Microsoft, Symantec officials outed by major hack in Sweden

Read about the intrusion at Computer Sweden:

Passwords for many of Sweden's cyber elite are now available on the Internet following a hack against The Swedish Computer Society, an organization of IT professionals. Among the victims are a former security officer at Microsoft, a Symantec security expert and the director of Sweden's largest Internet bank.

Microsoft, Symantec officials outed by major hack in Sweden

The most annoying security procedures

According to a Swedish survey with 1200 participants, these are the three most annoying security procedures that are enforced at companies:

...change password: 43%
...the USB port is blocked: 42%
...not being able to select password: 41%

I certainly agree with the first one... it is annoying, because it is hard to remember all passwords at different places.

Poor Macbook thieves

Thieves had stolen a set of Macbooks from a school in the northern Sweden according to this Swedish newspaper:

Macbooktjuvar klev rakt i fällan - IDG.se

However, what they did not know was that software from Orbicule had been installed. With this software they could among other things identify the computers new IP addresses and send pictures of the thieves from the built-in webcam. Then it was easy for the police to identify the thieves and capture them.

That is kind of an intrusion response system!

Powered by ScribeFire.

Sweden the third most used country for cyber crime

Sweden has according to a Swedish newspaper a lot of servers that are used for crime acts. Third position this year, last year we has the second position...

Kriminella avancerar på nätet

Chockhöjning av nya virus...

Well, I hope this might increase the funding for computer security at large and specifically intrusion detection.

The misuse of intrusion detection

The same methods used for intrusion detection can also be used for detecting anything. The EU Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini wants to forbid searches for terror words such as "bomb" and "kill" and "terrorism". You might start to wonder what EU is going to become.

EU-topp vill förbjuda terrorord
EU vill blockera farliga sökord - IDG.se
Web search for bomb recipes should be blocked: EU

EU proposes anti-terror measures

Powered by ScribeFire.

"Big Business"

Yesterday the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet had a set of articles about intrusion into Swedish companies. It really seems to be "Big Business". These articles I hope triggers more Swedish research in intrusion detection.

powered by performancing firefox

IDS and child pornography

According to a Swedish newspaper has the volume of child pornography seized by the police at single crimes increased from averaging from 10.000 - 20.000 pictures two years ago till being up to millions of pictures and movies. The cheer volume blocks the police from investigating the crimes (summary in Swedish below).

Barnporrfall blir liggande

- De stora volymerna blockerar våra resurser. Ett stort beslag för två år sedan kunde bestå av 10.000-20.000 bilder. Det tyckte vi var mycket då. I dag kan det finnas enskilda beslag där den misstänkta har lagrat flera miljoner filmer och bilder, säger Stefan Kronqvist, chef för Riskriminalens IT-brottssektion.

Maybe intrusion detection/prevension technology could be used to stop kiddie porn from being sent through a network? Though pedophiles probably encode their communication using some form of cryptography or maybe they use darknets. However, according to the following story, it might be a reasonable approach: Recent child porn busts are one result of stepped-up Internet monitoring.