Growing concern, growing fear

Organisations are spending as much as 20% of their IT budgets on security, according to a new survey, says The Register.

The poll, commissioned by CompTIA, surveyed 1 070 organisations and found that in 2004, about 12% of overall budgets went to security, followed by 15% in 2005, and 20% of the budget in 2006.

This is a definite indication that companies are either becoming more aware, or more fearful.

A new book by Markus Jakobsson from The Indiana School of Informatics, and Zulfikar Ramzan from Symantec, has an interesting chapter on cybercrime and the electoral system, says Information Week.

The chapter discusses how cyber-criminals disseminate misinformation, commit fraud, and use phishing, malicious code, and the invasion of privacy to wreak havoc during election periods.

The public is assured, however, that no politicians have as yet enlisted the services of a cyber-criminal to aid in their possible election.

In Australia, the so-called "Howard Hacker", who is blamed for defacing the Liberal Party Web site, is trying to plead his innocence, explains Builder AU.

Brett Soric, who created a script that exploited a common cross-site scripting flaw in the official Web site, is now claiming he did nothing wrong.

Soric explained: "It is not a `hack` because the script did not break into their servers [and] did not modify any pages on their site. The only way to have seen any of the results was to click a [crafted] link."

This is a definite indication that companies are either becoming more aware, or more fearful.

Ilva Pieterse, ITWeb contributor

Soon after releasing its new patch for the month, Microsoft issued a security advisory. It warned about a dangerous command execution vulnerability affecting users of Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, according to Search Security.

Apparently, this flaw in Windows XP and Server 2003 fails to properly validate URIs and URLs, allowing an attacker to execute arbitrary commands.

If Internet Explorer 7 is installed, malicious URIs may be passed through it via several third-party applications like Adobe Acrobat Reader, mIRC, Mozilla Firefox, Skype or Miranda IM.

China is using "colossal human and financial resources to obstruct online free expression", according to a report by two human rights pressure groups, says VNUNet.

The pressure groups stated the Chinese government has way too stringent editorial control over news Web sites and blogs.

"This system of censorship is unparalleled anywhere in the world and is an insult to the spirit of online freedom," wrote Reporters Without Borders and Chinese Human Rights Defenders in a joint statement.