Greyware Automation Products, a small business, has been scrambling for the past week to keep itself alive as it's barraged by a denial-of-service attack launched by the Swen virus.. . .. Greyware Automation Products, a small business, has been scrambling for the past week to keep itself alive as it's barraged by a denial-of-service attack launched by the Swen virus. Greyware is getting 40 attempts per minute to deliver copies of the worm by e-mail. The worm makes up 51 percent of its total incoming e-mail traffic. The worm has been trying to contact the company's discussion servers 16 times every second; normal discussion server traffic is one attempted contact every minute. Those figures are current as of Friday afternoon. Left unchecked, the activity would flood Greyware's Internet connection, taken Greyware offline and put it out of business. The online business has fended off attacks by modifying the technique it -- and most e-mail services -- use to screen mail for spam and viruses. Instead of downloading each message in its entirety, then analyzing the contents, Greyware analyzes the messages as they come in, and, as soon as it determines a message is Swen-generated, the Greyware server breaks the connection. That saves bandwidth and e-mail storage, although it's processor intensive. Swen is also mounting a second attack on Greyware, flooding Greyware's NNTP-based discussion servers with connections in attempts to harvest e-mail addresses. Greyware dealt with those attacks by changing the port number users use to access the server, from Port 119 to Port 1119, which unfortunately made it impossible for some of its users to contact the discussion servers until those users had been informed of the change and reconfigured their client software to contact Greyware on the new port. The link for this article located at Security Pipeline is no longer available. . Greyware Automation Products, a small business, has been scrambling for the past week to keep itself. greyware, automation, products,small, business, scrambling, itself. . Anthony Pell
Companies are increasingly considering their security as world events cast doubt on their ability to deal with natural disaster, human error or malicious attack. Spending on security has reached record levels, and continues to climb as businesses seek to reassure shareholders . . . . Companies are increasingly considering their security as world events cast doubt on their ability to deal with natural disaster, human error or malicious attack. Spending on security has reached record levels, and continues to climb as businesses seek to reassure shareholders and comply with standards and changing legal requirements. However, being secure is about more than simply buying firewalls, antivirus software and login technology. "Good IT security is about good management. It's more important to maintain patches and to document systems and procedures than it is to install expensive new security devices," says Bart Vansevenant, director of European security strategies at security service provider Ubizen. "Secure environments are typically well-documented, with a procedure for regularly patching systems, good monitoring and control of servers, and where good security is part of a culture." The link for this article located at VNUNet is no longer available. . Companies are increasingly considering their security as world events cast doubt on their ability to. their, companies, increasingly, considering, security, world, events, doubt, ability. . LinuxSecurity.com Team
Bottom line: No product you can buy will protect you completely from the most serious threat to your network and your business. That's not what you want to hear after laying out six figures to arm yourself with firewalls, antivirus software, and intrusion-detection applications, is it? Nevertheless, forewarned is forearmed, and there is something you can do to fight this threat. . . .. Bottom line: No product you can buy will protect you completely from the most serious threat to your network and your business. That's not what you want to hear after laying out six figures to arm yourself with firewalls, antivirus software, and intrusion-detection applications, is it? Nevertheless, forewarned is forearmed, and there is something you can do to fight this threat. I'M TALKING ABOUT social engineering, which is simply a fancy way of saying "getting people who should know better to do what you want." A recent CERT report notes that attempts to hornswoggle those of you using instant messaging and Internet Relay Chat (IRC) via social engineering are on the rise. Victims of these hoaxes are directed to sites that ostensibly will help them, but really plant Trojan horse programs on their computers. Now what if the unsuspecting victim is infected with a Trojan horse at the office? It could be very costly to your business. The link for this article located at ZDNet is no longer available. . Bottom line: No product you can buy will protect you completely from the most serious threat to your. bottom, product, protect, completely, serious, threat. . LinuxSecurity.com Team
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