Security Paranoia

I am hearing so many cases of password theft through yahoo IM that it is alarming.

And guess what ! Interestingly 8 out of 10 such cases involved clicking on a link pointing to “GeoCities.com”

What is wrong with Geocities.com ?

Well, Geocities.com is owned by yahoo ( http://geocities.yahoo.com/ ). And I strogly feel that they should try to look into this mess and stop this craziness.

Why hackers like Geocities ?

• It is free to host pages as long as you don’t mind seeing Ads.
• Most likely they allow any type of file and content to be hosted on server ?? This can make big difference.

• This makes it easy for hacker to put malicious code and lure victims to click on it.

What Yahoo can do ?

• In my opinion, Yahoo can do lot. After all, it is their service and they own infrastructure.
• Yahoo should make MUCH stricter policy for content being hosted on geocities.
• They should also search all accounts for any type of malicious code in their account.

• How hard this can be ?
• For sake of security, if we are compelled not to take even a water bottle to airport, implementing account search policy should be piece of cake.
• Someone can argue that there can be privacy issues. Yes, may be. But looking at benefits, company like yahoo can surely implement it. After all, it is for security of all netizens.

Yahoo being such a large ( and old ) player in Internet economy, I believe that they owe internet community better security measures. Yahoo should be more responsible about security and better service.

• I am surprised that we have not seen any such measure from yahoo yet despite so much impact has been made.
• However, Yahoo has recently provided good feature called password theft protection. It is good start, but not enough. I expect more in terms of security from Yahoo.

– OR –

MAY BE…. Yahoo has deal with hackers ( on one side ) and anti-virus, anti-spyware companies ( on other side ) to provide infrastructure for spreading spyware and malware ? After all, it is business !

You tell me !

Links

• Google search on Yahoo IM virus

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Filed under Email Security, Password theft 

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I am hearing so many cases of password theft through yahoo IM that it is alarming.

And guess what ! Interestingly 8 out of 10 such cases involved clicking on a link pointing to “GeoCities.com”

What is wrong with Geocities.com ?

Well, Geocities.com is owned by yahoo ( http://geocities.yahoo.com/ ). And I strogly feel that they should try to look into this mess and stop this craziness.

Why hackers like Geocities ?

• It is free to host pages as long as you don’t mind seeing Ads.
• Most likely they allow any type of file and content to be hosted on server ?? This can make big difference.

• This makes it easy for hacker to put malicious code and lure victims to click on it.

What Yahoo can do ?

• In my opinion, Yahoo can do lot. After all, it is their service and they own infrastructure.
• Yahoo should make MUCH stricter policy for content being hosted on geocities.
• They should also search all accounts for any type of malicious code in their account.

• How hard this can be ?
• For sake of security, if we are compelled not to take even a water bottle to airport, implementing account search policy should be piece of cake.
• Someone can argue that there can be privacy issues. Yes, may be. But looking at benefits, company like yahoo can surely implement it. After all, it is for security of all netizens.

Yahoo being such a large ( and old ) player in Internet economy, I believe that they owe internet community better security measures. Yahoo should be more responsible about security and better service.

• I am surprised that we have not seen any such measure from yahoo yet despite so much impact has been made.
• However, Yahoo has recently provided good feature called password theft protection. It is good start, but not enough. I expect more in terms of security from Yahoo.

– OR –

MAY BE…. Yahoo has deal with hackers ( on one side ) and anti-virus, anti-spyware companies ( on other side ) to provide infrastructure for spreading spyware and malware ? After all, it is business !

You tell me !

Links

• Google search on Yahoo IM virus

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Filed under Email Security, Password theft 

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