Hacktivism survey

Bit9 released the results of a survey of IT Professionals which showed that hacktivism is now seen as the biggest security threat. 61% of those surveyed believe that their organization will be targeted by hacktivist groups like Anonymous.

As a side note, Imperva's analysis of the results notes that while 61% are concerned about hacktivism, only 4% were concerned about SQL injection - which happens to be one of the most prevalent web app vulnerabilities on the internet, one of the main avenues for hackers to extract data and  number 1 in the OWASP Top 10.

Fake Instagram app for Android

To demonstrate the fact that malware authors use whatever is currently popular to trick people into downloading their software, here's a report from Threatpost about a malicious version of the Instagram Android app which also sends premium rate text messages in the background.

Panda Security hacked by Anonymous

Panda Security was hacked by the Anonymous group  in retaliation for allegedly working with law enforcement to investigate Anonymous members, something that Panda staff deny.
Story from ZDNet Australia via the Verizon Business Security blog

Library of Congress website compromised

The Library of Congress website was compromised by a group known as BlitzSec - report from threatpost.com The password tables were taken and some of the passwords were decrypted revealing some particularly weak password policies in place. A user account named "test" had a password of "testing" for example.

Zero-Day Java Flaw for Apple

Last week Apple released two updates to Java for Mac OS X to fix multiple security issues that have been exploited by the Flashback trojan. Good write up on Krebs On Security.

If you think that the reason Apple's OS hasn't been a target for malware writers is because it's "better" and "more secure" , think again.Malware writers target whichever platform is the biggest, witness the rise in mobile-targeted malware that's happened alongside the hiuge rise in smartphones as proof of that.

"Instaspam"

Love the title of Symantec Security Response team's latest blog post - "Instaspam: Instagram Users Receive Gift Card Spam | Symantec Connect Community" about spam targeted at Instagram users

It's also related to an earlier post of theirs which I read about spammers moving to new social media sites like Pinterest

Passwords

Good post from The Economist online about the challenges of creating and using strong passwords.

31% of all web traffic ...

Research from Incapsula says that up to 31% of all web traffic is malicious in some way. Wow!