Cyber criminals related to the Mariposa botnet were finally arrested last month. The Mariposa botnet, a network of 12 zombie computers assembled together to steal personal information, is believed to have infected approximately 13 million computers in more than 190 countries. The botnet spread over P2P networks, infected USB drives and through web links. After a user was infected, malware would begin to install and allow the hackers to access sensitive information.

The Register reports that “half the roster of Fortune 1000 companies harboured machines infected by Mariposa at one time or another.” In fact, Christopher Davis, chief exec at Defence Intelligence in Canada, says, “It would be easier for me to provide a list of the Fortune 1000 companies that weren’t compromised, rather than the long list of those who were.”

After Davis first discovered Mariposa in May 2009, he teamed up with Georgia Tech Information Security Center, PandaLabs and law enforcement personnel to form the Mariposa Working Group. After months of collaboration, Panda Security, other security experts and law enforcement were able to shut down Mariposa on December 23, 2009.

Read more about the Mariposa botnet takedown >>

Are you using Internet Explorer 7 or 8? Beware, it’s possible that you are at risk for a recently discovered vulnerability revealed by iSEC Security Research.

“Microsoft is investigating new public claims of a vulnerability involving the use of VBScript and Windows Help files within Internet Explorer,” says Jerry Bryant, senior manager with the Microsoft Security Response Center. So far, “the current state of our investigations shows that Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, and Windows Server 2008 R2, are not affected.” In addition, Bryan also notes Microsoft hasn’t seen any attacks yet stemming from this vulnerability.

The Microsoft Security Response Center blog reminds us that “only Windows 2000 and Windows XP are impacted” and “Windows 2003 Server is also impacted, but the issue is mitigated in the default configuration due to the presence of the Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration.”

A security advisory issued by Microsoft earlier today tells us, “the main impact of the vulnerability is remote code execution.” Basically, the F1 key (which activates Windows Help) could be used to execute malicious code that may pass along sensitive information of the user. Microsoft is currently working on a security patch to fix this flaw, so in the meantime, don’t hit that F1 key! You could also protect yourself by locking down the Windows Help system. Further instructions can be found on the MSRC blog post.

If you’re ready to drop IE, like Google did yesterday, you could always entertain the idea of switching to FireFox or Chrome…

The Bipartisan Policy Center, a nonprofit organization focused on various issues including national and homeland security, will be unleashing Cyber ShockWave on Tuesday, February 16th. Cyber ShockWave, a cyber-attack simulation, will allow the government to assess response times and improvement areas shall they ever encounter the real deal.

A group of high-ranking former White House, Cabinet and national security officials will band together to fend off this simulated cyber-attack. As the event unfolds, the participants will be advising the President and planning a strategical response. None of the participants have any advanced information regarding the simulated attacks. The event even goes as far as hiring professional scriptwriters to coach the security experts and a production company to recreate the White House situation room in the Mandarin hotel.

There is no doubt that Google’s (and other tech companies’) struggle with recent (most-likely) Chinese attacks have caused greater concern regarding our nation’s cyber-security. How do you think our nation will fair in this exercise?

Read the ComputerWorld article or the Bipartisan press release for more information regarding this event.

Spammed
Remember how the Australian Government green lighted an Internet filter not too long ago? In retaliation to the proposed filter, a group of hackers, who call themselves Anonymous, took down two government sites: the main website and the Parliament site. Ars Technica tells us “the plan was DDoS government servers first, and then followup with ‘a s***storm’ of porn-related emails, faxes, and prank cell phone calls to government officials.”

More Operation: Titstorm, sexting and YouTube’s new Safety Mode >>

Take the Endpoint Protection Small Business Edition “20-Minute” Challenge: fully deploy the software in just 20 minutes. At the CRN Test Labs, Endpoint Protection SBE was installed in 16 minutes. How long does it take you?

More information about the product may be found at the Symantec website. There’s also a quick blog breaking down the challenge.

If you just want to start the timer, the product is available for download here. The product is limited 30-day trialware, but once you’re convinced and ready to commit SoftwareMedia.com is ready for you. Feel free to hit up our licensing specialists and take advantage of our software licensing price guarantee!

