Web Threats Weekly

 Week of November 26, 2008

Web Threats Weekly helps alert organizations and individuals to known online vulnerabilities. We've added a new section, News & Ideas, to give our readers more information about online security issues.

If you have questions about how to make your organization secure against web threats, please  contact Boonbox for more information.

News & Ideas

Read articles, commentary and tips about IT security, ID management and more.

Devfense NSA Network Security Mapping (Security Watch)

Tips on how to ease the office pain of password security (Business in Vancouver)

"We're too busy for IT security".  Really? That's the point. Time to outsource (Pacific Coast Informer Blog)

Spammer-squatters using trusted sites like myNBC.com to get your clicks (Techvibes Blog)

In this issue:

* News & Ideas

* Hacker Bait 

* Mythbusters Tip #3

* Spam-Alot

Web Threats Weekly is distributed by:

* Pacific Coast Information Systems Ltd.

* Boonbox

* Boonbox IT security resources page

* Subscribe/Unsubscribe Instructions below

Hacker Bait

The websites listed below have recently been found to have vulnerabilities that hackers and cyber criminals could exploit. Keep in mind that this is not a complete list of all vulnerable sites on the Internet, but only represents websites where vulnerabilities were found within the past 90 days.

These are only the latest additions to an ever-growing club of sites found to be insecure according to various public sources and online tools used in the web security industry.

Industry experts suggest that another site gets hacked every five seconds. Sites that have been hacked can infect computer systems through web browsing.

If you would like more information on our data and why these sites are listed here, please contact Boonbox

Mythbusters Tip #3

“You can see if a website has been hacked just by looking at it -- and I don't see a problem.”

This is a very common misperception. We've all heard of security breaches where hackers plant a dumb message like "This site is pwned by iceman223", or leave offensive images. This kind of breach can be very annoying, but it is also easier to deal with, since the hackers have alerted you to their presence. 

The real danger comes from the hackers you don't see. The smart ones will plant malicious code on websites and cover their tracks. The bad code can go undiscovered for months or even years,  enabling ID theft and industrial espionage.  Qualified experts are needed to find the problem and fix it.

Spam-Alot

Spammers are linking to blogs, profiles and other pages on these trusted sites to give victims a false sense of security that the links can be followed safely. These sites may not have been hacked, but following the spam links to these sites and clicking on links shown there can result in harm to your computer.

If you would like more information on our data and why these sites are listed here, please contact Boonbox

wikipedia.org

flickr.com

digitalmediaminute.com

fuelcellpartnership.org

immigrationreform.org

athealth.com

- (Discovered by Boonbox Nov.20-Nov.26, 2008)

Boonbox is a division of Pacific Coast Information Systems Ltd., specializing in products for web security, network security, password management and data backup.

PCIS is a Vancouver-based company which provides strategic consulting, application development, technology solutions and managed services to companies and government organizations throughout North America.

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