Products

• Technology news: How your data can get loose

  
  01 December 2008
  
  LOCKING up personal data is like putting a lock on your front door: It may deter some people, but professionals will break a window.

  If they really want to get in, they'll resort to more violent entries such as tunneling through the floor, smashing the walls or chopping a hole in the ceiling.

  Nothing's different in cyberspace — except that the chances of getting caught are lower than in the physical world. In some countries, cyber-attacks aren't even illegal. And to make matters worse, it can be done remotely and hit many more victims with a single blow.

  It's an odd bit of protection for the criminals: If a hacker is based in country that doesn't make data snatching illegal, then he or she can't be prosecuted even if they prey on people elsewhere, notes John Stewart, chief security officer at Cisco Systems.

  "Even if (an attack) violates the victim's law, it may not be illegal where it was done," he said.

  That means protecting yourself — your identity, your company's data, even your health — becomes an imperative.

  Unusual locations

  As more devices rely on software, malicious code has crept into surprising places.

  Buyers of Insignia electronic picture frames, for instance, got more than they bargained for last Christmas: the frames came pre-infected with a virus. Retailer Best Buy recalled the frames, but the damage was done. The good news is, it could have been worse.

  "The number of attack vectors and techniques continue to multiply," says Josh Corman, principal security strategist at IBM.

  "No matter how good your perimeter defenses are, as soon as someone uploads pictures of their kids and their grandkids you could have a hardware-based Trojan in a USB."

  New hacks

  Significantly more dangerous is the possibility of infecting medical devices. MIT has been researching a piece of malicious code embedded into pacemakers.

  "Imagine what would happen if you suddenly shut down all the pacemakers at the G8 Summit," Mr Corman said.

  "There is a whole market for certified, pre-owned technology that comes pre-infected. It's a very attractive, bottoms-up infection method."

  Conspiracy-minded technology developers have long sounded the alarm about technology backdoors — ways into data stored on devices that buyers never knew existed.

  Apple confirmed last summer that there is a backdoor for the iPhone that allows Apple to remove illegally downloaded programs whenever it chooses.

  That measure helps Apple protect intellectual property, but given the complex global supply chain of parts that go into most products, unknown backdoors created by companies with unknown backgrounds and connections may pockmark final systems.

   

  (news.com.au)