Brian Prince

Malware authors have been very busy this year. How busy? According to Panda Security, 20 million new strains of malware have already been created this year-the same total as in all of 2009. The shortened lifespan of the malware combined with the increased number of variants demonstrates a shift in the cyber-crime landscape, where many […]

Security researchers uncovered critical flaws in WebOS, including a cross-site scripting issue that could be used to gain remote control of devices and possibly build a botnet. WebOS is the operating system used in Palm smartphones. The issues were uncovered by Orlando Barrera and Daniel Herrera of SecTheory, who discovered a total of three unique […]

Facebook has made several announcements this year related to privacy and security, but the malicious applications hidden behind some of the links circulating the social network still pose a problem. This was underscored by recent analysis by BitDefender of thousands of people using its safego product. According to the company, 22.4 percent of safego users […]

The iPhone Dev-Team has released a new jailbreak for Apple’s iOS operating system. The jailbreak, known as Redsn0w 0.9.6b4, was released Monday just hours after Apple released an update for iOS. Right now, the jailbreak is tethered on all recent devices, according to the Dev-Team blog. “A tethered jailbreak means that each time your device […]

A 33-year-old Scottish man was sentenced today to 18 months in prison in the U.K. for spamming out malware-infected e-mails and stealing data. The sentencing today of Matthew Anderson of Drummuir, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, brought to an end to an investigation first launched four years ago. According to the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), Anderson was part […]

9 Free Security Tools to Be Thankful For by Brian Prince Security Essentials Microsoft Security Essentials made its debut last year. The product is meant to be lightweight, but still comes armed with an anti-malware engine, anti-rootkit features and other functionality to fight threats targeting your computer. Red Alert Given the amount of malicious sites […]

Exploit code for one of the zero-day vulnerabilities exploited by the Stuxnet worm has made its way online. The code exploits a Windows Task Scheduler vulnerability, and can be used to escalate privileges. The exploit code was added to the Exploit Database operated by Offensive Security Nov. 20. There is no patch currently available for […]

Cyber-Securitys New Global Battlefield: U.S., Russia, China by Brian Prince Hijacking the Internet A report from the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission aired accusations that China Telecom had intercepted massive amounts of traffic, rerouting traffic to 15 percent of the Internets destinations through servers in China. China Telecom has denied the allegations. Google vs. […]

The personal price of having one’s identity stolen can be high. But the price for buying that identity isn’t. A look at underground sites revealed stolen American credit cards can go for as little as 80 cents, Hugh Thompson, program committee chair of the RSA Conference, told eWEEK. But just as interesting is the other […]

Malware authors don’t always get along – in fact, there have been a number of instances where attackers target each other. But sometimes, malware infecting malware can be a good thing for attackers. According to Trend Micro Threat Response Engineer Roland Dela Paz, there has been an uptick of this kind of activity, which he […]

Google has patched a vulnerability that could have been used to spam Gmail users who visited a specially crafted Website. The bug was first reported Nov. 20 by TechCrunch after someone known as Vahe G. created a site to exploit the issue. The situation affected users who visited the site while they were still logged […]

Cyber-security took a political bent this past week due to discussions of Stuxnet’s true target and allegations that a Chinese company had caused Internet traffic to be rerouted through servers in China. The allegations against China Telecom were aired in a report to Congress by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. In the report, […]