Aurora Report: Around The Horn vol.1,141

UAE cellular carrier rolls out spyware as a 3G "update"

By jtimmer@arstechnica.com (John Timmer) on Spyware

With the proliferation of ever more capable smart phones, many security experts are predicting that the cellular world will be the new malware frontier. Always-on Internet connections and direct SMS messages do provide a lot of opportunities for external parties to inject malware into a user's phone. But in what may be developing into the most disturbing instance in the relatively short history of cellular malware, Blackberry users in the United Arab Emirates have had a spyware package placed on their devices through the actions of their carrier, which claimed it was necessary for a service upgrade.

IT admins: users' online antics greatest threat to security

By jacqui@arstechnica.com (Jacqui Cheng) on Web 2.0

Hackers don't have to work very hard to steal information from people and organizations—people are pretty willing to give it away. Social networks and other Web 2.0 sites are making it ever easier for Internet users to accidentally share too much information or become victim to phishing scams, leading to security research firm Sophos to warn IT admins on how to handle employee use of these services.

Adobe to fix critical Flash hole next week

By Elinor Mills

Adobe said Thursday that it will issue fixes next week for a critical hole in Flash that is being exploited in attacks against Adobe Reader version 9 on Windows.

The vulnerability exists in current versions of Flash Player for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux and the authplay.dll component .

Researchers to offer tool for breaking into Oracle databases

By Elinor Mills

During their presentation at the Black Hat and Defcon hacker conferences next week in Las Vegas, security experts will release a tool that can be used to break into Oracle databases.

Chris Gates and Mario Ceballos will present Oracle Pentesting Methodology and give out "all the tools to ...

Gmail offers auto-unsubscribe feature for newsletters

By Elinor Mills

Gmail Auto-unsubscribe gives you the option to have Google unsubscribe you from mailing lists.

Ever sign up for a newsletter and then regret it later and feel too lazy to go back to the source and unsubscribe? Well, instead of just marking the messages as spam and hoping ...

Adobe investigating zero-day bug in Flash

By Elinor Mills

Researchers on Wednesday said they have uncovered attacks in the wild in which malicious Acrobat PDF files are exploiting a vulnerability in Flash and dropping a Trojan onto computers.

The situation could affect tons of users since Flash exists in all popular browsers, is available in PDF files, and is ...

Another round of Hacktivism

By Rik Ferguson on web

Independent websites dedicated to high profile Indian political figures have been compromised in a targeted attack. The websites manmohansingh.org and soniagandhi.org have both been compromised by the same group who have injected defamatory and inflammatory content into many of the pages. Although these sites are not official, they are returned int he first page of a [...]

Touting Possible Benefits of Windows 7 Security

In Vulnerability Research

At least one respected security researcher believes that Windows 7 should prove effective at stemming some forms of electronic attack.

Panel OKs bill that would increase cybersecurity oversight

A Senate committee has approved a bill that would require the president to notify Congress about existing and new cybersecurity programs that involve personally identifiable information.

IG: DHS should get new infrastructure data system

The Homeland Security Department should finish the acquisition process for a new system that will be used to keep track of critical infrastructure, DHS' inspector general said.