Computer repairs, internet and the world

Thenumber of online threats will have grown tenfold by the end of 2007,according to researchers at anti-malware firm Kaspersky..

Kasperskyanalysts said at Infosec Europe 2008 that new malicious programsrecorded on the internet, including viruses, worms and Trojans,amounted to 2.2 million in 2007, representing a fourfold increase onthe 535,131 recorded in 2006.

David Emm, senior technologyconsultant at Kaspersky Labs, predicted that the year-end results for2008 will demonstrate a very different trend.

The overall volumeof detected malware reached 354GB in 2007, and many leading antivirusexperts called for urgent measures this huge increase in malware withthe utmost urgency.

"In addition to the quantity, the quality of malicious programs is alsoimproving," said Emm.

"Newand more complex samples such as the notorious Storm worm are emergingthat demonstrate a wide range of hostile behaviour and distributionmethods."

Kaspersky added around 250,000 new signatures to itsantivirus databases in 2007 but, according to its forecast, one millionnew signatures will be added in 2008.

"With the help of newtechnologies it will be possible for a fourfold increase in the numberof new signatures to combat the tenfold increase in the number of newmalicious programs," explained Emm.

"These technologies allowone signature to successfully neutralise dozens or even hundreds ofdifferent types of malicious programs."

Security firm RSA has warned that thesoftware kit behind half of the world's phishing attacks has beenupgraded..

The RockPhish software has been used in attacks on over 40 European and USfinancial institutions.

Thetool has been very successful, using innovations including unique URLgeneration to defeat blacklists. But Rock Phish has not used malware aspart of its attack until recently.

The fake phishing pages nowinclude a Trojan dubbed Zeus, so that once a victim's financial datahas been harvested the Trojan allows the computer to be controlledremotely.

"The victim is duped into visiting a phishing site," said Uriel Maimonfrom the RSA 24x7 Anti-Fraud Command Center.

"Whetheror not the victim surrenders his/her credentials into the site isirrelevant, as many people click on phishing links but do not fill inmeaningful information.

"However, with this new attack twist the victim will still be infectedwith a Trojan."

Thegroup behind the Rock Phish attacks did not develop the Trojanthemselves, but purchased it for the job in much the same way as alegal software developer.

Zeus is a very flexible and persistentTrojan which can be used to steal data, make the infected machine partof a botnet and even take regular screenshots of a user's activity.

"TheZeus Trojan has many startling capabilities," said Maimon. "As I lookon this blissful union of fraud and crime technologies, I can only envythe criminals who can find such coupling."

The Rock Phish software has become something of a cause célèbre in theIT security industry since it surfaced.

The creators have been described as the Kaiser Söze of the online world,and no-one is sure whether the creator is a single person or a hackinggroup.

RSAis confident that it is a hacking group behind the code, and no-onedisputes that the software has been astonishingly successful.

Hundreds of millions of pounds have been siphoned out of users' bankaccounts over the past four years.

Securityresearchers have discovered a new web-based attack tool which exploitsup to 14 browser vulnerabilities and installs malware on the user'ssystem..

Symantecresearcher Liam O'Murchu said that 'Tornado' is commonly installed on aserver by a single 'administrator', who then offers accounts on theserver to other attackers.

The attackers then inject code intoother web pages to redirect users to the Tornado server, where theexploit and malware installation is conducted.

"Perhaps this is why the code for this pack has stayed private for solong," said O'Murchu.

"Usingthis model, the creators of the pack can sell it to a few trustedcustomers at a higher price, rather than selling it to manyuntrustworthy customers and risking the code being released in theunderground."

Tornado also offers attackers a full set of traffic statistics andoptions for selecting which exploits can be conducted.

The malware features an option to redirect repeat visitors to a phoney'account suspended' page.

Thishelps the tool to evade security researchers who will make repeatedvisits to infected pages in order to study the exploits and malware inuse.

Programs such as Neosploit and MPack offer similarcapabilities to set up servers that can conduct multiple exploitsagainst users.

Having grown tired of chasing the approval of Yahoo directors,Microsoft now has issued the company an ultimatum; agree to its $US44billion buyout offer within three weeks, or Microsoft will take itsoffer directly to shareholders.

On Jan. 31, Microsoft offered to acquire Yahoo for US$44.6 billion, orUS$31 per share, in cash and stock. Yahoo's board rejected the offer,which has since declined in value to US$29.36 per share because of asubstantial drop in Microsoft's share price.

