Smartphones to become major hacker target says Google expert

Contrary to the views of many of his colleagues in the IT industry, Rich Cannings, Google's Android security leader, thinks that smartphones are now a primary target for malware and hacker attacks.

Android is the mobile phone operating system developed by Google.

According to Cannings, speaking at the Usenix Security Symposium in Montreal this week, hackers can already hit millions of victims with a smartphone attack.

And, predicted the Android security specialist, soon that number will be even larger.

The Android mobile operating system runs under a Linux kernel and, after being initially developed in 2007 by Google, the OS has been adopted by the Open Handset Alliance (OHA), a consortium of 48 hardware, software, and telecoms firms.

Since Google has released most of the Android code under the Apache License, a free-software and open source license, the number of mobile handset vendors releasing devices supporting the OS is expected to rise substantially in the next 12 months.

Canning's comments are in direct contrast to those of Mikko Hypponen, F-Secure's chief research officer, who told the New York Times earlier this week that the likelihood of getting hit by mobile malware is almost non-existent.

According to Hypponen, whose company writes software to detect and remove viruses from desktop and mobile devices, F-Secure's research team has discovered just 490 mobile viruses in the last five years.

In that same period, he told the paper, more than two million viruses were found for Windows computers.

Those few mobile attacks were noteworthy for the fact that they were so, well, 'juvenile', he said.

"They didn't involve hacking for financial or personal data. They were done by hobbyists and were stupid attacks to leave funny displays", he added.

Μπορείτε να βρείτε το άρθρο στη διεύθυνση http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/view/3241/smartphones-to-become-major-hacker-target-says-google-expert

Misdirected spyware infects Ohio hospital

It was a bad idea from the start, but even as bad ideas go, this one went horribly wrong.

A 38-year-old Avon Lake, Ohio, man is set to plead guilty to federal charges after spyware he allegedly meant to install on the computer of a woman he'd had a relationship with ended up infecting computers at Akron Children's Hospital.

In late February 2008, Scott Graham shelled out US$115 for a spyware program called SpyAgent and sent it to the woman, according to a plea agreement filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northeastern District of Ohio.

He allegedly sent the spyware to the woman's Yahoo e-mail address, hoping that it would give him a way to monitor what she was doing on her PC. But instead, she opened the spyware on a computer in the hospital's pediatric cardiac surgery department, creating a regulatory nightmare for the hospital.

The complaint does not explain how Graham managed to convince the woman to install the program, but clever attackers often trick their victims into clicking on files by saying that they are interesting videos or some kind of useful software.

Between March 19 and March 28 the spyware sent more than 1,000 screen captures to Graham via e-mail.

They included details of medical procedures, diagnostic notes and other confidential information relating to 62 hospital patients.

Μπορείτε να βρείτε το άρθρο στη διεύθυνση http://www.cio.com.au/article/319073/misdirected_spyware_infects_ohio_hospital

Νέος διαδικτυακός τόπος του Element45

Καλώς ήλθατε στο νέο διαδικτυακό τόπο του Element45.

Φεύγοντας από το φιλόξενο data center της Γερμανίας που μας κράτησε online από το 2005 έως σήμερα, μεταφερόμαστε πια σε άλλη χώρα και σε νέες τεχνολογίες που θα μας επιτρέψουν σταδιακά να προσφέρουμε εκπληκτικές νέες υπηρεσίες στους φίλους και πελάτες μας.

Εισερχόμενοι πλέον στο cloud computing, θα μπορούμε να εγγυηθούμε πρακτικά απεριόριστο scalability - οι απαιτήσεις σας πλέον δεν αποτελούν κανενός όριο για εμάς.

Από αξιόπιστο business email με εγγύηση uptime για επιχειρήσεις και power users, σχεδιασμό και φιλοξενία διαδικτυακών τόπων, πυλών και εφαρμογών έως λογισμικό υποδομής και προστασίας από ιούς και μη εξουσιοδοτημένους χρήστες, μπορούμε να δημιουργήσουμε το εταιρικό περιβάλλον πάνω στο οποίο μπορείτε να αναπτύξετε αξιόπιστα και με ασφάλεια τις εταιρικές σας εφαρμογές και δραστηριότητες.

Η επταετής πείρα μας στο χώρο του software localization (μέσω του αδελφού διαδικτυακού τόπου http://www.prakteon.com/) μας καθιστά μια από τις παλαιότερες παρουσίες στο χώρο σε πανελλήνιο επίπεδο.