Brian Prince

Minnesota’s Star Tribune newspaper can add its name to the list of organizations to be hit by a malicious Web advertisement. The ad, which came from a third-party advertising network, sought to rope victims into downloading rogue anti-virus. According to the Star Trib, the culprit was an unauthorized Web advertisement that was “slipped into the […]

“The Federal Trade Commission has notified almost 100 organizations that personal information, including sensitive data about customers and/or employees, has been shared” from their computers via peer-to-peer networks, the FTC said in a release Feb. 22. “In the notification letters, [PDF] the agency urged the entities to review their security practices”-as well as the practices […]

Intel has acknowledged it was targeted in a “sophisticated” cyber-attack in January, but has not officially linked the incident to a broad attack on Google and other companies. The company disclosed the attack in its annual 10-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Though Intel stated the attack happened “around the same time” as […]

U.S. analysts have reportedly traced the programming code at the center of the cyber-attack on Google back to its author. According to the Financial Times, the code was created by a Chinese “freelance security consultant.” The consultant, who is not a full-time government worker and is believed not to have taken part in the actual […]

Data warehousing vendor ParAccel is putting an emphasis on high-performance analytics in the upcoming version of its database appliance. According to the company, when it releases ParAccel Database Version 2.5 in the second quarter of 2010, it will be armed with a number of enhancements designed to improve performance. For starters, ParAccel’s advanced query optimizer, […]

The FBI is reportedly investigating a Pennsylvania school district for possible federal law violations in light of a lawsuit filed by the parents of a high school student. According to multiple media reports, the FBI is probing accusations made against the Lower Merion School District by Michael and Holly Robbins of Penn Valley, Pa. The […]

When NetWitness uncovered the now-notorious Kneber botnet, the culprit of attack had a familiar name-Zeus. The Zeus Trojan, also known as Zbot, is one of the popular pieces of malware on the market, selling for a few hundred dollars to several thousand. In the case of Kneber, the Trojan made its way from hacker forums […]

Investigators have uncovered a link between two schools in China and the notorious Aurora attacks that victimized Google and dozens of other companies, according to a news report from The New York Times. Citing sources close to the investigation, The Times reported the attacks, which were aimed at stealing trade secrets and computer codes and […]

Microsoft has confirmed that the Blue Screen of Death issue reported last week on Windows machines is caused by a rootkit. According to Microsoft, Windows systems infected with Alureon were hit with Blue Screen of Death errors that prevented computers from booting after the user downloaded Microsoft patch MS10-015. “The restarts are the result of […]

Researchers at NetWitness have uncovered a 75,000-strong botnet of systems infected with the notorious Zeus Trojan. But perhaps even more notable than its size is the data that it is targeting. The botnet, which has touched 2,500 organizations throughout the world and been dubbed “Kneber” due to a username linking the infected systems, seeks to […]