Technology in your hands.

Apple’s OS X, Microsoft Windows, and Linux operating systems are to be pitted against each other in an ethical hacking contest in Vancouver next month. Run by the organizers of the CanSecWest Vancouver 2008 security conference, the competition is a repeat of the “PWN to Own” contest at CanSecWest in 2007, when security researchers competed to win a MacBook Pro and $10,000. The prize was shared between security researchers Dino Dai Zovi and Shane Macauley for their successful use of a zero-day QuickTime vulnerability, which they used to compromise the MacBook. The vulnerability was subsequently found to also affect Windows platforms.

The hacking competition at CanSecWest 2008 will pit the Linux, Leopard OS X, and Vista operating systems against each other, according to CanSecWest organizer Dragos Ruiu.

“The fur is flying right now about which is more secure–Linux, Vista, or Leopard,” Ruiu said on Thursday. “Linux guys have their propaganda, Windows guys are saying this and that, Apple guys have buried their heads in the sand as usual. I guess the proof is in the pudding.”Full Article Here

The Web site for Indian antivirus vendor AvSoft Technologies has been hacked and is being used to install malicious software on visitors’ computers, security researchers said last week.

The download section of AvSoft’s S-cop Web site hosts the malicious code, according to Roger Thompson, chief research officer with security vendor AVG. “They let one of their pages get hit by an iFrame injection,” he said. “It shows that anyone can be a victim…. It’s hard to protect Web servers properly.”

The technique used on the site has been seen in thousands of similar hacks over the past few months. The attackers open an invisible iFrame Window within the victim’s browser, which redirects the client to another server. That server, in turn, launches attack code that attempts to install malicious software on the victim’s computer.

The malicious software is a variant of the Virut virus family…

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Thousands of Australians are at risk from a relatively new online scam targeting the desperate and dateless, Queensland police say.

The state’s Fraud and Corporate Crimes Group has noticed a growing number of cases of men and women being lured into online relationships by Nigerian fraudsters posing as prospective lovers.

In the latest case, Gold Coast resident Patricia (surname withheld for privacy reasons) lost $8500 when she became involved with a fraudster posing as an Australian retiree using the name “David”.

After six months developing what Patricia believed to be a loving relationship, David said he had to travel to Nigeria to sell some land, which he promised would set them up for life.

While there, he supposedly got mugged and asked Patricia to send money to help him return home.

Superintendent Brian Hay said such “romance scams” cost their victims about $35,000 on average…

Full Article Here

I’d like the readers input on what antivirus they prefer. For my I like Panda Internet Security best but atm I am using CA internet Security. There are many out there and one of the most popular is AVG antivirus, which is completely free. I’ve also seen Kaspersky which I don’t like to much. I’ve also seen Zone Alarm which I dont think is too great either. One really good Internet Security Suite is Bitdefender. It is pretty light on your resources and is great at keeping your system clean but its antispyware is lacking a bit. One of the worst that I have tinkered with is McAfee so you guys should steer clear of it.

Whether you receive a file from an attachment in your e-mail or from an online file server you can never be positive that it is virus free. However, instead of wasting your time and scanning it with the one virus scanner on your computer, you can have the file scanned by multiple anti-virus engines. There are two online services where you can upload the file to be scanned. A report will be delivered to show if any viruses are found after the file is scanned by 32 anti-virus engines.

Website: Jotti’s malware scan and Virus Total