Fahmida Y. Rashid

A new variant of the Ramnit worm has managed to steal log-in credentials for several thousand Facebook accounts, according to researchers at Seculert. The latest Ramnit variant stole more than 45,000 Facebook passwords and tried compromising other accounts belonging to the victims, such as virtual private networks, emails and other Web services, Seculert researchers wrote […]

Microsoft plans to ship seven patches closing security holes in the Windows operating system and Microsoft developer tools and software in its first Patch Tuesday release of 2012. The company fixed vulnerabilities in all versions of the Windows operating system, including Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, according to Microsoft’s advance notification announcement released […]

A lack of standards and increasingly aggressive attackers will pose some challenges to electric utilities trying to monitor and secure smart grids, according to a recent report. Critical infrastructure operators are monitoring and managing automated systems and grids that are becoming more complex, according to a report released Jan. 4 from Pike Research. IT teams […]

Russian investigators have uncovered chat logs between the botmaster in charge of the “Cutwail” botnet and a founder of a fake pharmaceutical spam operation that hint at the botmaster’s identity.The chat logs were discovered by Russian law enforcement on a computer belonging to Dmitry Stupin, a co-founder of “SpamIt,” according to Brian Krebs, a security […]

Facebook users who checked out Timeline and decided they hate it are being targeted by scammers on the social networking site, according to a report on Inside Facebook. Searching for “remove Timeline” or “disable Timeline” on Facebook returns more than a dozen pages and groups that claim to have instructions on how to disable the […]

Fujitsu is reportedly working on a cyber-weapon for the Japanese government designed to track and disable the sources of cyber-attacks, according to a Japanese newspaper. Japan’s Defense Ministry has commissioned Fujitsu to develop a virus capable of tracking, identifying and disabling the systems being used by cyber-attackers, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported Jan. 3. The Defense […]

As Stratfor continues rebuilding its Website after the cyber-attack in which email addresses of its subscribers and other personal details were leaked, the company is coming under fire for its weak passwords and security policies. Attackers breached Strategic Forecasting and stole over 200GB of data belonging to individuals and organizations who registered to have access […]

Check Point Software Technologies has partnered with Amazon to bring virtual security appliances to its Amazon Web Services. AWS customers will be able to manage Check Point’s virtual security gateways from the centralized management dashboard to apply security policies to the cloud infrastructure, Check Point announced Jan. 4. Virtual Appliance for Amazon Web Services offers […]

Concerns about data breaches and privacy violations would spur enterprises to adopt encryption and use it effectively, according to security experts. Organizations are beginning to assume that the firewall has already been compromised and are relying on ubiquitous encryption to protect data across the enterprise, according to Jeff Hudson, CEO of Venafi. In the past, […]

A researcher has released a new jailbreak tool that would allow iPhone users to run code from sources other than Apple’s iTunes App Store. The new jailbreak, dubbed Corona, takes advantage of two different bugs in iOS 5 to untether iPhones and other devices running iOS 5.01, a researcher, pod2g, wrote on his iOS Research […]