Spain Nabs 3 Suspected Members of Anonymous

Spanish police arrested three suspected computer hackers who allegedly belonged to a loose-knit international activist group that has attacked corporate and government websites around the world, authorities said Friday. A National Police statement identified the three detainees as leaders of the Spanish section of a group that calls itself "Anonymous."
A computer server in one of their homes was used to coordinate and carry out the cyber attacks on targets including two major Spanish banks, the Italian energy company Enel and the governments of Egypt, Algeria, Libya, Iran, Chile, Colombia and New Zealand, the statement said.
The statement said the only other countries to act against "Anonymous" so far are the United States and Britain. It attributed this what it called complex security measures that members use to protect their identity. The suspects in Spain were arrested in Barcelona, Valencia and the southern city of Almeria, the statement said without specifying when the detainees were picked up.

http://news.hitb.org/content/spain-nabs-3-suspected-members-anonymous?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=s3cb0t

Citigroup card customers data hacked

Computer hackers have breached Citigroup’s computer network and have accessed data on hundreds of thousands of its card customers, the Financial Times said.

Citigroup said the breach, which affected about 1 per cent of its card customers, was discovered in early May through routine monitoring.

According to the bank’s annual report, Citi Cards has about 21 million customers in North America.

The breach occurred at Citi Account Online, which holds basic customer information such as names, account numbers and e-mail addresses.

Other information such as birth dates, social security numbers and card security codes are held elsewhere and were not compromised, Citi said.

“The bank said it had contacted law enforcement officials and tightened its fraud detection procedures, but declined to provide further details or to say whether customers had reported suspicious transactions,” the FT reported.

Though Citigroup said the breach involved only credit card accounts, the FT said that several people have reported about their debit card details being compromised.

Hacking into companies is increasingly becoming common.

Lockheed Martin, PBS and Sony have all recently had their security systems violated.

http://www.thehindu.com/business/companies/article2090316.ece

Hackers may try to disrupt World IPv6 Day

Hundreds of popular websites -- including Google, Facebook, Yahoo and Bing -- are participating in a 24-hour trial of a new Internet standard called IPv6 on June 8, prompting worries that hackers will exploit weaknesses in this emerging technology to launch attacks.

BACKGROUND: Large-scale IPv6 trial set for June 8
Dubbed World IPv6 Day, the IPv6 trial runs from 8 p.m. EST on Tuesday until 7:59 p.m. EST on Wednesday.
Security experts are concerned that the 400-plus corporate, government and university websites that are participating in World IPv6 Day could be hit with distributed denial of service (DDoS) or other hacking attacks during the 24-hour trial.

"In the last five months, there has been a huge increase in DDoS attacks," says Ron Meyran, director of product marketing and security at Radware, a network device company that is not participating in World IPv6 Day. "IPv6 is going to be even easier for attackers ... because IPv6 traffic will go through your deep packet inspection systems uninspected."
Meyran says another concern is that IPv6 packet headers are four times larger than IPv4 headers. This means routers, firewalls and other network devices must process more data, which makes it easier to overwhelm them in a DDoS attack.
"With a DDoS attack, you need to reach 100% utilization of the networking and security devices to saturate the services," Meyran says. The longer headers in IPv6 "must be processed completely to make routing decisions."

"I wonder if there's going to be any sort of DDoS type of things going on ... or hackers probing servers that are dual-stack enabled [running IPv6 and IPv4 at the same time],'' says Jean McManus, executive director of Verizon's Corporate Technology Organization, which is participating in World IPv6 Day. "Content providers need to be careful and watch to make sure that everything is appropriately locked down."
Many security threats related to IPv6 stem from the fact that the technology is new, so it hasn't been as well-tested or de-bugged as IPv4. Also, fewer network managers have experience with IPv6 so they aren't as familiar with writing IPv6-related rules for their firewalls or other security devices.
"We know from security breaches that the security rules that allow you to see the network and applications better ... is where there is a lack of training and expertise with IPv6," Meyran says. "The new software is much more complex ... and there are much less programmers familiar with it."

