Laptop staysin this case

Are you tired of having to drag out your notebook every time you go through airport security? Well, Case Logic has a solution to that misery. The US transportation Security Administration (TSA) now allows travelers with Case Logic's Security Friendly cases to pass through security checkpoints without removing their laptop for individual inspection, helping travelers get through security lines at a faster pace. These Security Friendly cases isolate the laptop computer so x-ray screeners have an unobstructed view of the laptop and can inspect it quickly and easily.

To help ease what can already be a hectic security process, Case Logic now offers two collections of Security Friendly solutions: laptop cases that isolate the laptop computer in an individual compartment, and laptop sleeves that still require removal from a traveler’s carry on, but do not require removal of the laptop. The sleeves help protect the laptop and their bright colors make it more difficult for the notebook to be “accidentally” picked up by another passenger during the screening process.

Anti-theft tech for laptops

Lenovo will turn to Intel Anti-Theft Technology in an effort to help customers address the growing demand for notebook protection and security among business users. Lenovo's next-generation ThinkPad notebook PCs, scheduled for release later this year, will include innovative built-in security capabilities based on Intel Anti-Theft Technology. This new hardware-based security technology will allow customers to remotely disable access to end-user data, or disable the PC, if the notebook is stolen or lost.

Hackers try new methods

The Sophos Security Threat Report examining cybercrime in the first half of 2008 noted that most attacks are now designed to try and out-fox traditional security systems such as e-mail scanning. The first half of 2008 has seen an explosion in threats spread via the web, the preferred vector of attack for financially motivated cybercriminals. On average, Sophos detects 16,173 malicious web pages every day — or one every five seconds. This is three times faster than the rate seen during 2007.

Over 90 percent of the web pages that are spreading Trojan horses and spyware are legitimate websites, some belonging to household brands and Fortune 500 companies, that have been hacked through SQL injection. SQL injection attacks exploit security vulnerabilities and insert malicious code into the database running a website. Companies whose websites have been struck by such an attack often clean up their database, only to be infected again a few hours later. Users who visit the affected websites risk having their computer taken over by hackers, and their personal information stolen by identity thieves.

Sophos has identified that the number one host for malware on the web is Blogger (Blogspot.com), the blog publishing system owned by Google, which allows computer users to make their own websites easily at no charge. Hackers both set up malicious blogs on the service, and inject dangerous web links and content into innocent blogs in the form of comments. Blogspot.com accounts for two percent of all of the world's malware hosted on the web. There is also a trend for hackers and spammers to take advantage of Web 2.0 websites such as Facebook and LinkedIn.

Although most attacks are now taking place via infected websites, e-mail continues to present some danger. Attacks via e-mail file attachments have diminished in 2008. Only one in every 2,500 e-mails examined in the first six months of 2008 was found to contain a malicious attachment, compared to one in 332 in the same period of 2007. Corporate executives have been put at risk during the first six months of 2008 with targeted malware, designed to infect individuals at specific corporations rather than the Internet community at large. In April, there was a specifically targeted malware campaign e-mailed to CEOs of various companies, all pretending to be subpoenas from US federal courts, trying to frighten hand-picked recipients into opening the dangerous attachment.

One last trend to consider on the threat horizon is spammers going mobile. According to the Internet Society of China, an astonishing 353.8 billion spam messages were sent to the country's mobile phone users in the last year - with almost 440,000 formal complaints in June 2008 alone. The problem is smaller elsewhere in the world, but Sophos has identified SMS spam campaigns that have succeeded in clogging up phone lines in the US and Europe.