23:00 Top ten e-threats for June 2009BitDefender released the top ten e-threats for the month of June. Five of the ten worst e-threats are Trojans, making this the best represented e-threat category.
In tenth position is a generic det... >>>
19:12 New ENISA Quarterly Review available for downloadEuropean Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) Quarterly Review is a publication that is distributed to stakeholders and other interested readers every three months.
Vol. 5 - No. 2 ... >>>
17:22 Manchester City Council pays $2.4m in Conficker clean up costsHow severe can the impact of the Conficker worm be on a single city council that has apparently not implemented basic security solutions in place?
Pretty severe according to a recently released a report entitled “Service interruption resulting from ICT disruption in February 2009” which details the financial costs of a Conficker incident affecting Manchester City [...]
Spam levels are returning to normal following the recent takedown of crime-friendly ISP 3FN, which temporarily interrupted the operation of a significant spam spewing botnet.
14:59 New cryptanalytic attack on AESAlex Biryukov and Dmitry Khovratovich from University of Luxembourg published a paper titled "Related-key Cryptanalysis of the Full AES-192 and AES-256".In this paper we present two related-key attac... >>>
14:46 Ixquick - the search engine that protects your privacyEvery time you use a regular search engine, your search data is recorded. Your search terms, the time of your visit, the links you choose, your IP address and your User ID cookies all get stored in a ... >>>
14:23 Month of Twitter Bugs: bit.ly multple vulnerabilities First report in the Month of Twitter Bugs focuses on multiple vulnerabilities in bit.ly URL shortening service. Discovered security issues include:Reflected Cross-Site Scripting in the url query pa... >>>
The leader of a malicious hacker collective who used his job as a security guard to breach sensitive Texas hospital computers has been arrested just days before his group planned a "massive DDoS" attack for the July 4 Independence Day holiday.
Can anyone guess the entry codes for these door locks?
There are 10,000 possible four-digit codes, but you only have to try 24 on these keypads. The first is most likely 1986 or 1968. The second is almost certainly 1234.
The plant caladium steudneriifolium pretends to be ill so mining moths won't eat it.
She believes that the plant essentially fakes being ill, producing variegated leaves that mimic those that have already been damaged by mining moth larvae. That deters the moths from laying any further larvae on the leaves, as the insects assume the previous caterpillars have already eaten most of the leaves' nutrients.
Its body carries two reactive chemicals that only mix when a predator attacks it. The injured aphid dies. But in the process, the chemicals in its body react and trigger an explosion that delivers lethal amounts of poison to the predator, saving the rest of the colony.
The dark-footed ant spider mimics an ant so that it's not eaten by other spiders, and so it can eat spiders itself:
M.melanotarsa is a jumping spider that protects itself from predators (like other jumping spiders) by resembling an ant. Earlier this month, Ximena Nelson and Robert Jackson showed that they bolster this illusion by living in silken apartment complexes and travelling in groups, mimicking not just the bodies of ants but their social lives too.
Now Nelson and Robert are back with another side to the ant-spider's tale - it also uses its impersonation for attack as well as defence. It also feasts on the eggs and youngsters of the very same spiders that its ant-like form protects it from. It is, essentially, a spider that looks like an ant to avoid being eaten by spiders so that it itself can eat spiders.
My previous post about security stories from the insect world.
