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15 February 2010, 16:06

Lost+Found: Praise, Retreat, Mudge, Counter-terrorism and Wills

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Too short for news, too good to lose; Lost+Found is a round up of useful security information. Today, Praise, Retreat, Mudge, Counter-terrorism and Wills.

  • Praise and scolding from a virus author: Trend Micro discovered that the latest version of the Zeus bot (ZBot) contained a message to several anti-virus vendors. It thanked Kasperskey and Avira for "new quests" and called NOD32 and Symantec AV "Stupid!".

  • Security expert Bruce Schneier is now distancing himself from the claim that Chinese hackers used a back door in Google's online services, including its Gmail email service, to spy on political opponents. In late January, Schneier had said that back doors into online services were being used as a counter-terrorism device by US government agencies and that it also opened doors for criminals, cyber espionage and spamming attacks. He now says that, "At this point, I doubt that it's true".

  • Peiter Zatko, a well-known hacker that goes by the alias "Mudge", has received a job as a project manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the official research and development branch of the United States Department of Defense (DOD).

  • Apparently, Apple is doing its part to fight terrorism: The company prohibits iTunes users from using downloaded applications and content to "design, manufacture or production of nuclear, missiles, or chemical or biological weapons".

  • It seems that a large number of peer-to-peer (P2P) networking users still don't know what information on their hard drive is actually being shared over the internet. In one test, two security researchers were able to easily download sensitive information including driver's license and passport details, tax returns and even an individual's last will and testament.

(crve)

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