Cracking automatic teller machines isn’t new: ATMs have been rigged with sniffers, spoofed with cloned cards created from successful phishing attacks, and even physically blasted open by explosives. But a new, sophisticated attack that inserted information-stealing malware on ATM machines has raised the bar on just what determined criminals can and will do to steal [...]
An extraordinary behind-the-scenes struggle is taking place between computer security groups around the world and the brazen author of a malicious software program called Conficker. The program grabbed global attention when it began spreading late last year and quickly infected millions of computers with software code that is intended to lash together the infected machines [...]
The networks powering industrial control systems have been breached more than 125 times in the past decade, with one resulting in U.S. deaths, a control systems expert said Thursday. Joseph Weiss, managing partner of control systems security consultancy Applied Control Solutions, didn’t detail the breach that caused deaths during his testimony before a U.S. Senate [...]
Computer security researchers have devised a new Twitter attack that they say could spread virally, much like a worm on the microblogging service. The attack, posted online Thursday by researchers at Secure Science, is an innocuous proof of concept that forces users to send out a predetermined Twitter message, but it could be repurposed into [...]
Hacking banks and large businesses? That’s sooo 2008. Hackers and computer criminals this year are taking a new aim — directly at small and midsize businesses, according to experts who spoke here today at Visa’s annual security event. The consensus: Smaller businesses offer a much more attractive target than larger enterprises that have steeled themselves [...]
A Los Angeles federal grand jury indicted a disgruntled tech employee Tuesday on allegations of temporarily disabling a computer system detecting pipeline leaks for three oil derricks off the Southern California coast. Mario Azar, 28, faces a maximum 10-year term after being accused of purposely impairing a computer system that monitored for leaks on three [...]
Cybercriminals are spreading invisible infections far and wide across the Internet by hammering hundreds of thousands of websites each day with so-called SQL injection attacks. The trend started last summer and has continued to accelerate. IBM Internet Security Systems says it identified 50% more infected Web pages in the last three months of 2008 than [...]
The head of the Pentagon’s Strategic Command warned Congress today that the United States is vulnerable to cyberattacks “across the spectrum” and that more needs to be done to defend against the potential of online strikes, which could “potentially threaten not only our military networks, but also our critical national networks.” But Air Force Gen. [...]
Traditional security systems may be ineffective and become obsolete in warding off Web attacks launched by countries, according to Val Smith, founder of Attack Research. New attack trends include blog spam and SQL injections from Russia and China, Smith said during his talk at the Source Boston Security Showcase on Friday. “Client-side attacks are where [...]
Louis Freeh, who served as FBI director from 1993 to 2001, told audiences at the FOSE 2009 conference here that when the director of the Homeland Security Department’s National Cyber Security Center resigned last week, he tapped into a strong historical resistance in the United States to centralized power, particularly in intelligence and military units. [...]
