Intel's VPro Technology

On Monday, August 27th, Intel rolled out it’s new Vpro security measures. The new processor and chipset bundle, dubbed the Weybridge package, are set to be released today offering corporate businesses a better solution for information security. They also plan to release the Vpro bundle for notebooks early in the first quarter of ’08.

But what does the Vpro package offer the corporations that decide to pick it up? Intel claims that network managers will be able to send patches and security updates throughout the network automatically with this bundle. They also boast that these machines will be able to be managed remotely and instructed to perform certain tasks without much additional software. The Vpro also uses a form of virtualization to run certain security programs in a more secure area on the hard drive. There are time based filters in place to help detect attacks and patterns of any persons who may be trying to attack the network. What stood out the most to me was that instead of being stored in software, network security is given a space on certain pieces of the hardware to be stored. Since it is being stored on the hardware, it becomes much more difficult for an attacker to compromise this information.

Intel does not intend to phase out other security programs, but has designed these programs to work with some of the fairly common consumer/corporate security tools. HP and Dell have already joined forces with Intel to help bring this technology out to the general public, but a date was not given as to when we should expect it. In the meantime, rest a bit easier knowing that Intel is thinking ahead and attempting to protect your data in a more effective manner.

How to Survive the Worst PC Disasters

In this handy-dandy little article, Christopher Null of PC World goes over some devastating PC situations and gives some technical, and yet common sense, approaches in handling these types of situations. This “How to” style article covers general wide open potential disasters, such as “Your computer won't boot” and “What if it’s the OS”, to more specific disasters like “You deleted a critical file, and you have no backup.” He also gives the reader an idea of how the problem happened in the first place (Likely Cause), how to fix the situation (The Fix), and how to avoid it the next time that it may happen. This extremely useful information can come in handy for just about anyone who owns a computer and it might someday just save you time, money, and your job.

Teen Unlocks iPhone

The Apple iPhone was made out to be the biggest deal since sliced bread. Reasons why it was so popular are because it uses touch screen navigation. It is a phone, video media player, audio media player, it has a camera, and it offers internet service, such as email, web browsing, and even local Wi-Fi connectivity. That’s right, it slices, it dices, and is the biggest breakthrough for humans to have as little one on one confrontation as possible. Though, one of the drawbacks to the phone was that the service provider had to be AT&T. But, because of a 17 year old student from New Jersey, the phone can be used with other wireless providers, if properly hacked. The students name is George Hotz, and he completed his summer project by hacking into the iPhone. One of his reasons is so that he could get on his family's T-Mobile plan with an iPhone. Hotz has posted the hacking information on his website for free so that anyone can use it. One of his two hacked iPhones has gone for $3000 on Ebay. He plans to keep the other one for himself.

New Software censors work communication

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) was created in 1996 in order to protect the use and disclosure of private medical information. Now with a new technological box, HIPPA laws can be further enforced. The box is currently being used in Georgia’s DeKalb Medical Center, and is connected to the hospital's computing system. Personal medical information needs to stay personal. The purpose of the box is to detect anything in a message, whether it’s email or an instant message, that would be considered private information. The box, then encrypts the private information, and sends it to its destination. Sometimes personal information needs to be sent in a digital format. This just makes the transaction safer to do. This is a huge step in terms of technology and privacy rights working together.

Monster Waited 5 Days To Tell of Leaked Information

This article appealed to me and how that the largest job seeking company waited nearly five days before telling its users that they were hacked. August 17, 2007 is when Monster first noticed there was a problem with their internet security. The illegal operation was run from two server computers at a web-hosting company in Ukraine. Monster has nearly 1.3 million job seeker records to this date, and the names and confidential contact information was stolen. The security team got the servers shut down late in the evening on August 20, 2007. Monsters web page was warning people that their information might have been stolen. The effects of this type of an attack are very dangerous, because it now puts people at risk for phone calls trying to get personal information, identity theft of information, or spam email so greatly that it will become hard to detect. If a user was to open this spam email and it was to load malicious content on the machine it could breech system security and open up a backdoor for them to gain more personal information. I am a Monster user and I have not noticed any usual spamming lately. The bad part about this situation though is whoever got the information, has full contact with names, addresses, and phone numbers. I am a little concerned at the present moment but hopefully everything will remain safe.

Newsmaker: Don't be so quick to click that Web page

In this article, Joris Evers, a staff writer for CNET News.com, interviews Trend Micro Chief Technology Officer Raimund Genes about the changing environment of cyber attacks. The interview is done in classic Q&A style. In this interview, Raimund Genes talks about how Web threats are starting to out weigh E-mail threats. “…the number of worms has increased by 22 percent since first-quarter 2005, while Web threats have increased by 540 percent.” “If Trend Micro's predictions hold up, more cyber attacks will originate from the Web than they do from e-mail.” They also talk about exactly what is considered a Web threat and what consumers, and corporations alike, can do to mitigate the risks of Web attacks and protect themselves from experiencing these types of attacks.

Media Players Have Critical Flaws

How many people everyday use some form of media player? There has been extensive research showing that media players are seriously vulnerable to potential threats. Malicious code can spread through the machine and infect computers and files similar to what a virus does. This is relatively bad due to the fact most of the people using this media player are not well educated in what could happen. There are millions of videos and music files downloaded each day, and this could be used to turn the computer into a weapon to attack itself. Many of the vulnerabilities were in commercial players but were not able to be released do to reason that the players are commercial and well known. The companies of these players were trying to fix the exploits as soon as they could. A great example of how bad this could impact your computer is how that YouTube automatically loads a movie when you click on the correct link. This would mean you basically have no defense from stopping it from happening. In the coming weeks there should be a fix to this problem but it is just something that could turn into a giant problem.

Google To Acquire Postini

Google has announced that it will acquire the well known security company, “Postini”. The deal, which is mostly worked out, will have Google acquiring the company for 625 million dollars in cash. Postini is scheduled to become a wholly owned subsidiary of Google in the third quarter of 2007. But what does this mean for security professionals as well as the common user?

It means that the Internet titan, Google, will also have the access to Postini's incredibly effective e-mail security tools. Postini made available to Google it's incredibly effective spam filter to add to the already efficient spam filter of Google's “G-Mail”. Postini also offers a web security, which provides virus and worm and also offers a system to prevent users from clicking on links that will download malicious code.

With this acquisition, look for Google, to make a serious move up in the technology field and perhaps put some real pressure on some of the other companies to keep up with them.

1. The Internet & the WWW

The Internet is a vast collection of thousands of interconnected networks across the world, all of which use the TCP/IP protocol (transmission control protocol/Internet protocol). This common protocol acts as a global electronic language, allowing dissimilar computers to talk with each other easily. The Internet is used for many types of communication--text, graphics, email, audio, video, telephony, and television--by means of thousands of software applications or programs, the most popular and widely used of which is the Web browser. The Internet is the network. The World Wide Web is a network application.

New Beginnings!

Welcome to our new Security Blog. Our intention is to provide real time information related to security for the common user. Check back with us to see what great information will be available!

See ya soon!

Ty

Please submit your posts to my email at smith.tyrone@pti.edu for review.