Study Finds Security Flaws on Web Sites of Major Banks
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A new study suggests that image identification security systems provides little additional protection.
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Popular Web sites like MySpace and Photobucket has banner ads containing malicious code that could lead to the compromise of a computer.
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A bank that guarantees its online users safety and security has direct evidence that its Web-based banking system is not bullet-proof. Should that bank tells its users?
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A researcher says the techniques to stay anonymous online can be thwarted through flaws in the systems.
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The Web is scarier than most people realize, according to research published recently by Google.
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Security researchers warned today of a vulnerability in most Web browsers that could allow scammers to launch phishing attacks from pop-up windows on trusted Web sites.
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Microsoft Corp. is investigating a reported security flaw in its ASP.NET technology that could allow intruders to access password-protected sections of a Web site simply by altering a URL.
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Feeding on fat cats A researcher has uncovered malware that targets commercial bank customers by logging into their online accounts and wiring large sums to accounts under the control of criminals.â¦
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The banking industry warns online customers to guard against a new wave of sophisticated cyber-fraud.
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Security researchers have found flaws in older versions of the Mozilla and Firefox browsers, and the Thunderbird e-mail client, that could allow an attacker to spy on or take over a user's system.
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The huge losses reported by French bank Soci?t? G?n?rale, apparently caused by a rogue trader with inside knowledge of the bank's procedures, don't necessarily point to an IT systems failure but rather to poor management of those systems, analysts say.The bank has accused 31-year-old employee Jerome Kerviel of creating a fraudulent trading position in the bank's computers that ultimately caused it to lose around ?4.9 billion ($7.3 billion).Kerviel achieved this by, among other things, misappropriating computer passwords, the bank said. It has revealed few other technical details of what caused the losses.Management of passwords, including rescinding the old passwords of employees who move to different positions within the bank, or modifying the level of access those passwords allow, is often a task given to the lowest-level IT worker."It's dull and routine 99 percent of the time, but a vital backstop," said Bob McDowall, senior analyst at the TowerGroup. Senior IT managers should conduct more frequent reviews of password policies, he said.In some cases, it may not have been the security of the passwords themselves that posed a problem, but rather the access those passwords allowed, said Ian Walden, professor of information and communications law at Queen Mary, University of London.Organizations tend to think of access as being binary in nature: you get access to it all, or you don't, Walden said. In reality, there are many more levels of access. "In modern, complicated systems, the granularity has to be much more sophisticated."To make the best use of systems with advanced access controls, the IT department must have a thorough understanding of how the business works and where there is risk.IT departments and business managers have yet to find a way to wrap security into business processes so it is not an impediment, Walden said."IT in a company is not given a sufficient status," Walden said. "What's shocking is you would have thought that the financial sector was more sophisticated than this, but it still tends to be the case that security is an add-on and a block, something you've got to live with but you don't have to like, rather than being viewed as an integral part of the business structure."Workers should be able to do their job without having to share passwords when someone goes on holiday, and the IT department should not make it harder for people to perform their duties, Walden said.In one extreme example at telecommunications company BT, one employee didn't have the right to use a computer at all, but he found it helped him do his job, Walden said."By the time he was found, he had 90 passwords of different employees," Walden said.It's possible that financial institutions could use biometric systems, such as fingerprint scanners, to provider an added layer of security, McDowall said. Those systems, however, are expensive. Also, the sometimes-finicky fingerprint scanners may not be appropriate in a frantic trading environment, McDowall said.Questions remain about how Kerviel's losses could be so high given his job as relatively low-level trader. But Kerviel's career progression in 2005 from the bank's back office to the front office -- where he would have had access to client accounts -- is also troubling since he would have gained greater knowledge on the bank's inner controls, McDowall said.As an arbitrage trader, Kerviel made money off price differences between different financial products. Soci?t? G?n?rale said Kerviel balanced real and fake trades in order to avoid setting off internal alarms.Kerviel has been described in some press reports as a computer genius. However, most attackers used unsophisticated methods for exploiting systemic vulnerabilities in applications, processes and procedures, according to the 2005 "Insider Threat Study" by Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute.That report notes that sophisticated tools are also used in some attacks, which would demand that internal financial systems need to be designed on a more defensive footing.Programmers should code under the assumption that a hacker or employee will use every means in order to break in, said Ben Rothke, senior security consultant at BT's International Network Services."The underlying issue is that many systems are designed to stop honest people from making mistakes, but do not take into account those with malicious intent," Rothke said.It makes insider jobs one of the toughest to defend against. The psychological profile of an insider tends to be a disgruntled employee who feels wronged by the company, according to the Insider Threat Report.That in turn can lead to a suspicious behavior such as staying late at work, which paradoxically might only signal a committed employee."It's always the insider," Rothke said. "It's often harder to steal $10,000 from a bank than $10 million."
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A new Internet security analysis finds that computer vulnerabilities decreased last year for perhaps the first time, though the researchers behind the report caution that there has been no improvement in Web safety.
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&quot;The State of Search Engine Safety,&quot; a recent study by McAfee&#39;s SiteAdvisor group, has some classic good news and bad news for Internet surfers. Using several automated techniques, the SiteAdvisor study determined that 4 percent of the query results offered by the major search engines lead to potentially dangerous Web sites, and the total for sponsored links is nearly twice as high at 7 percent.
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Sunbelt Software reports that the Bank of India's Web site has been hacked and is dispensing an enormous amount of malware, including rootkits and trojans, to visitors.
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More than three million customers of global banking giant HSBC have been left vulnerable while banking over the internet for more than two years because of a security flaw, a newspaper reported.
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User-generated Web content is becoming a target for hackers and cross-site scripting attacks on Web sites can lead to malware taking over the browsers of machines that use the sites.
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Security researchers have warned of a vulnerability in most web browsers that could let scammers launch phishing attacks from pop-up windows on trusted websites.