"This is the largest hacking case to date. The crime is very serious, and this must be reflected in the sentence," Prosecutor Maria Cingali said.

"My recommendation has always been that the investigation has focused on finding clues that point to my client, even though the tracks have also pointed in another direction," lawyer Louise Høj said, as cited by TorrentFreak. "It is clear that my client’s computer has been the subject of remote control, and therefore he is not responsible."

Appelbaum expressed his disappointment with the conviction on Twitter. "Gottfrid convicted. I'm sad to hear that only two of the jurors understand the technology involved," Appelbaum tweeted yesterday.

"The punishment should be close to the maximum punishment, which can be six years in prison," the senior prosecutor in the case, Maria Cingari, said according to local media. "It shouldn’t be under five years."

Wow What a Day It was!!
And suddenly You get up and hear a news that more than 24 news websites have been hacked Tonight!!

Its a group of Pakistani hackers, who pretends to be tired of having repeted news from Indians professional and other students.

"They pretend to carry on hacking all the major news website of India. And tend to go for more extended and powerful Targets Like "NDTV India, AAJ",etc.

''This is arguably the first case where we have had a hack of critical infrastructure from outside the United States that caused damage,'' a managing partner at Applied Control Solutions, Joseph Weiss, said.

The network breach was exposed after cyber intruders burned out a pump. ''No one realised the hackers were in there until they started turning on and off the pump,'' he said.

It said hackers apparently broke into a software company's database and retrieved usernames and passwords of various control systems that run water plant computer equipment.Using that data, they were able to hack into the Illinois plant.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are examining the matter, said DHS spokesman Peter Boogaard.

"At this time there is no credible corroborated data that indicates a risk to critical infrastructure entities or a threat to public safety," he said, declining to elaborate further. An FBI spokesman in Illinois did not return phone calls seeking comment.

Increasing attacks on cyberspace in India has brought several professionals and experts from the Industry, in support with the Government of India to jointly form a national level program to identify credible and valuable information security experts. The program "National Security Database" is all set to launch this Saturday in Mumbai at a major Information security conference, MalCon. The database will include ethical hackers and programmers who can protect country’s cyberspace. They will all be registered with the National Security Database, a brainchild of Information Sharing and Analysis Centre (ISAC), a non profit foundation which works closely with the Government on the issue of cyber security.

The need of such database originated after 2008 attacks in Mumbai when the cyber security professionals realised that a lot needed to be done in the area. "It is observed that some or other form of electronic notification is usually sent before a major terrorist attack, followed by defacement of government web sites. Professional cyber security professionals can make a lot of difference in investigations and help in the entire episode," said Rajshekhar Murthy, director of ISAC. Issue of forming a credible repository of such cyber security professionals who can be trusted with sensitive information can be of use in case of an emergency, and was also raised in a conference held last year.

"After a lot of brainstorming and analysis the database is in place and will be flagged off on November 26 in Mumbai," said Murthy. As per estimates there are over a lakh cyber security experts and hackers in India who as of now function individually. Each one of them has a certain area of specialisation. "They will be brought in to the NSD after a rigourous test which would test their skills. Also they would be made to undergo psychometric tests over and above the tasks that they would have to perform to test their personal skills. Once they clear all levels they would be empaneled in NSD program in applied areas of specialisation," added Murthy. Fraud investigation, web security, mobile security are some of the areas of specialisation in NSD.

The Database, which was secretly being worked on from last two years on invitation only basis has already a sizeable number of experts who have developed malwares and softwares to hack into devices like iPhone and XBox Kinect, which are slated for release at the malware conference MalCon. The database will come in handy each time country is under threat on cyberspace front. "The next generation of attacks will not be only on ground but also on country’s cyberspace," said Murthy citing the example of recent attack on some government computers after which the hackers released sensitive information pertaining to the miltary and communication between India and Moscow.