BY THE NUMBERS: 8 security considerations for IPv6 deployment
World IPv6 Day participants say the event was advertized to everybody in the Internet engineering community, including hackers, and they are beefing up the security measures on their sites accordingly.
"This is a well-publicized event," says John Brzozowski, distinguished engineer and chief architect for IPv6 at Comcast, which is participating in World IPv6 Day both as a provider of IPv6-based cable modem services and as an operator of seven IPv6-enabled websites. "Anything can happen. IPv6 is no different than any other new technology. The potential [for attacks] is there. Protecting the network is key to us."

Brzozowski says Comcast will be monitoring its network for signs of attack throughout the trial. "We're taking the necessary steps so that the Comcast infrastructure is protected," he adds.
Juniper says that if its website comes under DDoS or other attack on World IPv6 Day, it will simply switch back to IPv4. "We can revert back to IPv4 in about five minutes," says Alain Durand, director of software engineering at Juniper, which is using its own translator-in-a-cloud service to IPv6 enable its main website for the day.
Akamai, a content delivery network with 30 customers that are participating in World IPv6 Day, says it isn't too concerned about hacking or DDoS attacks during the IPv6 trial.
"All of our command and control systems are going to stay on IPv4," says Andy Champagne, vice president of engineering with Akamai, which is developing a commercial IPv6 service. "Absent some underlying exposure in the protocol that we don't know about ... we think we're OK. We've got enough IPv6 capacity ... I don't expect any trouble.''

Radware's Meyran says hackers may be so clever that they won't attack websites on World IPv6 Day but will instead wait until these sites turn IPv6 on permanently. "The hackers will be very happy to see this day go successfully and that sites are starting to deploy IPv6 because it opens up new areas of attack," he predicts.
That's why Meyran recommends network administrators who participate in World IPv6 Day follow up with an event focused on IPv6 security testing. "The next stage will be to ... run attack tools that simulate IPv6 attacks to make sure your firewalls are really seeing the network and that your intrusion protection systems can really do the deep packet inspection of IPv6 traffic," he says.
World IPv6 Day is a large-scale experiment sponsored by the Internet Society that is designed to discover problems with IPv6 before the new protocol is widely deployed.

DETAILS: What if IPv6 simply fails to catch on?
The Internet needs IPv6 because it is running out of addresses using IPv4. The free pool of unassigned IPv4 addresses expired in February, and in April the Asia Pacific region ran out of all but a few IPv4 addresses being held in reserve for startups. The American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN), which doles out IP addresses to network operators in North America, says it will deplete its supply of IPv4 addresses this fall.
IPv4 uses 32-bit addresses and can support 4.3 billion devices connected directly to the Internet, but IPv6 uses 128-bit addresses and can connect up a virtually unlimited number of devices: 2 to the 128th power. IPv6 offers the promise of faster, less-costly Internet services than the alternative, which is to extend the life of IPv4 using network address translation (NAT) devices.
One major stumbling block for IPv6 deployment is that it's not backward compatible with IPv4. That means website operators have to upgrade their network equipment and software to support IPv6 traffic.

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/060611-ipv6-security.html?page=1

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/060611-ipv6-security.html?page=2

Test driving the new internet...World IPv6 Day

IF your Google search takes a little longer than normal tomorrow, or your Facebook doesn't update quite as quickly, it may be due to a trial of new technology.

Tomorrow is World IPv6 Day, when more than 100 companies around the world will test a new way of assigning addresses to devices on the internet.
Narelle Clark of the Internet Society of Australia said the switch was important because the current system, IPv4, was unable to cope with the growing number of gadgets going online.
"In the past, when we were running out of telephone numbers, we added a single digit," Ms Clark told news.com.au.
"We can't take that same approach for the internet, as the entire numbering system needs more capacity — not just one country.
"Over the last fifteen years or so we have come up with some great ways to make those IPv4 addresses last longer, but we're now at the end of the line."
Ms Clark said the IT industry had put off adopting the new protocol and now the switch had become both more urgent and more difficult.
"Unfortunately, all the things we've done to stretch things out have been so effective that we haven't made a timely move across to IPv6," she said.

"At the same time much of our use has matured, and we've come to rely on the internet for our economic, educational and social lives (which) is making the switch even harder."
The companies trialling IPv6 tomorrow include Facebook, Yahoo, Google, YouTube, Cisco, Akamai and Meebo.

