Brian Prince

Researchers at F-Secure have witnessed a jump in the amount of automatically-generated Twitter accounts being used by people pushing rogue antivirus. According to F-Secure, the Twitter accounts are being used to blast out tweets exploiting Twitter’s ‘Trending Topics’ – the microblogging service’s list of top 10 tweeted keywords. Others are copies of legitimate tweets. “This […]

Microsoft is telling IT pros to utilize its automated Fix IT tool to deal with an unpatched vulnerability in Server Message Block 2. The flaw in Server Message Block (SMB) 2 was publicly disclosed Sept. 7 and affects Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 and release candidates of Windows 7. When it was first found, researchers […]

Gartner is predicting the worldwide market for security software will jump 8 percent over last year, despite the economic slowdown. The analyst firm expects the market to total $14.5 billion in 2009. According to Gartner, roughly $6.5 billion of that amount will be in the United States, an 11 percent increase from 2008. The projections, […]

When it comes to fighting malware, researchers have to both keep their eyes on the present and foresee what the future may hold before the next threat is on their doorstep. While the majority of malware attacks stick to tried-and-true methods, malware authors are getting better at being stealthy and finding ways to fight back […]

Microsoft has filed five lawsuits targeting malicious online advertisers. The company filed the suits in King County Superior Court in Seattle. The suits allege that a group of individuals using the business names “Soft Solutions,” “Direct Ad,” “qiweroqw.com,” “ITmeter INC.” and “ote2008.info” used malvertisements to distribute malware or trick victims into downloading rogue antivirus. “Although […]

PandaLabs has uncovered an online service offering to hack Facebook accounts for a fee. But would-be customers may find out the joke is on them. According to PandaLabs, the service-which was discovered this week-offers to break into Facebook accounts in exchange for $100. But researchers at Panda have reported they have no evidence that the […]

Researchers at RSA, EMC’s security division, have uncovered a new phishing attack targeting online baking customers. Dubbed “Chat in the Middle” by the RSA FraudAction Research Lab, the attack starts out like a common phishing ploy to dupe bank customers into giving up their usernames and passwords by luring them to an ordinary phishing site. […]

Click Forensics has found an unusually large spike in click fraud traffic coming from a new botnet apparently eluding the filters of search engines, publishers and ad networks alike. Dubbed the “Bahama botnet,” the network of compromised computers is distributing malware while masking itself as a legitimate source of search advertising traffic. According to Click […]

The iPhone-Dev team has released a new tool to enable users to jailbreak and unlock Apple iPhone OS 3.1. With Pwnage Tool 3.1 for Mac OS X, users can jailbreak both iPhone 3G and the first editions of the iPhone and iPod Touch. The tool, however, does not support iPhone 3GS or the second or […]

Microsoft on Sept. 16 unveiled two new tools to help developers build better security into their applications. The tools are available for download for free, and are designed to help developers extend Microsoft’s SDL (Security Development Lifecycle) process into their organizations. The first of the tools is BinScope Binary Analyzer, which examines binaries to see […]

Google has acquired ReCAPTCHA, an open-source CAPTCHA service that the search engine giant will use to bolster security and its efforts to digitize books and newspapers. CAPTCHA technology is widely used to fight spammers by preventing them from using computers to automatically sign up for Webmail accounts or other online services. This is where ReCAPTCHA […]

IT security has less to do with bracing for the inevitable zero-day vulnerability than some outside the industry may think. Truth be told, the biggest threats facing users and organizations today are unpatched client-side applications and unsecure Web programs – that is the message of a sweeping study undertaken by Qualys, TippingPoint and the SANS […]