Brian Prince

It hasn’t been the best 10 days for Facebook. After instituting changes meant to improve user privacy, Facebook has been hit with a Federal Trade Commission complaint alleging the social networking site did the exact opposite. According to a host of consumer and privacy groups, Facebook’s changes actually did more harm than good. But just […]

New details about the attack that disrupted Twitter Dec. 17 have begun to emerge. According to Twitter, the DNS (Domain Name System) settings for Twitter.com were hijacked, resulting in roughly 80 percent of the traffic from the site being redirected elsewhere from 9:46 p.m. to 11 p.m. PST. Apparently, the attackers got their hands on […]

Ten privacy and consumer groups filed a complaint Dec. 17 with the Federal Trade Commission over Facebook’s recent privacy changes and urged the agency to open an investigation. “This is the most significant case now before the Federal Trade Commission,” Marc Rotenberg, executive director of EPIC (Electronic Privacy Information Center), said in a statement. “More […]

Seven Security Attacks for Your Christmas Stocking by Brian Prince Santa Claus Is Coming to Town This e-mail is being distributed through what is called a “snowshoe” operation. Snowshoe spamming is a technique where the spammer distributes the spam load across static IP address ranges, which makes spam harder to identify and trap. According to […]

Applications vulnerabilities are the honey bringing attackers out of their hives. According to an analysis by Bit9, released Dec. 16, this year’s list of applications with the most serious vulnerabilities had Adobe Reader, Acrobat, Flash Player and Shockwave at the top. For IT administrators, the findings are a reminder of the importance of keeping track […]

Adobe Systems is prepping a patch for a zero-day bug affecting its Reader and Acrobat software for release by Jan. 12. The vulnerability is considered critical by Adobe and impacts the latest versions of Adobe Reader and Acrobat for Windows, Macintosh and Unix systems. Earlier editions are affected as well. The company has not released […]

When McAfee published its list of the most dangerous Web domains, China ‘s .cn domain was among the list’s familiar faces. However, some security researchers say that may change as a side effect of China tightening its control over the Internet. Chinese authorities recently changed their domain registration process to require domain name applicants submit […]

RockYou, a distributor and creator of applications for social networking sites, was compromised by a SQL injection attack that exposed passwords and e-mails for more than 32 million user accounts. But perhaps just as troubling as the attack is that the passwords and e-mails of its user base were stored in the clear. By default, […]

Attackers are exploiting a new vulnerability affecting Adobe Systems’ Reader and Acrobat software in what are reportedly targeted attacks. According to Adobe’s Product Security Incident Response Team blog, the vulnerability impacts Adobe Reader and Acrobat 9.2, and is being exploited in the wild. “We are currently investigating this issue and assessing the risk to our […]

A report testing Australia’s controversial Web filtering plan is done, paving the way for the country to join thelist of nations with mandatory Web filtering. Stephen Conroy, who is Australia’s minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, released the report (PDF) Dec. 15 as he outlined the government’s plans. Australian authorities expect to make […]