Forum for Information Security

Well, for those of you who’ve been living on the ‘other side’ - i.e. those who don’t really have an interest in all things information technology, I’ve got some news for you.

You need to be scared. Very, very scared.

Unbeknownst to you, someone is probably using your computing resources, your personal information, your email addresses, your address books, your credit card numbers….get it?

Conventional anti-virus solutions DON’T work.

Why?

Because they look at signatures (bits of code, strings or any other personal identifiers) and decide to ‘allow’ or disallow data to interact with your PC.

But of course, if they don’t recognize a known pattern, then they will, by default, allow, say, some code to enter and reside on your system when you download a program, visit a website, open an attachment, click on a link, etc.

You won’t know about it.

The AV companies won’t know about it.

But someone will.

And if the person / individual / entity has malicious intent, then you’re done for.

Rootkit technology depends on stealth - and is designed to cover its tracks.

The only way to trace rootkits is to figure out from their behaviour, whether there are anomalies with legitimate program behaviour.

See more on this topic at: http://news.com.com/Rootkit+numbers+rocketing+up,+McAfee+says/2100-7349_3-6061878.html

I’ll post some more interesting (or scary, depending on how you look at it) stuff on rootkits later…

Cheers

oRiOn

Folks, we are going to Infosec Europe as participants for the first time. It should be a great gig, with more than 15,000 visitors (11,000 attended in ‘05).

MIEL have a keynote speaker in Avinash Kadam, who will be providing information on what organizations should be looking for when hiring security professionals.

He is the only speaker from Asia - and we have a stand (G909) at the gallery level, where senior management will interact with the ‘crowd’…

Grand Olympia, Kensington - Apr 25th - 27th, 2006.

See you there!

oRiOn