Companies like QuickHeal and Security Compass among others have already given support to the database and will be hiring security professionals with a direct final interview. "Since NSD professionals will have to go through a tough eight hour lab exam, major companies have written in expressing their interest in hiring NSD empaneled professionals. While NSD does not award certification, we are glad about the support from the Industry" stated Murthy.

The biggest challenge for NSD now is to reach both hackers and professionals and identify them with skills in existing areas of specialization.. "We have already identified several accross the country. Their motivations is that once they are registered with NSD they not only get to upgrade their skills and knowledge but will also be of service to the country. We are collaborating with government agencies looking after cyber security, all of whom are looking forward to the NSD," said Murthy.

The program will be flagged off in the International Malware Conference, MALCON, scheduled to be held at JW Marriott on November 26. Sachin Pilot, Minister of State for Communication and Information Technology is also going to join the conference via video conference from Delhi. His office confirmed that Pilot would share his views on cyber security and extend their endorsement to the National Security Database. Officials from National Technical Research Organisation, a government body which looks at cyber security, too have shown keen interest in the NSD. "It is great initiative which will be of use to the nation and will provide a databse of cyber security professionals," said an NTRO official refusing to be named.

Two Days before we publish that [Read This], Geeks at Security Web-Center Found 25 Facebook phishing sites. Security Web-Center found another biggest Facebook phishing site in French which steal more then 5000 usernames and passwords, using the fake domain www.frfacebook.fr to scam the victims. All phished passwords are stored here

[Read More]

A typical phishing scam reads like this:

LAST WARNING : Your account is reported to have violated the policies that are considered annoying or insulting Facebook users. Until we system will disable your account within 24 hours if you do not do the reconfirmation.

Please confirm your account below:

[Link Removed]

Thanks.

The Facebook Team

Copyright facebook © 2011 Inc. All rights reserved.

The emails are entirely bogus. They are not coming from Facebook. Social media venues would not request financial information, nor would they request login details.The scams are, in fact, designed to steal credit card numbers and social media accounts.  When someone has been phished, their account will often start automatically sending messages or links to a large number of their friends. These messages or links are often advertisements telling friends to check out videos or products. If your Facebook account is automatically sending out spammy messages or links, secure it here.

Make sure that when you access the site, you always log in from a legitimate facebook.com domain. A good rule of thumb is if a URL ends in facebook.com, it is owned by Facebook. For example, "en-gb.facebook.com" ends in facebook.com and is therefore safe and legitimate.

A Stanford University student recently discovered a security flaw with Adobe’s Flash Player that allowed malicious users to activate your webcam and microphone without your knowledge.They could then tap into the video and audio to watch and listen to your every move. OK, that sounded a lot less sensationalist in my head. Unfortunately, up until a few days ago, this exploit very much existed and Adobe was working feverishly on a fix. Feross Aboukhadijeh, the aforementioned Stanford student, wrote about the flaw on October 18.
According to Feross Aboukhadijeh:-

"I discovered a vulnerability in Adobe Flash that allows any website to turn on your webcam and microphone without your knowledge or consent to spy on you. It works in all versions of Adobe Flash that I tested. I’ve confirmed that it works in the Firefox and Safari for Mac browsers. Use one of those if you check out the live demo. There’s a weird CSS opacity bug in most other browsers (Chrome for Mac and most browsers on Windows/Linux)."

Later Adobe issued a critical update for its Flash Player software. The patch fixes six security vulnerabilities, at least one of which is a zero-day vulnerability being actively exploited in the wild. The details of the Adobe security bulletin explain, "This update resolves a universal cross-site scripting issue that could be used to take actions on a user's behalf on any website or webmail provider if the user visits a malicious website (CVE-2011-2444)," adding, 

"Note: There are reports that this issue is being exploited in the wild in active targeted attacks designed to trick the user into clicking on a malicious link delivered in an email message."
The zero-day bug fixed today is similar to a flaw in Flash that was patched in June. Coincidentally, both the June vulnerability, and this one patched today were reported to Adobe by Google.

To download the Patch and more about Adobe Security Bulletin Click Here