Category: Computer/online security

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South America #1, Africa #2, Asia #3 Safest Continents for Web

08 Wild Cards, Computer/online security, Cyberscams, malware, spam, Technologies
Source article (WhiteAfrican.com)

Africa: The 2nd Safest Continent to Surf the Web

by HASH on August 23, 2010

Here’s an interesting study by AVG on internet security, asking “Where in the World are you most likely to be hit by a malicious computer attack or virus?”.

Apparently, and surprisingly to me, the answer is “not Africa” or South America.

“During the last week of July, AVG researchers compiled a list of virus and malware attacks by country picked up by AVG security software. This means we have compiled data from over 127 million computers in 144 countries to determine the incidence rates of virus attacks by country.”

Dirk Singer, of AVG sent over the list of African countries, here they are country-by-country. As you can see, sub-saharan Africa is compatively ‘safe’ compared to other areas of the World. Your chances of being attacked while surfing the web in each country are:

North Africa

  • Egypt 1 in 62.4
  • Algeria 1 in 86.9
  • Libya 1 in 87.7
  • Mauritania 1 in 92.4
  • Tunisia 1 in 110.7
  • Morocco 1 in 112.1

Continue reading “South America #1, Africa #2, Asia #3 Safest Continents for Web”

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The 19 most influential cybersecurity organizations in the world (GAO)

02 China, 06 Russia, Computer/online security, General Accountability Office
see the report

The Government Accountability Office identified 19 global organizations “whose international activities significantly influence the security and governance of cyberspace.”

The organizations range from information-sharing forums that are non-decision-making gatherings of experts to private organizations to treaty-based, decision-making bodies founded by countries. The groups address a variety of topics from incident response,  the development of technical standards, the facilitation of criminal investigations to the creation of international policies related to information technology and critical infrastructure, the GAO stated.

From the GAO report:

  • Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) is a cooperative economic and trade forum designed to promote economic growth and cooperation among 21 countries from the Asia-Pacific region. APEC's Telecommunication and Information Working Group supports security efforts associated with the information infrastructure of member countries through activities designed to strengthen effective incident response capabilities, develop information security guidelines, combat cybercrime, monitor security implications of emerging technologies, and foster international cybersecurity cooperation.
  • Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is an economic and security cooperative comprised of 10 member nations from Southeast Asia. According to the 2009-2015 Roadmap for an ASEAN Community, it looks to combat transnational cybercrime by fostering cooperation among member-nations' law enforcement agencies and promoting the adoption of cybercrime legislation. In addition, the road map calls for activities to develop information infrastructure and expand computer emergency response teams (CERT) and associated drills to all ASEAN partners.

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Secrecy News: Afghanistan Deaths, CRS Reports, Weaknesses in Industrial Cyber Sec, Too Many Secrets, Math Discovery

04 Inter-State Conflict, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, Computer/online security

SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2010, Issue No. 62
August 2, 2010

Secrecy News Blog:  http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/

**      AFGHANISTAN CASUALTIES, AND MORE FROM CRS
**      WEAKNESSES IN INDUSTRIAL CYBER SECURITY DESCRIBED
**      TOO MANY SECRETS, THE GREATEST MATH DISCOVERY, AND MORE

AFGHANISTAN CASUALTIES, AND MORE FROM CRS

Sixty-six American troops died in Afghanistan in July, making it the deadliest month for U.S. forces in the Afghanistan War thus far, the Washington Post and others reported.

Casualties of the Afghanistan War have recently been tabulated by the Congressional Research Service, including statistics on American forces, of whom around 1100 have been killed, as well as allied forces, and Afghan civilians.  Although the three week old CRS report does not include the very latest figures, it provides links to official and unofficial sources of casualty information that are regularly updated.  See “Afghanistan Casualties: Military Forces and Civilians,” July 12, 2010.

