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What about Sun's Solaris sys-
tem, its closed source isn't it?
Sun's Solaris system is not as
closed as Microsoft. We show
it to a much wider range of
customers on routine source
licenses than Microsoft does.
My belief is that a source
license is something that cus-
tomers can routinely get, its
probably expensive but major
customers can get source
licenses to look at Solaris code.
There was an attempt to
open Solaris completely a few
years ago and some rather
complex patterns of owner-
ship stopped us from publish-
ing all of it in the late 1990s.
Security breach
forces closure of
company
Janteknology, a software dis-
tribuor recently closed busi-
ness after suffering an
internal security compromise.
Glen Miller, managing
director of Janteknology said
in a statement “The company
has suffered a major internal
security breach that among
other things involved the
removal and modification of
company records.”
Miller was unable to com-
ment further as investigations
are currently taking place.
In order to deal with exist-
ing backorders, Jantecknology
are restoring and validating a
number of records.
Large online
gamer paid
ransom to hacker
extortionists
Russian extortionists took
control of servers on a major
online gaming company
using a virus, and demanded
a ransom, which the corpo-
rate victim paid.
The hackers bypassed fire-
walls and other security sys-
tems to infect five servers from
Grafix Softech F.A. with a
virus, they then encrypted
vital data and demanded a
ransom in return for the key.
“These hackers were good, it
took something special for
them to break in” said Bill
Margeson, CEO of CBL Data
Recovery Technologies who
helped Grafix Softech recover
the data.
Grafix Softech, based in
Costa Rica, lost $75 000 daily
for eight days as a result of the
breach, which meant that vital
company data disappeared.
Margeson said that Grafix
were also under “intense pres-
sure from business relation-
ships.”
Even though the intruders
received the ransom and deliv-
ered the encryption key, data
could not be retrieved from
one key server containing a list
of consulting clients and details
for the operation of many gam-
ing sites.
“When the data was encrypt-
ed a large temp file was created
so encryption effectively delet-
ed the MS SQL database” said
Margeson. When Grafix
Softech complained to the
extortionists, they recommend-
ed using ndustrial software for
recovery, which failed to work.
“Because Grafix Softech
don’t work at the hex level, they
were misapplying products to
retrieve the data” said
Margeson so they summoned
in CBL, data recovery experts.
CBL examined the file struc-
ture of the Microsoft SQL
database, and wrote custom
software to piece together
signatures left from the file
structure of the database,
which led to the recovery of all
the data.
Margeson said: “This was a
well thought out and targeted
attack, the extortionists knew
who they needed to talk to.”
IDS — the new
firewall?
Catherine Everett
Until now, the high cost and
complexity of IDS/IPS prod-
ucts have meant they have
been deployed only by large
organizations with stringent
security requirements, accord-
ing to Jeff Wilson, executive
director of Infonetics Research.
But as companies of all sizes
begin to rely on the Internet
more and more, they are realis-
ing that their firewalls, although
widely deployed, are not 100%
effective and so are looking at
the next stage in how to protect
their perimeter security.
"Though growth in 2003
will be strong, the [IDS/IPS]
market will really take off in
2004 due to increased global
demand from customers of all
sizes, and innovations that will
make the technology easier to
use, more accurate and widely
available," explains Wilson.
A recent Infonetics study
dubbed "Network Technology
Adoption Forecasts, North
America 2003 and Europe
2003" indicates that, while
sales of IDS/IPS products hit
$382 million last year, by 2006
this figure is expected to leap
to $1.6 billion, a compound
annual growth rate of 42%.
Marcus Ranum, an inde-
pendent consultant, agreed
with the findings. "The IDS
market is about to explode,
with most organizations see-
ing their value now and just
trying to decide whether to
news
In Brief
US UNIVERSITY
HACKED
An intruder exploited a vul-
nerability in the University of
Texas administrative data
reporting system and stole
55200 records. A program
was written to bombard the
system with millions of social
security numbers. All SSNs
that matched any of the mil-
lions of security numbers in
the database were captured
along with other personal
information. The case is cur-
rently being investigated.
SECURITY ALERT ON
PERSONAL STORAGE
WEBSITES
Personal storage websites
could increase the threat of
industrial espionage warn
Websense, an employee
Internet management compa-
ny. Websites such as brief-
case.yahoo.com and
Hotdrive.com now number
1000 worldwide and 71% of
companies around Europe do
not have policies on the use of
such websites. Approximately
20% of company’s surveyed
by Websense knew of spyware
use within their organization.
budget for them and do it.
We'll only start to see them
really penetrating the data
centre and infrastructure
when they become cheap
enough, however, which
won't be for another few
years yet."By 2002, about 38%
of small, 48% of medium and
63% of large organizations
globally had already implement-
ed IDS systems, but this figure
is expected to grow to 62%,
83% and 92 % respectively by
2007.