Malware makers and scammers have quickly latched onto the news that U.S. military forces killed Osama Bin Laden, security researchers said today.

Antivirus vendors have spotted multiple threats based on the news, including links that lead to fake security software -- dubbed "rogueware" -- attack code masquerading as plug-ins that users must supposedly download to view video, and attempts to harvest personal information.

Sunday night, President Obama announced that a special operations team had assaulted the Pakistani compound of Bin Laden, and during a firefight, shot and killed the al-Qaeda leader .

Cyber criminals wasted no time in leveraging the news. "Hackers love a big, breaking story, said Rob Rachwald of Imperva, a Redwood Shores, Calif. security firm, in a post to the company's blog Monday.

Rachwald reported that Imperva had monitored forums where hackers bragged about posting fake videos, then duping users into clicking a Facebook "Like" button that in fact generate "Likes" to a product or service page they're promoting.

"This is one of those rare opportunities that can build you a great list and a couple of zeros in your profit," an anonymous hacker crowed. "Use it while the news of Bin Laden killed by US forces is hot. I just started one and it had 600 likes in 2 minutes."

"Not at all unexpected," said Sam Masiello, chief security officer at Return Path, of the quick appearance of Bin Laden-related threats. "We saw it with the death of Michael Jackson, with the death of Elizabeth Taylor, with [Hurricane] Katrina, with the Japanese earthquake. But Bin Laden will be effective [for scammers] because he's such a polarizing figure."

With the tight window of opportunity, Masiello said that hackers and scammers simply recycle existing campaigns and malicious content whenever a major news story breaks.

Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab said it had seen criminals poisoning Google Images search results with black-ops SEO (search engine optimization) tactics. The sites, which are artificially promoted to high spots in Google's search rankings, redirect victims to malicious URLs that in turn try to convince users to download rogueware.

Rogueware is the term for bogus security software that claims the user's machine is heavily infected and constantly nags the victim with pervasive pop-ups and alerts until they fork over a fee to purchase the worthless program.

"We've been tracking this group for months," said Kurt Baumgartner, a senior malware researcher at Kaspersky. "They're using the same black hat SEO tactics to promote their sites, and using the same fake AV distribution domains."

Other Kaspersky researchers are tracking Facebook scams that rely on the Bin Laden news to extract personal information from consumers, such as their email addresses. The bait: Free tickets on Southwest Airlines or free Subway sandwiches. 

While search- and Facebook-related Bin Laden scams were the first to kick off after Sunday's news, Masiello expects that other tactics, including malware-infected spam, to follow shortly.

Users can protect themselves by "being diligent," said Masiello, and not clicking on links to Bin Laden-related news. Instead, he advised users to type in URLs manually for trusted news sites. Baumgartner recommended that users equip themselves with a comprehensive security package that will block attempted installs of rogueware, or failing that, to disable JavaScript, or rely on the Firefox NoScript add-on.

 Source: Computerworld

The Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) has run out of all but a handful of IPv4 addresses that it is holding in reserve for start-up network operators.APNIC is the first of the Internet's five regional Internet registries to deplete its free pool of IPv4 address space.

APNIC's news is another sign that CIOs and other IT executives need to begin migrating to IPv6, the long-anticipated upgrade to the Internet's main communications protocol known as IPv4.BACKGROUND: IPv6 Tutorial

"For anybody who hasn't figured out that it's time to do IPv6, this is another wake-up call for them," says Owen DeLong, an IPv6 evangelist at Hurricane Electric and a member of the board of the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN), the North American counterpart to APNIC.

Any CIO who isn't planning for IPv6 is "driving toward a brick wall and closing your eyes and hoping that it's going to disappear before you get there," DeLong says. Ignoring IPv6 "is not the best strategy."Most IPv4 address space is expected to be handed out by the regional Internet registries by the end of 2011.

IPv4 uses 32-bit addresses and can support 4.3 billion devices connected directly to the Internet. IPv6, on the other hand, uses 128-bit addresses and supports a virtually unlimited number of devices -- 2 to the 128th power.The Asia Pacific region has been gobbling up the most IPv4 address space in recent years; APNIC has apparently distributed more than 32 million IPv4 addresses to network operators in this region in the last two months alone.

APNIC has depleted its IPv4 address space "dramatically faster than people expected," DeLong says. "My guess is that a lot of operators in the Asia Pacific region realized the time of IPv4 depletion was drawing near and they rushed to get their applications in.

"DETAILS: The 6 biggest misconceptions about IPv6 

APNIC is holding 16.7 million IPv4 addresses -- dubbed a /8 in network engineering terms -- in reserve to distribute in tiny allotments of around 1,000 addresses each to new and emerging IPv6-based networks so they can continue to communicate with the largely IPv4-based Internet infrastructure.

