Brian Prince

Microsoft released five critical security bulletins Sept. 8 to cover issues in Microsoft Windows that company officials said could allow hackers to remotely execute code. None of the vulnerabilities are known to be under attack at this time. Still, two of the bulletins address vulnerabilities that have been given the highest possible rating on Microsoft’s […]

It began with an e-mail sent to an employee at an energy company, and ended with a security breach that exposed critical systems to outside control. This is an-all-too common scenario, and just one example of the types of threats targeting not only critical infrastructure but organizations generally. The attack referred to above happened at […]

From Valentine’s Day to Independence Day, pretty much all the holidays this year have had at least one thing in common — the Waledac botnet. In a new paper (PDF) and a series of blog posts, Symantec researcher Gilou Tenebro offers a peek into what has made Waledac one of the most active botnets today. […]

Microsoft officials are reporting limited attacks targeting a zero-day vulnerability in the FTP service in Internet Information Services. The IIS vulnerability warning follows the release of new exploit code that can be used to create a DoS (denial of service) condition on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 without requiring Write access. Also, a new […]

Why take one when you can have a baker’s dozen? Unfortunately, we are talking about infected files and not doughnuts. According to security company ESET, the average compromised machine is home to 13 infected files as well as malicious programs from three different malware families. ESET based its findings on scans of more than a […]

Microsoft is prepping five critical security bulletins for the Patch Tuesday release Sept. 8. All five are classified as remote code execution vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows. The bulletins cover various editions of the operating system, ranging from Windows 2000 to Windows Server 2008. Though Microsoft offered few details regarding the bulletins, the company did say […]

Microsoft is downplaying a SQL Server security flaw that could be exploited by someone with administrative privileges to see users’ unencrypted passwords. The vulnerability was discovered last year by database security vendor Sentrigo when one of their researchers noticed that the unique string of their personal password was visible in memory in SQL Server. Since […]

Apple is pushing out an older, vulnerable version of Adobe Flash Player with its “Snow Leopard” operating system upgrade, according to Sophos. Snow Leopard, aka Mac OS X 10.6, hit the streets Aug. 28 with much fanfare about promised performance improvements. Apple also generated some buzz by including a malware scanner in the mix to […]

Security vendor Marshal8e6 is sporting a new name and a new bag of integrated products bringing its technology together with technology from recently acquired Avinti. The new name-M86 Security-is meant to reflect the company’s focus on Web and messaging security, and is the second name change for the firm in less than a year. In […]

Oracle pulled the covers off Oracle Database 11g Release 2 today, bringing a host of new features around performance and management. A year ago, just what would be included in 11g Release 2 was the subject of intense speculation at the Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco. Now, roughly a month before the 2009 conference […]

In some ways, the virtualization security market may be in a good news, bad news situation. The good news: More tools are appearing that focus on securing virtual environments. The bad news: Many may not be making their way into the IT infrastructure. A survey by Nemertes Research found that only 10 percent of organizations […]

This Zeus doesn’t call Mount Olympus home, but has found a resting place on millions of PCs. The Zeus Trojan, otherwise known as ZBot, is widely available for purchase in the cyber-underground. Zeus was linked to a campaign that stole thousands of FTP credentials in an effort to compromise a number of high-profile Websites — […]