At a lost for which backup software to use? CA’s ARCserve Backup and Symantec’s Backup Exec have been top contenders when it comes to company backup software. But, according to an independent study conducted by Productive Corp., ARCserve “clearly” surpasses Backup Exec’s features and technology.

The two products were compared in “9 categories to help you uncover the right solution for your data backup needs.” Productive points out that although “these two data backup and storage products are relatively similar in function,” the differences in features are made evident in the product comparison. These features include the nine categories: “ease of install,” “ease of use,” “scalability,” “performance,” “cost,” “data security,” “supported systems,” “customer service,” and “extra value.” The review also concludes ARCserve being a better return on investment product.

Continue reading a comparison between ARCserve and Backup Exec >>

A report analyzing the strength of passwords was released yesterday by security firm, Imperva. The study is 32 million passwords strong, thanks to last year’s Rockyou.com breach. And “never before has there been such a high volume of real-world passwords to examine,” notes the study.Take heed to these key findings in Imperva’s study:

• About 30% of users chose passwords that are six characters or less in length
• Almost 60% of users chose their passwords from a limited set of alpha-numeric characters
• Nearly 50% of users use common slang or dictionary words, names and consecutive letters or digits — the most common password found was “123456″

Note that a study not too long ago also revealed “123456″ as the most common password amongst 10,000 Hotmail, MSN and Live.com users. Is that you? Okay, what about the most popular passwords following “123456″?

Are any of those you? If you have a password fitting the bullet points noted above, change it now! Let’s say a hacker worked off this list… It would only take “one attempt (per account) to guess 0.9% of the users passwords or a rate of one success per 111 attempts.” Now, let’s say this hacker is using his DSL connection (55kpbs connection rate) and each hack is 0.5kb in size… that hacker will gain access to one new account every second. Or, in the bigger scope of things, he just hacked 1000 accounts in less than 17 minutes.

Continue reading for tips on creating strong passwords you can remember >>

Trend Micro detected TROJ_PIDIEF.WIA, a trojan that arrives as a mass email attachment. This trojan may also be downloaded by visiting malicious Web sites. According to Trend Micro’s malware blog, it “uses the heap spray technique to execute shellcode in its stream.” This, in turn, infects your system with the malicious backdoor file, BKDR_POISON.UC, and allows a malicious user to “execute any command on the affected system.”

Adobe will release a patch for this vulnerability on January 12, 2010. In the meantime, protect yourself by disabling JavaScript in Adobe Acrobat.

1. Under the Edit menu, select Preferences (or use the shortcut key Ctrl+K)
2. Select JavaScript in the left panel menu.
3. Uncheck the “Enable Acrobat JavaScript” option.
4. Hit OK to apply the new settings.

Did you know that over 20 threats emerge every minute? Actually, there is a new one every 2.5 seconds. Most of these threats are from the web. According to a survey conducted by Harris Interactive, the average adult Internet user spends an average of 13 hours a week online — a trend that has been increasing over the years. Hence, more cause for concern in our technological future?

Cloud-computing and virtualization are becoming increasingly popular. At cheaper costs, the ease of work mobility, increased reliability, lighter installations and improved efficiency, it’s hard not to progress with this trend. But with the ups must come the downs, I suppose. The Trend Micro 2010 Future Threat Report (released December 2009) predicts the grounds on which cyber-criminals prey are also expanded due to the expansion of cloud-computing and virtualization.

Continue reading more security threat predictions in 2010 >>

Recently tested in real-life conditions against the latest malware, Kaspersky Internet Security 2010 ranked within the top 3 of 12 products tested. Conducted with the latest malware implemented using custom methodology developed for this particular test, the German laboratory fired away at 12 popular Internet security products. According to Kaspersky.com, “Kaspersky Internet Security 2010 achieved a high score in the Real World test, coming second in the ‘Malware Detection’ category and third in the ‘Malware Block’ category and recording very few false positives.”

Continue reading more about Kaspersky Internet Security 2010’s successes >>