Brian Prince

AT&T blocked portions of the 4chan.org bulletin board July 25 and 26 in response to denial-of-service attacks against an AT&T customer, touching off a debate on censorship and network neutrality. In response to criticism, AT&T stressed that it moved against 4chan.org because of the attack, and not because of content posted there. Click here to […]

Kaspersky Lab released some interesting statistics recently in a technical whitepaper. As part of its research into the cyber-underground, the company took a look at how botmasters are pricing the networks under their control. The prices cover a fairly large range, and depend on both what buyers are interested in and what they plan to […]

Microsoft is planning to release two out-of-band security bulletins next week to fix critical vulnerabilities. Microsoft did not release many details about the issues, but the company does not typically release patches except on its monthly Patch Tuesday. According to Microsoft’s Advance Notification, one of the bulletins will deal with the Microsoft Visual Studio product […]

Adobe Systems is working on a fix for a bug in its Flash Player software that has come under attack. Adobe first warned about the vulnerability July 21, then issued an updated advisory the following night. The issue affects current versions of Flash Player on Windows, Mac and Linux platforms, as well as the authplay.dll […]

The United States is No. 1 – in malware. I’m guessing there is no gold medal for that. But the United States did get top mention in Sophos’ latest Security Threat Report. According to the company, nearly 40 percent of all Web malware is hosted in the United States. This is a dramatic change from […]

The U.S. government needs to do more than buy technology to improve cyber-security – it needs to hire more experts, according to a new report. The report was prepared by the non-profit Partnership for Public Service and consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton and paints a picture of the government’s cyber-security efforts as dysfunctional, where a […]

Novell plans to pull the covers off a cloud computing security service designed to provide identity and access management for hosted applications and storage next week. The company will showcase the new technology, as well as a compliance reporting suite, at the upcoming Burton Group Catalyst Conference in San Diego. The service is currently in […]

Two researchers from Hewlett-Packard have developed a browser-based darknet that allows users to share files and communicate anonymously. Traditionally, darknets are defined as closed, private networks used for secure communications and file sharing. Popular examples of darknets include Freenet and WASTE. Typically, users need to download an application to a PC to join. However, HP […]

Sybase on July 21 reported double-digit growth in its database business as part of a solid second quarter. According to the company, database license revenue increased 23 percent year over year. Overall, Sybase’s second-quarter profit jumped 26 percent to $37.6 million, up from $29.8 million a year earlier. The company released Sybase IQ 15.1 July […]

Two security researchers are calling for the utility industry to pay close attention to securing smart grid technology as the nation upgrades its power infrastructure. In separate presentations next week at the Black Hat security conference, researchers Mike Davis and Tony Flick will be making the case that the energy industry has work to do […]

Adobe has talked a lot about security lately. A few months ago, the company announced it was changing its patching and development process. Now, officials at Secunia are reporting that the version of Adobe Reader available for download on Adobe’s Website is both old and riddled with vulnerabilities. According to Secunia, the version on the […]

Mozilla is pouring cold water on reports of a severe bug affecting its Firefox browser. Reports of a new stack overflow vulnerability affecting Firefox surfaced not long after the company released a new version to patch a critical bug in the TraceMonkey JavaScript engine’s JIT (just-in-time) compiler. On Sunday, the SANS Internet Storm Center warned […]