pc safety

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In 2004, online consumer spending was at a record $65.1 billion.  More and more people are attracted to the ease of online shopping and are spending higher amounts.  Unfortunately, the chances of becoming a victim of Internet fraud are also increasing.  The Internet National Fraud Center Watch reported that the average loss to fraud victims for just the first six months of 2005 was $2,579.   This is compared to the $895 average for all of 2004.   Complaints relating to general merchandise purchases (goods never received or misrepresented) accounted for 30% of Internet fraud complaints, and auction purchases (goods never received or misrepresented) topped the list at 44%.  

While many e-commerce Websites are reputable and have taken the necessary safety precautions to protect you, it never hurts to always proceed cautiously.  If you are making an online purchase consider these easy steps: 

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Tags: pc security, website security

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We have all heard the term Trojan Horse, but what exactly is it?  A Trojan Horse is a destructive program that masquerades as a harmless application. Unlike viruses, Trojan Horses do not replicate themselves, but they can be just as destructive. One of the most dangerous examples of a Trojan is a program that promises to rid your computer of viruses but instead introduces viruses into your computer. 

The Trojan can be tricky. Who hasn’t been online and had an advertisement pop up claiming to be able to rid your computer of some nasty virus?  Or, even more frightening, you receive an email that claims to be alerting you to a new virus that can threaten your computer. The sender promises to quickly eradicate, or protect, your computer from viruses if you simply download their “free”, attached software into your computer. You may be skeptical but the software looks legitimate and the company sounds reputable.  You proceed to take them up on their offer and download the software.  In doing so, you have just potentially exposed yourself to a massive headache and your computer to a laundry list of ailments.   

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Tags: pc safety, Trojan Horse

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A keylogger is a program that runs in your computer’s background secretly recording all your keystrokes. Once your keystrokes are logged, they are hidden away for later retrieval by the attacker. The attacker then carefully reviews the information in hopes of finding passwords or other information that would prove useful to them.  For example, a keylogger can easily obtain confidential emails and reveal them to any interested outside party willing to pay for the information.   

Keyloggers can be either software or hardware based.  Software-based keyloggers are easy to distribute and infect, but at the same time are more easily detectable.  Hardware-based keyloggers are more complex and harder to detect.  For all that you know, your keyboard could have a keylogger chip attached and anything being typed is recorded into a flash memory sitting inside your keyboard. Keyloggers have become one of the most powerful applications used for gathering information in a world where encrypted traffic is becoming more and more common. 

As keyloggers become more advanced, the ability to detect them becomes more difficult. They can violate a user’s privacy for months, or even years, without being noticed.   During that time frame, a keylogger can collect a lot of information about the user it is monitoring.  A keylogger can potential obtain not only passwords and log-in names, but credit card numbers, bank account details, contacts, interests, web browsing habits, and much more.  All this collected information can be used to steal user’s personal documents, money, or even their identity.   

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Tags: pc safety, keylogger

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Spyware and Adware are not only an ever increasing nuisance for computer users everywhere, but also a booming industry.   According to Webroot Software, Inc., the distribution of online advertisements through spyware and adware has become a $2 billion industry.   

The aggressive advertising and spying tactics demonstrated by some of these programs, require an equally aggressive response from a seasoned eradicator.  Sunbelt Software is such a company.  A leader in Anti-Spyware, Anti-Spam, Network Security and System Management tools, they gave consistently remained on the cutting-edge of anti-spyware programming since 1994. 

One of their more notable software applications is CounterSpy 1.5.  CounterSpy is designed to detect and remove spyware that is already in your computer system.  Additionally, it provides real-time protection while preventing browser hijacking and changes to your computer’s Registry.

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Tags: pc safety, spyware, adware, anti-spyware, anti-spam, Sunbelt Software

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Spam.  Nobody likes it.  Nobody wants it.  No, we aren’t talking about the canned meat, but those unsolicited, unwanted, irrelevant, or even inappropriate messages that hit our email in mass quantities.  While most mailboxes have some type of spam filtering software built into their system, they never seem to do a very good job of catching what you want them to catch, and letting through what you want them to let through.  Therefore, it becomes increasingly important to turn to some type of additional spam filtering product.  One such filtering system, designed for Outlook and Outlook Express users, is receiving rave reviews for its superior detection and low rate of false positives (i.e,. what you want to get through does).  

Cloudmark Desktop, formerly known as SpamNet and SafetyBar, uses a unique community-based filtering process.  This community-based filtering system relies on users to report any new spam.  Within minutes of a spammer being reported, they are placed on a blacklist.  At that point, no other member will receive that particular spam.  Cloudmark also applies the same basic process to phishing email scams.   

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Tags: pc security, Cloudmark Desktop, SpamNet, SafetyBar

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