ARIN, which doles out IPv4 and IPv6 address space to companies operating in North America, predicts that it will run out of IPv4 addresses this fall."RIPE [the European Internet registry] is going to be the next one to run out. I wouldn't count on them making it until July," DeLong says. "I think ARIN will make it to the end of this year; maybe we'll run out in October or November."

"RIPE [the European Internet registry] is going to be the next one to run out. I wouldn't count on them making it until July," DeLong says. "I think ARIN will make it to the end of this year; maybe we'll run out in October or November."

PANIC TIME QUIZ: Are you prepared for IPv6?

One wild card is whether Asian network operators who also do business in North America will begin requesting IPv4 address space from ARIN now that APNIC has none to give.

"This will probably accelerate consumption in the ARIN region slightly and in RIPE for the same reason because there are a very large number of companies that have operations in Asia, Europe and the Americas," DeLong says.

Source: Network world

An Iranian military commander Saturday accused the German electronics giant Siemens with helping U.S. and Israeli teams craft the Stuxnet worm that attacked his country's nuclear facilities. According to the Islamic Republic News Service (IRNA), Iran's state news agency, Brigadier General Gholam Reza Jalali laid some of the blame for Stuxnet on Siemens.

"Siemens should explain why and how it provided the enemies with the information about the codes of the SCADA software and prepared the ground for a cyber attack against us," Jalali told IRNA. Siemens did not reply to a request for comment on Jalali's accusations.

Jalali heads Iran's Passive Defense Organization, a military unit responsible for constructing and defending the country's nuclear enrichment facilities. He is a former commander in Iran's Revolutionary Guard.Stuxnet, which first came to light in June 2010 but hit Iranian targets in several waves starting the year before, has been extensively analyzed by security researchers, most notably a three-man team at Symantec, and by Ralph Langner of the German firm Langner Communications GmbH.

According to both Symantec and Langner, Stuxnet was designed to infiltrate Iran's nuclear enrichment program, hide in the Iranian SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) control systems that operate its plants, then force gas centrifuge motors to spin at unsafe speeds . Gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium, can fly apart if spun too fast.

Jalali suggested that Iranian officials would pursue Siemens in the courts."The Foreign Ministry and other relevant political and judicial organizations should lodge complaints at international courts," said Jalali. "The attacking countries should be held legally responsible for the cyberattack."

He also claimed that Iranian researchers had traced the attack to Israel and the U.S. "The investigations and research showed that the Stuxnet worm had been disseminated from sources in the U.S. and Israel," said Jalali, who added that the worm sent reports of infected systems to computers in Texas.

Jalali's allegations of U.S. and Israeli involvement were the first from an Iranian official, although President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has repeatedly blamed the two countries for trying to destabilize his government.In January, the New York Times, citing confidential sources, said that Stuxnet was jointly created by the U.S. and Israel , with the latter using its covert nuclear facility at Dimona to test the worm's effectiveness on centrifuges like the ones Iran employs.

According to the Times, Siemens cooperated in 2008 with the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) to help experts there identify vulnerabilities in the SCADA hardware and software sold by the German firm. The lab -- located about 30 miles east of Idaho Falls, Idaho -- is the U.S. Department of Energy's lead nuclear research facility.

Jalali repeated earlier claims by others in Iran, including Ahmadinejad, that Stuxnet did not cause major damage or disrupt its nuclear enrichment program because researchers discovered the worm and instituted defenses.

"If we were not ready to tackle the crisis and their attack was successful, the attack could have created tragic incidents at the country's industrial sites and refineries," said Jalali.

He suggested that massive casualties could have resulted, and suggested that they might have been on the scale of the Bhopal, India disaster, where in 1984 a Union Carbide pesticide plant released chemicals that killed between 4,000 and 8,000 people.

Symantec, however, has said that Stuxnet was very successful. In a February update to its research on the worm, Symantec said the first attacks in June 2009 infected Iranian computers just 12 hours after the worm was compiled. The average time between compilation and infection was 19 days for the 10 successful attacks Symantec monitored over an 11-month span.

Source: Computerworld

 

The United States is sending specialized robots to Japan to help officials there get control of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plants damaged in this month's devastating earthquake and tsunami.

Dr. Peter Lyons , an acting assistant secretary for nuclear energy with the Department of Energy, told a Senate panel on Tuesday that the government is shipping radiation-hardened robots to assist the Japanese. He said the robots could begin to give Japanese and U.S officials readings on the environment inside the nuclear power plants that were badly damaged during the 9.0 magnitude earthquake and the subsequent tsunami that rocked the nation on March. 11.

