Common Admission Test 2010 aspirants received a scare when they visited the official site www.cat iim.in only to find the portal hosting malware files.

The timing of the bug makes it even scarier as the sale of CAT 2010 vouchers and online registration started just recently.

Whenever the site was opened a warning popped up: "This web page at catiim.in has been reported as an attack page and has been blocked based on your security preferences." In fact, even Google search stated that "this site may harm your computer".

Ref: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Now-malware-bugs-users-on-CAT-site/articleshow/6477864.cms

The most significant breach of U.S. military computers was caused by a flash drive inserted into a U.S. military laptop on a post in the Middle East in 2008.

Deputy Defense Secretary William J. Lynn III says malicious code placed on the drive by a foreign intelligence agency uploaded itself onto a network run by the U.S. military's Central Command. The code spread undetected on both classified and unclassified systems, establishing what am ounted to a dig ital beachhead, from which data could be transferred to servers under foreign control.

The Pentagon's 15,000 networks and 7 million computing devices are being probed thousands of times daily; that cyberwar is asymmetric; and that traditional Cold War deterrence models of assured retaliation do not apply to cyberspace, where it is difficult to identify the instigator of an attack.

Counterfeit hardware has been detected in systems that the Pentagon has bought. Such hardware could expose the network to manipulation from adversaries.

Infiltrating the military's command and control system is significant, said one former intelligence official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. "This is how we order people to go to war. If you're on the inside, you can change orders. You can say, 'turn left' instead of 'turn right.' You can say 'go up' instead of 'go down.

Ref: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/24/AR2010082406154.html

Authorities investigating the 2008 crash of Spanair flight 5022 have discovered a central computer system used to monitor technical problems in the aircraft was infected with malware due to which the infected computer failed to detect three technical problems with the aircraft, which if detected, may have prevented the plane from taking off.

Flight 5022 crashed just after takeoff from Madrid-Barajas International Airport two years ago today, killing 154 and leaving only 18 survivors.

The malware on the Spanair computer has been identified as a type of Trojan horse. It could have entered the airline's system in a number of ways, most likely through third party devices such as USB sticks which were responsible for the International Space Station virus infection in 2008, or through a remote VPN connection that may not have the same protection as a computer within the enterprise network. Opening just one malicious file on a single computer is all it takes to infect an entire system.

Ref: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38790670/ns/technology_and_science-security

In the age of everything digital, the photocopier is probably the one workplace item you never thought to worry about. It's just making a copy of a document, right? How risky could that be?

Very risky, as it turns out. You might want to press cancel on the copy machine right about now.

The multi-purpose copy machines in your office keep a wealth of copied data on a hard drive that any one can hack.

Security experts say businesses are completely unaware of the potential information security breach when the office photocopier is replaced. They think the copier is just headed for a junkyard but, in most cases, when the machine goes, so does sensitive data that have been stored on the copier's hard drive for years.

Even though high-volume photocopy machines with hard drives have been around for more than five years – most large offices today would have them, the kind that photocopy 35 to 60 pages a minute – people rarely think of them as computers.

Modern, large, office-type photocopiers are computers. The whole system is controlled by a computer, it has a hard disk. It scans images and they are stored on the disc. They are also networked computers and have all the same security issues that a computer does.

Ref: http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/781567--high-tech-copy-machines-a-gold-mine-for-data-thieves

A group of nations including the United States, China and Russia have for the first time signaled a willingness to engage in reducing the threat of attacks on each others computer networks.

It is recommended that the U.N. create norms of accepted behavior in cyberspace, exchange information on national legislation and cybersecurity strategies, and strengthen the capacity of less-developed countries to pr otect their computer systems.

For about the past decade, U.S. efforts to work with global partners in cyberspace have centered on combating crimes online. This left aside the more sensitive issues of state involvement in or responsibility for cyber intrusions into critical computer systems.

The Russians proposed a treaty in 1998 that would have banned the use of cyberspace for military purposes. But the United States has not been willing to agree to that proposal, given that the difficulty in attributing attacks makes it hard to monitor compliance.

Others in the group are Britain, France, Germany, Estonia, Belarus, Brazil, India, Israel, Italy, Qatar, South Korea and South Africa.

Ref: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/16/AR2010071605882.html