Home Users Flunk Web Security
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As part of a month long effort to highlight the dangers of online threats, the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) and America Online (AOL) released survey results that paint a bleak picture of the home PC security landscape.
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You may lock your doors and windows - and maybe even activate an alarm system to keep your home protected, but a new study indicates that most of us haven&#39;t taken the equivalent of those basic steps when it comes to protecting ourselves when we go online.
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(InfoWorld) - If you haven't changed the default password on your home router, do so now. That's what researchers at Symantec and Indiana University are saying, after publishing the results of tests that show how attackers could take over your home router using malicious JavaScript code. For the attack to work, the bad guys would need a couple of things to go their way. First, the victim would have to visit a malicious Web site that served up the JavaScript. Second, the victim's router would have to still use the default password that it's pre-configured with it out of the box. In tests, the researchers were able to do things like change firmware and redirect a D-Link Systems DI-524 wireless router to look up Web sites from a DNS (Domain Name System) server of their choosing. They describe these attacks in a paper, authored by Sid Stamm and Markus Jakobsson of Indiana University, and Symantec's Zulfikar Ramzan. "By visiting a malicious Web page, a person can inadvertently open up his router for attack," the researchers write. "A Web site can attack home routers from the inside and mount sophisticated... attacks that may result in denial of service, malware infection, or identity theft." Once the router has been compromised, victims can be redirected to fraudulent Web sites, the researchers say. So instead of downloading legitimate Microsoft software updates, for example, they could be tricked into downloading malware. Instead of online banking, they could be giving up sensitive information to phishers. At the heart of the problem is the fact that consumer routers ship with simple, well-known default passwords, like "admin," which could be exploited by attackers. "Owners of home routers who set a moderately secure password -- one that is non-default and non-trivial to guess -- are immune to router manipulation via JavaScript," the paper states. The researchers blame router makers for shipping products with "poorly secure default settings." Vendors like D-Link and Cisco Systems are aware of the problem. "It's a concern to us," said Karen Sohl, a spokeswoman with Cisco's Linksys group. "We've shipped about 30 million routers and we want those 30 million customers to understand why it's so important to change [the default password]." Both Cisco and D-Link said they've taken steps to avoid this type of security problem. Over the past few years they've introduced step-by-step "wizard" software to configure their routers, and these products always suggest that the user come up with a unique password. The problem is that the routers still work if the password is left as default. And that's not likely to change anytime soon, according to Michael Scott, D-Link's technical media manager. Users wouldn't buy routers that forced them to enter unique passwords, he said. "That would only result in returned products, and then they would buy one of our competitors products," he said.
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A few months ago I wrote about Web browser hijacking. It&#39;s a problem a lot of computer users are facing these days. You open your Internet Explorer, but instead of being directed to your homepage, you&#39;re sent to some search engine you&#39;ve never heard of.
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Internet users at home are not nearly as safe online as they believe, according to a nationwide inspection by researchers. They found most consumers have
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Home computer users who think that they are well protected from malevolent acts should think again. The vast majority of home computers operate at risk of intrusion by invasive code, according to the results of a study conducted by America Online and the National Cyber Security Alliance.
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Barely hours after home users started securing their PCs with a key update for Windows XP, security experts have found ways around it.
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WASHINGTON Oct 25, 2004 - Internet users at home are not nearly as safe online as they believe, according to a nationwide inspection by researchers.
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If you buy things on the Web--or even just browse--you could be at risk from prying eyes and sloppy security. Some people want to change that.
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Windows XP Service Pack 2 promises to raise the security bar for the sometimes beleaguered operating system. Unfortunately, one of the new features could be spoofed so that it reports misleading information
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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 experts warn of banner ads with a bad attitude--and a link to malicious code. Also: Phishers, be gone.
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A nationwide inspection shows Internet users are not as safe online as they believe. The inspections found most consumers have no firewall protection, outdated antivirus software and dozens of spyware programs secretly running on their computers.
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Even site keys aren't good enough if clever hackers take over a transaction via emerging techniques such as 'man-in-the-browser' attacks.
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A massive hack of several hundred legitimate Web sites is spreading malware to visitors' PCs using a new tack that makes detection "extraordinarily difficult,"  security experts said today.
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Browser beware Security experts are crying foul over a new supposedly secure browser application.â¦
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Most users think their computer is safe from adware and spyware--but they're wrong.