A new Solution for Network Administrators to Prevent Cyber Hacking

Recently a new powerful Platform named Radware has been produced by an expert computer specialist team for the purpose of reducing the terrorism in the cyber space. This platform, assures the complete availability, performance and security of business-critical applications for more than 10,000 enterprises and carriers worldwide. With Radware's comprehensive APSolute suite of application delivery and network security products, companies can drive business productivity, improve profitability, and reduce IT operating and infrastructure costs by making their networks business-smart.

Most of the threats on the websites are Bot commands, DOS attacks , TCP and HTTP Flood attacks. Radware is using several technologies to prevent our websites, our data centers and our servers from being hacked

Source:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEdV02M0VGE

An International Partnership Against Cyber Terrorism in Malaysia

Malaysian government has made an impact against cyber terror by several means. The government has set up an international center with the name of IMPACT (International Multinational Partnership Against Cyber Terrorism) in the IT industry serving on its advisory board. The budget of this center has approved RM34mil and it is located in Cyberjaya. This non –profit organization is the first international public-private sector which bound to work against cyber terrorism. Two local IT companies – Ascendsys Sdn Bhd, a leading security services company, and GITN Sdn Bhd, a government IT network company that is owned by Telekom Malaysia – will run and coordinate the centre.

For a start, IMPACT would focus its activities in three key areas - security certification, research and development; as well as establishing a global emergency response centre. IMPACT has got off to a good start with some leading names lending their support. America's Symantec Corporation, Japan's Trend Micro, and Russia's KaperskyLlab have already agreed to be key partners and to serve on IMPACT's international advisory board to be established soon.

Source:

http://security.org.my/index.php?/archives/Making-an-IMPACT-on-Cyber-terrorism.html

Some Hints to Prevent Your Bank Accounts from Being Hacked

These days the hackers are looking for the ways to earn some money as well as destroying and making problem for the websites. One of these way is to penetrate the users bank account and transfer and steal money from their accounts. As we see nowadays most of us are doing our banking activities via internet so in case we won’t be precautious we may lose all our assets. There are some hints which might help us to prevent our bank accounts and credit card from being hacked. Some of them are as follows:

· Try to use OS like Linux instead of windows as this OS is the most vulnerable one.

· Try to use the most secure web browsers and email services.

· It would be necessary to install a firewall and antivirus program on your system.

· Using Wi-Fi connections just in the secure place like your office and your home.

· Encrypting all your valuable information on your hard drives including your bank account passwords.

· Social networking websites such as Twitter and Facebook can be another source of being hacked, so try to be very cautious while surfing these websites.

· Last but not least, try to use strong password by combining alphabets and numeric in your password.

As a conclusion the bank all over the world are trying to make their websites as much secure as they can, but still the carefulness of the costumers is required to decrease such the events.

Source:

http://www.panamalaw.org/prevent_bank_account_hacking-Dec2009.html

Hacker Arrested By FBI

A computer hacker who penetrate into the several internet phone service providers in Miami, New Jersey and Spokane arrested by the FBI. the total amount that he has stolen was about 1 million $ and the federal court punished him to be in the prison for over 20 years. the point which is very interesting is that FBI found this victim by means of his MYSPACE account and the photos that he has uploaded there. as the FBI mentioned he has 22 years old and he confessed that he was not alone.

A Scientist Infected By a Computer Virus

Dr Gasson, A computer specialist at University of Reading tested a new threat for human beings recently. As using the micro-chips in different parts of human bodies to improve their health is becoming worldwide this researcher tried to implant one of these chips to his body to see how much vulnerable could it be in case of malfunction of the chip by a computer virus.

Nowadays using these micro computers in medical science makes the scientist to be worry about the threats that these electronic devices might have for human beings. Dr Gasson attached one of these micro-chips to his hand to make a secure connection with his university building and his mobile phone. As he mentioned when this device implanted in his body it became a part of his body and whatever happened to the function of this device will affect him. The results of his experience as the first human being who has infected by a computer virus were presented at the IEEE International Symposium on Technology and Society in Australia in June 2010.
This scientist threatens us about the dangers we might encounter in the near future because of using such the technologies to enhance ourselves.

