14 DAY TRIAL // This was the week of the stats - a lot of studies giving us a lot of numbers. Researchers making predictions for the next year, analyzing this year's third quarter or just the month of September in cyber-security. That's what made the news this week, but don't worry, this is not about boring numbers and statistics only - we also had our share of news that were more fun, so to say.
Also, if you've read my news, then you know that October is cyber-security awareness month in the US? I wish it was something global. And now that I've mentioned the United States - there have been quite a few news regarding cyber-security in that part of the world and I can't say that they were too good. What I've learned after reading a McAffee study is that even though Americans are quite aware of the threats that are on the web, they still don't use too much protection against them. They rarely have up-to-date anti-viruses and many among the ones who answered the survey don't have an active firewall.
Furthermore, Americans have serious spamming issues and by that I don't mean that they get more spam than the rest of us, but that they send out more. From a Symantec research, I found out that 45% of all the spam in the world is sent from North America. The same study showed that 26% of all the spam out there is related to knockoff products. Employing simple math, you can figure out that about 11% of all the spam in the world is sent by Americans trying to scam people with fake products!
And if that weren't enough of bad news for you, then let me tell you that their leading organizations in security are cyberspace-challenged. Recently the DHS has spammed out the people that had subscribed to one of their services, all because their e-mailing program was poorly configured. That was this week, but as for the NSA - the fact that they hack and can't keep quiet about it is older news. Neither the DHS nor the NSA are setting a good example, in my opinion!
But there were some more interesting things too this week and I don't know how this could be, but they were both good news. For one thing, the brainy people at Carnegie Mellon University launched a new game to teach people about cyber-security - it's a pretty cool security tool. Pretty nice game, in my opinion. Then, the same guys came up with another great idea - they're using CAPTCHA for far more than authentication. They're actually making use of it to digitize books. It's a lot to rant about, so just read my material.
As for hackers, well, they didn't do anything too interesting this week, that's for sure. Not unless you count that YouTube spam affair. They've somehow tapped into YouTube servers and used the address service [at] youtube [dot] com to send out unwanted messages. This has made spam more efficient, true, but it's no great hack. What seemed to be a huge hacking operation was what happened to Syria, but there are just speculations about it, no actual facts or statements. It is a known fact that a Syrian objective has been bombarded by Israeli planes, that bypassed the state of the art radar system, without employing stealth technology whatsoever. It has been suspected that the Syrian defense system has been hacked, but as I've said, there are no clear reports about this - read my article on it, if you wish to find out more.
My favorite piece of news was this Friday's hottest and it was called "Why Loving Sexy Blondes Is Bad". It was spam related and don't get me wrong, this doesn't mean that I like spam or anything like it, it's just that a week ago I predicted the fact that spammers will be using photos in e-mails or other types of messages to exploit sex appeal and make users click on links. And now what do you know? This Friday, Sophos experts backed up my theory, revealing that a lot of unwanted messages using the same tactic are hitting inboxes.
And I left out probably the most important thing for the end. Sun Java has been disclosed with several vulnerabilities that if exploited by a malicious user could seriously mess up your computer. This affects Windows, Solaris and Linux, so you are advised to patch up the flaws in order to stay safe. You'll find the necessary link in my article.
And here's this week's piece of advice:
Since this was stats week, I advise you to be careful around the web and what you read. Some people may misinform you, so when you learn something that seems to be outrageous, first ask what the source of the facts is and where those stats come from. Do not let yourself be fooled by false statements on the web, as it might get you scammed!
