Technology Security Archives - Page 17 of 17

Software Programs, Technology Security

Russians release near-instant password cracker for Excel spreadsheets

Beside a hard drive failure or discovering a scratch on a backup DVD, one of most frustrating user-induced experiences is forgetting a password for that all-important spreadsheet or a word document containing masters’ thesis or something similar. Russian cryptologists from ElcomSoft think that they have just the right "silver bullet" for Excel and Word documents. Following the footsteps of their Thunder Tables for Microsoft Word, this security giant released Rainbow Tables for Microsoft Excel. According to the company, Thunder Tables comes with a 100% guarantee that it will recover a password from a word document containing Microsoft-standard 40-bit encryption. In case of Rainbow Tables, the

Technology Security

Boston Police may have conducted Improper Technology Seizure

It would seem that lately US law enforcement has been taking a healthy dose of ignorance pills. Slightly before the seizure of co-located equipment from two Dallas Data Centers by the FBI, a Boston College Police Officer [Kevin M. Christopher] seized several of a Computer Science student’s [Riccardo Calixte] Computers, a cellphone and an iPod. According to the officer all of these were needed as evidence for a mass e-mail that was sent about his roommate. Now here is where things get interesting.Sending out a defaming e-mail is a civil matter the last time I checked, but not criminal. If the e-mail in question was

Business, Software Programs, Technology Security

Windows XP support shuts down, security lifeline until 2014

We woke up this morning with a newsletter from Microsoft – informing us to that April 14th, 2009 is the final date of "mainstream support" for Windows XP operating systems and Office 2003 application suites. Long story short – no more features and enhancements for the venerable OS or one of less popular Office suites – only the security updates will continue to appear for the next five years. Under the "extended support" moniker, Microsoft is stating that Windows Update and Automatic Updating service will host all previously released functionality and enhancement software, such as .NET, but features such as new drivers might not be

Audio/Video, Business, Enterprise, Technology Security

Security Expert: FBI is very wrong on Emergency 911 fiasco

The FBI in Dallas, Texas showed off its technological ignorance on Tuesday when it seized all systems inside two data centers as part of an investigation into companies that owed money to AT&T and Verizon. Federal Buerau of Investigation is defending their actions based on a belief that all systems in a Data Center are interconnected as Mark White [FBI spokesperson for Dallas office] stated: "My understanding is that the way these things are hooked up is that they’re interconnected to each other," he says. "Company A may be involved in some criminal activity and because of the interconnectivity of all these things, the information of what

Technology Security

Detect and get rid of Conficker for free

If you want to know whether you are infected with the Conficker virus, German colleagues at Heise Online came up with a very simple way – all you need to do is load Conficker Browsercheck site, and if you see all of the icons, you’re safe. But, if you are already infected with Conflicker, the good news is that the tool for removing this vicious pest can be downloaded from BitDefender’s pages free of charge. With this tool IT Admins can completely remove this worm from one place on server, and with that the possibility of worm reinfection through network is avoided. You can also

Software Programs, Technology Security

Anonymous Warning Says "Brace for April 1st"

Yesterday we published a story about a new form of Virus that attacks the edge of the network targeting the hardware firewall/routers and DSL Modems that are popular today. Shortly after that article was published I received an ominous warning: “Brace for April 1st“ That was it, nothing more. Editorial team discussed about this and then I remembered reading that the Conficker Worm is set to roughly 500 domains on April 1st. Conficker has been a thorn in the side of security companies since it hit back in November of 2008. Conficker exploits a vulnerability in the way that Microsoft Operating Systems handle

Hardware, Technology Security

New Attack Targets the Edge of the Network, Routers and Modems – Updated

In the world of home networking, when people shop for a router, they check to see f it has some sort of firewall protection, buy it, bring it home and just plug it in. If the manufacturer is a good one, there may be a quick setup for the first boot and that’s about that. This turnkey approach has lead to a new virus called psyb0t. This nasty virus attacks MIPS based routers and their embedded Linux OS. As most users do not bother to go in and check for things like remote management, UPnP [Universal Plug and Play], SSH [Secure Socket Handler] access after

Technology Security

Australian Internet blacklist leaked?

We received news from Sophos that alleged list of sites banned by the ACMA, authority in charge of Great Australian Firewall. In case you didn’t knew earlier ACMA [Australian Communications and Media Authority] is a body of Australian government. This authority created a list of 2400 websites that are not allowed to be approached by well… Australian public. As it happens in a globally connected world, this supposedly hush-hush, top secret list allegedly found its way out of ACMA. According to the sources that had seen the list, all the websites on this leaked list contain content which is indeed illegal, such as child pornography,

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