USR-Lib

London teenagers arrested in cyber crime swoop.

The Metropolitan Police has arrested two London youths for their alleged roles in an international cyber crime forum. The teenagers were picked up yesterday on suspicion of encouraging or assisting crime, unauthorised access under the Computer Misuse Act and conspiracy to commit fraud. The arrests were made with the aid of the Police Central e-Crime Unit (PCeU). The accused have not been named, and...

Twitter privacy case settles with the US FTC.

Twitter has agreed to adopt new security measures that will settle its privacy case with the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The FTC said that the micro-blogging site will now enforce best practice for password selection and control, and submit to regular audits of its security controls. Twitter will be required to adopt unique non-dictionary passwords not used with other accounts or stored within...

Possible software or hardware problems or user errors in Electronic health record systems

Electronic health record systems likely will soon become a fixture in medical settings. Advocates claim they will reduce health care costs and improve medical outcomes, which could be critical since the new health care reform law increases access for millions of Americans. Although benefits of bringing information technology to health records can be substantial, EHR systems also give rise to increased...

Dutch scientist developes self-destructing data system

A Dutch scientist has developed a system of deleting private details from databases automatically with pre-set time bombs that ensure redundant personal data is not left festering on company hard drives. Dr Harold van Heerde of the Centre for Telematics and Information Technology at the University of Twente says his database software allows information to degrade as it becomes less relevant to the...

University of Texas are seeking solutions for maintaining privacy in a cloud

Scientists at the University of Texas in Dallas, with funding from AFOSR’s Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative, are seeking solutions for maintaining privacy in a cloud, or an Internet-based computing environment where all resources are offered on demand. Dr. Bhavani Thuraisingham has put together a team of researchers from the UTD School of Management and its School of Economics,...

Foreign Journalists has issued an alert on email accounts hacked.

The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China, an association based in Beijing comprised of journalists representing non-Chinese media, has issued an alert because some of its members have reportedly had their email accounts hacked. A statement posted on the FCCC’s website states: “Three Beijing-based journalists have reported receiving emails containing malware from an address that...

Three men for tricking internet users into buying over $100m (£69m) worth of fake security software.

US federal prosecutors have filed charges against three men for tricking internet users into buying over $100m (£69m) worth of fake security software. The three men are alleged to have set up a company called Innovative Marketing, which sold software such as DriveCleaner and ErrorSafe for around $50 (£34) a time. The software scans a user’s system, purports to have found malware and then offers...

Apple have discovered a stealth patch to Apple’s anti-malware software.

Analysts at Sophos say that they have discovered a stealth patch to Apple’s anti-malware software that has not been mentioned in the security notes accompanying its release this week. After analysing the patch the researchers found an update to the XProtect.plist file in OSX, which includes malware signatures, which will block the HellRTS trojan first seen in the wild in April. The Trojan...

About 7,000 web pages (not sites) have been struck by SQL’s attack

An old hack attack has come back to haunt SQL databases, after reports that a widespread attack has compromised thousands of web pages, including some from the Wall Street Journal. Speaking on web security vendor ScanSafe’s blog, one of its security researchers, Mary Landesman, said that “about 7,000 web pages (not sites) have been struck by SQL injected iframes pointing to malware on...

Cryptography expert Paul Kocher says Quantum computing is no threat secure to web and wireless network traffic.

Leading cryptography expert Paul Kocher says the new breed of quantum computers will not be able to crack encryption currently used to secure web and wireless network traffic. The statement follows concerns among some security experts that the high processing power of quantum compute technologies could be used to crack the encryption used by most organisations. Kocher, chief executive at Cryptography...