Hopefully, the trial will be a success — however things may get bumpy for a few web surfers.
Google said it expected about 0.5 per cent of requests to fail due to network incompatibility, while Facebook said only 0.03 per cent of its users could be affected.
Facebook also said recent studies had indicated that about one in 2000 users have trouble connecting to dual stacked websites — sites that have both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses.
In a post on its engineering blog earlier this year, Facebook said the adoption of IPv6 had become a "classic chicken-and-egg puzzle".

"Websites don't want to enable IPv6 because a small number of their users may have trouble connecting," it said.
"At the same time, doing nothing means that ever more users will have trouble connecting."

http://www.news.com.au/technology/dont-panic-but-the-internet-might-break-tomorrow-just-a-little-bit-and-were-sure-theyll-fix-it/story-e6frfro0-1226071115396

Use your brain - don't let your PC turn into a zombie

IF you're in an office, like I am, take a look around. If there are 10 computers in the room, chances are one of them is a zombie.

According to a University of Sydney cyber security expert studies have shown about one in five home computers and one in 10 work computers are "zombies" that have been taken over and used to conduct illegal activity.
"The global average is 20 to 25 per cent that are probably infected which means about one in five," said Professor Michael Fry from the university's school of IT.
"These computers are taken over remotely and incorporated into botnet networks."
Botnets are networks of computers enslaved by malware allowing the "bot herder" or "bot master" to control them remotely.
Prof Fry said remotely-controlled computers were being used in everything from organised crime to cyber warfare.
"Controllers use botnets for stuff like identity theft, to launch mass spam campaigns, phishing attacks, and online advertising 'click fraud'," he said.
"But the big one that they are becoming the weapon of choice for are distributed denial of service attacks."
A denial-of-service attack is when someone directs such a huge volume of requests to a target website that the web server can't respond and the site becomes inaccessible to everyone.
A distributed denial-of-service, or DDoS, attack occurs when hundreds or thousands of infected zombie computers are enlisted to help.
Prof Fry said botnets were today's "weapon of choice" for organised crime conducting DDoS attacks and there was a strong suspicion in cyber security circles that governments had also used botnets to sabotage others countries' IT systems.
He said individuals were already using attacks such as these to extort money right here in Australia.
"We had a case where a man in Alice Springs had his system go down one day," Prof Fry said.
"A little later he received an email from a group saying 'this was us and pay up or we’ll do it again'. He told them no and the next day they attacked him, bringing his whole system down."
They are even reports that individuals are able to hire botnets for a fee.

• One in five home computers are enslaved "zombies"
• Enslaved PCs used by "botmasters" in cyber attacks
• That means my computer has more of a life than I do

Aim for the head
Prof Fry said the systems which were the most vulnerable to these sorts of attacks were "unpatched" machines — computers which haven't been updated with the latest defences from software providers.
"These regular update requests can be a nuisance but are essential to stay ahead in the day to day battle against cyber crime," he said.
Craig McDonald is the founder and chief executive of MailGuard, a company specialising in the online security needs of business. He said it was essential for individuals and businesses to check for regular software updates.
"You're only as protected as the last update," Mr McDonald said.
"And for businesses, as email is highly used for 'doing business', I would recommend a multi-layered managed email filtering service."
Mr McDonald said individuals needed to ensure they followed all the directions given by their software and to run full scans of all computers.
Prof Fry said the identification of malware could sometimes be extremely hard and the process had become an "arms race".
"The less sophisticated ones can be tracked down and stopped, but the detection of zombies or the detection of bot masters can be very difficult," he said.
"The whole thing is an arms race. You can develop a tool that is very good at detecting them but as soon as you do people are working to get better at covering their tracks.
"It’s a global problem — governments, ISPs and everyone else."

