USENIX Blog

Update on Google attack

It seems that early reports were wrong about the actual exploit used against Google and 33 other companies. The exploit code has appeared in the hands of many AV companies. It is an IE exploit and a zero-day.

Zero-day means that this was a previously unknown vulnerability, and as far as I can tell, there is no patch for it from MS as yet.

The second stage malware was a script used to insert a malicious DLL . This DLL, the third stage, is called Hydraq (by Symantec) and Roarur (by McAfee). This third stage provides remote access as well as hiding itself.

Google attacked via email

I seem to have become a prophet: the column I wrote for the December
2009 issue of ;login: focused on disabling scripting in Web browsers,
and through that, email readers as well, using NoScript. The big
news is this week is that Google has been hacked, along with 33 other
US companies (all Fortune 500) by China.

HotPar '10 Submissions Deadline: January 24

The submission deadline for the 2nd USENIX Workshop on Hot Topics in Parallelism (HotPar '10) is quickly approaching.

Please submit your work by 11:59 p.m. PST, January 24, 2010.

NSDI '10 Registration Now Open

Join us in San Jose, CA, February April 28–30, 2010, for the 7th USENIX Symposium on Network Design and Implementation.

Focusing on the design principles of large-scale networked and distributed systems, the NSDI '10 program includes 29 refereed papers representing some of the outstanding work in the area, with topics including cloud services, Web browsers and servers, datacenter and wireless networks, malware, and more.

USENIX FAST '10 Registration Now Open

Join us in San Jose, CA, February 23-26, 2010, for the 8th USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies (FAST '10).

USENIX ATC '10 Submission Deadline: January 11, 2010

The submisison deadline for the 2010 Annual Technical Conference (USENIX ATC '10) is quickly approaching.

Please submit your work by January 11, 2010.

USENIX TaPP '10 Submissions Deadline: December 14, 2009

The submissions deadline for the 2nd USENIX Workshop on the Theory and Practice of Provenance (TaPP '10) is approaching.

Please submit all work by December 14, 2009, 11:59 p.m. PST.

Tuning Up Your Linux Machines

Wednesday marked the beginning of the actual conference, as opposed to just the workshops and training sessions of the first few days. The attendance was much larger than earlier in the week, with people coming for the technical sessions and invited paper talks, and vendors have their booths set up to talk about their latest projects. As full as the schedule of the past few days have been, today it’s near the bursting point.

"Ahead in the Clouds" Lisa '09 Keynote by Werner Vogels

Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon.com, was the keynote speaker at this year's LISA conference. His keynote was entitled "Ahead in the Clouds".

One of Werner's goals in this talk was to level set the audience with regard to the term "Cloud Computing". He wanted to make sure we understood the reality today of cloud computing versus all the hype.

Live Stream of LISA '09 Technical Sessions

Check out the Live Stream of the LISA '09 Technical Sessions, sponsored by Solaris.

The full program can be found here.

LISA '09  is sponsored by USENIX and SAGE in cooperation with LOPSA and SNIA

Pages

Subscribe to USENIX Update