Home

On:

Researchers studying potential security issues surrounding open-source computer programs used to analyze DNA have found that most common sequencing software is the subject of poor security practices, leaving such systems open to cyberattacks and exploits. While the researchers haven’t found any evidence of attacks made against DNA synthesizing, sequencing and processing services, they did find that it is possible to encode a computer virus into synthetic DNA that could conceivably infect the computer that is analyzing this altered genetic code.
read more

On:

An ancient computer virus has been turned into a nasty “double-infected” virus. Anti-virus software makers say some versions of the widespread computer virus Klez.h hides a mutation of a very destructive virus first seen in 1998 and known as Chernobyl or CIH. The Chernobyl virus variant automatically infects files and programs files on computers running Microsoft Windows.

“Klez is just another Windows program,” says Graham Cluley of the UK anti-virus firm Sophos. “[CIH] just infects the executable file, whereupon Klez then forwards itself around in a double infected state.”
read more

On:

The FBI is trying to get access to a massive database that contains the private communications and passwords of the victims of the Badtrans Internet worm. Badtrans spreads through security flaws in Microsoft mail software and transmits everything the victim types. Since November 24, Badtrans has violated the privacy of millions of Internet users, and the FBI would like to get hold of the information it has collected.
read more

On:

Four teenagers, aged 15 and 16, who created a computer virus in early December which infected computers via the internet worldwide, have been arrested in Israel. The high school students have confessed to creating and spreading the Goner Windows virus. An Israeli law passed in Israel in 1995 mandates sentences of up to five years for the creation and distribution of virus programs.
read more