[OPLIN 4cast] OPLIN 4Cast #236: Security forces endanger cloud security

[Editor]

Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser. 
<http://www.oplin.org/4cast/>
OPLIN 4Cast

OPLIN 4Cast #236: Security forces endanger cloud security
June 29th, 2011

<http://www.oplin.org/4cast/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/cloud_security2.png>A 
week ago on Tuesday (June 21), the FBI raided 
<http://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/department-of-justice-disrupts-international-cybercrime-rings-distributing-scareware> 
a data center in Virginia run by a Swiss hosting company, DigitalOne. 
The FBI was looking for evidence of international cyber crime rings that 
have been distributing "scareware," a false alert that appears on 
people's computers telling them their security software must be 
updated/repaired and then sends them to a link that loads malware on 
their machine. This would not have been particularly noteworthy, except 
that the FBI took machines containing servers for completely legitimate 
and legal businesses, and thus had possession of data that should be 
private. As a result, some people wonder about the wisdom of putting 
their data in the "cloud," i.e., using servers hosted in large data 
centers.

    * FBI busts two scareware, fake AV gangs in global operation
      <http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Midmarket/FBI-Busts-Two-Scareware-Fake-AV-Gangs-in-Global-Operation-187749/>
      (eWeek/Fahmida Y. Rashid) "The FBI seized three racks of servers
      from the hosting facility, causing several Websites and services,
      including Curbed, Eater, Instapaper and Pinboard, to go offline.
      'The global reach of the Internet makes every computer user in the
      world a potential victim of cyber-crime,' said U.S. Attorney B.
      Todd Jones of the District of Minnesota. The FBI worked with
      police in Cyprus, Germany, Latvia, Ukraine, France and Romania as
      well as with Canada's Mounted Police and London's Met Police."
    * Sites rebuild after F.B.I. raid on data center
      <http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/22/sites-rebuild-after-f-b-i-raid-on-data-center/>
      (New York Times/Verne G. Kopytoff) "The agents, who were seeking
      the servers of a single client, nevertheless seized three
      enclosures filled with servers for 'tens of clients,' the company
      said. Sergej Ostroumow, DigitalOne's chief executive, declined to
      name the client that was the target of the investigation. He said
      he did not know the reason for the raid. In an e-mail on
      Wednesday, Mr. Ostroumow said he was working to restore his
      company's Web site, which was also taken offline by the raid, but
      added that 'we have e-mail and the hope that we will receive all
      servers back very soon.'"
    * The FBI stole an Instapaper server in an unrelated raid
      <http://blog.instapaper.com/post/6830514157> (Instapaper
      Blog/Marco Arment) "Possibly most importantly, though, the FBI is
      now presumably in possession of a complete copy of the Instapaper
      database as it stood on Tuesday morning, including the complete
      list of users and any non-deleted bookmarks. [...] Instapaper
      stores only salted SHA-1 hashes of passwords, so those are
      relatively safe. But email addresses are stored in the clear, as
      is the saved content of each bookmark saved by the bookmarklet."
    * FBI seizes servers in brute force raid
      <http://www.tgdaily.com/security-features/56793-fbi-seizes-servers-in-brute-force-raid>
      (TG Daily/Trent Nouveau) "While most Americans probably don't
      really care about a few downed sites, the brute force raid
      executed by the Feds surely doesn't bode well for the future. One
      can't help but wonder what comes next: mass Gmail seizures, Amazon
      cloud server confiscations, or perhaps entire data centers carted
      off in FBI trucks? Clearly, U.S. law enforcement officials must
      learn how to minimize 'collateral damage' to neutral civilian
      infrastructure during cyber-related raids."

*/Bounty fact:/*

Microsoft has been offering a $250,000 bounty since early 2009 for 
information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible 
for launching the sophisticated Conflicker worm, which was apparently 
the delivery mechanism for this scareware.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The */OPLIN 4cast/* is a weekly compilation of recent headlines, topics, 
and trends that could impact public libraries. You can subscribe to it 
in a variety of ways, such as:

    * *RSS feed.* You can receive the OPLIN 4cast via RSS feed by
      subscribing to the following URL:
      http://www.oplin.org/4cast/index.php/?feed=rss2.
    * *Live Bookmark.* If you're using the Firefox web browser, you can
      go to the 4cast website (http://www.oplin.org/4cast/) and click on
      the orange "radio wave" icon on the right side of the address bar.
      In Internet Explorer 7, click on the same icon to view or
      subscribe to the 4cast RSS feed.
    * *E-mail.* You can have the OPLIN 4cast delivered via e-mail (a'la
      OPLINlist and OPLINtech) by subscribing to the 4cast mailing list
      at http://mail.oplin.org/mailman/listinfo/OPLIN4cast.


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.oplin.org/pipermail/oplin4cast/attachments/20110629/c737d33e/attachment-0001.html
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: kubrickheader.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 38379 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.oplin.org/pipermail/oplin4cast/attachments/20110629/c737d33e/kubrickheader-0001.jpg
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: cloud_security2.png
Type: image/png
Size: 25805 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.oplin.org/pipermail/oplin4cast/attachments/20110629/c737d33e/cloud_security2-0001.png