The robots could be sent into areas that would be dangerous for humans to enter because of high radiation levels.Lyons, speaking in front of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, did not specify how many robots are going, but did say they would arrive soon and are being sent at the request of the Japanese government.

"The government of Japan has been very, very interested in understanding the capabilities that could be brought to bear from this country," said Lyons. "We have provided that information. They have identified needs. We are moving expeditiously to ship not only the robots but also operators who perhaps will be used to train Japanese operators. We don't know yet how close the operators will need to be to the site."

When asked about getting information about the state of the damaged reactors, Lyons said the robots could provide some information. "Certainly not all we need, but some," he added.The robots aren't the only aid the U.S. is sending. Lyons said the Department of Energy has also sent 40 people to Japan, along with 17,000 pounds of equipment.

A little more than a week ago, Massachusetts-based iRobot shipped four remote-controlled robots to help the Japanese military with its daunting relief efforts. The company, which in the past has sent robots to aid rescue and cleanup efforts in the area affected by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and at Ground Zero after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, also has six employees in Japan helping to train others to use the machines.

Tim Trainer, a vice president at iRobot, told Computerworld that the robots could be used for search-and-rescue missions, and there's a strong possibility that they will be sent into the damaged nuclear facilities.All four of iRobot's machines that have been sent to Japan are equipped with multiple cameras and can be operated from up to half a mile away. "People can stay at a safe distance and evaluate obstructions and the security and safety of a building," Trainer said.

For the first time, a spacecraft is in orbit around the solar system's innermost planet. About 9 p.m. EDT Thursday, NASA's Messenger spacecraft maneuvered into orbit around Mercury. Carrying seven science instruments and built to withstand the blistering temperatures near the sun, Messenger is tasked with performing the first complete reconnaissance of the planet's geochemistry, geophysics, geologic history and atmosphere, according to NASA.

Messenger is programmed to get images of different areas of the planet, including its northern pole, where some scientists surmise there might be ice . That would be a major discovery on a planet that is so close to the sun that its surface is 11 times brighter than Earth's.

"From the outset of this mission, our goal has been to gather the first global observations of Mercury from orbit," said Messenger's principal investigator Sean Solomon and director of the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism at the Carnegie Institution of Washington. "At the time of our launch more than six and a half years ago, that goal seemed but a distant dream. Messenger is now poised to turn that dream into reality."

Now that the spacecraft is in orbit, NASA engineers will begin checking Messenger's systems to make sure they are in working order.Starting on Wednesday, the spacecraft's instruments will be turned on and checked out, and on April 4 the mission's primary science phase is set to begin.When Messenger entered Mercury's orbit, it was 28.67 million miles from the sun and 96.35 million miles from Earth.

Messenger has been on a six-year mission to become the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury. NASA reported that it followed a path through the inner solar system, including one flyby of Earth, two of Venus, and three of Mercury.

Messenger hasn't been scientifically idle during its journey to enter Mercury's orbit.During its second flyby of Mercury in the fall of 2008, Messenger sent back more than 1,200 images of the planet's surface , along with topographical information and data about its atmosphere and magnetic fields.

"The region of Mercury's surface that we viewed at close range for the first time this month is bigger than the land area of South America," Solomon said after the second flyby. "When combined with data from our first flyby and from Mariner 10, our latest coverage means that we have now seen about 95% of the planet."

NASA's Messenger is the first spacecraft to return information about Mercury to Earth since the Mariner 10 mission more than 30 years ago.The space agency's Mariner 10 was the first spacecraft to reach Mercury and Venus. Mariner 10 flew by Mercury three times, returning images and data from the planet.

The scientists behind Messenger hope to take this latest mission several steps further. Data from Messenger will be collected by Deep Space Network antennas and transferred to the Mission Operations Center at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., where it will be analyzed.

NASA scientists and engineers have spent about 20 years developing new materials and technologies for Messenger. Its structure was built out of a graphite epoxy material that was designed to be strong enough to withstand the launch yet light enough to lower the probe's overall mass and save on energy usage. Two large solar panels and a nickel-hydrogen battery power the spacecraft.

The Messenger uses two computer chips -- a 25 MHz main processor and a 10 MHz backup processor.

The spacecraft, according to documents on NASA's Web site, includes a gamma ray and neutron spectrometer that is designed to map different elements and offer clues about the existence of ice at the planet's poles. A magnetometer attached to a nearly 12-foot boom will scan the planet for areas of magnetized rocks. Dual-imaging cameras, one with a wide-angle imager and one with a narrow-angle imager, will map the surface and give scientists a topographical view.