2 Koreans nabbed for hacking Globe system

By: Hector Lawas - Journal online

AGENTS of the National Bureau of Investigation arrested two Koreans and a Filipino for allegedly hacking the international simple resale system of Globe Telecoms, resulting in revenue losses for the giant telecom firm and the government.

NBI director Nestor Mantaring identified the suspects as Gyoung Hwan Kim, Young Soo Yang and Adelan Adorel, all of Greenworld Plaza, President’s Avenue, BF Homes, Parañaque City.

The suspects were nabbed based on the complaint of Globe Telecoms which claimed to have incurred losses amounting to P30 million in just three months because of the trio’s illegal activity.

Police said the suspects placed long distance phone calls mostly to the United States and the Middle East. But because of their hacking equipment, the calls would only register as mere “local long distance calls.”

The NBI agents raided the suspects’ lair at the Geeco Marketing Ventures, Inc. and Whizresearch Inc. in Greenworld Plaza.

Hackers get hold of critical Internet flaw

SAN FRANCISCO -- Internet security researchers on Thursday warned that hackers have caught on to a "critical" flaw that lets them control traffic on the Internet.

An elite squad of computer industry engineers that labored in secret to solve the problem released a software "patch" two weeks ago and sought to keep details of the vulnerability hidden at least a month to give people time to protect computers from attacks.

"We are in a lot of trouble," said IOActive security specialist Dan Kaminsky, who stumbled upon the Domain Name System (DNS) vulnerability about six months ago and reached out to industry giants to collaborate on a solution.

"This attack is very good. This attack is being weaponized out in the field. Everyone needs to patch, please. This is a big deal."

DNS is used by every computer that links to the Internet and works similar to a telephone system routing calls to proper numbers, in this case the online numerical addresses of websites.

The vulnerability allows "cache poisoning" attacks that tinker with data stored in computer memory caches that relay Internet traffic to destinations. Agence France-Presse

'It was not a hacking incident'--PLDT

By Erwin Oliva - INQUIRER.net


MANILA, Philippines -- There was no hacking incident, a spokesperson of the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) told INQUIRER.net, as it reacted to news of several government websites it hosted being redirected to a website of a Philippine theme park.

“It was not a hacking incident. We had problems with the software managing these websites,” said Ramon Isberto, spokesperson of PLDT, as he explained how the website of the Department of Justice (DoJ), and dormant websites of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group of the Philippine National Police (CIDG-PNP), the National Bureau of Investigation, and the Information Technology and E-commerce Council -- now a defunct body -- were found to be redirected to the official site of the Enchanted Kingdom theme park in Laguna.

Isberto said that the DoJ website was part of a cluster of websites whose management software had gone bad.

“The DoJ website was in the same cluster as the Enchanted Kingdom website. There were problems in the configuration [of the system hosting these websites]," the PLDT spokesperson added.

Isberto said the other government websites are also part of the same cluster of websites.

PLDT has also given the DoJ a written explanation of what happened.

Earlier, an Internet security expert from TrendLabs Philippines and a director of the Philippine Computer Emergency Response Team agreed that the recent redirection of at least three government websites to the Enchanted Kingdom website could be due to a “network setup problem.”

As of Friday, the ITECC website was restored, while the PNP website has been taken down.

Government websites affected by the redirection were www.itecc.gov.ph, which is an old website of the defunct ITECC; the www.cidg.pnp.gov.ph, a dormant address of the Philippine National Police (PNP), and the www.doj.gov.ph, which was fixed immediately. All government websites were redirected to the official website of the Enchanted Kingdom, a popular theme park located in Sta. Rosa, Laguna.

The Enchanted Kingdom website is hosted by Infocom Technologies, a local Internet service provider owned by the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. The "itecc.gov.ph" domain is hosted by Infocom Technologies, a local Internet service provider owned by PLDT, a check on host of the domain name "itecc.gov.ph " revealed.

Infocom Technologies also appeared as host of the DoJ and the NBI websites.

Politics and profit set stage for Internet security disaster

The Internet is ripe for hacking chaos and rampant crime due to serious computer defense flaws, specialists told cyber security experts from around the world at a major conference here.

The experts who met at the Black Hat digital self-defense conference in Las Vegas also heard from US counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke, who blasted what he described as President George W. Bush's lack of interest in enhancing the nation's cyber security.

A dark secret is that the companies devoted to defending systems have "massive security problems" of their own and most react to attacks instead of predicting and preventing them, said Dinis Cruz of London-based Ounce Labs.

"The big question is will the perfect storm occur," Cruz told AFP.

"I wish a bunch of kids would just bring this thing whole down because it would really help us to understand the level of mess we are in."

Internet browsers can be used by hackers to get into computers and take control, sessions at Black Hat revealed.

Hackers are increasingly using software commonly used when sharing text, video and music files to hide and deliver malicious codes that infect machines.

"The industry is in a very reactive mode at the moment," Cruz said.

"A lot of the stuff we have here is quite immature because we don't have proper attackers. We are waiting for a new generation of attackers that can exploit our vulnerabilities."

Software developers are under pressure to quickly produce programs at low cost, making thwarting abuses by evil doers a low priority, according to security specialists.

One Black Hat attendee equated Microsoft's new Vista operating system to a fortresses with thick concrete walls and steels doors, and a defense program that was "a stupid security guard handing keys" to wily attackers.

"It is crazy to think of all the applications we depend on a lot of times have massive vulnerability," Cruz said.

"A lot of security providers add more problems to networks than they solve."

Clarke, who worked for both presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, said that the global economy could be shut down by hackers.

"We are building the global economy on a foundation of cyberspace 1.0 with a structure that has not changed since its creation," warned Clarke.

"We are still running code from vendors all over the world that is replete with errors."

Clarke said Bush cut funding for Internet security research and ignored a prepared cyber security plan.

"I handed it to him in the Oval office and he signed it, but I don't think he ever read it," Clarke said of a plan he recommended before quitting and becoming an author.

The Bush administration, financial institutions and much of the United States "don't get it" when it comes to cyber security, according to Clarke.

Since leaving government in 2003 Clarke has written three books: "Against All Enemies," a critical look at blunders in the US-led war on terror, a political thriller and a tech-heavy science fiction novel. He is also chairman of a risk management firm.