NTA Monitor

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60% of UK website tests revealed Internet encryption and cross-site scripting vulnerabilities

10th April 2008 60% of web application tests performed for UK organisations showed that their websites contain weak encryption or cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities Read More

Demilitarised Zone most secure option for BlackBerry device

28th February 2008 Recent BlackBerry testing by IT security consultancy, NTA Monitor, has revealed that organisations are still not configuring these mobile devices correctly Read More

Retailers should put security top of their Christmas list

13th November 2007 With British consumers spending more than £6.6 billion online in the last two months of last year, the 2007 festive season is set to be one of great cheer for online retailers Read More

Businesses warned not to have skeletons in cupboards

13th November 2007 For many organisations, the festive season is an opportunity to heave a corporate sigh of relief and enjoy the brief respite in frenetic business activity as countless people all over the world, go home to celebrate Christmas Read More
Date: 30th August 2004
Risk: Low

Virus writers have moved on from using Osama bin Laden's "suicide" as a lure to trying the same trick with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

July saw VXers seed multiple Usenet groups with messages saying Osama bin Laden had killed himself, pointing users towards "photographs" illustrating the momentous news. In reality these images offered only the HackarmyTrojan. The Trojan has been around for some months and the Usenet trick gives the aging malware a second lease of life.

Over the third weekend in July, messages using the same template, but referring to the supposed death of California's Governor began appearing all over Usenet. The messages invited users to download a zip file containing a "screensaver" (again contaminated with the Hackarmy Trojan). This malicious code has since been taken offline, but users are still advised to be cautious. More copycats can be expected, as the trick is easy to engineer.

Many within the industry claim that some script kiddie got himself a copy of the "Virus Authoring for Dummies", however this could prove to be an interesting attack vector if correctly implemented.

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