Brian Prince

Malicious PDFs have become familiar features on the threat landscape, in no small part due to the popularity and ubiquity of Adobe Reader and Acrobat. In a new report, researchers at Symantec took a deep look at how malicious PDF attacks hit users. According to Symantec, in the span of a year, the United States […]

Microsoft is warning users it has seen “limited attacks” targeting an ASP.NET vulnerability that could potentially affect many Web applications. The issue, which was demonstrated by security researchers Juliano Rizzo and Thai Duong, is due to ASP.NET’s use of encryption padding, which provides information in error messages that can be used by an attacker to […]

Twitter says it has patched a cross-site scripting issue that was exploited by attackers the morning of Sept. 21. The flaw allowed attackers to display pop-windows or redirect users if they scrolled their cursors over a link. The attacks took advantage of a JavaScript function called onMouseOver, which allows Webpages to do things when a […]

Oracle’s first release candidate for MySQL 5.5 received some solid reviews from analysts at Oracle OpenWorld. The company pulled the covers off the release candidate at the conference Sept. 19 during its inaugural MySQL Sunday event. The emphasis in the release was on performance and scalability, two areas where analysts said customers will get what […]

Oracle is targeting the health care industry with an integrated, out-of-the-box security governance solution. The company announced the tool, dubbed Oracle Security Governor for Healthcare, today at the Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco. A component of the Oracle Health Management Platform, the product brings auditing and real-time fraud detection to the table to help […]

A group of piracy advocates launched coordinated attacks on Websites belonging to the Motion Picture Association of America, the Recording Industry Association of America and anti-piracy firm AiPlex Software. The attacks, which occurred during the past few days, temporarily knocked the sites offline. According to TorrentFreak, the effort has been dubbed “Operation Payback” on the […]

IBM has agreed to acquire data warehousing firm Netezza for approximately $1.7 billion. The acquisition, which is subject to Netezza shareholder approval, is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2010. Netezza specializes in data warehouse analytics, and competes in the space with companies such as Teradata and Oracle. The move also follows EMC’s […]

Adobe Systems pushed out a fix for an Adobe Flash Player zero-day faster than expected. Initially expected to come out the week of Sept. 27, today’s patch fixes a vulnerability the company warned Sept. 13 had come under attack. Though the attacks have targeted Flash on Windows, the flaw impacts versions 10.1.82.76 and earlier on […]

It has been a big year for Oracle’s army of partners, some of whom packed the Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) Forum event Sunday in San Francisco. There has been significant change in Oracle in the year since the last OPN Forum, most notably the $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems. The deal has not only changed […]

Oracle Co-president Mark Hurd may have avoided mentioning Hewlett-Packard during his keynote at the Oracle OpenWorld conference Sept. 20, but he had no shortage of things to say about Oracle. The same day as Hurd’s keynote speech, his former employer confirmed that a settlement had been reached with the former CEO. Hurd resigned from HP […]

The latest version of open-source database PostgreSQL is now available, this time bringing with it new hot standby and replication capabilities. In 9.0, users can find more than a dozen major features touching on everything from security to performance. The replication and hot standby enhancements, however, have garnered the most attention. The streaming replication technology […]

Microsoft issued a security advisory Sept. 17 with a workaround for a vulnerability impacting Web applications built on ASP.NET. The advisory was in response to findings by security researchers Juliano Rizzo and Thai Duong, who developed the “Padding Oracle Exploit Tool” to demonstrate the attack. At the heart of the issue is a vulnerability in […]