Source:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100526095830.htm

How Hacking Of Passwords Is Achieved?

Nowadays we use a lot of electronic tools such as email ,electronic bank account and many more electronic tools that we need password to use them, so we must make sure our password is safe or not?

These days several methods of password hacking is getting popular.
These methods can be categorized into 3 main sections which are as follows:

-the first and probably the most convenient method for hackers is social engineering which will get some personal information from you and will guess your password according to those info.
-the second way is decrypting your encrypted password key which was made by a hash program to achieve your password, this method needs lots of knowledge and a skilled and experienced hacker.
-the third and the last method is by using Brute Force technique which is done by a program , the procedure is very simple ,these programs will try several random keys with different combination to find your password but it would be a bit time-consuming.
My suggestion is to choose longer and less guessable password to make sure your accounts are safe.

http://www.hackingalert.com/hacking-articles/password-hackers.php

Iranian Cyber Army Hacked TWITTER for Several Hours

Several months ago a group in Iran which named themselves as “Iranian Cyber Army” shut down twitter for several hours and put an image on the twitter website which shows the flag of Iran and a message which represented that Iranian government has this power to hack very huge social networks such as twitter and USA has no power in comparison to Iran.

Doing this activity on a website like twitter caused lots of problems both for the home and business users which were using this platform to communicate with their friends, families and partners and it also make a fear in the user that their personal information and message is not on a secure place on the web.so what will be the result? The result will be a sharp decrease in the number of users who uses this website and it’ not the thing that the creator of such the website looking for. Although the security team of twitter solved the problem several hours later but the effect will last for several months.

The new threat which might encounter the users in the new future is about FACEBOOK , another huge virtual place for the users from different parts of the world.they can not be sure any more that their personal info will keep secure or not?

source:

http://fvdb.wordpress.com/2009/12/18/twitter-hacked-by-iran-cyber-army/

Data Theft via Portable Device

As the new portable devices such as Mobile phones, Flash memories and Mp3 players are getting more and more popular, a new security threat is showing up in the networks where the employees are bringing such the things to their workplace for their personal use.
Recently two computer scientists from University of Strathclyde, in Glasgow published an article in “International Journal of Electronic Security and Digital Forensics” which shows the illegal usage of these new portable devices in the workplace computing systems. These two researchers are introducing two methods in their article to decrease the numbers of data theft and malwares distribution via these devices into the computer networks.

The main problem with these devices is because of their large capacity and web connectivity capabilities which let even the normal users to carry huge amounts of data in a very small portable device and also can transfer them to internet or send them as email with Wi-Fi.Their suggestion to the organizations is that they should ban these portable devices to be brought to the workplace which contains valuable and confidential information by their employees. But as we know there is no possible way to remove the data leakage in the workplace completely.

Source:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100331081133.htm

CNET News on Identity Theft in Facebook

Social networks like Facebook are getting very popular nowadays and most of the people spend their times to communicate with their friends and family members via this virtual community. A new weblog named FBHive created a discussion board for the users to introduce the security gaps in Facebook. According to the recent news which this weblog alerted the users about that is a new security hole in Facebook which will let the hacker to view the basic information of the users such as Location, Gender, Relationship status and … .

In the first look it doesn’t seem too much critical but it will be a problem when you find out that this basic information can be the password hint for user’s accounts. The same problem was reported by this blog last year which was solved by the Facebook several months ago.
This weblog tries to introduce such the problem to Facebook security team to fill the gaps as soon as possible.

Source:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10270002-36.html

Hacking a TV program in Netherland

In this video you will see a well-skilled hacker. As he mention in his video he has hacked a famous live TV program by changing it's subtitles which will confuse the presenter.
you wont believe this?but it is real

Source:
www.youtube.com

A new Laser Security device to prevent Hackers from Accessing CIA

Accessing the user’s confidential information and also big corporations like Pentagon or CIA by hackers shows the need of developing a new method for the network security programmers.
Recently a university professor named “ Dr. Jacob Scheuer” in Tel Aviv University introduce a new digital security method by means of Laser technology. In this method the encryption data for accessing the system is in the form of light pulses.
His device acts like a sender and reciver to encrypt and decrypt the lock-keys, so only the person with the provided device can access to the database.
His new invention will be presented in the upcoming Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO) conference in California. As Dr. Jacob Scheuer mentioned his new device is the best ever as it has no signal loss in the long distance, he indicates that according to his testing there had been no problem for over 3000 miles distance and it can be even more with no major problem.
This new technology will be used in the near future in CIA and other Corporations which need a high security for their databases access.

