Half of pirated Vista is malware

About half of the downloads claiming to be free versions of?Microsoft’s Vista operating system are actually malicious Trojan horse software, security vendor DriveSentry warned Thursday.

With Vista’s consumer launch just days away, hackers have been bombarding discussion boards with offers of “cracked” versions of Windows Vista, which are typically being distributed on peer-to-peer networks, said John Lynch, vice president of sales and marketing for DriveSentry.

These posts offer downloads of the operating system that skip Vista’s activation process, created by Microsoft to prevent users from running illegal copies.

Users who fall for the scam can end up with some pretty nasty problems, according to Lynch. DriveSentry researchers have found malicious key-logging software and spyware on about half of the downloads it has examined recently, he said.

Pirated versions of Vista have been in circulation for several months now, and one Vista “crack,” called “Windows Vista All Versions Activation 21.11.06,” has already been identified as a Trojan. Trojan horses are malicious programs that present themselves as harmless or useful software.

DriveSentry has also seen criminals disguise Trojans as free versions of Windows XP in the past, Lynch said.

It’s an effective technique, he added. “Someone that’s stealing the software to begin with is not going to raise a fuss if the software turns out to be malicious.”

http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/01/25/HNpiratedvista_1.html

Posted in Internet, Security, Windows | No Comments

Microsoft develops new tunneling protocol

Microsoft is working on a new tunneling protocol for Vista and Longhorn that will provide secure network access from anywhere on the Net.

The Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol (SSTP) creates a VPN tunnel that travels over Secure-HTTP, eliminating issues associated VPN connections based on the Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) or Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol (L2TP) that can be blocked by some Web proxies, firewalls and Network Address Translation (NAT) routers that sit between clients and servers.

The protocol, however, is only for remote access and will not support site-to-site VPN tunnels.

Microsoft hopes SSTP will help reduced help desk support calls associated with IPSec VPNs when those connections get blocked by firewalls or routers. The protocol will also use the same controls as previously so retraining shouldn’t be needed. The SSTP-based VPN tunnel plugs directly into current interfaces for Microsoft VPN client and server software.

Microsoft plans to ship SSTP support in Vista Service Pack 1 and in Longhorn Server. The ship date for Vista SP1 has not been set, but Longhorn is expected to ship in the second half of this year. SSTP will be included in Longhorn Server Beta 3, which will available in the first half of this year.

Despite incorporating the SSL 3.0 and HTTP 1.1 with 64 -it content length encoding standards, Microsoft does not plan to seek standardisation of SSTP, according to officials. Because SSTP is only a tunneling protocol it cannot be directly compared to SSL VPNs, the company said.

“However, since SSTP provides full-network VPN access over SSL, RRAS can provide customers with a baseline SSL VPN solution or be a building block in a more comprehensive SSL VPN solution by providing a generic SSL tunnel,” said Samir Jain, lead program manager for RRAS at Microsoft. “SSTP also provides support in the server to block specific IPs and subnets.”

On his blog , Jain has provided a step-by-step description of how SSTP works , and how to configure it on the client side. In general, he says SSTP creates a thin layer to “allow Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) traffic, which is datagram oriented to be encapsulated over an SSL session, which is stream oriented — hence giving firewall traversal. The encryption is done over SSL and user authentication is done using PPP.”

http://www.techworld.com/security/news/index.cfm?RSS&NewsID=7814

Posted in Internet, Networking | No Comments

New PayPal key to help thwart phishers

The https://www.paypal.com/eBay/securitykey is actually a small electronic device, designed to clip on to a keychain, that calculates a new numeric password every 30 seconds. PayPal users who sign up to use the device will need to enter their regular passwords as well as the number displayed on the key whenever they log in to the online payment service.

“The key is really going to give users one more layer of security for their accounts,” said Sara Bettencourt, a PayPal spokeswoman.

Because the numeric password changes so frequently, even successful phishers will end up with obsolete numeric passwords and will be unable to empty PayPal accounts.

“If you fall for a phishing scam and give away your user name and password … if you used the PayPal Security Key, a third party couldn’t get to your account because they wouldn’t have this dynamic digit,” Bettencourt said.

The Security Key could be an important tool for PayPal, whose Web site is frequently spoofed by phishers looking to steal user account information.

The PayPal Security Key is being tested by PayPal employees right now, and the test will be opened up to beta users in the U.S., Germany, and Australia “in the next month or so,” Bettencourt said. Later this year, the company plans to begin promoting the devices to all PayPal users. News of the new PayPal system was first reported on AuctionBytes.com

PayPal users who want this extra level of security will be able to buy the devices for $5, but this fee will be waived for PayPal business accounts.

PayPal’s device is based on VeriSign Inc.’s One-Time Password Token product, which is also being tested by Charles Schwab & Co. Inc. and U.S. Bancorp.

ETrade Financial Corp. also uses a similar system, based on RSA Security’s SecurID tokens.

Over the past year, online financial companies have paid more attention to authentication technologies such as the VeriSign tokens, which add a second layer of authentication to online transactions. Adoption of these “two-factor” authentication techniques has been further boosted by new federal guidelines, which require stronger authentication for online transactions.

Still, phishing attacks are becoming increasingly lucrative for criminals.

Research company Gartner Inc. estimates that phishers cost U.S. financial institutions about $2.8 billion last year. The average loss per phishing attack was $1,244, up from $256 in 2005.

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/011107-new-paypal-key-to-help.html?fsrc=rss-security

Posted in Hardware, Internet, Privacy, Security | No Comments

Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor

Want to see if your Windows XP-based PC can run Windows Vista? Just download, install, and run the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor.

This small software tool will scan your computer and create an easy-to-understand report of all known system, device, and program compatibility issues, and recommend ways to resolve them. Upgrade Advisor can also help you choose the edition of Windows Vista that best fits the way you want to use your computer.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/upgradeadvisor/

Posted in Hardware, Windows | No Comments

Firefox vulnerable to password-stealing

Internet Explorer is also susceptible to the attack but is less likely to be tricked because it does a more thorough job in checking to see where a log-in form is coming from before it automatically submits password and user information.A flaw in Firefox allows you to steal user information on websites where users create their own pages, such as MySpace.

The flaw in the browser’s Password Manager software can be tricked into sending password information to a different website, said Robert Chapin, president of Chapin Information Services. But for it to work, attackers need to be able to create HTML forms on the site – something not allowed on blogging and social networking sites.

The attack was used in a MySpace phishing attack last month where a fake log-in page was use to exploit the flaw. The page then sent MySpace username and password information to another site, and MySpace users who visited the page using Firefox could have easily had their information compromised, said Chapin. Firefox developers rate the bug critical.

Password Manager currently does not check if password information is being sent to the server that requested it, Chapin said. “From a programming point of view, this is almost like a typo,” he said. “Ironically I think that’s why it hasn’t been discovered until now. It was just way too obvious.”

http://www.techworld.com/security/news/index.cfm?RSS&NewsID=7417

Posted in Internet, Privacy, Security | No Comments