The biggest threat?
Last week Attorney-General Robert McClelland and Defence Minister Stephen Smith said the Australian Government would work towards the creation of its first ever national strategy for dealing with cyber security.
"The Cyber White Paper will examine what we need to do to protect ourselves online, the role of government, industry and the public in protecting our interests," McClelland told a cyber security function in Sydney.
The paper will be completed in the first half of next year and would look at a broad range of areas including consumer protection, cyber safety, cyber crime, cyber security and cyber defence, he said.
Earlier this year the Federal Parliament was the subject of a cyber attack with the computers of at least 10 federal ministers, including Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Defence Minister Stephen Smith, targeted and confidential emails possibly accessed.
The head of Sydney University's Centre for International Security Studies, Professor Alan Dupont, said cyber attacks were "possibly the biggest security threat facing Australia".
"Of course we need to understand the technical detail of cyber crime in order to keep ahead of the game but we want people to think more broadly about cyber security," Prof Dupont said.
"We are stressing the importance of how cyber attacks are conducted, why and by whom, in order to enhance understanding of systems' susceptibility to attacks.
"If we don't get on top of this in a defensive sense, everything on a computer network is vulnerable to attack."

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/technology/use-your-brain-dont-let-your-pc-become-a-zombie/story-e6frfro0-1226070293650#ixzz1OaFtTJ9F

Sony apologises as hackers strike again!!!

Sony executives took to the stage at games show E3 to apologise for a massive hacking incident, as yet another attack targeted the beleaguered firm.
In April, Sony temporarily shut down its PlayStation Network, after hackers made off with details from 77 million accounts, including some credit card data.
"This is not the first time I've come to the stage at E3 with an elephant in the room," Jack Tretton, the head of Sony's gaming division in the US, told attendees of the show, as the firm unveiled an update to the PlayStation Portable, the Vita.
"I want to apologise personally and on behalf of the company for any anxiety that we have caused," he said. "It is you that causes us to be both humble and amazed at the amount of dedication and support you continue to give to the PlayStation brand."
Another hack
The apology came as hacking group Lulz Security said it had again targeted Sony, posting company data online.
The group posted what appeared to be Sony BMG network maps from a New York city office and what they said was 54MB of Sony developer source code.
"We're not commenting on this issue," said Sony Music spokeswoman Liz Young.
Last week, the group said it had broken into Sony's computer network and accessed information on more than one million customers to show the vulnerability of the company's systems.
Nobody has claimed responsibility for the attacks that Sony disclosed in April and May.

Read more: Sony apologises as hackers strike again | Security | News | PC Pro http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/security/367849/sony-apologises-as-hackers-strike-again#ixzz1OaDcqtVb

RSA, the security division of EMC, has acknowledged that information stolen from its network was used to carry out a cyber attack against Lockheed Martin and offers to replace all of the 40 million SecurID hardware tokens in existence.

Back in March, RSA announced that attackers managed to penetrate its network and accessed information related to SecurID, its two-factor authentication solution. 

The company provided little information about the incident and the extent of the breach, a decision that attracted strong criticism from the information security community.

"While at this time we are confident that the information extracted does not enable a successful direct attack on any of our RSA SecurID customers, this information could potentially be used to reduce the effectiveness of a current two-factor authentication implementation as part of a broader attack," the company said at the time.

Since then, three large U.S. government contractors, namely Lockheed Martin, L-3 Communications and Northrop Grumman are believed to have been attacked using information stolen during the RSA breach.

Of these, only the Lockheed Martin one was publicly confirmed and attackers are said to have used cloned SecurID tokens to access the company's network.

Lockheed claims that its security team spotted and blocked the attack before any sensitive information was stolen, but the incident prompted a week-long remote network access ban and a change of SecurID tokens for all employees.

In a letter to customers sent yesterday, RSA acknowledged that intruders breached Lockheed Martin's security using information stolen from its systems. Furthermore, the company's chairman, Mr. Art Coviello, told the Wall Street Journal that as a precaution, the company will offer to replace the SecurID tokens for virtually every customer.

In addition, for certain customers, primarily those in the financial industry, RSA will provide transaction monitoring and other intrusion detection capabilities. Depending on their security requirements, some customers might not need to replace the tokens. "We believe and still believe that the customers are protected," Mr. Coviello said.
 
http://news.softpedia.com/news/RSA-Offers-to-Replace-All-SecurID-Tokens-Following-Lockheed-Martin-Attack-204609.shtml?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=s3cb0t