Source:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100323121834.htm

Meaning of Hacking and the Different Kinds of Hackers

Nowadays, the term "hacking" most commonly refers to gaining unauthorized access to computer resources, such as databases or websites, typically through software-based exploits, with or without criminal intent. We have different types of hackers, I’ll give a brief description on each of them:

CRACKERS: A cracker is someone who breaks into someone else's computer system, often on a network; bypasses passwords or licenses in computer programs just for fun of it and sometime to prove his technical skills.
BLUE HAT HACKERS: A person outside computer security team, who tries to bug test a system prior to its launch, looking for exploits so they can be closed. The Microsoft employees who have blue badges are the origin of this name.
GRAY HAT HACKERS: Grey Hat hackers are morally ambiguous. They act in their own self-interests and do not think about the legal aftereffect of their actions. They do not actively seek to break the law, but are not concerned if such is the outcome.
WHITE HAT HACKER: White Hat hackers are individuals who hack into computer systems solely to see how the computer's security systems work and discover security weaknesses to help the system administrator.
BLACK HAT HACKER: Black Hat hackers are the complete opposite of "White Hats." Black Hats break into security systems in order to steal credit card numbers, vandalize websites or otherwise do harm.
SCRIPT KIDDIES: Script Kiddies are fake-hackers. They use pre-packaged, pre-written software to slip past Internet security protocols and are generally looked down upon in the various hacking communities.
HACKTIVIST (rare): A hacktivist is a hacker who uses technology to announce a political message. Web vandalism is not necessarily hacktivism.

Hacking Incidents 2009

There is a project called the web hacking incident database (WHID), which collects data and statistics on web-application related security incidents. I was just looking into their report called The Web Hacking Incident Database 2009 which has some pretty interesting statistics in.

In order to judge the results and statistics of this database, we have to make sure we understand the contributors and where they come from:




Therefore the output will definitely have some US-centricity but is nevertheless interesting.

There is no secret that the attackers go for money. Cybercrime came from cool to cash! If you look what the attacker did after a successful attack, this proves this statement once more:

But how do they get in? How does a hacker actually attack a Web-Application? Again, not a lot of surprise here, more a confirmation of what we know already:


So, looking at it is definitely worth in order to get a better picture from a security intelligence point of view.

Email Hacking

As the Internet has grown, email hacking has become a more common problem and one that both Internet service providers (ISPs) and law enforcement continue to fight. Because email is considered private information, email hacking can be a criminal offense and is defined as unauthorized use of an email account. Here's how emails can be hacked, and the punishment that can befall the hacker, if caught.

Social Engineering

Considered almost an art among hackers, social engineering is a scam combining psychological and computer skills. Simply, it is the process whereby a hacker convinces an Internet user via email that she is corresponding with someone she can trust. The hacker asks the victim to email personal information to an untraceable address, usually under the guise of checking security.
If caught, the hacker can lose his email account and, if he does perpetuate a financial crime as a result of the hack, can be arrested and prosecuted for fraud.

Workplace Sabotage
Some of the most grievous cases of email hacking happen in the workplace. In one such case an information systems manager for an organ donation database was fired and was able to hack into her email account and maliciously delete important data before the company locked her account. She was arrested, tried and convicted of unauthorized computer use and was sentenced to two years in prison.

General Sentencing Guidelines
While the most common penalty is loss of email account services, in some instances fines, prison sentences and a combination of these two penalties can result from successful prosecution of email hacking. Sentences range from a $5,000 fine for one instance of unauthorized access to twenty years in prison for multiple offenses involving multiple victims and damage greater than $1 million.