National Satellites are they Hackable ...!

According to

" http://www.infiltrated.net/amishAttacks.html "

reported on 9th april

"Security experts are reporting today that Amish hackers equipped with reverse engineered VCIM's have hacked into Instar's vehicle satellite navigation systems and are extorting Instar."

while some witnessess were also reported saying

"It's horrible. I was headed down Main Street and my Garmin told me to turn right. 20 minutes later not only was I was late for my interview, I went from being in Colorado to driving down Fifth Avenue in New York City." stated a visibly shaken John McSmith.

The article which reports the incident also shows pictures of the INstar device showing altered text. Although the authenticity of such news is a question in in itself but IMHO it seems practical to a point that the hacked VCIM can change the behavior of that particular device but not the satellite transmission itself. I would be looking forward for the details if any are released from some reliable source.

Adobe Vulnerability takes a new turn

The new adobe vulnerability is now exploitable not only by reading the infected pdf file but also by at least three different methods using metadata which is used by windows to show file information. It turns out that adobe has a shell extension which get the file information. Security Researcher "Didier Stevens" have released a short video on his blog which shows how this vulnerability can be easily exploited in windows. The dangers associated with this vulnerability have leveraged the threat level using the JBIG2Decode exploit. Meanwhile a new exploit have also been released today which shows foxit pdf viewer (the alternative to adobe viewer) as the victim. The only tip that I can give you guys now is to only open files or should I say receive files from trusted sources.

The video and the original blog post can be found on the following links.
http://www.youtube.com/v/2poufBYBBoo&rel=1&fs=1&showsearch=0
http://blog.didierstevens.com/2009/03/04/quickpost-jbig2decode-trigger-trio/

Heartland Sniffer Hid In Unallocated Portion Of Disk

While I was surfing online today, this news was something really interesting.
“The sniffer malware that surreptitiously siphoned tons of payment card data from card processor Heartland Payment Systems hid in an unallocated portion of a server’s disk. The malware, which was ultimately detected courtesy of a trail of temp files, was hidden so well that it eluded two different teams of forensic investigators brought in to find it after fraud alerts went off at both Visa and MasterCard, according to Heartland CFO Robert Baldwin.”
“A significant portion of the sophistication of the attack was in the cloaking,” Baldwin said.
Payment security experts pretty much agreed that hiding files in unallocated disk space is a fairly well-known tactic. But it requires such a high level of access—as well as the skill to manipulate the operating system—that is also indicates a very sophisticated attack. One of those security experts—who works for a very large U.S. retail chain and asked to have her name withheld—speculated that the complex nature of the hiding place, coupled with the relatively careless leaving of temp files, could suggest a less-skilled cyberthief who simply obtained some very powerful tools.

The complete article can be found on http://www.storefrontbacktalk.com/securityfraud/heartland-sniffer-hid-in-unallocated-portion-of-disk/