Lost e-mails from Hotmail are back

Microsoft hat im offiziellen Windows Live Blog darauf aufmerksam gemacht, dass die Probleme mit dem E-Mail-Dienst Hotmail inzwischen behoben wurden. Über 17.000 Kunden des Angebots hatten seit dem 30. Dezember keinen Zugriff auf ihre Nachrichten.

Der Windows-Live-Entwickler Chris Jones erklärte, dass es ein Problem mit der Lastenaufteilung (Load Balancing) zwischen den Servern gegeben hat. Die zu Grunde liegende Ursache konnte ermittelt werden und bereits am 2. Januar konnten die für einige Nutzer verlorenen E-Mails wiederhergestellt werden. Für die Zukunft will man Maßnahmen ergreifen, um dieses Fehlverhalten zu vermeiden.

Im Verhältnis zu der Anzahl der Hotmail-Nutzer waren relativ wenig Personen betroffen. Dennoch entwickelte sich der Vorfall zu einer PR-Schlappe, da viele große Medien rund um den Globus über die Panne berichteten. Microsoft hatte zuvor ein großes Budget in Werbung für Windows Live-Angebote gesteckt, zu denen auch Hotmail gehört.

In den letzten Monaten hat sich zwischen Google und Microsoft ein harter Kampf um die Gunst der Anwender entwickelt. Vor allem Unternehmen sollen von den Vorteilen der Online-Dienste überzeugt werden. Probleme wie diese werden dann besonders kritisch betrachtet, da sie das Vertrauen in die jeweiligen Anbieter schmälern.

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Smartphones, Apple top 2011 crime targets

Security firm McAfee expects malicious activity in 2011 to target smartphones, URL shorteners, geolocation services like Foursquare, and Apple products across the board, according to a report released today.

"We've seen significant advancements in device and social-network adoption, placing a bulls-eye on the platforms and services users are embracing the most," Vincent Weafer, senior vice president of McAfee Labs, said in a release announcing the report. "These platforms and services have become very popular in a short amount of time, and we're already seeing a significant increase in vulnerabilities, attacks and data loss."

In other words, the security infrastructure surrounding popular new services and devices--and more importantly public awareness of potential threats that people may face when using them--may not be up to par with better-established technologies. Take URL shorteners, for example. Because it's so easy to mask longer URLs with them and because Twitter users have grown accustomed to clicking them without much thought, McAfee expects that they will continue to be targets for spam, scams, and viruses.

Social networks will remain hotbeds of malicious attacks, McAfee predicted, but geolocation services like Foursquare and Facebook Places will see new prominence. "In just a few clicks, cybercriminals can see in real time who is tweeting, where they are located, what they are saying, what their interests are, and what operating systems and applications they are using," McAfee noted. "This wealth of personal information on individuals enables cybercriminals to craft a targeted attack."

As for hardware, mobile devices (particularly those used on corporate networks), Internet TV platforms like Google TV, and devices running Apple operating systems are anticipated to be prime targets.

McAfee also said that the saga of WikiLeaks, the controversial classified-document repository that dominated headlines around the world late in 2010, is likely to spawn copycats in 2011: the security firm expects "politically motivated attacks" to be on the rise.

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Trojan will take over Android phones

A new and very sophisticated Trojan is hitting Android devices in China and endangering users worldwide.

Dubbed 'Geinimi', it can harvest large amounts of personal data on a user’s phone and send it to remote servers, says Lookout Mobile Security, describing it as 'the most sophisticated Android malware we’ve seen to date'.

It's also the first Android malware in the wild to display botnet-like capabilities, handing over control of the phone to a remote server.

Geinimi is turning up in repackaged versions of legitimate applications, mainly games, from third-party Chinese Android app markets. These include Monkey Jump 2, Sex Positions, President vs. Aliens, City Defense and Baseball Superstars 2010. Lookout says it hasn't seen any applications compromised by Geinimi in the official Google Android Market.

When a host application containing Geinimi is launched on a user’s phone, the Trojan runs in the background and collects user information including location coordinates and unique identifiers for the device (IMEI) and SIM card (IMSI).

At five minute intervals, Geinimi attempts to connect to a remote server using one of ten embedded domain names and transmit collected device information to the remote server.

"Geinimi’s author(s) have raised the sophistication bar significantly over and above previously observed Android malware by employing techniques to obfuscate its activities. In addition to using an off-the-shelf bytecode obfuscator, significant chunks of command-and-control data are encrypted," says Lookout.

"While the techniques were easily identified and failed to thwart analysis, they did substantially increase the level of effort required to analyze the malware."

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