Category Archives: datawars

The New Attack: Penetrate and Tailor

In its latest security report Cisco identifies a trend I hadn’t heard of before with malware writers: Closer inspection of those computers they’ve successfully penetrated to see whether there’s something interesting there, and then if there is targeting that company (or organisation) with a more tailored follow-up attack: Attackers can—and do— segregate infected computers into… Read More »

Taking Shady RAT to the Next Level

I know I’ve drawn attention to this before, but the timeline of McAfee’s Operation Shady RAT by Dmitri Alperovitch raises questions again about WikiLeaks’ original data. Alperovitch points out that their data goes back to mid-2006: We have collected logs that reveal the full extent of the victim population since mid-2006 when the log collection began. Note… Read More »

Libya’s Stuxnet?

A group of security professionals who have good credentials and strong links to the U.S. government have outlined a Stuxnet-type attack on Libyan infrastructure, according to a document released this week. But is the group outlining risks to regional stability, or is it advocating a cyber attack on Muammar Gadhafi? The document, Project Cyber Dawn… Read More »

The Gmail Phish: Why Publicize, and Why Now?

This Google Gmail phishing case has gotten quite a bit of attention, so I thought I’d throw in my two cents’ worth. (These are notes I collated for a segment I did for Al Jazeera earlier today. I didn’t do a particularly good job of getting these points across, and some of the stuff came… Read More »

Osama bin Laden’s Death on Twitter

(Updated timeline to include subsequent accounts) There was, by all accounts, no Internet or phone access to Bin Laden’s compound. Had there been, might he have known about the attack in advance from social media? This depends on what was being said on twitter, and when. Although lots of people in Pakistan are on Facebook,… Read More »