An Israeli security researcher recently published his new discovery, the exploit code for a security hole in Internet Explorer web browser, via his Twitter page. The researcher discovered the exploit after receiving clues from a McAfee blog post.
This new exploit affects IE 6 and IE 7 web browsers. The exploit has been targeted already in attacks and potentially could enable an attacker in taking control of a users system.
Microsoft’s next scheduled patch is in four weeks.
Resources: Targeted Internet Explorer Zero-Day Attack Announced (CVE-2010-0806), McAfee
February was a bad month for email. Due to a surge in the month of February, spam now accounts for 90% of email traffic according to Symantec. Two botnets, named Grum and Rustock, helped this spam surge by pushing up spam levels 5.5 percent. The Grum botnet came back from a period of plateau to increase activity by 51%. The rise of both botnet systems were linked to activity related to Canadian pharmaceutical spam.
Until recently, the Pentagon has stayed away from social media such as Facebook and Twitter. Pentagon will be moving forward with the use of social networking tools as a communication bridge between the public and the non-classified activities of the agency–as announced in a press release from Feb. 26th 2010 containing the headline “DOD Releases Policy for Responsible and Effective Use of Internet-Based Capabilities”. It will also allow the social networking tools to be used within it’s Non-Classified Internet Protocol Router Network (NIPRNET)–saying that it found a proper balance between the necessary security criteria and the use of social tools.