Small Business Information Security Fundamentals

Today I read about a new DRAFT document published by NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) titled "Small Business Information Security: The Fundamentals". I must say that this is a great document and if you are a small business, please take a look at it. It attempts to explain in plain language some of Information Security's best practices.

If you've read Brian Krebs' blog about the increasing occurrence of small businesses being targets of money theft from Eastern European criminals, the stats in the NIST document's overview section really drives home the importance of Infosec for small business. These businesses are vital to our economy and unfortunately lack the resources of larger businesses who do invest in information security. If small businesses don't act to protect themselves, their customers or their employees, we're headed down a dangerous path.

Milw0rm offline again?

I haven't been able to get to Milw0rm yesterday or today. Anyone have a similar experience? Anyone have any news as to what's up? I know there was talk about the demise of the site in July, but I thought str0ke decided to keep the site up. If you have any info, please post a comment.

Thanks!

P.S. I did spell it with a zero, not the letter O. Thanks Blogger ;-)

Reports of MS09-039 in the wild

We have read in several places about a report of MS09-039 being actively exploited in the wild. Nothing has been verified, but according to the ISC and their DShield data, there has been a HUGE increase in port 42 being targeted. Looking at the graph, port 42 as the destination hovers around 1,000-2,000 targets a day normally. On the 17th of August, there were nearly 70,000 targets.

That's a 70x increase. Just a coincidence? I don't think so, but unfortunately this is our only fact so far. Hopefully someone can get a malware sample to add more credibility to the lone report of active exploitation.