Brian Prince

When Facebook announced its plans Nov. 15 for its Messages feature, it opened the door to new questions about spam and security. Once it is fully rolled out, the new Messages interface will weave together not only Facebook messages, but also chats, SMS (texts) and e-mails in a central location. “You decide how you want […]

Research from Webroot illustrated that many small to midsized businesses (SMBs) have taken to blocking social networking sites. In a survey of more than 1,000 businesses from the U.S. and U.K., Webroot found 50 percent do not allow their employees to visit any social networks via company computers. Almost 40 percent of those polled prohibit […]

Adobe Systems released a patch today to plug a security hole affecting Adobe Reader that is on the radar of attackers. The update actually fixes two vulnerabilities, though only one is known to be under attack. That vulnerability-a flaw affecting Adobe Reader 9.4.1 and earlier 9.x versions for Windows, Unix and Mac OS X-had been […]

A report slated to be made public Nov. 17 highlights security issues posed by a massive redirection of Internet traffic through Chinese servers earlier this year. Citing a draft of a U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission report to Congress, the Washington Times reported today that roughly 15 percent of the world’s Web traffic was […]

Researchers at Symantec say they have made a breakthrough in deciphering another piece of Stuxnet’s puzzle – the disruption of motors at nuclear power plants. Stuxnet – which is considered by some to be one of the most sophisticated pieces of malware ever seen – was first uncovered by the security community this summer. In […]

On Nov. 11 IBM announced it had closed on its $1.7 billion acquisition of data warehousing vendor Netezza, making good on an announcement it made in late September. At the time of the September announcement, IBM said the acquisition was driven largely by a desire to bring Netezza’s analytic capabilities in-house. With the deal now […]

From Microsoft and Apple security updates to the sentencing of the man who hacked former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s e-mail, there was no shortage of news this past week in security. In a relatively small Patch Tuesday update, Microsoft released three security bulletins to cover 11 vulnerabilities in Microsoft Forefront Unified Access Gateway and […]

A new report has pulled the veil away from the Koobface botnet, exposing how the operation made more than $2 million between June 2009 and June 2010. The money-making schemes of the Koobface gang were revealed in a sweeping paper (PDF) released by Information Warfare Monitor (IWM), a joint venture backed by researchers from the […]

Adobe Systems plans to release an out-of-bad security update next week to patch security vulnerabilities in Adobe Reader and Acrobat. Among the fixes is a patch for an Adobe Flash Player flaw that impacts a component of Adobe Reader and Acrobat and has been the subject of attacks. According to Adobe, the issue – which […]

More than one million mobile phone users in China have been infected with malware due to a fake antivirus scam. According to media reports, malicious code hidden within a fake antivirus application is infecting phones and causing them to blast out spam messages that have cost users about two million yuan ($300,000 US) a day. […]