Brian Prince

The Associated Press experienced a computer outage that spanned several hours Oct. 25 after its systems failed during an attempted security update. According to a report by the AP, the problem arose around 3 p.m. EDT, when the news organization tried to apply a Microsoft patch to update security ahead of next week’s national and […]

From spamming to harvesting data, botnets are a hot commodity for attackers. But as the Iranian Cyber Army’s decision to sell access to its botnet shows, hawking access to compromised computers can be profitable too. The price of a botnet depends on a number of factors. The first is size, noted Imperva Senior Security Strategist […]

A pair of researchers has developed a new Firefox extension that can hijack accounts on Facebook and other Web 2.0 sites to demonstrate the threat posed by a lack of encryption. Software developer Eric Butler and Ian “craSH” Gallagher created a tool they dubbed “Firesheep” to bring the topic of session hijacking front and center. […]

Privacy concerns kept reappearing in the news this week, starting with social networking giant Facebook. Some of the most popular applications on Facebook were observed sharing Facebook user IDs, mostly inadvertently. The information could potentially be used to look up Facebook user names and other public information. Rapleaf, which the Wall Street Journal reported had […]

Researchers from F-Secure have uncovered a Trojan posing as Microsoft Security Essentials. The Trojan is spreading through drive-by downloads as hotfix.exe or mstsc.exe, according to F-Secure. Users are greeted with a pop-up alert from what claims to be “Microsoft Security Essentials” that says a Trojan has been found. “Not only does this fake tool steal […]

Facebook plans to use encryption to block Facebook applications from leaking user identification numbers. The data exposure was reported earlier this week, and was due to the sharing of user IDs via the HTTP Referrer Header. The culprits included some of the site’s most popular applications, including games such as FarmVille and Texas HoldEm Poker. […]

Adobe Systems is warning users about a critical bug in Shockwave Player that impacts both Macintosh and Windows computers. Adobe issued an advisory about the bug Oct. 21. According to Adobe, the vulnerability exists in Shockwave Player 11.5.8.612 and earlier, and could be exploited to “cause a crash and potentially allow an attacker to take […]

A new report from Forrester Research projects that the cloud security market will grow to $1.5 billion by 2015-a shift that will disrupt what Forrester calls the “security solution ecosystem.” In a report entitled “Security and the Cloud,” Forrester analyst Jonathan Penn predicted that rather than reallocating portions of existing security budgets to cloud computing, […]

A security hole has been found in FaceTime for Mac that allows someone with physical access to a user’s computer to change that person’s iTunes password without knowing the existing one. Apple launched a public beta for FaceTime for Mac Wednesday. The application allows Mac users to video call other Macs as well as iPhone […]

Facebook announced it filed three separate lawsuits against spammers this week. The lawsuits, filed in federal court in San Jose, Calif., accuse Steven Richter, Jason Swan and Max Bounty of violating Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the CAN-SPAM Act and other state and federal laws. Facebook is seeking compensatory, statutory and punitive damages from each. […]