Messaging News - August 2008 - (Page 8) S H O R T TAKES In-Flight Internet Access Taking Flight American Airline passengers are now able to use email and instant messaging, download video and connect to secure networks on notebook computers or wireless devices through three wireless access points on some planes. The test service, which began in June, is free, but the plan according to American’s technology partner, Aircell LLC, is to charge $9.95 to $12.95 USD for the service, depending on flight length. Aircell and American will share the revenue. Besides the paid service, passengers will be able to connect free to American’s Web site, Frommer’s travel guides and limited news headlines. The airline won’t filter any content, but it will block all Internet voice services. Many airlines either are testing or have plans for Internet service, most all are sorting out the business model. Sony PlayStation Not Alone Last month’s attack on the U.S.-based Sony PlayStation Web site resulted in video gamers believing their computers were infected with viruses and purchasing bogus security products. But while well publicized, the Sony PlayStation site was not the only target in that attack. It was one of many sites hit. SophosLabs tracked huge numbers of victim sites estimating more than a million victim pages across a variety of sites worldwide. These SQL injection attacks begin with a compromising script being injected into a legitimate site, causing a redirect to a malicious Web site. This month, the focus is the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games and China. According to F-Secure, they are seeing some interesting examples of SQL injection attacks specifically targeting Web sites designed for a Chinese audience or Chinese-language literate visitors. U.S. Patriotism Exploited on 4th of July West Nile wasn’t the only virus to take precautions against this past 4th of July. A widespread email spam campaign circulated that offered a link to a malicious Webpage disguised as a video player showing an Independence Day fireworks display. In reality it was another Storm attack to recruit more computers into the Storm botnet. Symantec says they observed over 15 million of these messages. Twitter On Malware researcher Chris Boyd recently discovered a new tool that retrofits IM bots to spew Twitter-like micro-blogging spam. So far, Twitter spam has been limited to that overly-friendly person trying to follow hundreds of people with useless messages, but things could get ugly with automated bots. It’s not hitting Twitter quite yet, so keep Tweeting for now, but watch out for potentially harmful hyperlinks. Source: FaceTime Communications More Storm, This Time in China As noted above, lately China is a place of interest to malware writers. Earlier this summer, message writers bet on the fact that since a massive earthquake had recently hit China that unsuspecting users would assume an outbreak of blended threat emails about a nonexistent earthquake in China were legitimate. Further adding to the social engineering was the fact that the hype for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games was in full swing, so any unusual news about China had a stronger tendency to be opened or clicked. The writers were right. 8 MESSAGING NEWS AUGUST 2008
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