Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
The United States Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, in a recent Technology Incident Report that was
compiled using data from the suspicious activity reports filed
quarterly by banks themselves, lists a total of 536 cases of computer
intrusion. In 80 percent of these, while the source remains unknown,
the intrusion took place during online banking sessions.
The University of Michigan study 'Analyzing Web
sites for user-visible security design flaws' found that
some 47 percent of banks surveyed were guilty of placing login boxes on
insecure pages. This, it suggests, enables the potential hacker to
reroute inputted data or create spoof pages to harvest fresh data.
It would be possible, they say, to use a wireless connection to perform
such a man-in-the-middle attack without ever changing the bank URL as
far as the end user is concerned.
Prakash says that the solution is as simple as ensuring that such pages
are designed to use standard secure socket layer (SSL) protocol
wherever sensitive information is being collected. Sadly while some
pages will be secured like this, the survey found that only a minority
applied the measure to all pages.
"The research is notable as many of the site flaws are structural in
nature" Geoff Sweeney, Chief Technology Officer with security outfit
Tier-3 told us, continuing "Short of many of the
site operators designing their portals from the ground up, it's likely
there is no short-term fix."
Sweeney is looking forward to how the paper is received today, telling
us "Some banks are reported to have reworked their sites as a result of
the team notifying them of their problems, but I suspect that many will
take time to change their portals."
David Bass
| For the fourth year in a row, IDC has placed content security provider Websense (NASDAQ: WBSN) at the top of the IDC Worldwide Web Security 2011 –…
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