Brian Prince

Cyber-criminals are getting better; law enforcement needs to as well. That is the overall theme of the McAfee Virtual Criminology Report “Cybercrime Versus Cyberlaw.” The report paints a picture of poor international cooperation and ad hoc police efforts-all of which allow cyber-crooks to keep a step ahead of their pursuers. The cat-and-mouse game requires both […]

Microsoft pushed out eight security bulletins as part of this month’s Patch Tuesday, including a fix for a vulnerability currently under attack. According to the advisory, hackers have begun launching limited, targeted attacks against a vulnerability in an ActiveX control for the Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 Runtime Extended Files. Visual Basic 6.0 Runtime Extended Files […]

A new variant of the DNSChanger Trojan is appearing in DNS pharming attacks.Once the malware, named Trojan.Flush.M by Symantec, infects a machine, it creates a rogue DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) server. DHCP is a protocol for assigning dynamic IP addresses to devices on a network. The compromised machine then sends bogus DHCP packets to […]

It was an interesting year for database vendors. It was a year of cloud databases and acquisitions, most notably Sun Microsystems’ purchase of MySQL. Here are some of the top stories for the database space in 2008, in no particular order: Sun Microsystems Acquires MySQL AB Sun’s $1 billion acquisition of MySQL made waves in […]

A survey of IT decision makers by the Enterprise Strategy Group is enough to make those concerned about database security tremble slightly. While 58 percent of the 179 respondents reported the database is where most confidential data is located, more than half said their organizations suffered a data breach in the last 12 months. Some […]

Sun Microsystems officially announced the general availability of MySQL 5.1 Dec. 8, more than a week after declaring the open-source database production-ready. Controversy erupted around the decision last week after MySQL founder Monty Widenius noted a number of bugs had not been fixed and advised enterprises to take a cautious approach to deployment. In the […]

Microsoft and EMC are joining forces in the name of security. The vendors have announced plans to work together to build security into the IT infrastructure, starting with EMC’s data loss prevention (DLP) content classification technology. The immediate plan is to integrate RSA DLP Suite 6.5 – which will ship later this month – with […]

Microsoft is planning to release six critical security bulletins as part of this month’s Patch Tuesday.In addition to the critical bulletins, there are two others rated “important” slated to make this month’s round of fixes as well. The critical bulletins cover remote code execution issues in Microsoft Excel, Internet Explorer, Word, Visual Basic and Windows. […]

Apple users should not panic – the advice by Apple that Mac users should use anti-virus is neither new, nor reflective of a significant increase in malware attacks targeting Apple. The existence – or relative lack thereof – of Mac malware has been a catalyst for arguments between Mac and Microsoft Windows users. But as […]

A new report from Secunia serves as a reminder for users to patch their systems. According to data gathered from 20,000 users of Secunia PSI (Personal Software Inspector) 1.0 during the past seven days, roughly 98 percent were running unpatched programs. Roughly 30 percent had one to five insecure programs running on their Windows PCs; […]

Super users may use their powers for good most of the time, but every now and again, an insider breach will remind us how important keeping track of super users and shared accounts truly is. According to a survey performed in summer 2008 by the IOUG (Independent Oracle Users Group), almost a third of the […]

Amazon Web Services has started a public beta of online database service Amazon SimpleDB, and is offering customers a free tier of usage for at least the next six months. Under the beta, Amazon SimpleDB users will receive 25 machine hours, 1GB of data transfer in and out, and 1GB of storage for free. The […]