Brian Prince

Alleged cyber-criminals around the world the week of Sept. 27 were scooped up by police after a 16-month investigation that stretched from the United States all the way to the Ukraine. The cyber-crime ring is accused of stealing $70 million from bank accounts, with targets ranging from individuals to small and midsize businesses to municipalities. […]

Ukraine police arrested five individuals accused of being part of a cyber-crime ring that used the Zeus Trojan to steal $70 million from U.S. bank accounts, the FBI said Oct. 1. The arrests were made Sept. 30, and targeted people the FBI described as “key suspects responsible for this overarching scheme.” Authorities in the United […]

Microsoft made the patch for a vulnerability in ASP.NET available through all its distribution channels Sept. 30. Microsoft released the patch Sept. 28, roughly a week after reporting attackers were targeting the bug in the wild. Initially, the company only made the update available through the Microsoft Download Center, which forced users to seek out […]

Google has added a new alert service to help speed detection of malicious code on Websites. The new service, Google Safe Browsing Alerts for Network Administrators, is aimed at Autonomous System owners to ensure they receive early notifications of malware infections. “A single network or ISP can host hundreds or thousands of different Websites,” Google […]

Botnet operators are always on the lookout for ways to get around the security community-a fact that has led some to turn to Web 2.0 to gain an edge. In a new report (PDF), researchers at McAfee examine the evolution of botnets as well as examples of people using sites like Twitter and LinkedIn as […]

Adobe Systems is patching vulnerabilities impacting Adobe Reader and Acrobat to fend off attackers. Adobe is issuing the updates Oct. 5, a week ahead of its regular schedule. The first of the updates addresses a problem in Adobe Flash Player that also affects Reader versions 9.3.4 and earlier on Windows, Mac and Unix systems and […]

Security researchers have uncovered what some have called potential connections between the Stuxnet worm and Israel. Two pieces of evidence have emerged. The first is a file directory inside Stuxnet called “Myrtus,” which some consider an allusion to the Book of Esther, an Old Testament story in which the Jews thwart a Persian plot to […]

Stuxnet Worm: Nine Facts Every IT Security Pro Should Know by Brian Prince The Target Security researchers have traced Stuxnet worm to as far back as June 2009. It targeted the control systems at industrial plants, specifically Siemens’ WinCC and Step 7 software. Historic data shows that Iran (nearly 59 percent), Indonesia (18.22 percent) and […]

Microsoft released an update to SQL Server 2008 with new improvements around reporting and management. SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 2 (SP2) includes updates for Reporting Services integration with SharePoint products. SQL Server 2008 SP2 report servers can integrate with SharePoint 2010 products, and SP2 also now provides a new add-in to support the integration […]

The Obama administration has established deadlines for federal agencies to adopt Internet Protocol Version 6. IPv6 is an update of IPv4, and includes support for several times as many addresses as IPv4-a fact that has prompted many to call for increased IPv6 adoption. Federal CIO Vivek Kundra wrote in a Sept. 28 memo (PDF) that […]