Infosecurity

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Cruising the Misinformation Superhighway

Long before there was a World Wide Web, when the internet was largely a playground for academics and the military, and most people still thought spam was a canned meat, there were already hoaxes and scams (pyramid schemes, Ponzi schemes, lures into premium rate phone services, fake friends a ...

Posted 28 February 2013 by David Harley

tags: David Harley, hoax, social media, web 2.0, ESET, Facebook, social engineering

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Mac AV Testing: How Useful Is It?

I commented recently (on an independent AV testing-related blog) on a blog article from Intego in which Lysa Myers commented not only on the infamous Imperva pseudo-test, but on a test report from Thomas' Tech Corner. On January 28, Thomas Reed returned to the fray with a further ro ...

Posted 29 January 2013 by David Harley

tags: David Harley, Mac malware, Mac AV, AV product testing, anti-malware testing

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Jailbreaking: Not Just a Sport for iPhone Users

I just came across an interesting blog by Lysa Myers (for Intego) on jailbreaking: The Latest in Jailbreaking: Will Malware Follow? Ironically, while there are rumours of an imminent untethered jailbreak for iOS 6.0.2, the most recent high-profile jailbreak is for Windows RT, approximately equivale ...

Posted 09 January 2013 by David Harley

tags: David Harley, Intego, Codeproof, Lysa Myers, jailbreaking, iOS, tethered jailbreaking, untethered jailbreaking, Android, Windows RT

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Send in the Clones

The longer you stay in this game, the more obsolete information you have cluttering up your memory cells. Technology moves quickly, and in the tug o’ war o’ attrition between malware and anti-malware, the effective lifetime of a specific malicious binary is often very short indee ...

Posted 17 December 2012 by David Harley

tags: David Harley, John Leyden, Mikko Hypponen, Michelangelo, Elk Cloner, Brain, viruses, malware, Apple II

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OSX/Flashback isn't Necessarily the Newsflash

As the pseudonymous Old Mac Bloggit – my colleague at Mac Virus – has already noted, there’s some interesting Mac-related content included in the Sophos Security Threat Report 2012 (some of it already summarized in an Infosecurity article here: Malware set to take a big bit ...

Posted 07 December 2012 by David Harley

tags: David Harley, OSX/Flashback, Mac Virus, Sophos, Apple, mac malware, Forrester, OSX/FkCodec-A, WildList, INF/Autorun

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OSX/Dockster Spyware

On November 30th, Intego blogged about OS X spyware it calls OSX/Dockster.A. This relatively simple backdoor trojan, found on Virus Total, provides a remote shell to give a remote attacker access to the system, provides a channel for downloading additional files, and has keylogger functionality. The ...

Posted 03 December 2012 by David Harley

tags: David Harley, Intego, Sophos, F-Secure, Dockster, spyware, Virus Total, Dalai Lam, CVE-2012-0507, Sabpab, Flashback

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McAfee & Michelangelo

Without breaking any confidences, it’s fair to say that the present troubles of John McAfee, founder of the AV company that still bears his name, has inspired a lot of comment in the security industry, a lot of it not particularly complimentary to him. Despite having been conn ...

Posted 19 November 2012 by David Harley

tags: David Harley, Aryeh Goretsky, John McAfee, Michelangelo, hype, media virus, boot sector virus, Dr. Alan Solomon

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Are Operating System Vendors Really Selling Security?

In an IT Pro Portal article whose title says it all – Windows vs Apple OS X security: market share more important than product – Will Dalton gives Team Cymru's Steve Santorelli the chance to make the point that operating system vendors aren't really in the bu ...

Posted 08 November 2012 by David Harley

tags: David Harley, Steve Santorelli, IT Pro Portal, Will Dalton, Team Cymru, Operating System, security versus convenience

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Apple Support and Anti-Social Engineering

When Infosecurity Magazine originally wrote about the attack on Mat Honan, the focus was on Apple’s culpability, though it’s become clearer since that there’ve been a multitude of security sins committed here that weren’t all Apple’s (notably Amazon and Honan himself). ...

Posted 08 August 2012 by David Harley

tags: David Harley, Apple, Amazon, social engineering, Kevin Mitnick, Mat Honan, authentication, password re-use, password reset, education, data aggregation attack

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Pickpockets in the (app) Marketplace

Suddenly, it seems, the App Store is having a (very small) taste of the sort of criticism previously reserved for Android outlets, recently with regard to ZonD80’s provision of a service by which Apple’s in-app purchasing mechanism can be subverted, hard on the heels of reports of a prob ...

Posted 20 July 2012 by David Harley

tags: David Harley, iOS, App Store, ZonD80, Find and Call, spam, fraud, piracy, contact details misuse, movement tracking, data encryption

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Apple Tiptoes Out of the Pavilion and onto the Sports Field

Kelly Jackson Higgins has noted “4 Signs That Apple's Sharpening Its Security Game”. And indeed, there are indications that Apple’s hard-line “We don’t have any security problems” attitude as getting a bit smoother at the edges, as the Mac threatscape has started ...

