To the beat of a different rod

A new phishing scam, called "vishing" by Secure Computing, sends e-mails to potential victims containing bogus VOIP numbers of credit card or financial services institutions. Once the number is dialled, the users are asked for personal information.

Another variant sees cyber criminals configuring an automatic telephone dialler to phone randomly and play automated recordings to listeners stating their credit card has been compromised.

It then asks the listener to dial a number to fix the problem, and again, personal information is requested.

In a much more aggressive attempt to steal sensitive data, hackers have broken into worldwide branches of the US State Department over the past few weeks, particularly the offices dealing with China and North Korea.

Investigators believe hackers have planted backdoors in unclassified government computers to gain limitless control and access.

This has caused severe limitations to Internet access at many locations and many connections have had to be restored since the initial break-in, discovered in mid-June.

A new phishing scam sends e-mails to potential victims containing bogus VOIP numbers of credit card or financial services institutions.

Ilva Pieterse, ITWeb journalist

The FBI has identified the growth of cybercrime to be among the top global threats to security, and says its Cyberdivision is next only to terrorism and foreign intelligence operations.

Says David Thomas, deputy assistant director, FBI Cyberdivision: "Your security will be breached; it is just a case of when."

Interesting to note, China`s increasingly technologically savvy population of 1.5 billion are seen as the next source of cybercriminals.

Microsoft is highlighted considerably this week. The IT giant is being sued for between 200 million and 300 million euros by the EU for failing to carry out anti-trust sanctions.

The company must be in full compliance with the European Commission`s landmark anti-trust decision of March 2004 by the end of the month, or face a further fine of up to three million euros daily, but Microsoft has pledged to deliver documents by 18 July to be in compliance.

Microsoft has also stated there will be an 80% chance of a Vista delay on the January 2007 deadline date.

In the meantime, the up and coming operating system version will be displayed at the sixth annual Hack in the Box conference, and at the Las Vegas Black Hat hacker conference, where it will be fully tested by penetration engineers and aspiring hackers alike.

On a final note, there is no more support for either Windows 98 or ME versions, as part of Microsoft`s product lifecycle policy.

IDC estimates there are about 70 million users of Windows 98 who will now be unable to receive support and security patches via their product vendor.

Sources: Reuters, Softpedia, ComputerWeekly, The Register, Computerworld