Halloween is not a big deal down under. Certainly when I was a kid, nobody celebrated halloween, but these days it is starting to pop up more and more. What does Halloween have to do with security you ask? Well it seemed quite apt that on Halloween night I saw this article from computerworld on how 48% of surveyed companies plan to run XP post Microsoft end-of-support in 2014.

Now if that isn't scary I don't know what is! While I can understand the pain in the need to to test applictions, run a pilot group, train users in a new interface and finally roll out a new desktop OS, I suspect it pales in comparison to getting your desktop fleet pwned by the first never-to-be-patched-in-your-OS vulnerability on April 9th 2014.

Don't get me wrong. I liked XP. It did what was needed and was a solid OS. It was rock solid enough to make it's successor, Vista, look like crap. I still have it running on one machine at home. But Windows 7 is no Vista. IMO it's worth the switch. Anyway by 2014 I doubt I'll even still be using Windows 7, (with plans for Windows 8 in 2012) let alone a 13 year old OS!

I don't care how much you 'like it', continuing to use WinXP post april 2014 for your desktops is just asking for trouble. Think about it.... a 13 year old OS. That's akin to using Windows 95 in 2008. Or continuing to use Windows 98 until next year.

Now that's scary!

Unisys have released their latest security index reports which also have a break out section for Australia. While this report covers far moer than InfoSec (it includes items such as terrorism/national defence, health and financial security) there are sections on Internet Security, shopping & banking online and computer security (viruses and spam).

From their summary:

• Six out of 10 (58%) Australians never secure their mobiles, PDAs or smartphones by using, and regularly changing, a password or PIN. Only 18% say they always secured their mobile device
• Young Australians are protecting their identities online by limiting the information they post on social networking sites with 70% of 18-34 year olds saying they do it always, compared with only 44% of those aged 50+
• The top two areas of concern for Australians are ID theft related: Unauthorised access to/misuse of personal information (56%) and other people obtaining/using credit card/debit card details (55%)

Australians are ending the year more relaxed than they started. The overall level of concern on key security issues, tracked by the Unisys Security Index, stands at 115 out of 300, down 8 points compared to April 2010. This reflects a drop in concern for all four areas of security with the biggest fall recorded for national security which has an index of 110 down 11 points since April.

Things have been quiet here at the Circus, as work and Uni have been in high gear alongside preparing for the CISM exam.

I will hopefully be back on a regular blogging schedule soon, in the meantime here is a gem from reddit.com:
Oh dear.

Symantec Education have posted some pretty good videos to help explain internet nasties to non-technical people:

#1 Phishing
#2 Botnets
#3 Cybercrime Underground
#4 Drive-By Downloads
#5 Misleading Applications
#6 Denial of Service Attacks
#7 Pests on your PC
#8 Losing your Data
#9 Net Threats

They're quick and easy to watch without being too heavy on the marketing.

Richard pointed out that the ever-amusing xkcd has a cartoon today that relates to the point I was making in an earlier post (except the bit about google turning evil...didn't that happen already?)

Oh the irony...

HackisWhack...hacked!

'nuff said.

It's been a busy time under the Security Circus Big Top of late which has led to a distinct lack of blogging.

But what busy time it has been in the InfoSec world! What with Intel buying McAfee for almost $8 billion and Snoop Dog declaring "Hack is Whack!" (which is how the cool kids, in this case Symantec Norton and Snoop, say "please don't commit cybercrimes").

It's been a tumultuous time here down under, with a deadlocked parliment after a recent Federal Election meaning we're in Governmental limbo which must somehow be the cause of the recent week of system outages amongst financial institutions such as the Commonwealth Bank, ANZ Bank and not to be outdone, Westpac. I can only assume the National Australia Bank (or 'NAB' as they prefer to be called these days) will have an outage tomorrow, as the 'big four' banks like to do everything together*. Not to be left out, the Australian Tax Office (ATO) also has a minor outage today. Whatever happened to testing patches? Hmmm.

Time fo' me to bounce off to my crib with my homeys and bust some phat cyphers to win that grand prize and meet Snoop!

Waitaminute.... "2 tickets to Snoop concert, meet his mgmt/agent, Toshiba Laptop"

Meet his mgmt/agent?

Weak? fo'shizzle!

*for the non-Australians, these four major banks have been accused of interest rate collusion in the past...