Personal Computers Of Iranian Nuclear Plant Employees Infected By Stuxnet Worm

"An electronic war has been launched against Iran", Mahmoud Liayi, head of the information technology council at the ministry of industries, told the state-run Iran Daily newspaper. This, in response to reports that a sophisticated computer worm had infected the personal computers of staff at the country's first nuclear power station, the Bushehr plant, due to come on line in the coming weeks. Officials claim that the operating system at the plant has been unaffected by the Stuxnet worm, so sophisticated that it is believed to be the work of "a nation state".

Stuxnet targets systems made by the German company Siemens, these systems are typically used to manage water supplies, oil rigs, power plants and other utilities. The Iranians claim that computers operating on some 30,000 IP addresses within the country have been infected.

Western nations fears Iran's goal is to build nuclear weapons while Iranian officials says its programme is aimed solely at peaceful energy use.

Source: BBC

New iPhone Worm Targets Netherlands Users

A new worm detected that targets the iPhone is specifically directed at users in the Netherlands who use their device to do online banking with Dutch online bank ING Direct according to security company F-Secure.

"It's the second iPhone worm ever and the first that's clearly malicious - there's a clear financial motive behind it," F-Secure research director Mikko Hypponen told the BBC.

"It's fairly isolated and specific to Netherlands but it is capable of spreading."

The worm again attacks iPhones which have been "jail-broken" and have SSH (secure shell), a file-transfer program that enables users to remotely connect to their phones, installed.

I wonder how long it will be before we see Microsoft adds poking fun at iPhone's security? "I'm a Windows Mobile, and I'm a iPhone OS"

Gizmodo Serves Up Scareware

Hackers posing as advertisers for large corporations have been targeting high volume sites buying ad space and infecting their links with scareware. The latest to be fooled into taking the ads is the popular tech blog gizmodo. In a statement on the site, gizmodo says:

"I'm really sorry but we had some malware running on our site in ad boxes for a little while last week on Suzuki ads. They somehow fooled our ad sales team through an elaborate scam.

"It's taken care of now, and only a few people should have been affected, but this isn't something we take lightly as writers, editors and tech geeks,"

The malicious sites associated with the ads try to convince users that their computer is infected with viruses and trojans, and offer them a download remedy which is actually harmful code that can be used by perpetrators to acquire information on the infected PC such as credit card details.

A similar scam got past the folks at the New York Times last month.

Source: BBC News

Black Hatters Reveil SMS Security Concern

Speaking to the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas, Charlie Miller and Collin Mulliner told the audience that smartphones operating Apple's, Microsoft's, or Google's operating systems were vulnerable to an SMS based attack that would be executed by code arriving in a text message. The malicious code could knock a phone off of a network, access data on the phone, or access the programs installed on the phone. The pair have published their findings to encourage the OS makers to fix the holes and have said the they contacted Apple, Microsoft, and Google directly but Google is the only one who has addressed the issue todate.

BBC story.

Malware Authors Set Traps Via Twitter

According to CNN, "Cyber criminals have been targeting Twitter users by creating thousands of messages (tweets) embedded with words involving trending topics and malicious URLs," Sean-Paul Correll, a threat researcher for Panda Labs. These are not new attacks but a new way of luring the unsuspecting in.

"The fundamental fact is cyber criminals are highly organized with sophisticated corporate structures and business chains," said Michael Fraser, director of the Communications Law Centre at the University of Technology Sydney in Australia.

"They have R&D departments, strong distribution networks and Web sites for the discerning cyber criminal," Fraser said.

This stuff isn't going away anytime soon folks, so keep your patch levels up and your anti-virus current...

Swine Flu Spam Carries Malicious Payload

Symantec Security Response is reporting of a document entitled "Swine influenza frequently asked questions.pdf" which is showing up in e-mail in-boxes and being used to drop malware on computers when opened. The file, known now as Bloodhound.Exploit.6, utilizes an old Adobe vulnerability to drop a malicious "infostealer" file on the user's computer. "We see so many of those and all they're doing is they're trying to steal your personal information, like you're credit card number, your online bank credentials," Marc Fossi, manager of security response at Symantec, said Wednesday. The best defense of course is to avoid opening e-mail attachments and to keep your software patch levels up.

Source: CBC