Security Guru Gives Hackers a Taste of Their Own Medicine

Malicious hackers beware: Computer security expert Joel Eriksson might already own your box.

Eriksson, a researcher at the Swedish security firm Bitsec, uses reverse-engineering tools to find remotely exploitable security holes in hacking software. In particular, he targets the client-side applications intruders use to control Trojan horses from afar, finding vulnerabilities that would let him upload his own rogue software to intruders’ machines.

He demoed the technique publicly for the first time at the RSA conference Friday.

“Most malware authors are not the most careful programmers,” Eriksson said. “They may be good, but they are not the most careful about security.”

Eriksson’s research on cyber counterattack comes as the government and security firms are raising alarms about targeted intrusions by hackers in China, who are evidently using Trojan horse software to spy on political groups, defense contractors and government agencies around the globe.

The researcher suggests that the best defense might be a good offense, more effective than installing a better intrusion-detection system. Hacking the hacker may be legally dubious, but it is hard to imagine any intruder-turned-victim picking up the phone to report that he had been hacked.

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How to Choose a Home PC Backup Method

It’s not only mission-critical business information that should be backed up. The data on your home PC needs to be backed up as well. But how should you choose between the traditional method of saving files on storage media yourself and a newer method of storing your data offsite with an online service provider? We talked to two experts about the security, management and cost benefits of both methods.

Factor 1: Security

From a disaster recovery perspective, the risks of keeping backup data and original data in the same place are obvious. “Any event that is going to take out your PC or server, like a fire, is also going to take out your backup,” says Adam Couture, principal research analyst at Gartner. Having that data at a remote location ensures that it remains safe, even if the original data is lost.

Another benefit: encryption. Gary Chen, senior analyst at the Yankee Group, says encryption is mandatory with online backups. Encryption of USB keys, external hard drives and other methods of backup is an option, but it’s not something that many people choose to enable, he says, which leaves stolen or misplaced external media vulnerable.

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Data Security Tips for CIOs: Wiping the Hard Drive

Security issues are on the minds of all CIOs these days. Whether the CIO of a 1,300-student liberal-arts college or that of a 13,000-employee Fortune 100 company, never before has the issue of data security been more important. Besides a record-breaking year of data breaches, legislation such as Sarbanes-Oxley, Gramm-Leach-Bliley and HIPAA mandates new security protocols that must be followed or violators face severe penalties.

At Catawba College, network, computer and information security concerns have been a major focus of our information technology work for the past several years, as evidenced by our campus-wide 802.1x network authentication and our CatNet Connect process to clean and secure student computers before allowing them to connect to the residence hall network.

As we faced the prospect of a hardware refresh for about 500 personal computers on campus, it was only natural for us to be concerned about how to dispose of the outgoing equipment in a secure and environmentally friendly way. For the environment's sake-and to benefit the community-we decided to donate our used equipment to a local organization that trains middle school and high school students to refurbish computers, which are then donated to needy families. From an information security perspective, it was essential that we ensure all confidential data was completely eliminated from the hard drives in a manner that would preserve the drives.

As we investigated ways to completely remove the data from hard drives in a nondestructive manner, we immediately eliminated two options-degaussing and mechanical destruction-because both failed to meet our reusability criteria. The magnetism of degaussers destroys the read/write head, rendering the hard drive inoperable. And mechanical destruction is very harmful to the environment because it requires drives to be ground into tiny pieces, releasing a variety of toxic chemicals.

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Malware filters bad for business

Up to 80% of Web sites flagged as malicious by antivirus and search engine indexes are legitimate businesses, according to security experts.

Experts said while the security industry is on top of conventional spam and phishing attacks, more effort needs to be put into preventing and eliminating so-called drive-by-downloads.

The attacks allow hackers to redirect massive amounts of traffic by inserting malicious IFRAMES into legitimate Web sites. The hacks are usually invisible to Web site visitors and do not often draw attention from security personnel because they only require a single line of code to be manipulated.

Sophos CTO Paul Ducklin said affected organizations risk losing business because they are flagged as malicious by search engines such as Google, and antiphishing software.

“You could imagine the business lost if one of only three or four local sign writers were tagged in a search as malicious,” Ducklin said.

“It can be very expensive to fix iframe attacks because they can originate externally or internally, and they have a very small footprint.”

Compromised Web sites can turn into virtual breeding grounds for further attacks, according to Ducklin, because they are easy targets for hackers wanting to inject additional malicious IFRAMES.

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SanDisk warns of USB drive threat

SanDisk has warned that IT managers are unaware of the extent to which unsecured flash drives are being brought into their organizations, backing this with a new study of corporate end-users and IT executives.

The study found that 77% corporate end-users surveyed have admitted to using personal flash drives for work-related purposes. However, when asked to estimate what percentage of the workforce uses personal flash drives, corporate IT respondents said only 35%.

Users meanwhile admitted that data files most likely to be copied to a personal flash drives includes customer records (25%), financial information (17%), business plans (15%), employee records (13%), marketing plans (13%), intellectual property (6%), and source code (6%).

The survey highlights that due to the highly portable nature of USB flash drives, they represent a significant risk of data loss for enterprises. Approximately one in ten (12%) of corporate end users reported finding a flash drive in a public place. Additionally, when asked to pick the three most likely actions they would take if they found a flash drive in a public place, 55% indicated they would view the data.

SanDisk meanwhile hopes to give IT managers a fighting chance of controlling the usage of flash drives in organizations, and earlier this week unveiled a new version of its CMC (Central Management & Control) software used to manage its Cruzer Enterprise USB flash drives.

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