Net Sciences, Inc.

What Happened When One Man Pinged the Whole Internet

Justin Neofotistos — Wed, 29 May 2013 16:22:41 +0000

You probably haven’t heard of HD Moore, but up to a few weeks ago every Internet device in the world, perhaps including some in your own home, was contacted roughly three times a day by a stack of computers that sit overheating his spare room. “I have a lot of cooling equipment to make sure my house doesn’t catch on fire,” says Moore, who leads research at computer security company Rapid7. In February last year he decided to carry out a personal census of every device on the Internet as a hobby. “This is not my day job; it’s what I do for fun,” he says.

Read The Full Article

Washington Hospital Hit By $1.03 Million Cyberheist

Justin Neofotistos — Thu, 16 May 2013 15:16:21 +0000

Organized hackers in Ukraine and Russia stole more than $1 million from a public hospital in Washington state earlier this month. The costly cyberheist was carried out with the help of nearly 100 different accomplices in the United States who were hired through work-at-home job scams run by a crime gang that has been fleecing businesses for the past five years.

Read The Full Article

Hackers Empty $900K Bank Account

Justin Neofotistos — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 21:33:25 +0000

In itself, a distributed denial of service, or DDoS, attack on a bank’s website is little more than costly hooliganism. It essentially consists of hackers ordering a bunch of infected computers to “click” on a bank’s website until it’s too overwhelmed to respond to legitimate users.

Read The Full Article

Zero-day PDF exploit affects Adobe Reader 11 and earlier versions, researchers say

Ethan Wellman — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 21:53:35 +0000

IDG News Service – Researchers from security firm FireEye claim that attackers are actively using a remote code execution exploit that works against the latest versions of Adobe Reader 9, 10 and 11.

Read The Full Article

Dell Going Private in $24.4 Billion Agreement

Ethan Wellman — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 21:19:59 +0000

For Dell, a $24.4 billion deal to take itself private is a bold move out of Wall Street’s harsh spotlight as it tries to remake itself in a world where personal computers are no longer the big business in technology.

Read The Full Article

Macs hit by new wave of money-stealing malware

Joshua Liberman — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 23:11:26 +0000

Apple users who think they’re immune to malware and other bugs need to pay attention: A new Trojan is infecting Apple computers in order to obtain victims’ phone numbers and rob them via unexpected premium SMS charges.

Read The Full Article.

Pop-up ad queen caught by the U.S. government, fined $163 million

Joshua Liberman — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 22:00:29 +0000

You’ve probably never heard the name Kristy Ross before, but we’re willing to bet you’re very familiar with her work. You may have even given her money. For the last five years (at least), Ross has been flooding the internet with pop-up ad after pop-up ad, all claiming that your computer — yes, yours specifically — is infected with viruses. That’s illegal, and it turns out the law has finally caught up to her: The Federal Trade Commission has just fined Ross a staggering $163 million dollars for her crimes.

Read The Full Article.

Internet Explorer Users: Please Read This

Joshua Liberman — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 21:59:56 +0000

Microsoft is urging Windows users who browse the Web with Internet Explorer to use a free tool called EMET to block attacks against a newly-discovered and unpatched critical security hole in IE versions 7, 8 and 9. But some experts say that advice falls short, and that users can better protect themselves by surfing with an alternative browser until Microsoft issues a proper patch for the vulnerability.

Read The Full Article.

Microsoft Disrupts the Emerging Nitol Botnet Being Spread through an Unsecure Supply Chain

Joshua Liberman — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 21:59:23 +0000

Earlier this week, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia granted Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit permission to disrupt more than 500 different strains of malware with the potential for targeting millions of innocent people. Codenamed “Operation b70,” this legal action and technical disruption proceeded from a Microsoft study which found that cybercriminals infiltrate unsecure supply chains to introduce counterfeit software embedded with malware for the purpose of secretly infecting people’s computers. In disrupting these malware strains, we helped significantly limit the spread of the developing Nitol botnet, our second botnet disruption in the last six months.

Read The Full Article

Keeping Your Cloud Up

Joshua Liberman — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 21:58:53 +0000

Joshua Liberman has a warning for those who have their heads—and business applications—in the clouds. If cloud services or the connectivity to them are down, then so are your users. And since either a service or broadband failure alone can bring productivity to a halt, the perceived availability rate even for well-managed cloud offerings can effectively be 99 percent or less. That translates to days of downtime a year.

Read The Full Article