Brian Prince

Mozilla is blocking the use of two Microsoft add-ons installed silently on Windows computers with .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1. Mozilla is blocking the Microsoft .NET Framework Assistant and Windows Presentation Foundation components in light of a vulnerability that attackers can use to impact Firefox users. “Because of the difficulties some users have had […]

When it comes to passwords, users are often the weakest link in the chain. According to a survey by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and IT University in Copenhagen found that just four percent of the people surveyed obeyed best practices for passwords. The survey focused on 836 staff members at company handling “very […]

The Gumblar botnet is back with a new trick up its sleeve. The goal, however, remains the same-to steal FTP credentials and other data. Gumblar first made the news in May, when attackers compromised legitimate sites and sent visitors on to a malicious site that infected their PCs with malware. Now, attackers are using the […]

While much of the talk at Oracle OpenWorld focused on applications, Oracle’s database business had its share of the spotlight as well. During his keynote Oct. 14, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison extolled the virtues of Oracle Exadata Database Machine Version 2. Pitched by Oracle as the “foundation for building dynamic storage grids” and the fastest […]

It’s Cyber Security Awareness Month, and the folks at Google are taking it seriously. Having already built automated scanners to detect malware on Websites in its search index, Google has now added a feature designed to provide more detail to Webmasters whose sites are compromised. To do this, Google has enhanced Webmaster Tools to offer […]

Barracuda Networks has acquired security software-as-a-service vendor Purewire in a bid to build out its cloud-based platform. The financial details of the deal were not disclosed. Purewire was launched in 2008, and has sought to make a mark offering Web security in the cloud. Bringing that technology into the fold will expand Barracuda’s existing SAAS […]

IBMraised a few eyebrows last week when it announced plans for DB2 pureScale, a feature IBM officials said would challenge Oracle’s Exadata technology. But sitting at the Oracle OpenWorld conference, Oracle executive Robert Shimp told eWEEK that IBMmay be getting ahead of itself. “(That was) a very bold statement on their part,” said Shimp, group […]

Standardize, simplify and automate-those three words are at the heart of a strategy laid out Oct. 13 at Oracle OpenWorld by Michael Dell. Dell, CEO of the company that bears his last name, said he wants to battle inefficiency and reduce IT spending with what he called the “efficient enterprise.” Dell has spoken about the […]

Database Security Shortcomings Raise Red Flags by Brian Prince Data Breaches Galore Roughly the same percentage of people in the 2009 survey declared a data breach was either “inevitable” or “somewhat likely” as they did a year ago. However, the report also found that 9 percent had experienced a data breach over the past year—a […]

Adobe Systems has swatted a zero-day bug affecting Adobe Reader and Acrobat that was being exploited in targeted attacks. The vulnerability, described by Adobe as critical, is one of several Adobe fixed today in the Oct. 13 security update. According to Adobe, the vulnerability is a heap overflow issue. A successful exploit can corrupt memory […]