Brian Prince

Twitter users were hit with yet another worm during the weekend. This time, the tweets came bearing the message “WTF” with a link in tow. Clicking on the link automatically generated a post from the victim with a pornographic message. “Clicking on the WTF link would take you to a webpage which contained some trivial […]

Microsoft has begun rolling out new security features for Hotmail users today centered around preventing and detecting account compromises. The changes, which Microsoft first discussed with eWEEK in May, will take about a week to roll out to all users, Dan Lewis, senior product manager for Windows Live Hotmail, told eWEEK. Once they arrive, the […]

A cross-site scripting vulnerability impacted as many as 500,000 Twitter users and led a busy week of security news. The bug was exploited by worms that spread throughout the microblogging service and affected users ranging from the wife of former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. The vulnerability-which Twitter […]

Microsoft added information Sept. 24 to the workaround section of the advisory on the ASP.NET vulnerability that has come under attack. The company updated its advisory to include a step in the workaround requiring the blocking of requests that specify the application error path on the querystring. “This can be done using URLScan, a free […]

Two men accused of hacking the Comcast Website were sentenced Sept. 24 to 18 months in prison. The Department of Justice said in a news release, “Christopher Allen Lewis, aka ‘EBK,’ 20, of Newark, Del., and Michael Paul Nebel, aka ‘Slacker,’ 28, of Kalamazoo, Mich.,” had previously pleaded guilty to charges of “conspiring to disrupt […]

Law enforcement in Romania have announced the arrest of a man accused of trying to phish IDs and passwords for more than 3,000 eBay employees. Liviu Mihail Concioiu, arrested Sept. 22, is accused of having launched two phishing attacks against eBay in 2009 and stealing employee credentials with which he accessed an eBay database and […]

A man federal authorities said is the first person to be charged with hacking voice-over-IP providers and reselling hacked VOIP services was handed a 10-year prison sentence Sept. 24. The sentencing of Edwin Andres Pena, 27, in federal court in Newark, N.J., followed a three-year chase that took authorities from the United States to Central […]

More details about the Stuxnet worm trickled out Sept. 24 as security researchers continue to peel back the layers of the complex malware. According to Symantec researcher Liam O Murchu, early versions of Stuxnet were targeting industrial control systems without the help of a vulnerability at all. Instead, the malware abused Windows’ AutoRun feature to […]

EMC is partnering with Cloudera to help organizations manage and analyze big data. The two companies plan to integrate the data warehousing and analytics technology EMC acquired when it bought Greenplum with Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop (CDH). CDH is used for collecting, consolidating and analyzing data. The partnership will integrate CDH with EMC’s Greenplum massively […]

Spammers have increasingly been moving their operations to Russian domains since China’s domain regulator introduced tighter rules in 2009, security researchers say. The CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center) changed some of its domain registration rules so that applicants are required to submit a formal paper-based application to a registrar that includes, among other things, […]

Microsoft is targeting small and midsize businesses with changes to the licensing agreement for its Security Essentials software. Right now, the licensing agreement states users “may install and use any number of copies of the software on your devices in your household for use by people who reside there or for use in your home-based […]

Internet Scams and Phishing: A Look Inside the Business by Brian Prince Phishing the Globe This graph shows the geographic distribution of servers hosting phishing pages in August. Phishing MOs The unique domains were home to more than 60 percent of the phishing attacks observed by Symantec last month, while Web hosting services and automated […]