Brian Prince

Microsoft has teamed with Symantec, AOL and other industry leaders to battle the Conficker worm. Working with security researchers, ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) and operators within the domain name system, Microsoft has coordinated a response designed to disable domains targeted by Conficker. Microsoft also announced a $250,000 reward for information that […]

Valentine’s Day may be a time for love, but spammers and malware writers are having their fun too. While reports of the percentage of spam related to Valentine’s Day versus overall spam have been varying somewhat from vendor to vendor, what the security community seems to agree on is that a botnet called Waledac is […]

It’s been roughly a year since Sun Microsystems acquired MySQL AB and brought the open-source database into its portfolio. A lot has happened in the ensuing months, from the release of MySQL 5.1 to the resignations of two prominent names long associated with MySQL, Monty Widenius and Marten Mickos. But there are even more changes […]

Microsoft issued four security bulletins for February’s Patch Tuesday release in order to plug a number of remote code execution vulnerabilities in its products. Two of the bulletins are rated “critical.” Arguably the one with the greatest impact is MS09-003, which addresses two bugs affecting Microsoft Exchange Server. The first vulnerability could allow remote code […]

CA has released a new version of its risk management tool with a broader set of features meant to help companies take a more comprehensive approach to risk management and compliance. In CA GRC Manager 2.0, CA has included a common risk management framework designed to provide a uniform set of risk-related metrics, assessment processes, […]

CA GRC Manager 2.0 Looks to Bring Uniformity to Risk Management by Brian PrincePhotos Courtesy of CA. Risk Review Dashboard Using the Risk Monitor dashboard, an administrator can view the state of a given risk within the organization and determine its likelihood, its impact severity and how it is trending. Risk Tracking Dashboard With the […]

Officials at anti-virus vendor Kaspersky Lab are adamant that no data was stolen during a hack of its U.S. support site over the weekend. According to Kaspersky Lab, on Feb. 6, a hacker exploited a flaw on the Web site to launch a SQL injection attack. After Kaspersky officials received word of the breach Feb. […]

With hackers increasingly targeting Web 2.0 sites, knowing how to develop secure Adobe Flash applications can be a difference maker when it comes to avoiding mass compromises. It is not surprising then that some are calling for developers to pay closer attention to Flash security. IBM, for example, just enhanced its AppScan tool to add […]

Security researchers Shawn Moyer and Nathan Hamiel are well-known for poking holes in myths surrounding security on social networking sites. Their presentation Feb. 7 at ShmooCon 2009 in Washington, D.C., was no exception, as the two walked through examples of attacks and social engineering on sites such as MySpace and LinkedIn. As I told Moyer […]

In response to user concerns, Microsoft has agreed to change the User Account Control feature in Windows 7 so it generates a prompt if there is an attempt to alter its settings. The decision was something of a reversal for Microsoft, which earlier indicated it did not want to force users to deal with additional […]

Sun Microsystems wants to make a push in the competitive identity and access management market with an emphasis on reducing complexity and expanding the use of single sign-on technology. IAM (identity and access management) is one of the fastest growing segments of security. Analyst firm IDC predicted by 2012 the IAM market – which includes […]

MySQL founder Monty Widenius has packed his bags. No, really this time. Widenius, who came over to Sun Microsystems when the company acquired MySQL AB last January, announced in a blog post that he has moved on. His departure is hardly a surprise; rumors that he had already left first circulated months ago, though Widenius […]