A number of other noteworthy new CRS reports that have not been made readily available to the public were obtained by Secrecy News, including these (all pdf):

Continue reading “Secrecy News: Afghanistan Deaths, CRS Reports, Weaknesses in Industrial Cyber Sec, Too Many Secrets, Math Discovery”

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Google = King of Malware

Computer/online security, Corporations, Cyberscams, malware, spam, Technologies

See the report

New Report Findings from Barracuda Labs: The ‘King Of Malware’ at Midyear 2010, Google

Matt McGee writes on Search Engine Land:

Google has twice as much malware in its search results as Yahoo, Bing, and Twitter combined. That’s one of the findings in the Barracuda Labs 2010 Midyear Security Report, which will be presented tomorrow at the DEFCON 18 hacking conference tomorrow in Las Vegas.

Barracuda Labs says it studied the four search engines for about two months and reviewed more than 25,000 trending topics and almost 5.5 million search results.

The article also includes a pie chart (on page 60 showing malware percentages from Google 69%, Bing 12%, Yahoo 18%, and Twitter 1%) as well as a table showing the percentage of accounts Twitter suspends each month.

[It] was 1.67% for the first half of 2010, with a high of 2.38% in June.

Access the Complete Article, Charts, and Graphs at Search Engine Land

Also see:
+ Barracuda Labs 2010 Midyear Security Report (Free; 83 pages; PDF)
+ Researcher ‘Fingerprints' The Bad Guys Behind The Malware (June 22, 2010)
+ Vulnerabilities in Adobe Acrobat/Reader & MS Word being used to install malware

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Journal: Who will trust open source security from the government? Any government?

Collaboration Zones, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Computer/online security, InfoOps (IO), Key Players, Methods & Process
Looking for Integrity...

Sometimes the old joke is true. Sometimes the government is just trying to help.

An open source consortium funded by military and civilian security agencies within the U.S. government has released a final version of Suricata, a new security framework.

. . . . . . .

Unfortunately the timing of the release could not have been worse, coming as it did the same week the Washington Post launched its series Top Secret America, detailing just how immense and intrusive the nation’s national security apparatus has become, an economic boom for Washington seen as increasingly dangerous by many on both the left and right.

Jonkman acknowledged the help of “thousands of people” in delivering Version 1.0 of the software, which was immediately fisked by Martin Roesch, creator of Snort, who called it a cheap knock-off funded with taxpayer dollars.

. . . . . . .

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Journal: Consumer Group Calls for Hearings on Google Relations with NSA and CIA, Google’s Global Street-Level Survey of Wi-Fi Packet Interceptability

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Commerce, Computer/online security, Corruption, Cyberscams, malware, spam, Government, InfoOps (IO), Methods & Process, Military, Misinformation & Propaganda, Mobile

Group Calls for Hearings Into Google’s Ties to CIA and NSA

Prisonplanet.com
July 20, 2010

More information has emerged about Google’s relationship with the government and spook agencies (see PR Newswire below). The revelations should come as no surprise.

FULL STORY ONLINE

Consumer Watchdog, formerly the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights is a nonprofit, nonpartisan consumer advocacy organization with offices in Washington, DC and Santa Monica, Ca.  Consumer Watchdog’s website is www.consumerwatchdog.org. Visit our new Google Privacy and Accountability Project website: http://insidegoogle.com.

Phi Beta Iota: Goggle has accomplished a great deal, aided in part by CIA and NSA, but also in part by being able to get away with stealing Yahoo's search engine in the early days and hiring the Alta Vista people when HP foolishly killed off that offering.  They have emulated Microsoft in achieving first-rate marketing with second-rate services, and continue to spend $10 million in fantasy cash for every dollar they actually earn.  They are now the Goldman Sachs of the software industry, and that is not a compliment.  It is not possible to understand Google without reading the three deep analytic books on Google by Stephen E. Arnold:

Book One: The Google Legacy–How Google's Internet Search is Transforming Application Software

Book Two:  Google Version 2.0–The Calculating Predator

Book Three:   Google: The Digital Gutenberg

All three books (all downloadable pdfs) are available in The Google Trilogy at a very special price.