News (34)

Storm worm botnet upgraded, prepared for attack

The owners of the Storm botnet, whose identities are as yet unknown, could be preparing to sell off the "services" of segments of the network, according to Joe Stewart, a researcher from managed security services company SecureWorks. Read more »

Botnets threaten the Internet as we know it

Botnets are the biggest threat facing the Internet today and neither education, technology or the police can help, according to experts at the RSA security conference in San Francisco last week. Read more »

Sun Grid hit by network attack

Sun Microsystems' Grid, a publicly available computing service, was hit by a denial-of-service network attack on its inaugural day, the company said on Wednesday. Read more »

Escalating DoS attacks may 'shut down the Internet'

Denial-of-service attacks are growing faster than bandwidth is being added to the Internet, according to VeriSign, the company that administers the .com domain. Read more »

Criminals' botnet more powerful than BlueGene?

Criminals behind the Storm worm have created a botnet containing millions of PCs, which have a combined computing power greater than the most powerful supercomputer in existence. Read more »

Web attackers get better at hiding

Cybercrooks who rig Web sites to break into PCs are getting better at hiding their malicious code, a security expert said this week. Read more »

Five percent of Web traffic caused by DDoS attacks

After analysing traffic from 68 ISPs around the globe, a security researcher claims that as much as five percent of all Internet traffic is from DDoS-attacks. Read more »

Botnets on mobile phones in 2009?

About 15 per cent of all online computers are infected with bots, says a new report on emerging threats for 2009 from Georgia Tech Information Security Center. Read more »

US wants its own botnet for preemptive strikes

The US Air Force is talking openly about forming botnets to launch preemptive attacks in cyberspace. Read more »

A million zombies threaten US national security

More than a million PCs under the control of spammers are threatening the US national security, its economy and its information infrastructure, according to the FBI. Read more »

Features (2)

10+ things you should know about rootkits

Malware-based rootkits fuel a multibillion dollar spyware industry by stealing individual or corporate financial information. If that weren't bad enough, rootkit-based botnets generate untold amounts of spam. Here's a look at what rootkits are and what to do about them. Read more »

Passwords: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Even with the best security technology in place, people are still putting enormous faith in the strength of their password, many without realising what having a "strong" password entails. Builder AU's Nick Gibson runs you through the basics. Read more »

Blog (1)

5 reasons restricting hacking is not like gun control

Nick Gibson [blogs:byteclub] -- Let's get it out of the way: Guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people. People with hacking tools can steal your personal data, shut down your system and deface your web site -- but is that any reason to ban them? Read more »

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  • Staff Crying, mooning and leaving

    In this week's roundup we see that continuous whining can get results, Linux users get 64-bit Flash and Moonlight previews, the latest in the Yahoo/Microsoft relationship and Senator Conroy ducks and weave in Senate Question Time. Read more »

    -- posted by Staff

  • Brendon Chase Sun eye Web developers with Netbeans 6.5

    Despite the recent employment axe hitting Sun the company has pushed out a new release of its Netbeans open source IDE with an eye to appeal more to Web developers. Read more »

    -- posted by Brendon Chase

  • Renai LeMay BarCamp buzz: Let the hacking continue

    Attending last weekend's BarCamp in Sydney, it was hard to escape the conclusion that a certain "dot-com bust" flavour had seeped into the kool aid previously being drunk by Australia's web 2.0 and early stage start-up sector. Read more »

    -- posted by Renai LeMay

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