"If we are forced to take an offer directly to your shareholders, thataction will have an undesirable impact on the value of your companyfrom our perspective, which will be reflected in the terms of ourproposal," wrote Microsoft's chief executive, Steve Ballmer in an openletter sent to Yahoo!'s board on Saturday.

Breaking nearly two months of silence since Yahoo's board rejectedMicrosoft's buyout offer, Ballmer reiterated Microsoft's opinion thatits offer was "generous" and said the company had expected that a dealwould be struck swiftly.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has warned

Australian investors about emails that enticed them into scams and

get-rich-quick schemes.

Peter Kell, executive director of consumer protection at ASIC, told a

seminar --Financial Literacy: An Australian Priority -- that in the past

few months unlicensed offshore stockbrokers had re-emerged in the

marketplace. “They are cold calling and emailing Australian investors

offering shares,” Kell said.

He also warned that some of these “offshore cold callers” were targeting

people who had low value shares bought a couple of years ago, offering

to swap them for other shares. “Once the investor becomes interested,

the cold caller asks for extra money, sometimes for fees and sometimes

for options to get extra shares to close the detail,” according to an

ASIC statement.

Kell warned that once this extra money was sent offshore it could be

lost forever.

In addition, ASIC was also warning consumers about overpriced start-up

companies and share trading get rich quick schemes. Among its

suggestions, ASIC urged consumers to not be fooled by business-like

websites, or email offers made by strangers.

Open source software makes economic sense.

Floss for economic health. That's the conclusion of a newly released

European Commission study on the impact of Free, Libre, and Open Source

Software (Floss) on the European IT sector.

The EC study, conducted by UNU-Merit, a research institute of the

University of Maastricht in the Netherlands, finds that the use of open

source software adds 263 billion Euros to the European economy and "the

number of employees among firms contributing code to Floss projects is

at least 570,000."

It also says that open source software programmers, nearly half of which

are based in Europe, volunteer least 800 million Euros (roughly US$1

billion US) worth of labour.

The report calls for "correcting current policies and practices that

implicitly or explicitly favor proprietary software" by offering fairer

R&D incentives, supporting standardisation, avoiding vendor lock-in in

education settings, equitable tax treatment for open source

contributors, and encouraging partnerships between businesses and the

open source community.

The report estimates that the Floss-related share of the economy could

reach 4% of European GDP by 2010.

"By providing a skills development environment valued by employers and

retaining a greater share of value addition locally, Floss can encourage

the creation of [businesses] and jobs," the report says.

That's a perspective shared by Richard Gorman, a venture partner at

Silicon Valley VC firm Bay Partners, which invests in open source

companies. "Open source is clearly a major trend and is clearly an

economic stimulus for the economy today," he said. "The reason we like

the open source business model is that it's a way of entering markets

and solving customer problems in a very effective way, both from a

control and an economic perspective."

Some of the report's findings and recommendations may rankle leading

proprietary software makers such as Apple and Microsoft.

One policy recommendation seems particularly applicable to Apple and the

ties between the iPod and iTunes Music Store: "Explore how unbundling

between hardware and software can lead to a more competitive market and

ease forms of innovation that are not favored by vertical integration."

And one of the report's findings is that users of Microsoft Office are

no more productive than users of OpenOffice. "We also investigated the

productivity of the employees in using Microsoft Office and

OpenOffice.org," the report says. "Office suites are widely used and are

a good test bed and representative for a comparison on issues like

effort and time spent in the daily routine of work. Delays in the task

deliveries may have a bigger impact than costs on the organisation's

management. Our findings report no particular delays or lost of time in

the daily work due to the use of OpenOffice.org."

The report, however, stops short of recommending businesses switch to

free applications such as OpenOffice because "employees may perceive

that their work is under-valued using 'cheap' OSS products." It says

organisations should consider that migrating away from proprietary

software might have implications beyond cost.

Microsoft maintains that the total cost of ownership for Windows

software is less than Linux and continues to host dozens of case

studies, white papers, and customer testimonials to that effect on its

Get the Facts website.

But Gorman insists the open source software makes economic sense. "It's

a very good business model for entering large, existing markets and

taking significant share, and creating significant customer and investor

value," he said. "If you're an incumbent competing with a new company

that's an open source company, it's very difficult to adjust or change

your business model to be competitive. Usually by the time they end up

adjusting, it's too late."

