Robert Lemos

The average annual cost of cybercrime jumped 6 percent to $8.9 million in 2012, driven up by denial-of-service, malicious insiders and attacks on Websites, according to an Oct. 8 study released by the Ponemon Institute. Companies suffered a large number of incidents every week, averaging 1.8 successful attacks each week. Every firm surveyed suffered a […]

Universities and colleges are not known for their discipline in locking down computer systems. Good schools want debate to thrive and research to be unfettered. That means academic departments frequently skirt the rules around information security. No wonder, then, that a group of hackers aligning themselves with the Anonymous movement had little trouble in compromising […]

Chalk up another win for Microsoft’s legal and technical assault on botnet operators. The company settled its lawsuit with the operator of the 3322.org domain, which hosted some 70,000 malicious sub-domains used to compromise computer systems and control a botnet, known as Nitol that controlled millions of computers. In exchange, Peng Yong, the operator of […]

A spear-phishing attack compromised an unclassified system in the White House Military Office. However, the attack was quickly identified, the system isolated and no data taken from the network, the White House stated Oct. 1. The attack, which came from servers in China, follows a month of escalating cyber-operations against critical industries. On Sept. 10, […]

Most people worry about traditional viruses and Trojans—the malware that could infect their computer and steal data or use the system’s resources to attack other computers. Yet new research shows that people should, perhaps, worry more about their ever-present mobile phones and the devices’ ability to record their lives. Researchers at the University of Indiana […]

The computer systems of nearly 1,000 companies, government agencies and nonprofit organizations were compromised in a cyber-espionage operation that used semi-targeted attacks—known as waterhole attacks—to infect systems within certain industries, such as international finance, utilities, defense and government contractors, security firm RSA stated in a report released on Sept. 26. The campaign, dubbed VOHO by […]

Following attacks on its critical infrastructure and businesses, Iran’s government has kicked off a number of initiatives aimed at strengthening its digital defenses and its ability to operate online. On Sept. 23, the Iranian government announced it had implemented the first step toward creating its National Information Network by connecting all government agencies to the […]

Vulnerability disclosures are on a trajectory to hit an all-time high this year, driven by a resurgence of cross-site scripting issues, making technologies that hinder exploitation increasingly important, IBM stated in a report released on Sept. 20. While the number of vulnerabilities found in major products has declined, thanks to the adoption of secure development […]

Vulnerability disclosures are on a trajectory to hit an all-time high this year, driven by a resurgence of cross-site scripting issues, making technologies that hinder exploitation increasingly important, IBM stated in a report released Sept. 20. While the number of vulnerabilities found in major products has declined, thanks to the adoption of secure development methods, […]

A technology that promises easy payments via mobile phones was used to hack into an up-to-date Android device Sept. 19 at the Pwn2Own contest in Amsterdam. Using two vulnerabilities in the Samsung Galaxy S3 smartphone, researchers from U.K.-based security consultancy MWR InfoSecurity used the near-field communication (NFC) protocol to transmit their attack, according to statements […]