Brian Prince

A hacker linked to the infamous $9 million RBS WorldPay ATM heist was given a six-year suspended sentence by Russian authorities for his role in the crime, according to reports. In exchange for providing information to authorities, Viktor Pleshchuk, 28, of St. Petersburg, Russia, “received a reduced sentence, which includes four years of probation,” Bloomberg […]

A cyber-jihadist group may be to blame for the “Here you have” worm that reportedly struck organizations ranging from NASA to Wells Fargo. According to Joe Stewart, director of malware research at SecureWorks, there are indications a group called the Brigades of Tariq ibn Ziyad is behind the attack, as well as another campaign that […]

New figures from Panda Security’s anti-malware laboratory underscore how much cyber-crooks are looking to use the reputations of legitimate companies to fool victims. According to Panda, 57,000 new Websites are created each week to exploit 375 high-profile brand names worldwide. The statistics are based on a three-month investigation by PandaLabs. Notably, eBay and Western Union-related […]

A federal judge has brought Microsoft one step closer to seizing control of 276 domains controlled by the Waledac botnet. A magistrate judge in the U.S. District Court of Eastern Virginia decided Sept. 3 to recommend that a default judgment be granted in Microsoft’s favor. The defendants in the case were given 14 days to […]

A mass-mailer worm flooded inboxes at a number of high-profile organizations today. Dubbed “Here you have” because of its e-mail subject line, the worm struck organizations such as NASA and the Walt Disney Co. In some ways, the worm is a throwback to attacks such as the Anna Kournikova virus, which security researchers at Symantec […]

NSS Labs is planning to open an online store for security exploits. Through the Exploit Hub, NSS Labs will allow researchers to buy and sell exploits. According to NSS Labs President Rick Moy, the initial set of buyers will be “known quantities” such as penetration-testing companies and security vendors. “The goal is to close the […]

Microsoft is planning to release nine security bulletins next week for September’s Patch Tuesday. The bulletins are slated to address a total of 13 vulnerabilities. Four of the bulletins carry a rating of “critical,” Microsoft’s highest severity rating. Among those are fixes for remote code execution bugs in Microsoft Office and Windows. The remaining five […]

A jaibreak has reportedly been discovered for Apple iOS 4.1, the latest version of the operating system. iOS jailbreaking allows iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch users to have root access to their device and install applications unauthorized by Apple. According to reports, pod2g of the Chronic Dev Team has successfully developed a jailbreak using a […]

Apple and Mozilla have patched their browser products against the dynamic-library link file loading issue affecting many applications running on Windows. For Apple Safari users, the fix was mixed in with a relatively small update that also plugged two security holes in the Webkit engine. Users of Mozilla Firefox will find the fix tucked into […]

Adobe Systems is warning users about a new vulnerability being exploited in the wild. According to Adobe, the vulnerability can be exploited to “cause a crash and potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system.” The bug exists in Adobe Reader 9.3.4 and earlier for Windows, Macintosh and Unix systems. It also […]

A new survey by Symantec shows cyber-crime may be more prevalent than some think – and users are not happy about it. According to “The Norton Cybercrime Report: The Human Impact” 65 percent of about 7,000 users globally that were surveyed reported falling victim to cyber-crimes ranging from online credit card fraud to having their […]

Microsoft is advising users to be wary of a rogue antivirus program that creates fake warnings that appear to come from the user’s browser. The program, called MSIL/Zeven by Microsoft, detects what browser is being used and then launches a page virtually identical to pages generated by Internet Explorer, Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox that […]