Senator Kate Lundy hosted a pre-2020 Summit event in Canberra last week

to generate ideas on how open source technology, open standards and open

access to information might transform the way government departments and

the business world operate.

Senator Lundy, a former Shadow Minister for IT, said she'd elected to

focus on open source as the biggest potential game changer across the

portfolios she's involved in.

“I had a look at all the big public policy issues that I think have the

most capability to change the way we do things for the better, and open

source was the standout for me. I’m involved in a lot of different

policy areas ranging from sport and health promotion, right through to

things relating to IT, but this one has the greatest potential because

it’s a different way of solving problems, and it’s a way that I think

can help organisations capitalise on corporate knowledge and share that

knowledge.”

The event brought academics, lawyers and IT industry representatives

together with senior public servants to discuss how open source

technology is being used in government and the private sector, and how

open standards and free access to information can be used to ensure

public access to information.

Several participants at the summit warned that legal reform is needed

around intellectual property law. Senior software developer and open

source community figure Dr Andrew Tridgell warned that innovation in IT

risks being nobbled due to a patent law framework which can't

accommodate similar ideas being developed independently.

"The key issue that needs to be solved is independent invention. IP

doesn't cope with the commonly occurring 'idea whose time has come' -

the patent system considers that a crime," Tridgell said.

The Deputy Vice Chancellor of ANU, Professor Lawrence Cram, warned that

the Australian public is losing access to university research done in

tandem with industry due to a legal framework which is failing to

protect open access to information.

Professor Cram alluded to three separate incidents at ANU which had

raised problems of access to research. He said that in the most recent

case, ANU researchers will lose access to research data they'd developed

with an industry partner which had decided mid-way through the project

to protect it as a trade secret.

"We need to be very careful and very thorough at looking at adverse

consequences of legislation on openness and at the conditions which are

attached to funding regimes," he said.

Cram, the former executive director of the Australian Research Council,

said the disappearance of university research into private hands flies

against the obligation of universities to communicate the findings of

their research to the public, and ensure the public can benefit from

that research.

Cram said that ANU is on track to complete the "very difficult" task of

moving to publish its academic research results in the open commons, to

allow free access to that information.

"This is an excellent outcome for our researchers and the community," he

said.

Senator Lundy said the ideas and proposals raised at the Foundations of

Open Event would be fed into Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's 2020 Summit

later this month and to the relevant portfolio holders in the Rudd

government.

Wireless security vendor AirDefense has released new research which

suggests that even the most cautious organisations are leaving their

networks unprotected.

Tests across 1,000 companies in the San Francisco area – conducted ahead

of this week's RSA Security Conference in the city – exposed widespread

failures in wireless protection, even at financial services firms and

government organisations.

That suggests that many IT leaders are still unaware of the risks posed

by unsecured wireless networks, even after high profile cases of data

theft, such as the theft of credit card details at TJX where 45 million

customers had their details pilfered via the wireless network.

AirDefense found that 22 percent of the wireless access points it tested

were unprotected. A further 30 percent only used Wired Equivalent

Privacy, the weakest form of wireless protection.

In government organisations, an alarming 72 percent of access points

were unencrypted or using WEP; in financial services the figure was 67

percent.

But the lessons from TJX have at least been taken on board by retailers.

"Transportation and retail were head and shoulders above the other

industries with proven methods of intrusion prevention in place," said

Richard Rushing, chief security officer, AirDefense.

Companies want network technology tohelp increase productivity, says Gartner.

Growingnumbers of corporations are planning to install wireless networktechnology, according to a Gartner survey.

Some64 per cent of businesses are planning to increase wireless local-areanetwork (WLAN) deployment during the next 12 months, analysts say.

Formost of those planning to take on wireless, the primary motivation is improving the productivity of workers by allowing them constant accessto business system.

Wireless LANs are becoming a standard part of enterprise networks,covering entire facilities, not just meeting rooms, says Gartneranalyst Rachna Ahlawat.

"However,as wireless LANs expand from conference rooms to the whole enterprise,concerns about security and network management are rising," she said.

"We’vegone from thinking of offices as network nodes to considering eachemployee as a node on a wired network. Now, every major physical itemthe company owns is becoming a node on a wireless network."