Posted 02 July 2012 by David Harley

tags: David Harley, Flashback, Mountain Lion, Darkreading, Kelly Jackson Higgins, ASLR, Mac security, Graham Cluley, Flash, botnet, anti-virus

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Apple OS X and Risk Reduction

Some of the confidence Mac users have in the security of their chosen operating system derives from over-reliance on proactive patching. This outbreak highlights the need to be aware that patching of known vulnerabilities in system software or applications is not necessarily prompt enough to foresta ...

Posted 16 April 2012 by David Harley

tags: David Harley, SabPab, SabPub, Java, Flashback, patching, updates, anti-virus, Java, Flash Player, Adobe Reader

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Flashbacks and Backtracks

If you follow my Mac Virus blog, you’ll have noticed that I’ve been tracking some of the coverage of Mac malware incidents to hit my radar in the last couple of weeks. In fact, hits on Mac Virus have been skyrocketing in the past 24 hours, so perhaps this a good time to recap on a couple ...

Posted 06 April 2012 by David Harley

tags: David Harley, Mac Virus, OS X malware, Flashback, AlienVault, CVE-2011-3544, MS09-027, iOS, Flashback, botnet, Java, updates, CVE-2012-0507

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OS X Malware: A Steady Trickle

I’m guessing that the myth of OS X invulnerability to malware is pretty much busted by now: at any rate, there has been wave after wave of OS X-related malware reports in the past week or two. Sophos were the latest big name to weigh in on the OSX/Imuler malware that DrWeb, Intego, ESET and yo ...

Posted 26 March 2012 by David Harley

tags: David Harley, Intego, SecureMac, F-Secure, Sophos, ESET, DrWeb, Imuler, OSX, Flashback, Twitter, Tibet, Renzin Dorjee, Irina Shayk

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OSX/Imuler: the Image-Conscious Trojan

Intego recently posted some information on its blog concerning the Imuler information-stealing Trojan. The variant that Intego calls OSX/Imuler.C uses a different stealth/social engineering technique to that used by previous variants. It seems to be intended to spread via .ZIP archives containing th ...

Posted 16 March 2012 by David Harley

tags: David Harley, Intego, ESET, OS X, malware, OSX/Imuler, JPG, APP, deceptive icon, file extensions, Finder advanced preferences

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Malware: a Matter of Definition

Kurt Wismer has just put up a blog asking is the iphone really malware free? (Don’t be put off by the trademark absence of capitalization). Wismer is not illiterate and very far from stupid, asks some very pertinent questions, and his commentary is always worth reading. In fact, if keeping the ...

Posted 13 February 2012 by David Harley

tags: David Harley, Kurt Wismer, Apple, iOS, Google, Android, adware, malware, possibly unwanted, possibly unsafe, riskware

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Carrier IQ: Not Just an Android Issue

Unless you’re currently trekking through the Gobi, you’ve probably caught some of the fuss about Carrier IQ, accused of conduct resembling a rootkit more than legitimate logging. I think that some of the indignation has been a little overdone, as I commented here, but there are certainly ...

Posted 01 December 2011 by David Harley

tags: David Harley, chpwn, Carrier IQ, Dan Raywood, Android, iOS, Trevor Eckhart, HTC, iPhone, Blackberry, RIM, Nokia, Tim Worstall

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iPaddling in Corporate Waters

Computer Weekly, in an article I mentioned in my previous blog here, notes that Tablet device ownership among mobile employees increased from 33% in the second quarter of 2011 to 44%.That statistic dovetails quite neatly with a study from ComScore on Digital Omnivores: How Tablets, Smartphones and C ...

Posted 18 November 2011 by David Harley

tags: David Harley, Infosecurity Magazine, virtual conference, iPad, iPass, tablets in business, smartphones, Comscore

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Goodbye Blackberry Way?*

iPass tells us that a recent survey (n = 2,300) indicated that the iPhone now has 45% marketshare in the enterprise, whereas use of the Blackberry is down (slightly) to 35%. While Blackberry has traditionally been the weapon of choice for the security-conscious corporate IT administrator, Apple ...

Posted 18 November 2011 by David Harley

tags: David Harley, iPass, iPhone, Android, Blackberry, corporate security, liability versus risk, App Store, Android Market

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Apple Content in Infosecurity Virtual Conference

It occurs to me that something (else) I haven't mentioned here is that Infosecurity magazine is running one of its virtual conferences on November 8th, with the virtual doors opening at 10.30 EST. If you're interested in Apple security this plenty to interest you on the agenda: Between 13.30 ...

Posted 07 November 2011 by David Harley

tags: David Harley, Infosecurity Magazine, virtual conference, #USVC, iPad, Apple malware, Mac OS, Windows, Unix

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