Network Security News

Microsoft has warned customers that their financial data such as credit card information may have been compromised by hackers who attacked the company's online store in India earlier this month.

The company had earlier described the hack, in which user names and passwords had been leaked, as a "limited compromise". The site which is run by a third-party service provider has been criticized for bad security practices, such as saving data in plain text.

The store, which was defaced by hackers who claimed to be Chinese, is still unavailable. The hackers also released images of what appeared to be lists of users' names and passwords.

"Upon further detailed investigation of the third-party service provider managing Microsoft Store India, Microsoft has determined that financial information may have been exposed for some online store customers," the company said in a statement on Tuesday. "We have notified all potentially impacted customers and have provided additional guidance and resources to help protect their accounts," it added.

India has long-standing border disputes with China and Pakistan, and the friction is reflected on social networks, and in hacks of websites on both sides of the borders, including a high-profile hack of the website of India's Central Bureau of Investigation.

The hackers of the Microsoft website, who called themselves EvilShadow Team, said they wanted to get attention from Microsoft, and put up an image of China's flag on the altered main page. [ Learn More ... ]

Cloud technology is emerging as a viable option for companies that want to cut costs, increase agility or augment their own IT resources without building out new infrastructure -- or all of the above. But deciding which type of service is the best fit for your specific needs and ensuring the new cloud offerings play nice with your existing application mix is a challenge, to say the least. More companies are running head-on into these challenges nonetheless. A study published last year by PricewaterhouseCoopers found that 41 percent of security and IT respondents said their organizations have already implemented cloud computing, most going with SaaS offerings. To plot your cloud strategy, analysts and other experts say you should start by looking at your own needs, then work outward to see how cloud platforms, products and vendors can help. Pay heed to fundamentals -- the why, what, and how of your own situation -- by following a 3-step process: Assess your needs and goals, Set your application strategy, Identify challenges. Then you'll be better prepared to see how well today's industry offerings match up. Assess Needs and GoalsWhy do you want to make a move? Cutting or conserving costs is an obvious starting point."Probably the biggest challenge for CIOs is the facilities side of our business, all the switches and servers and routers and storage for the data centers; the thickness of all that within our own facilities, and the cascading costs that go along," says Mike Lucas, CIO for Hogan Lovells law firm. "There are opportunities to do this differently and benefit, especially now that we have greater market penetration by providers and the economies of scale start taking effect."The Betty Mills Company, an online retailer of office supplies and janitorial products, decided to move to the cloud rather than spend more than $100,000 for a data center upgrade. IT director Vlad Shalit said the fully redundant, 20-plus server configuration was designed to run at about 60 percent capacity, leaving headroom for unexpected spikes, such as when the swine flu epidemic hit. [ Learn More ... ]

If you want to be able to access your files from any device and easily share them with others, plenty of action is coming on that front. In the last few days, Dropbox and Box both announced they’re enhancing their cloud offerings and Microsoft and Apple are fanning the flames of user desire by giving sneak peeks at upcoming functions in their online storage services.Dropbox announced a new feature that automatically uploads full-size copies of your photos to its cloud storage service whether you’re on a Mac, Windows PC, or Android phone. Compatibility with iOS devices is coming soon.In response, venture capitalist Bill Gurley wrote an effusive post on his blog calling Dropbox a “major disruption.”Join the CrowdWhile it may slick to automatically upload photos and auto-sync your files to the cloud and across your devices, Dropbox is nonetheless operating in a very crowded space. What's more, what it offers to users for free -- only 2GB of storage with another 3GB thrown in to accommodate photo uploads -- could be considered stingy, especially considering a competitor’s recent announcement.For the next month, Box is giving Android users 50GB of free online storage. While the free offering won’t automatically sync files from your desktop to the cloud, 50GB is generous storage, even if you have to upload files manually. [ Learn More ... ]