Brian Prince

A Website operated by security firm Symantec was hacked – giving an attacker a sneak peak at sensitive customer data. The Romanian hacker known as Unu, who earlier this year uncovered a hole in a Website run by Kaspersky Lab, exploited a blind SQL injection problem to get his hands on clear-text passwords associated with […]

Consumers may have concerns about shopping online during the holidays, but that is not going to keep many of them away from their computers. In a survey by Sunbelt Software, 90 percent of the more than 650 respondents said they plan to shop online, despite the fact that many (56 percent) were concerned about security. […]

The so-called “Godfather of Spam” was among four people sentenced today in federal court in Detroit for involvement in a stock fraud scheme that leveraged on a virulent spam campaign. Alan M. Ralsky, 64, of West Bloomfield, Mich., was sentenced to 51 months in prison for conspiring to commit wire fraud, mail fraud and violate […]

When, oh when, will it be safe to view Internet porn? All jokes aside, on Nov. 23 AVG Technologies reported a new worm targeting Facebook users. The worm spreads by putting an alluring picture of a woman on the profile pages belonging to people it infects. The picture will also appear in the person’s News […]

Check Point Software Technologies has acquired FaceTime Communications’ application classification and signature database to “add security controls for over 50,000 Web 2.0 widgets and more than 4,500 Internet applications,” Check Point announced Nov. 23. The acquisition, made for an undisclosed sum, is meant to bring more granular controls over applications into Check Point’s product line. […]

Researchers at Symantec have uncovered another worm aimed at jailbroken iPhones. Like the well-publicized Ikee worm, the recently discovered malware targets jailbroken iPhones running SSH (Secure Shell) and using the default password of “alpine.” However, unlike Ikee, which merely changed victims’ iPhone backgrounds to a picture of 1980s pop singer Rick Astley, this worm can […]

Proof-of-concept code for an attack targeting old versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer has made its way online. According to Symantec, someone posted the code Nov. 20 to the Bugtraq mailing list. The code targets a flaw tied to how Internet Explorer (IE) uses cascading style sheet ( CSS) information. CSSis used in many Web pages […]

Microsoft has confirmed the existence of a zero-day bug in Internet Explorer 6 and 7. Proof-of-concept attack code for the flaw was posted Nov. 20 to the Bugtraq mailing list. The flaw is tied to the way IE uses CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) information. According to Microsoft, the company is looking into how to best […]

Microsoft unveiled an embryonic version of Internet Explorer 9 at its Professional Developers Conference this week, touching off a round of speculation about what the browser will entail feature-wise. From a security perspective, Microsoft has sought to make strides with each version of Internet Explorer. IE 7, for example, introduced a phishing filter; IE 8 […]

Three men have been charged by federal authorities for redirecting traffic for Comcast.net last year to sites under the trio’s control. According to the FBI, Christopher Allen Lewis, 19, of Newark, Del., Michael Paul Nebel, 27, of Kalamazoo, Mich., and 20-year-old James Robert Black Jr. of Tumwater, Wash., were part of a cyber-gang known as […]

Microsoft researchers uncovered a flaw in the Google Chrome Frame plug-in for users of Internet Explorer. According to Google, which patched the problem Nov. 18 with an update, the vulnerability could be exploited to bypass cross-origin protections. The plug-in-which injects Google Chrome’s rendering engine into Internet Explorer-has been a source of controversy between Microsoft and […]

The cyber-underworld is highly specialized, with the malware authors and purveyors at one end, and the cash out fraudsters responsible for laundering loot from compromised accounts on the other end. RSA, EMC’s security division, recently took a long look at another side of the cyber-crime business. Researchers focused on a reshipping operation dubbed “Air Parcel […]