Brian Prince

3M has agreed to acquire security biometrics vendor Cogent Systems for roughly $943 million. Cogent provides finger, palm, face and iris biometric systems for governments, law enforcement agencies and businesses. Under the agreement, a subsidiary of 3M will offer to purchase all outstanding shares of Cogent Systems within 10 business days. According to 3M, thebiometrics […]

U.S. cyber-security was in the spotlight this past week when a senior Pentagon official confirmed an infected flash drive caused the “most significant breach of U.S. military computers ever.” Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn III discussed the 2008 incident in an article for Foreign Affairs magazine. “That code spread undetected on both classified and […]

Rumors that ArcSight is putting itself up for sale for $1.5 billion has understandably triggered speculation about possible suitors. The rumors were reported this week in the Wall Street Journal. Officially, ArcSight has no comment, but given its footprint in the security information management space, any such deal is sure to ripple through the market. […]

Interested in a fake passport? There is an online forum for people like you. McAfee researcher Francios Paget found a Russian site selling, among other things, fake passports for dozens of countries. The operation is not inexpensive for the buyers, however. The cheapest passport is for Azerbaijan and costs $870 (USD). A French passport costs […]

Social Networking Security Attacks: The Top Incidents of 2010 by Brian Prince Koobface It needs no introduction. Koobface has tormented users of numerous social networks for the past two years or so, including MySpace and Facebook. During that time, Koobface has evolved in a number of ways, and has been linked to rogue antivirus and […]

Hewlett-Packard announced Aug. 26 that it has acquired database and data center automation vendor Stratavia. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. However, HP said the acquisition will strengthen its Software and Solutions portfolio by adding deployment, configuration and management tools for enterprise middleware, databases and packaged applications. In particular, the deal will enhance […]

Microsoft has released an update to SQL Azure with new support for database copying. With SQL Azure Service Update 4, users get the ability to take a snapshot of their database. “This new copy feature is the first step in backup support for SQL Azure, allowing you to get a complete backup of any SQL […]

Security researchers are reporting an uptick in malware hidden in .zip files being sent out in spam to Web users. According to IBM’s X-Force, there has been a significant increase in the number of spam messages with malicious .zip file attachments during the past few weeks. “Normally we see that between 0.1 and 1.5 percent […]

A report from IBM’s X-Force released Aug. 25 says the number of disclosed vulnerabilities during the first half of 2010 shot up 36 percent from the same period the previous year. All told, IBM X-Force analyzed and document 4,396 new vulnerabilities in the first half of the year. Leading the way in terms of having […]

The fallout from the binary planting vulnerabilities plaguing scores of programs running on Windows continued today as more names of susceptible applications became public and the number of exploits exploded. Belgian security site Corelan.be listed dozens of vulnerable applications, including several Microsoft programs. Among them are Microsoft Word 2007, Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2010 and Microsoft […]

Adobe Systems patched 20 bugs in its Shockwave Player in a critical update Aug. 24. The vulnerabilities were “identified in Adobe Shockwave Player 11.5.7.609 and earlier versions [running] on Windows and Macintosh systems,” the company said. Almost all of the bugs are memory corruption issues that, if triggered, could allow an attacker to execute code. […]

A senior Pentagon official has revealed details of a previously classified malware attack he declared “the most significant breach of U.S. military computers ever.” In an article for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Defense Secretary William J. Lynn III writes that in 2008 a flash drive believed to have been infected by a foreign intelligence agency uploaded […]