Web Security Review

YouTube became unavailable to the whole wide web for two grueling hours last Sunday due to a Pakistani government policy. The BBC has reported that Pakistan Telecom and national ISP, PCCW were directed by the Pakistani Government to block local access to video site, youtube.com for it’s offensive content. Pakistan Telecom disabled local users to access the said site while redirecting them to another site.

One way or another, the blocking leaked from Pakistan to other ISPs around the globe, hence the unavailability of the whole world to view precious youtube videos. ISPs cannot do anything to fix this mess as they don’t have control over it (OpenDNS).

Owner of Google, YouTube’s parent company said that “Traffic to YouTube was routed according to erroneous Internet protocols, and many users around the world could not access our site,” it said. “We have determined that the source of these events was a network in Pakistan. We are investigating and working with others in the Internet community to prevent this from happening again.”

By: MJ

The fastest web security hardware in the industry, the IronPort S-Series combines together highly exclusive Web Reputation technology with their new breakthrough, a Dynamic Vectoring and Streaming engine that enables signature-based spyware filtering. The new scanning technology is delivered through robust management and reporting tools as consumers benefit from the ease of administration and complete awareness of all threat-related activities.

As of now, more than 80% of corporate PCs are infected with spyware since opponents and competition are more than willing to know the corporate secrets through less than friendly means. A study showed that only 10% of corporations have deployed perimeter spyware defenses.

For readers with a MySpace or Facebook account, please be vigilant and careful when accepting apps or widgets from your friends; they main contain Trojan viruses that steal information from your site and then send it all back to the one who created it. They usually do this by sending Trojans through apps or widgets that your friends sent you. According to researchers at Finjan, cyberattackers are now going to these social networking sites such to get more victims.

“Attacks will become more sophisticated by combining several services in order to heighten infection ratios and decrease the detection rate, while providing more robust and scalable attack frameworks,” Yuval Ben-Itzhak, chief technology officer, Finjan, said in a news release. “The focus will be on trojan technology as it enables maximum flexibility in terms of command and control. This adds another potentially malicious element to the “legitimate” web traffic that needs to be examined by security solutions.”

In short, before installing the app or widget that your friend sent you, confirm if it came from them. If it didn’t, kindly delete it immediately. If it did come from them, research on the app or widget from previous users.

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The society ranges from prehistoric times to the fall of Rome (476 C.E) and it includes Western and non-Western cultures and civilizations. There is sixty-nine articles that cover the wealth of relevant topics such as art, economy, government, military, religion, scandals and writing.  With an introductory survey, each well-crafted piece begins, and then views developments in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and the Pacific, Europe, and the Americas. Meticulous cross-references and further-reading lists that include accurate Web sites should be appended in the Articles. The additional highlights are the primary-source documents, sidebars with supplementary instructive material, numerous black-and-white photos and illustrations, and clear maps.

The US government may be hardening it’s stance against the growing threat from cyber-attacks and guess what they did to make it known? They got a hacker to provide them with an insight to act as adviser to the government, a move that would surely get him on every cyber-hit man’s roster or possible targets. They say he’s only on as an adviser but for the world of Black Hats, this is seen a s treachery, a move that counters all beliefs on which they function, to deny his own people. “Dark Tangent” as he was known during his hacking days, was hired by the new and fortified Cyber-Security command which is to try and bolster the ability of the US government to fend of attacks hopefully armed with his insight on how they work. Continue Reading »

Twitter has received blow after blow in terms of attacks to the micro-blogging site that has been rendered useless on several instances, finally a free plugin from FinJan that protects you from attack when using your favorite micro-blogging site. The free browser plug-in dubbed SecureTwitter allows users to get a message saying if the site they are about to enter contains a malicious URL. This systems works much like the way Google blocks suspected attack sites, displaying a message to state their reason for blocking the site through detailed analysis results. Continue Reading »

Before anything else, we need to set this straight: YOU NEED an anti-virus program. You cannot do without one, because sooner or later, you will get infected.

Now, that being said, you may be turned off by the thought of paying for anti-virus programs. There are several good anti-virus programs being sold on the internet like Kaspersky and BitDefender, but if you really are decided in not buying, then the next best thing is to go for free.

There are a number of free anti-virus programs like Avira AntiVir, AVG, and Panda, all of which provide adequate protection against common infections. There are also daily and / or regular updates (which are also free) so you always have the latest virus definitions.

The only downside is that paid anti-virus programs have more customization features and offer added protection for your system.

Data storage is a very costly business considering the fact that one of the biggest network of data centers is owned by Google who has managed to keep them out of the sight of well, everybody. The lack of information regarding the location of Google’s famed data center or data centers might be the thing that has spared it from the many attacks that have been done in the past years. Botnets, Viruses and other malware have been targeting not only the lowly desktop I’m using but the whole internet itself. Imagine managing to disable one of the major data links in and out of a major country Continue Reading »

Web security can only be as good as the ones who use it, as the report below will show:

The investigation, conducted by McAfee(R) SiteAdvisor(TM), studied the five major U.S. search engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, Ask) and found that the overall chance of clicking through to a risky site declined by 12.0%. Still, McAfee estimates that consumers click through to risky sites more than 268 million times each month.

“It’s good to see that clicking on search engine results has gotten modestly safer,” said Chris Dixon, director of strategy, McAfee SiteAdvisor. “But when almost one of 12 sponsored links still clicks through to a risky site, there remains significant room for continued improvement.”

Hopefully the number goes down even further next year due to additional internet knowledge and ensure that internet security goes higher.

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Image source: www.blog.webreakstuff.com
This is an alarming news, everyone. We all know about Youtube, right? Well, it’s dangerous as MySpace, FaceBook, or any online community now. Given that Youtube also allows “pg 13” stuffs, but that’s not the danger we’re talking about. That’s right. Some of the pages in Youtube have links that opens malicious machines into your computer. These machines have the ability to save your computer’s keystrokes, copies data, or even control your computer for another hacking scheme. Some people can separate the real and the fraud just by looking in the URL in the status bar, but it is much safer if you just search it in youtube itself. You know why? Some hackers make their preys open these links by making them their friends first. They just did this just because this is the time of election in the US, and youtube-users provide videos about the election, or their insight.