Spyware, viruses, & security forum: NEWS - April 09, 2012

A series of hacks perpetrated against so-called "smart meter" installations over the past several years may have cost a single U.S. electric utility hundreds of millions of dollars annually, the FBI said in a cyber intelligence bulletin obtained by KrebsOnSecurity. The law enforcement agency said this is the first known report of criminals compromising the hi-tech meters, and that it expects this type of fraud to spread across the country as more utilities deploy smart grid technology.

Smart meters are intended to improve efficiency, reliability, and allow the electric utility to charge different rates for electricity at different times of day. Smart grid technology also holds the promise of improving a utility's ability to remotely read meters to determine electric usage.

But it appears that some of these meters are smarter than others in their ability to deter hackers and block unauthorized modifications. The FBI warns that insiders and individuals with only a moderate level of computer knowledge are likely able to compromise meters with low-cost tools and software readily available on the Internet. [Screenshot]

Sometime in 2009, an electric utility in Puerto Rico asked the FBI to help it investigate widespread incidents of power thefts that it believed was related to its smart meter deployment. In May 2010, the bureau distributed an intelligence alert about its findings to select industry personnel and law enforcement officials.

Continued : http://krebsonsecurity.com/2012/04/fbi-smart-meter-hacks-likely-to-spread/

From the Kaspersky Antivirus Research Weblog:

At the moment, there are more than 100 million Mac OS X users around the world. The number has grown switfly during the past years we expect this growth to continue. Until recently, Mac OS X malware was a somehow limited category and included trojans such as the Mac OS X version of DNSChanger and more recently, fake anti-virus/scareware attacks for Mac OS X which boomed in 2011. In September 2011, the first versions of the Mac OS X trojan Flashback have appeared, however, they didn't really become widespread until March 2012. According to data collected by Kaspersky Lab, almost 700,000 infected users have been counted at the beginning of April and the number could be higher. Although Mac OS X can be a very secure operating systems, there are certain steps which you can take to avoid becoming a victim to this growing number of attacks.

Here's our recommendation on 10 simple tips to boost the security of your Mac:

1. Create a non-admin account for everyday activities

Your default account on Mac OS X is an administrator user, and malware writers can take advantage of that to infect your computer.

Continued : http://www.securelist.com/en/blog/208193448/10_Simple_Tips_for_Boosting_The_Security_Of_Your_Mac

"Sourcefire data shows how often restoring from malware-contaminated backups reinfects organizations"

When malware slips past antivirus, it then can get swept up in an enterprise's system backup -- and ultimately reinfect systems when they restore from their contaminated backup.

Oliver Friedrichs, head of Sourcefire's cloud technology group, says this cycle occurs more often than you'd think. Friedrichs recently analyzed data collected from more than 2 million Sourcefire users over a one-month period and found that backup and file restoration applications often inadvertently restore malware.

His findings: during a one-month period, DropBox, a file-sharing and backup cloud-based service, restored 17,705 threats; Maxtor Backup and Restore's MaxSynch, 5,076 threats; 2BrightSparks SynchBack backup software, 165 threats; and FreeFileSync, 104 threats. These were users that had been running traditional AV products.

"We've historically talked about backing up malware as a hypothetical ... we assume it's been happening, but there hasn't been a clear way to see how frequently it's been taking place," Friedrichs says. "This [analysis] is a confirmation and affirmation that it is happening, and we should be concerned about it and aware of backing up malware and then restoring malware."

Continued : http://www.darkreading.com/cloud-security/167901092/security/storage-security/232800530/malware-getting-backed-up-along-with-data.html

Think twice if you live outside the U.S. and plan to sell your used gaming console.

The Department of Homeland Security has launched a research project to find ways to hack into gaming consoles to obtain sensitive information about gamers stored on the devices.

One of the first contracts for the project was awarded last week to Obscure Technologies, based in California, to devise a forensic tool that will siphon data from the Xbox 360, Wii, PlayStation 3 and other consoles.

The $177,000 contract requires the company to create new hardware and software tools that can extract data from gaming consoles, and to purchase used gaming consoles outside the U.S. to determine what data was left on them by previous owners that can be extracted, including information about communications with other gamers, according to Foreign Policy magazine.

Gaming consoles can store sensitive information such as passwords, credit card numbers and addresses. Newer systems also allow users to communicate with one another via messaging and chat systems, and the government is interested in knowing what data is stored in the systems and can be siphoned out of them. But the systems often employ anti-tampering technologies that can make extracting data from them difficult.

Continued : http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/04/game-console-hack/

Also: Department of Homeland Security contract seeks to 'hack' game consoles to obtain user data