Public bodies and organisations should really stop using USB sticks for important data. In fact, such bodies should not allow their staff to take anything out of offices, for fear it might get stolen, lost, dropped or just left behind somewhere. As in fact, a USB stick recently was – dropped that is.

A member of the public found the USB on a pavement in Manchester, not far from the police station. When the USB was plugged in, the man found over 2,000 pages of unencrypted data with anti-terrorist training manuals and sensitive information on it. It also contained details of police personnel, which could have been used by terrorists to target officers who were involved in anti-terror fields.

Sad as it is to say, IT security just isn’t what it used to be!

A new cyber-scam is causing security experts to warn the general public. The scam involves criminals using iTunes accounts and PayPal to steal from people. People are increasingly reporting incidents of theft and Apple is, as usual, keeping quiet despite the huge threat to data security.

Hackers are gaining access to the usernames and passwords of iTunes members and then charging large amounts to the victim’s PayPal account. PayPal has spoken up to say that any unauthorised payments will be refunded to people.

IT security experts Symantec have just released the MessageLabs Intelligence Report for August which points to the UK being the fourth worst country in the world for spam output.

Since April, Symantec has discovered that the UK has doubled its levels of spam. So the UK alone is responsible for around 4.5% of all the spam in the world. The only other countries that produce more spam than us are India, Brazil and the United States.

It isn’t just Symantec that has noticed this fact either – last month, a Sophos report also attributed the UK with massive amounts of spam.

Zurich Insurance is once again in the media spotlight – and for all the wrong reasons. Back in August 2008 the South African arm of the well-known insurance company apparently misplaced an unencrypted backup tape containing personal customer information and the incident wasn’t found out by Zurich Insurance for a whole year. This caused a massive media storm and notice by the Financial Services Authority.

Now, Zurich Insurance has just been handed the largest fine ever given by the Financial Services Authority – a huge £2.28 million. The fine was given after it was revealed that Zurich had lost the personal details of over 46,000 customers who could now be exposed to burglary and fraud. All of this after the 2008 incident as well! Zurich said after the last time that it highlighted its need for better data security – however, not much seems to have been done to improve it!

Researchers and data security experts from the Georgia Tech Research Institute have warned the public that passwords should be at least twelve characters long in order to be effective and protect data. If not, say the experts, they can be cracked by using a graphics card.

By using the graphics cards as a supercomputer in order to crunch the numbers, hackers can identify short passwords simply by using the brute power of the graphics cards. However, the researchers have found that it doesn’t really work with passwords that are over twelve characters in length.

Virgin Media, the third largest internet service provider in the UK, has started a new initiative which aims to help its customers with their IT security.

The initiative will see Virgin Media send letters to any of its customers whose computers are part of a botnet, advising them on what action to take and what IT security they should download for free. Virgin will commission companies to find out which of its customers are at risk.

Virgin Media already has letters ready to send out to its infected customers and the company has said that it plans to expand the campaign if the customer response is good.

A new Facebook bug is making the rounds, once again causing people to complain about the lack of IT security on the popular internet site.

The new bug is located in the login to the social networking site. It allows hackers to match hidden email addresses with people’s names. So, if the hacker wants to find someone on the site – which has 500 million users – the bug can return their email address, name and profile picture even if their account settings are all set to private.

All Facebook users are vulnerable to this bug and there’s nothing they can do…except possibly delete their account.

IT security experts have detected a new Trojan that only targets Android OS smartphones. The malicious application is a Trojan-SMS known as Trojan-SMS.AndroidOS.FakePlayer.a and according to security experts Kaspersky Lab, the Android Trojan-SMS has infected quite a few mobiles already.

The new Android Trojan is disguised as a media player application for Android-based smartphones. Once the application is downloaded, smartphone users are asked to install a +13KB file and once this file is installed, the Trojan-SMS is on the user’s mobile. The Trojan then sets about secretly sending SMS messages to premium rate numbers, lining the criminal’s pockets.

Many Gulf states have now threatened to ban the BlackBerry mobile services due to law and order and security issues. This is because RIM, maker of the BlackBerry mobile, encrypts the BlackBerry data and sends it offshore for data security and privacy purposes. However, Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia want access to the data which will allow them to keep a watch out for criminal activity.

But, let us considerfor just a moment, what the Gulf states may mean by criminal activity. Things such as political debate, criticisms and protests are all taboo subjects which are rarely discussed for fear of reprisals – and then along came the BlackBerry and all of a sudden, more and more people were daring to question the accepted order. Political and human rights activists grew.

Now though, activists say that the proposed ban may have been caused in part by growing political criticism from the masses and growing awareness of their human rights. RIM’s capitulation means that human rights activists are now back to square one – looking for a way to inform people without the authorities finding out.

According to the Federal Office for Information Security in Germany, the iPad, the iPod Touch and the iPhone mobiles have massive security flaws that could become a serious problem for Apple sometime in the near future.

The German agency has said that it has detected two severe security flaws in the iOS, weak points that Apple currently has no patch for. According to the government agency, opening a manipulated PDF or website using these flaws can allow cyber criminals to spy on passwords, emails, phone calls and all other manner of private information and communications. Although these weaknesses haven’t been exploited yet, they will be soon, according to the IT security agency.