Security Shorts

Theft of Personal Data Reaches New Levels
Reports of sensitive personal data stolen from companies, government agencies, colleges, and hospitals are at a record high. Theft of personal data has more than tripled this year, with over 162 million records having been reported as lost or stolen, according to USA Today. Of the more than 300 data loss cases that were tracked in 2007 by security website Attrition.org, 261 were reported in the U.S., 16 in Great Britain, 15 in Canada, six in Japan, two in Australia, and one per country in Denmark, Ireland, Sweden and Norway.

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Russian “CyberLover” Software Invades Chat Sites
Users of social networks beware: a new malware trend making the rounds in chatrooms and dating sites may be preying on those seeking relationships online to collect personal data. Security experts have issued warnings about the software, developed in Russia and dubbed CyberLover, as it is able to conduct flirtatious, automated conversations that mimic human behavior.

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Top 2008 Threat: International Cyber Spying
Governments around the world are using the Web for cyber spying and cyber attacks at rising rates, according to the annual McAfee Virtual Criminology report that examines emerging global cyber security trends. The report estimates that 120 countries now use the Internet for online espionage. “Cybercrime is now a global issue. It has evolved significantly and is no longer just a threat to industry and individuals but increasingly to national security,” said a McAfee representative.

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DNS Attack Redirects Users from Legitimate Sites
Research teams from Google and the Georgia Institute of Technology have uncovered a network of rogue servers that point users to phony versions of trusted websites. Researchers have estimated that as many as 68,000 open recursive DNS servers are behaving maliciously. Open recursive DNS servers are DNS servers that will answer all DNS lookup requests from any computer, making them prime targets for hackers.

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Google Cleans Up Search Results
The search giant Google has removed thousands of pages from its search results that were found to be guilty of surreptitiously infecting web users with malware. The clean-up followed the discovery by security researchers that users who clicked on returned links from seemingly safe search terms were vulnerable to installing programs capable of stealing bank credentials, sending spam, and engaging in click fraud.

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