Robert Lemos

Fraudulent certificates issued for major websites

Nine valid but fraudulent certificates have been issued for major Internet sites -- including Google mail, Microsoft Live, and Yahoo -- raising the possibility of undetectable phishing, man-in-the-middle and drive-by download attacks, multiple advisories stated on Wednesday.

The secure sockets layer (SSL) certificates, issued by root certificate authority Comodo, allow the attackers to sign fraudulent sites and content. The certificates were issued because of a compromise at a registration authority (RA) using stolen log-in credentials for one of Comodo's European partners, according to the company's report on the incident.

CSO Online

DroidDream turns Androids into zombies

The malicious code that led Google to remove more than 50 Trojan applications from the Android Marketplace appears to mainly be a "dropper" -- a program designed to load other code to further compromise the affected smartphone, according to a security firm's analysis.

The code, dubbed "DroidDream," attempts to use two exploits to gain root privilege on a compromised smartphone by breaking out of the sandbox designed to limit what applications can do on Android devices, mobile security firm Lookout stated in its most recent analysis.

CSO Online

InfoWorld Tech Watch Blog - Week of September 6

Published this week: Group sues Department of Homeland Security to stop laptop searches • Microsoft botnet 'decapitation' scores legal win against cyber crime

Fraud At Sprint Offers Lessons For Enterprises, Experts Say

The recently revealed abuse of insiders' system privileges to commit fraud at Sprint could be a wake-up call for other enterprises to implement more stringent security practices, experts said this week.

Last week, nine Sprint employees were charged with misusing their access to the telecommunications giant's systems to redirect phone charges to other customers by "cloning" their cell phones -- to the tune of more than $15 million in fraudulent charges in the first six months of this year.

DarkReading

InfoWorld Tech Watch Blog - Week of August 16, 2010

Published this week: Got Adobe ColdFusion? Start patching • Network Solutions versus the wily widget • Intel + McAfee = Desperate mobile move

Mobile Flaw Could Cloak Clicks

It's possible to craft a malicious website so that a user's clicks are secretly redirected to a legitimate site in a way that steals a user's passwords and other data. Many Web developers have added protections to block the tactic on standard Web sites, but Stanford University researchers warn that there are not nearly enough defenses against the technique on mobile websites, which are accessed from devices such as the iPhone.

As a result, a smart-phone user could think he's tapping to check a baseball score but is actually tapping on a button in a hidden page to confirm a money transfer.

Technology Review

Lessons From a Data Center That's Got Game

Companies developing latency-sensitive applications for hosting in their data centers could take a lesson from the playbook of OnLive.

The startup company, which just had its coming-out party during the recent E3 gaming confab, runs resource-intensive computer games on its servers and streams the action to players throughout the United States. Despite the technical hurdles of delivering real-time games—many of them first-person "twitch" games—to consumers, the service has quickly become popular, says Steve Perlman, the company's CEO.

CIO.com

Wireless Car Sensors Vulnerable to Hackers

Hackers could "hijack" the wireless pressure sensors built into many cars' tires, researchers have found. Criminals might then track a vehicle or force its electronic control system to malfunction, the University of South Carolina and Rutgers University researchers say.

The team, which successfully hijacked two popular tire-pressure-monitoring systems (TPMS), will describe the work at the USENIX Security conference in Washington, DC, this week.

Technology Review

Your Apps Could Be Leaking Private Info

A study of iPhone and Android apps has revealed that many of these programs secretly collect and transmit users' personal information.

The App Genome Project, launched by the mobile security company Lookout, analyzed every app available through Apple's App Store and Google's Android Market. Developers must disclose an app's functionality when they submit an app to either store. Apple performs its own review before making an app downloadable.

Technology Review

ATMs At Risk, Researcher Warns At Black Hat

A security researcher today gave notice to companies that make automated teller machines (ATMs).

Here on the first day of the Black Hat conference, Barnaby Jack, director of research at IOActive, demonstrated attacks that would allow a criminal to compromise ATMs, allowing hypothetical thieves to steal cash, copy customers' ATM card data, or learn the master passwords of the machines. While one of the attacks required a few seconds to open the ATM and insert a USB drive with code to overwrite the system, the other attack used a remote management feature commonly found on standalone ATMs.

DarkReading