2009 Security News Update – PCI Council, Aweber, Adobe – Hacks and Cracks

Back for the last entry of 2009, here are the latest updates in the security world:

Aweber announces its own incursion into its site, unnumbered amount of email addresses pilfered.

AWeber was recently the victim of an intentional attack to mine email addresses. We’d like to take this opportunity to share what happened, what was (and was not) affected and what we’re doing as a result of this attack.

PCI Security Council updates its site:

Today, the PCI Security Standards Council (PCI SSC), a global, open industry standards body providing management of the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), PIN Transaction Security (PTS) Security Requirements and the Payment Application Data Security Standard (PA-DSS), announced the launch of a new PCI SSC micro site, providing resources to secure payment card data in eight languages.

Adobe named this years most hacked software

Taking the first place from Internet Explorer, Adobe has had its fair share of issues this year, including numerous ‘zero-day’ exploits.  Kits that go by names like “T-IFramer,” “Liberty Exploit Systems” and “Elenore” all turned up on underground markets selling for $300 to US$500, Kandek says, and allow the attacker to install a Trojan program ready to download whatever malicious software a cybercriminal wishes, from spyware to click-fraud software. All three of those kits exploit three unique Adobe Reader bugs, along with a smaller number of bugs in Internet Explorer, Microsoft Office, Firefox and even Quicktime.

Ever wonder of what will happen to your Facebook account when you die?

This new service allows you to send posthumous notices, shut down accounts, store passwords, etc.  Important new entry into your last will and testament?

“Practically everyone knows someone that has died and whose blog just stays up there, or whose Facebook profile keeps on sending friendship suggestions,” said Lisa Granberg, 29, a co-founder of My Webwill.  “Those surviving that person, have a very difficult time (doing) something about it.”

For the ‘home hacker’ a nice little Christmas break project

Book scanners, like the ones Google is using in its Google Books project, run into thousands of dollars, putting them out of the reach of a graduate student like Reetz. But in January, when textbook prices for the semester were listed, Reetz decided he would make a book scanner that would cost a fraction of commercially available products.