daten writes A coalition of security companies has hit a sophisticated hacking group in China with a heavy blow. The effort is detailed in a report released today by Novetta. The coalition, which calls itself Operation SMN, detected and cleaned up malicious code on 43, 000 computers worldwide that were targeted by Axiom, an incredibly sophisticated organization that has been stealing intellectual property for more than six years. The group united as part of Microsoft’s Coordinated Malware Eradication (CME) campaign against Hikit (a.k.a. Hikiti), the custom malware often used by Axiom to burrow into organizations, exfiltrate data, and evade detection, sometimes for years. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Security Companies Team Up, Take Down Chinese Hacking Group
Google Drive is down, and it’s taken all of your docs with it. Users have been reporting outages since 11:20 , which is very annoying if you use Google Docs for workâlike all my coworkers and I do. Fingers crossed they fix it soon! Read more… 
The AP reports that American airplane passengers, squeezed by increasingly tight seating aboard planes, are lashing out, actually getting into in-flight fights over knee room: Three U.S. flights have made unscheduled landings in the past eight days after passengers got into fights over the ability to recline their seats. Disputes over a tiny bit of personal space might seem petty, but for passengers whose knees are already banging into tray tables, every bit counts. … Southwest and United both took away 1 inch from each row on certain jets to make room for six more seats. American is increasing the number of seats on its Boeing 737-800s from 150 to 160. Delta installed new, smaller toilets in its 737-900s, enabling it to squeeze in an extra four seats. And to make room for a first-class cabin with lie-flat beds on transcontinental flights, JetBlue cut the distance between coach seats by one inch. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
A team of recent graduates from North Carolina State are developing a new kind of nail polish that changes color when it’s exposed to date rape drugs. Just stirring a sketchy drink with a finger could let a woman know she’s being targeted for assault. Although a little odd, it does sound like a pretty good idea. Read more… 
Trailrunner7 writes The GameOver Zeus malware had a nice run for itself, making untold millions of dollars for its creators. But it was a run that ended with a multi-continent operation from law enforcement and security researchers to disassemble the infrastructure. Now researchers have identified a new variant of the Cridex malware that has adopted some of the techniques that made GOZ so successful in its day. Researchers at IBM’s X-Force research team have seen a new version of Cridex, which is also known as Bugat and Feodo, using some of the same techniques that GOZ used to such good effect. Specifically, the new strain of malware has adopted GOZ’s penchant for using HTML injections, and the researchers say the technique is nearly identical to the way that GOZ handled it. “There are two possible explanations for this. First, someone from the GOZ group could have moved to the Bugat team. This would not be the first time something like this has happened, which we’ve witnessed in other cases involving Zeus and Citadel; however, it is not very likely in this case since Bugat and GOZ are essentially competitors, while Zeus and Citadel are closely related. The second and more likely explanation is that the Bugat team could have analyzed and perhaps reversed the GOZ malware before copying the HTML injections that made GOZ so highly profitable for its operators, ” Etay Maor, a senior fraud prevention strategist at IBM, wrote in an analysis of the new malware. Read more of this story at Slashdot.