Cyber Crime

Pierluigi Paganini December 29, 2011
GSM mobile … the insecure network

The latest discovered vulnerability in GSM ( Global System for Mobile) technology is worrying many telecom operators of several countries due to their impact on an audience of billions users. Some experts in the Security Research Labs in Berlin have shown how to get the remote control of mobile phones to send SMS and make calls. […]

Pierluigi Paganini December 24, 2011
Iran, the cyber threat … are we creating a new enemy ?

“Iran, the super power capable of threatening the world”. This is the title of a hypothetical sensationalist article aimed to enhance the computer skills of a nation of which little is known. In recent weeks the strange coincidence of events is helping to fuel this belief that leaving the majority of Western countries perceive these […]

Pierluigi Paganini December 22, 2011
Russia, cyber repression in the social networks era

Several times in these posts we have discussed of the importance of social media in recent years. Social Media are the valuable carrier to disclose political decisions taken by central governments. This is well known to the main strategist of governments such as Russia, the country where a massive cyber repressive action was carried out […]

Pierluigi Paganini December 21, 2011
Malware attacks Georgia Hospital, have we learnt the lesson?

The medical industry is historically one of the sectors that has benefited more than others for the introduction of technology. Devices allow ever more complex operations every day to millions of patients and to medical equipments, from health conditions monitoring to remote surgery. Informations systems manage massive amounts of sensitive information, making them available to […]

Pierluigi Paganini December 19, 2011
Duqu – The worst may still have to come for critical infrastructures

Duqu, a name that we are reading since several months and with whom we have called a malware that scares the scientific community for some features we will shortly describe. I wrote a lot in this blog about Duqu and on more than one occasion we have raised doubts about the genesis of the agent. […]

Pierluigi Paganini December 18, 2011
SCADA and vulnerabilities to critical infrastructures

Over the last few months there have been different events that led to the story than they can be dangerous attacks on SCADA systems used to control production processes in industrial plants of various kinds, from industrial production to the provision of electricity supply or water. The concern is high, it could materialize the nightmare […]

Pierluigi Paganini December 17, 2011
Software piracy,from statistics to hypotheses of cyber warfare

With the term software piracy is referred the illegal distribution or reproduction of software for business or personal use. Whether software piracy is deliberate or not, it is still illegal and punishable by law. We distinguish several type of software privacy: End user: sing one licensed copy to install a program on multiple computers,copying distrubuting […]

Pierluigi Paganini December 15, 2011
The year of the networked protest, from SOPA act to Anonymous

It’s end of the year and time for reflections. Yesterday we have discussed on incident occurred to CAs, but what else will we remember of this 2011? No doubts, we will remember the new way to use Internet, an irreplaceable vector for social protests, expression of social malaise and of too much stolen liberty. We […]

Pierluigi Paganini December 15, 2011
2011, CAs are under attack. Why steal a certificate?

2011 was a terrible year for the certification authorities, the number of successful attacks against some major companies reported is really high and totally out of any prediction. Many attacks have had disturbing consequences.It all began, or so we were led to believe, with the case Comodo. Comodo officials revealed that the registration authority had […]

Pierluigi Paganini December 14, 2011
Carrier IQ, the privacy of millions of users has been violated

In recent weeks we have learned of a dialer able to track our movements, spy on our communications, read our SMS … the privacy of millions of users has been violated!  A disturbing application, multi-platform, which had not been reported previously. The news is troubling because it puts into serious consideration the privacy rights of […]