Internet Security and Programming

Last week, Security Fix published an analysis of Atrivo, a California based Internet service provider, also known as Intercage, that has proven to be a virtual magnet for cyber-criminal operations. Since that time, Atrivo’s biggest network backbone provider decided it could no longer support the company, and stopped offering it direct connectivity. I first got wind of this change while reading a post on the NANOG mailing list, which caters to professionals employed by ISPs and various network providers. Marcus Sachs, director of the SANS Internet Storm Center, had said it looked like Global Crossing had stopped handling long-haul Internet traffic for Atrivo/Intercage within hours after our story was published. I followed up with Marc, but he was unable to produce any conclusive data showing the change. Fast forward to today, and with the help of Jose Nazario at Arbor Networks, I was able to pull together a view […]

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Tales of sex, spying and spyware
South Korea has accused its neighbour North Korea of cyber-espionage during the trial of a suspected Mata Hari-style spy.…

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The Viagra two step
Online scammers have found a new way to skirt anti-spam filters, this time by making use of Adobe Flash files hosted on free websites.…

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The number of PCs compromised with software that lets cyber criminals control the machines from afar has more than quadrupled over the last quarter, security experts warn. The estimates come from Shadowserver, a group of volunteers that monitor activity from robot networks or “botnets,” large armies of hacked personal computers used for spam, phishing and all kinds of criminal activity. Shadowserver saw a rise from roughly 100,000 botted PCs to about 400,000 over the past three months. John Bambenek, an incident handler with the SANS Internet Storm Center, which tracks hacking trends, speculates that the spike is probably related to the massive numbers of Web sites that have been hacked by SQL attacks, and seeded with browser exploits. While those numbers might seem high, they suggest more of a recent upward trend in bot counts rather than an accurate picture of just how many compromised PCs are out there. […]

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Directi to Estdomains: No PrivacyProtect for you
A company that provides a controversial service to domain name registrars says it is severing ties with Estdomains amid complaints that the Eastern European company makes it too easy to register sites that are used by spammers and scammers.…

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