Brian Prince

Microsoft officials are investigating reports of a zero-day bug affecting Microsoft Internet Information Services in response to the appearance of exploit code on the Internet. The exploit, which targets a FTP server remote stack overflow, was published Aug. 31 on Milw0rm.com. According to US-CERT, the vulnerability may allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code. […]

Who needs a digital voice recorder when you have malware? According to Symantec, source code for a new Trojan targeting users of Skype VOIP has appeared on the Internet. So far there is no evidence the malware is spreading, but with the source code now public, it is possible malware writers can begin leveraging this […]

Reputed hacker Albert Gonzalez, the Miami man tied by investigators to several major data breaches, has agreed to plead guilty to a variety of charges, according to reports. Under the plea agreement, Gonzalez, 28, will face a maximum of 25 years in prison. According to authorities, he is at the center of a ring of […]

Apple plans to release Mac OS X 10.6, aka Snow Leopard, on Aug. 28, and cyber-criminals have taken notice. A number of rogue sites have popped up offering free copies of the latest version of Apple’s operating system. Researchers at Trend Micro are reporting that accessing these malicious sites lands users with a DNS (Domain […]

Microsoft has made the community technology preview of “Project Madison”, the culmination of the company’s DATAllegro acquisition last year. Madison is Microsoft’s answer to calls for a massively scalable data warehousing solution. The appliance partitions large tables across multiple physical nodes, each with dedicated CPU, memory and storage and running its own instance of SQL […]

IBM X-Force released its 2009 Mid-Year Trend and Risk Report Aug. 26 with a mix of good news and bad news. The good news is the number of vulnerabilities is declining. There were 3,240 new vulnerabilities discovered in the first half of 2009, an 8 percent decrease over the same period last year. The bad […]

It appears Apple has bolstered Snow Leopard with some new spots to enhance security. In this case, Apple has apparently added a new malware scanner to analyze downloads for malicious content. Apple did not return a request for comment on the feature, which has understandably caught the attention of security companies. “We’re naturally curious about […]

A software developer is claiming Twitter’s fix for a critical cross-site scripting bug is no good, meaning users are still vulnerable to an attack that could allow an attacker to take over their accounts. The bug was first reported by techie James Slater. According to Slater, the vulnerability allows malicious JavaScript to be inserted into […]

As The Pirate Bay fights to stay online, one of its chief rivals has also fallen into the sights of the authorities. A civil court ordered Dutch Website Mininova to remove all files on its servers that point to copyrighted works within three months or face fines. Mininova rivals The Pirate Bay as an Internet […]

A group of researchers uncovered new attacks on AES-256 encryption not too long ago. But while the research is definitely an improvement over the attacks of the past, experts say that is no reason to toss out the algorithm just yet. The research was performed by Alex Biryukov, Orr Dunkelman, Nathan Keller, Dmitry Khovratovich and […]

Trying to find actress Jessica Biel can be dangerous-on the Internet, anyway. For the third year in a row, McAfee has put out a list of the most dangerous celebrities when it comes to Internet search results. The list is home to more than a few well-known singers and movie stars, such as Miley Cyrus […]

Researchers at AirMagnet have uncovered a serious flaw in a provisioning system used by Cisco Systems WLANs that could enable attackers to gain access to WLAN-attached systems. According to AirMagnet’s Intrusion Research Team, the vulnerability, announced Aug. 25, lies in Cisco’s OTAP (Over-the-Air-Provisioning) feature, which helps users deploy WAPs (wireless access points). OTAP allows access […]