Provided by CommunityDNS, the information in this post consists of news items in the security-based Internet community.

Windows users ambushed by attack on fresh IE flaw

In a continuation from yesterday’s News Bit on the topic, this new zero-day Trojan is installing several malwares per drive-by browsing. Most of the compromised web sites dispensing the malware are located in China.

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Report: Trojans Comprised 70 Percent Of Malware in Q2

Between April and June of this year 70% of all malware are Trojans. Of the new malware, spyware accounted for 6.9%, adware rose to 16.37% (due to increase in rogue antivirus applications) and worms rose to 4.4%.

The top malware offender is Downloader.MDW, designed to download other malware.

The most affected country is Taiwan, with 33.63% of the computers infected by malware.

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What’s your Social Security number? Researchers say it’s surprisingly easy to figure out

Using data made public by the Social Security Administration on how they generate social security numbers, researchers have figured out a way to determine the first 5 numbers of ones social security number based on simple information that can be pulled from social networking sites. The success rate for determining the first 5 numbers increases the younger the person is and if born in less populated states.

Having a way to identify the first 5 numbers of a social security number makes figuring out the remaining 4 numbers possible through simple brute force. This now makes it financially feasible for the criminal community to throw money at determining such numbers, which may lead to identity theft on a grand scale.

Social security numbers are used by Americans as their identification number, or tax ID. From a record, credit, employment perspective, the social security number is what is used to uniquely identify American citizens.

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FAQ: How to vanquish mobile spam

US mobile users received over 1.1 million spam text messages in 2007. While US users might receive two SMS spam messages per year, people in China can receive up to 10 per day.

What can consumers do to control the SMS spam they receive? The following illustrates what the four major US mobile carriers are doing to help their customers combat spam.

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NASA fires up the ‘Interplanetary internet’

A protocol tolerant of the delays associated with communication in space has been developed to allow for such communications. DTN, or “Delay Tolerant Networking” took flight with the first DTN node residing in the International Space Station. Whereas TCP/IP assumes the sending and receiving PC are connected to the Internet for rapid interaction, DTN assumes there will be delays associated with temporary blockages due to solar storms or planets moving through transmission paths. As such DTN is designed more as a “store and forward” type of protocol where the message, upon arrival at the next node in the chain will stay until the next node is available to receive the transmission. Eventually the transmission will reach its intended destination.

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