Mike Reavey from MSRC on the history of MS07-017:http://blogs.technet.com/msrc/archive/2007/04/03/an-inside-look-into-building-and-releasing-ms07-017.aspx
Urs
Network managers are fighting a lonely battle on security with the majority of users and directors carelessly giving their passwords to complete strangers.Sometimes it helps if you offer chocolate!
http://www.computing.co.uk/networkitweek/news/2058275/users-spill-password-beans
Btw., did you know, that a Windows password could be up to 127 characters long? How long is yours?
Software tools that have been found to be useful in forensic examination of recovered evidence.
http://www.forensic-computing.ltd.uk/tools.htm
I really can't believe that there are still people who get trapped by those Nigerian fraud letter... Well, did I ever told you that you can win a million just by reading this blog???
From the management summary of the report:
Internet auction fraud was by far the most reported offense, comprising 44.9% of referred complaints. Non-delivered merchandise and/or payment accounted for 19.0% of complaints. Check fraud made up 4.9% of complaints. Credit/debit card fraud, computer fraud, confidence fraud, and financial institutions fraud round out the top seven categories of complaints referred to law enforcement during the year.
Of those individuals who reported a dollar loss, the highest median losses were found among Nigerian letter fraud ($5,100), check fraud ($3,744), and other investment fraud ($2,695) complainants.
But read the rest for yourself:http://www.ic3.gov/media/annualreport/2006_IC3Report.pdf
We got an increase on helpdesk calls in different subsidiaries with regards to a mail that is circulating: The mail claims to be coming from admin@microsoft.com and provides a link to an IE7 (Beta) download site. As always: This is spam and a fake.
If you want some detailed analysis: http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=2537&rss
As you probably have seen this allready, as a reminder:
On 03 April 2007 Microsoft is planning to release:
One Microsoft Security Bulletin affecting Microsoft Windows. The highest Maximum Severity rating for these is Critical. These updates will require a restart. These updates will be detectable using the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer.
Advisory:http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/935423.mspx
http://blogs.technet.com/msrc/default.aspxhttp://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/advance.mspx
The out-of band hotfix has created problems in combination with the RealTek Soundchip and some other applications. While the impact of these issues is clearly not widespread, it is affecting some of our customers. To help customers who have these applications installed, we will be releasing the hotfix that resolves this issue hotfix to affected customers through Windows Update (WU), Microsoft Update (MU), and Automatic Updates (AU) as part of the Tuesday April 10, 2007 release as a High Priority non-security update.
MSRC Blog entry: http://blogs.technet.com/msrc/archive/2007/04/06/microsoft-knowledge-base-article-925902-updated.aspx
MS07-017: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/MS07-017.mspxKB925902: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925902
Improved algorithms used in facial recognition software programs have improved the success of such technology by up to ten times since 2002, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) said in a report,"Face Recognition Vendor Test (FRVT) 2006 and the Iris Challenge Evaluation (ICE) 2006 Large-Scale Results" issued March 29.
http://www.realtime-itcompliance.com/information_security/2007/04/security_nist_releases_report.htm
Direct link to report (PDF): http://face.nist.gov/frvt/frvt2006/FRVT2006andICE2006LargeScaleReport.pdf
This guide, the Microsoft Data Encryption Toolkit for Mobile PCs Security Analysis, provides specific details about the levels of security that can be achieved using BitLocker and EFS. The Enterprise and Ultimate editions of Windows Vista™ support the full range of security features described in this guide, and a significant and useful subset is available in Microsoft Windows® XP. Several levels of protection are available, depending on the features and configurations applied. In the most secure configurations, a malevolent attacker would require an extraordinary amount of resources to decrypt the data on a hard disk drive.
The Security Analysis will help you understand how features in Windows Vista and Windows XP help mitigate or reduce specific security risks in your organization. This guide will help you to:
The security features discussed in this guide were developed using industry-accepted technologies. For example, the Microsoft implementation of the cryptographic algorithms used for BitLocker and EFS are certified according to the US Federal Government Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-1, and the implemented algorithms are all mature. This adherence to industry-accepted technologies is important because some state and national data privacy laws provide exemptions or mitigating factors for organizations that can show they have made good-faith efforts to follow best practices for data security.
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/guidance/clientsecurity/dataencryption/analysis/default.mspx