Due to the lack of any independent certification of Anti-Malware or IT security testing, MRG Effitas has started the process of rationalizing and rigorously defining its testing philosophy, objectives and methodology before having these ISO 9001 certified.

We would welcome constructive input from any interested party.

There has been a huge earthquake in Turkey today which has caused an as yet unknown loss of life and large scale destruction. The earthquake of magnitude 7.2 occurred at 1:41 p.m. local time and there were at least seven large aftershocks.

We have several good friends in the country and are in the process of trying to contact them to ensure they are okay.

We send our best wishes to the people of Turkey and hope there are as few casualties as possible.

Continuing its legal assault on botnet operators and the hosting companies that the criminals use for their activities, Microsoft has announced new actions against a group of people it contends are responsible for the operation of the Kelihos botnet. The company has also helped to take down the botnet itself and says that Kelihos’s operators were using it not only to send out spam and steal personal information but also for some more nefarious purposes.

Kelihos, which is sometimes grouped in with the more well-known Waledac botnet, is a fairly small botnet, at an estimated 41,000 machines, but Microsoft officials said that the network was being used for a large variety of activities, including child pornography. Microsoft on Tuesday notified the defendants in the civil cases it has filed in relation to the Kelihos botnet and last week the company also got a temporary restraining order in federal court in Virginia against a man in the Czech Republic named Dominique Alexander Piatti and 22 unnamed people in connection with the operation of the botnet.
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Microsoft, Google, and Mozilla developers are addressing a flaw in SSL encryption that could allow an attacker to decrypt intercepted traffic.

Microsoft said that it would bring out a patch for the flaw in an advisory on Monday. The patch could be out-of-cycle or in-band, depending on the impact of the flaw on customers, the company said.

“Microsoft is aware of detailed information that has been published describing a new method to exploit a vulnerability in SSL 3.0 and TLS 1.0, affecting the Windows operating system,” the company said. “This vulnerability affects the protocol itself and is not specific to the Windows operating system.”

The flaw, which has been known for a number of years, was successfully exploited by security researchers Juliano Rizzo and Thai Duong. Rizzo and Duong demonstrated a proof-of-concept (PoC) tool called ‘Browser Exploit Against SSL/TLS’ (Beast) at the Ekoparty security conference on 23 September. The Beast PoC allows a man-in-the-middle attack on a browser session. SSL is used by many websites to encrypt financial transactions. Continue reading →

Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the possibility of a second devastating attack by al-Qaida or a similar group has been on the minds of many Americans. There has been much discussion as to whether terrorist groups could get access to nuclear, biological or chemical weapons — weapons of mass destruction.

Should we be concerned about another potential threat — a cyber weapon of mass destruction?

Yes, say security experts. The cyber terrorist threat is real, and plots involving such attacks may already be in the works.

According to Damon Petraglia, a director with Chartstone, a computer, network and digital forensic resource company based in Connecticut, and a member of the electronic crimes task force for the U.S. Secret Service, cyber terrorist attacks have been taking place for more than a decade Continue reading →