Kasperkspy Labs recently launched a beautifully terrifying interactive map that shows online threats arounds the world in real time. In practice, it’s a global visualization of cyber attacks that, Kaspersky hopes, will motivate you to buy their security software. But it’s still a hell of a spectacle.
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Kaspersky Labs’ namesake Eugene Kaspersky is worried that widely distributed and potentially state-sponsored malware like Flame and Stuxnet pose dire threats to often lightly protected infrastructure like communication and power plants — whatever your nationality, it’s clearly bad for the civilian population of a given country to suffer even collateral damage from cyberattacks. To minimize future chaos and literally keep the trains running, Kaspersky and his company are expanding their ambitions beyond mere antivirus software to build their own, extra-secure operating system just for large-scale industry. The platform depends on a custom, minimalist core that refuses to run any software that isn’t baked in and has no code outside of its main purposes: there’ll be no water supply shutdowns after the night watch plays Solitaire from an infected drive. Any information shared from one of these systems should be completely trustworthy, Kaspersky says. He doesn’t have details as to when the OS will reach behind-the-scenes hardware, but he stresses that this is definitely not an open-source project: some parts of the OS will always remain confidential to keep ne’er-do-well terrorists (and governments) from undermining the technology we often take for granted.
Filed under: Software
Kaspersky Labs preps its own OS to guard vital industry against cyberwarfare originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Oct 2012 13:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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It seems that there’s more than two out-of-control computer viruses roaming around the Middle East. Security researchers think that a further three could be operating “at large,” with one positively identified on machines in Iran and Lebanon. Teams from Symantec and Kaspersky have separately found that the Flame malware had the electronic equivalent of a “handler,” a program called NEWSFORYOU, which is also in charge of three viruses that are code-named SP, SPE and IP. The two teams have been unsuccessful in finding a sample of the trio for analysis and despite finding a cache of data on a command-and-control server, decoding it is “virtually impossible.” While both security companies have declined to point a finger as to their origin, Reuters’ sources suggest the United States, while The Washington Post has been told that the project was a joint-enterprise with Israel — in keeping with the existing narrative that the pair were behind Stuxnet.
Filed under: Networking, Internet, Alt
Security researchers dissect Flame’s handling program, find three new viruses ‘at large’ originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 Sep 2012 13:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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You could call it technological baptism of sorts… just not the kind Apple would want. A Russian scam app known as Find and Call managed to hit the App Store and create havoc for those who dared a download, making it the first non-experimental malware to hit iOS without first needing a jailbreak. As Kaspersky found out, it wasn’t just scamware, but a trojan: the title would swipe the contacts after asking permission, send them to a remote server behind the scenes and text spam the daylights out of any phone number in that list. Thankfully, Apple has already yanked the app quickly and explained to The Loop that the app was pulled for violating App Store policies. We’d still like to know just why the app got there in the first place, but we’d also caution against delighting in any schadenfreude if you’re of the Android persuasion. The app snuck through to Google Play as well, and Kaspersky is keen to remind us that Android trojans are “nothing new;” the real solution to malware is to watch out for fishy-looking apps, no matter what platform you’re using.
[Image credit: C Jones Photography (wallpaper)]
Spam-happy iOS trojan slips into App Store, gets pulled in rapid fashion originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 05 Jul 2012 17:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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