VARINDIA IT MAGAZINE

McAfee Labs, Palo Alto Networks and Symantec, co-founders of the cyber threat alliance, have announced that Barracuda Networks, ReversingLabs, Telefónica and Zscaler have joined the Cyber Threat Alliance in their efforts to make united progress in the fight against sophisticated cyber adversaries. The mission of the Cyber Threat Alliance is to drive a coordinated industry effort against cyber adversaries through deep collaboration on threat intelligence and sharing indicators of compromise. “We appreciate the charter of the Cyber Threat Alliance and believe there should be closer collaboration across security researchers, industry, education, and government. We look forward to sharing critical data across threat vectors that can be leveraged not only for delivering Total Threat Protection for our customers but also toward benefiting the community as a whole,” said Stephen Pao, GM – Security, Barracuda, which provides cloud-connected security and storage solutions that simplify ...

VARINDIA- INDIA'S FRONTLINE IT MAGAZINE   Dell SonicWALL  has surveyed about the anticipated impact to business as a result of Cyber Monday, the largest online shopping day of the year. The survey found that most employees are not able to recognize online threats against the corporate network and companies are most concerned that online shopping could open the network to potential new threat vectors. Dell SonicWALL solutions help companies drive employee productivity and network efficiency by eliminating the non-business-critical use of bandwidth and applications and by protecting the corporate network against threats..... See More

VARINDIA- INDIA'S FRONTLINE IT MAGAZINE   Kaspersky Lab  has released a new research related to the discovery of the nation-state sponsored Flamecyber-espionage campaign.  During the research, conducted by  Kaspersky Lab  in partnership with International Telecommunication Union's cybersecurity executing arm, IMPACT, CERT-Bund/BSI and Symantec.... See More

VARINDIA- INDIA'S FRONTLINE IT MAGAZINE   Honeywell has announced a fully-certified application control and whitelisting solution to help combat viruses and malware from attacking its Experion Process Knowledge System (PKS) control system platform. Moreover, the solution is the result of an agreement between Honeywell Process Solutions and technology partner, Bit9. "Experion PKS users want increased cyber security as well as to spend less time managing the control system. Application control and whitelisting is another tool to help them balance the need for security with available resources," said Mike Baldi, Chief Cyber Security Architect, Honeywell Process Solutions. "Integrated business and production systems require careful design and infrastructure to ensure selective access and security.  Honeywell is committed to helping customers strengthen their cyber security by providing best-in-class technology in a manageable, scalable fashion," Baldi f...

VARINDIA- INDIA'S FRONTLINE IT MAGAZINE As the London 2012 Olympics opening event draws near, Trend Micro Researchers have spotted some spammed messages using the 2012 Olympics as bait, one involved an email that says "winning notification", another message asks for personal details in exchange for a prize, and another that asks users to notify a specific contact person. Users who fall for any of these traps are at risk of having their information stolen or their machines infected with malware. Some spam may even lead to monetary loss. Amit Nath, Country Manager - India and SAARC, Trend Micro, said, "Attackers are still using these because these scams are still giving them successful margins. Social engineering has worked for years and there are little signs of that changing. So long as users are still falling for this trap, scammers will continue to create new spam runs using events like the London Olympics to make a quick buck." Trend Micro Resear...

VARINDIA- INDIA'S FRONTLINE IT MAGAZINE   Kaspersky Lab researchers have recently announced the results of a joint investigation with Seculert, a Threat Detection company, regarding “Madi”, an active cyber-espionage campaign targeting victims in the Middle East.  Kaspersky Lab and Seculert worked together to sinkhole the Madi Command & Control (C&C) servers to monitor the campaign. Kaspersky Lab and Seculert identified more than 800 victims located in Iran, Israel and select countries across the globe connecting to the C&Cs over the past eight months.  In addition, examination of the malware identified an unusual amount of religious and political “distraction” documents and images that were dropped when the initial infection occurred.  “While the malware and infrastructure is very basic compared to other similar projects, the Madi attackers have been able to conduct a sustained surveillance operation against high-profile victims. Perhaps, the...

VARINDIA- INDIA'S FRONTLINE IT MAGAZINE   Kaspersky Lab has announced the discovery of a highly sophisticated malicious program, known as The Flame, which was actively being used as a cyber weapon targeting entities in several countries. The Flame was discovered by Kaspersky Lab’s experts during an investigation prompted by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), and the analysis of the malicious program revealed it was the largest and most complex attack toolkit to date.  Kaspersky Lab’s analysis of the malware revealed that it was currently being used for cyber-espionage and it would infect computers to steal data and sensitive information. The stolen data was then sent to one of The Flame’s command & control (C&C) servers. For More Details See www.varindia. com

VARINDIA- INDIA'S FRONTLINE IT MAGAZINE According to Trend Micro, Websites of Indian Government and Tibetan Activists in the country are under attack in a cyber attack campaign engineered by a Chinese hacker, working with Tencent. Baburaj Varma, Head - Technical Services (India & SAARC) Trend Micro said, "We were able to track elements of this campaign to hackers based in China. The victims include Indian military research organisations and shipping companies, besides aerospace, energy and engineering companies in Japan." For More Details See www.varindia.com

VARINDIA- INDIA'S FRONTLINE IT MAGAZINE The cyber criminals broke into one of the government servers and hacked as many as 27 websites of various departments of Andhra Pradesh exposing the chinks in the state's cyber security. It is believed that the hackers did not deface the pages or steal the information but only added additional pages with their message. The websites which were hacked include those of departments of commercial taxes, general administration department, horticulture, factories, gazette notifications and government orders. Some Bangladeshi hacking groups are suspected to be behind the incident. Ponnala Lakshmaiah, State Information Technology Minister claimed, "There was no loss of data. One of the 50 government servers was hacked and 27 websites supported by the server were affected." The officials shared, "None of the websites had data relating to 2012-13 budget, which is to be presented in the state legislature Friday." Anam Ramnarayan ...

VARINDIA- INDIA'S FRONTLINE IT MAGAZINE Trend Micro researchers have come across a scam in Facebook that leverages the upcoming occasion. The said attack begins with a post on affected user's wall inviting other users to install a Valentine's theme into their Facebook profile. Once users click on this post, they are redirected to another page that urges them to install the said theme. Note that this attack only works on either Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox browsers. Clicking the Install button on the page will prompt the download of the malicious file, FacebookChrome.crx which Trend Micro detects as TROJ_FOOKBACE.A. When executed, TROJ_FOOKBACE.A executes a script that is capable of displaying ads from certain websites. It also installs itself on the users' browsers as an extension names Facebook Improvement Facebook.com. Once this malicious browser extension is installed, it will monitor the users' browsing activities and redirect their page to a survey page as...

VARINDIA- INDIA'S FRONTLINE IT MAGAZINE Cyber Media Research (CMR) in a study titled India 45-City Monthly PC Printer Market Review, 3Q 2011 (December 2011) has revealed that the overall India Computer printer sell-throughs in top 45 cities touched nearly 6 lakh units during the July-September 2011 quarter recording a 4% sequential growth on account of pre-festive buying by consumers and investments in capital goods by corporates and SMBs to avail full fiscal year depreciation benefits. The present coverage of the CyberMedia Research study indicates that southern India contributes the maximum, as much as 30% of all A4 PC printer sales, followed by northern India, western India and eastern India, in that order. "Printer sales in the eastern India region were slow in 3Q 2011 due to heavy monsoon rains during July and August that impacted the movement of goods by road and rail. At the same time, overall printer supplies were impacted due to political agitations over the Telengan...