ESET Threat Blog

You just got a new wireless router for Christmas, but when you set it up it asks about wireless security. Do you want WEP, WPA, WPA2 or any of the other alphabet soup options they give? While it’s easiest to just pick the default setting, are you setting yourself up for trouble from aspiring hackers? … Read More…

Recently we noted that unencrypted credit card storage was on the rise in 2011, and also highlighted the expense involved to the company in the event of a credit card breach. Now we see personal data – including unencrypted credit card information – being paraded out as a part of the recent Stratfor hack.
Also, we … Read More…

One of the blessings of Open Source initiatives is the rapidity with which coders can release quality collaborative code. This is one of the ways the Android managed to claw its way into the smartphone mainstream, after arriving late to the game. But as the app ecosystem matures, vulnerability/patch management becomes more of an issue, … Read More…

With all the recent headlines about data breaches, should your organization hire a “thief to catch a thief?” That’s a question Kevin Mitnick, sitting near the top of the hacker hall-of-fame for famous hack sprees in decades past, has been contemplating. He’s not alone – many companies are wondering the same thing. There is a … Read More…

On the heels of the recent activity with Stuxnet, the industrial process control computer worm that targeted Iranian nuclear centrifuges, a Blackhat talk by Thanassis Giannetsos explains how to hack yet another commonly used family of controllers. We have mused that this trend, targeting critical infrastructure nodes, is but a shade of things yet to … Read More…

I get a lot of press enquiries currently about hacktivism, usually in the context of certain groups who have had more than enough publicity already. While discussing some related issues with my colleagues at ESET UK, it occurred to me that what we're lacking here is a clear differentiation between types of "hacktivist" or, indeed, "activist": much … Read More…

Well, really there are far more, but the latest study from Imperva of 10 million attacks against 30 large organizations from January to May of 2011 cites a cocktail of techniques used by would-be hackers to spot the weaknesses and exploit them. For those of us who’ve tailed a log file spinning out of control … Read More…

Or so the latest report from DEBKAfile states, claiming the Stuxnet worm broke numerous Iranian centrifuges by forcing them to overspeed, causing damage and prompting the replacement of some 5,000-6,000 units. They cite “intelligence sources” as the source of information. Whether or not this will be confirmed, it seems malware authors clearly are targeting political … Read More…

2 days ago, the FBI announced a series of raids resulting in arrests of alleged members of the hacking group ‘Anonymous’. Hoping to deal a critical blow to the organization, they swept up more than a few potential members, and a tidy stash of computers to boot. So we’re done with ‘Anonymous’, right? Today, we … Read More…

On Wednesday we heard additional documents had been leaked from the Arizona Department of Public Safety (DPS). “Will this ever end?” has to be the most commonly-asked question in Arizona nowadays at the DPS. The original attacks last week were claimed by the group LulzSec, which was making the rounds exposing private information through hacking … Read More…