1. Direct costs
-> Software, equipments, procedures.
2. Indirect costs
->Reduced efficiency due to additional procedures
3. Savings
-> Avoiding possible, expensive damage.
-> Potentially: optimisation of procedures.
Types of security mechanism
1. Pervasive mechanisms:
2. Specific mechanisms
Common malwares and its definition:
Trojan Horse: Code doing what it is supposed to do, plus something else
Trapdoor: Access to services by non-standard methods
Logic Bomb: Dormant malicious code, waiting for triggering event
Easter egg: “Cute” but harmless behaviour triggered by special input
WASHINGTON: US officials said Wednesday they shut down a series of so-called tech support scams, mostly operating from India, which duped consumers into paying to clean their computers of bogus virus infections.
The Federal Trade Commission said a US judge has ordered a halt to six “scareware” operations and has frozen their assets following an investigation in cooperation with Canada, Britain, Australia and New Zealand.
FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said the schemes involved calls to consumers in English-speaking countries from call centers in India, informing consumers of bogus infections. Continue reading
Think that turning off cookies and turning on private browsing makes you invisible on the web? Think again.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has launched a new web app dubbed Panopticlick that reveals just how scarily easy it is to identify you out of millions of web users.
The problem is your digital fingerprint. Whenever you visit a site, your browser and any plug-ins you have installed can leak data. Some of it isn’t very personal, like your user agent string. Some of it is more personally revealing, like which fonts you have installed. But the what if you put it all together? Would the results make you identifiable?
As the EFF says, “this information can create a kind of fingerprint — a signature that could be used to identify you and your computer.”
The EFF’s test suite highlights what most of us probably already suspect — we’re readily identifiable on the web. We ran the test on a Mac using Firefox, Safari and Google Chrome, all of which leaked enough data to make us identifiable according the EFF’s privacy explanations.
The purpose of Panopticlick is to show you how much you have in common with other browsers. The more your configuration mirrors everyone else’s, the harder it would be to identify you. The irony is, the nerdier you are — using a unique OS, a less common browser, customizing your browser with plug-ins and other power-user habits — the more identifiable you are.
Digital game distribution leader Valve just announced there has been a security breach within its Steam database. In a message sent to Steam users, Valve co-founder and managing director Gabe Newell said someone managed to gain access to not only the Steam forums, but to the database containing user information. Continue reading
Anonymous claims to have struck again as far as the Sony PlayStation Network is concerned, but the whole matter appears to be a hoax.
A tweet posted on Wednesday to the Twitter account of the infamous international hacker group asserted that the PlayStation Network had been hacked again. The tweet has been taken down, but here is a screenshot before it was removed just minutes ago:
