Friday, August 10, 2007

Daily Highlights

The Department of Homeland Security announced on Thursday, August 9, steps that will strengthen aviation security through uniform and consistent passenger prescreening against government watch lists. (See item 10)
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United Press International reports the Philadelphia metro area has unveiled a regional, interoperable, alert and information−sharing system expected to enable communication among emergency managers, key government officials, and first responders across the region. (See item 31)
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Information Technology and Telecommunications Sector

32. August 08, eWeek — Mandiant's free tool hunts for malware. Mandiant has released Mandiant Red Curtain, a free malware analysis tool aimed at helping security professionals evaluate files from potentially compromised computer systems. MRC examines executable files to determine how suspicious they are and calculates an overall threat score to establish whether a set of files should be examined further. The tool is aimed at helping security professionals responding to an incident.
Mandiant Red Curtain: http://www.mandiant.com/mrc
Source: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2168413,00.asp

33. August 08, InfoWorld — SpyProxy takes Web apps security fight to virtual sandbox. Faced with volumes of browser vulnerabilities and Web−based exploits designed to take advantage of the flaws, security researchers presented a new process for protecting users with execution−based malware detection at the ongoing Usenix Security Symposium in Boston on Wednesday, August 8. In a demonstration led by Alexander Moshchuk, a University of Washington (UW) graduate student who is part of a research team that has developed a tool that uses the technique for filtering out malicious programs, the expert pitched the use of "virtual sandboxing" as an effective means for testing Web applications for suspicious behavior before they reach end−users' browsers. Injected as a virtual machine that sits between an end−users' browser and a Website, UW's SpyProxy promises to download and test any application that the browser is directed toward in order to weed−out potential attacks. In a matter of seconds, the security program can effectively run and analyze any type of Web page or application to determine whether it contains the hallmarks of many threats, the researcher said.
Source: http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/08/08/spyproxy−execution _1.html