Eircom has announced that in December a number of company laptops were stolen. The laptops, which contain information of almost 7000 employees and customers were not encrypted.

Financial information, passport copies & driving licences comprise some of the data that was stored on the devices.

While there is currently no evidence that the information has been used fraudulently, in the right (or wrong as the case may be) hands, this kind of information could be a little goldmine for criminals.

Eircom have announced that they are currently reviewing encryption policies for mobile devices.

The websites of the Department of Justice and Finance suffered a DDOS attack by Anonymous last night. The attack was orchestrated through a number of twitter accounts affiliated with the Anonymous group. Messages from these accounts urged followers to engage in a Distributed Denial Of Service (DDOS) attack on the justice.ie and finance.gov.ie websites.

The reasoning behind these recent attacks are in response to the governments plans to reform the Irish copyright law, which is said to be the “Irish SOPA”.

It is also understood that the website of Sean Sherlock, who has proposed the law reform, is to come under attack at some stage today. An Irish supporter of Anonymous can be seen below tweeting the website to the group, along with a recommendation to add the website state.ie to the list of targets, which he later realised was not a government affiliated website.

The following is an extract from a very concise example of how to secure your Linux Computer using IPTables while allowing inbound SSH connections from only trusted hosts.

Okay, so this post will be brief but to the point. Today I needed to lock down a machine I administer so the only inbound connections which were allowed were SSH connections from trusted hosts. I’m using Debian so this will obviously work for other Debian based distros such as Ubuntu, Linux Mint etc.

Assuming you’re running a current version of Debian or a derivative then iptables will already be present on your system. One of the first things to take note is that iptables won’t hold its ruleset during a reboot so to start off this tutorial the first thing I ensured was that the ruleset will be restored when the machine is rebooted. So, as root I edited /etc/rc.local and before the exit line i added /etc/iptables-init.

The full article can be read on Jerry Walsh’s Blog located here:  http://jerrywalsh.org/2012/howto-secure-your-linux-box-with-iptables-0112.html

Permanent TSB customers are currently being targeted by a phishing scam that attempts to steal log-in information and passwords to the banking website.

If you happen to receive an email similar to the one below, do not respond or click on any links in the email.

Dear Esteem Customer

Due to multiple attempt error while trying to login in to your online Permanent TSB Online Account. We believed that someone other than you is trying to access your Account For security reasons, we have temporarily Flagged your account and your access to online banking will be restricted until this issue is solved.

Update your Permanent TSB Account now to enjoy the benefits of online banking and safer online banking experience.

Click here to proceed

Thanks for taking the time to learn about our upcoming plan for Enhance Online Security – it’s one more way that Permanent TSB online banking can makes your online banking experience better..

Irish Life & Permanent plc is a limited liability company registered in Dublin under No. 222332. The company’s registered office is: Irish Life Centre, Lower Abbey Street, Dublin 1.

Closer investigation of the email shows that the link actually points to a Brazillian website.

<a href="http://www.cspconsultoria.eng.br/logs/easyweb.php">

The email which we investigated comes from an insecure mail server run by an Australian company.

Received: from User (mail.blighcapital.com.au [59.167.233.41])

Recent posts on the Sony Music Ireland website suggest that the website has been hacked. On the posts it claims that:

- Two members of the Dublin band The Crypt have comitted suicide

- Scientists have proven tha the X-Factor is for stupid people

- Singer Rebecca Black has married R. Kelly

The website now directs to the Facebook page of Sony Music Ireland which would suggest that an investigation is underway as to how this might have happened.

It is not yet known when the website will come back online and Sony Music Ireland have yet to make a comment.

Mobile phone users have been receiving text messages that claim to be from AIB Bank

The text appears to come from sender: AIB

The message is as follows:

“Your AIB code card has been locked for security reasons due to recent fraud attempts. please visit http://www.aib-security.org to update your account”

If you receive a message like this do not visit the website as it is fraudulent and not operated by AIB Bank.

Although not confirmed, IT Security Consultant Alan O’Regan from Secured.ie reports that the fraudsters are using popular national websites like donedeal.ie to harvest Irish mobile numbers.