Brian Prince

LAS VEGAS-As some of you may have already read by now, one of our brilliant cyber-minds at eWEEK who will remain nameless (Brian Prince … oh wait … damn!) entered one of his passwords in the clear and had it intercepted at this year’s Black Hat conference. Alas, I broke one of the cardinal rules […]

LAS VEGAS-The creators of the Coreflood Trojan have managed to stick their digital hands into the pockets of victims for years. And they have done it largely under the radar, according to research revealed at the Black Hat conference here Aug. 6. Some may remember the Coreflood Trojan from the well-publicized case of Joe Lopez, […]

LAS VEGAS-Perhaps more than any other flaw in the last several years, the DNS protocol vulnerability discovered by security researcher Dan Kaminsky has shown that the circle of trust on the Internet can be broken more easily than we feared. After listening to Kaminsky’s talk Aug. 6 at the Black Hat conference here, it is […]

After delays and speculation, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 is being released to manufacturing Aug. 6. Microsoft officials did not give a definitive general availability date, but a spokesperson said it is expected to be within two weeks. Pricing for SQL Server is expected to remain the same, which Microsoft officials have said will help the […]

Microsoft has signed on to the concept of industry-coordinated security disclosure with a new initiative it will launch in October. Dubbed the Microsoft Active Protections Program, the move will make information on Microsoft’s monthly security updates available to a select group of software security vendors before Patch Tuesday. The idea is to give the vendors […]

IT security pros, analysts and researchers are coming together for the meeting of the minds that is Black Hat 2008. The popular security conference officially kicked off Aug. 2 in Las Vegas with a series of training sessions that wrap up Aug. 5. However, the real buzz for many attendees will be the technical briefings […]

Open-source database users can expect the final version of MySQL 5.1 to be ready for general availability in a few weeks, after Sun Microsystems makes sure any major bugs have been squashed. “We’re just drilling into a couple more areas, just to double-check. My expectation is that that will be GA in the next couple […]

Security giant Symantec has no plans to get into the encryption business, regardless of what competitors Sophos, McAfee and SafeBoot have done to acquire the technology themselves. Symantec is committed to its OEM arrangement with GuardianEdge Technologies to provide the encryption technology customers require, despite moves by some of its rivals, Symantec CEO John Thompson […]

McAfee is making a play in the data loss prevention space with its July 31 buyout of Reconnex. The $46 million deal is expected to close in the third quarter of 2008. McAfee’s move comes after a number of prominent acquisitions in the DLP space in 2007. These include Symantec’s purchase of Vontu, Trend Micro’s […]

Corporate IT security managers are confronting the reality that the sheer volume of both malicious and unmalicious software programs is growing explosively, prompting them to look for more effective tools to deal with the situation. But with some research reports showing that the amount of malware being created is actually outstripping the number of legitimate […]