Brian Prince

LAS VEGAS-Day two of briefings at the Black Hat security conference produced some interesting moments here in Las Vegas. The day began with a keynote from former National Security Agency (NSA) Director Ret. Gen. Michael Hayden, and included everything from mobile security to weaknesses in HTTPS. Without further ado, here are some highlights from the […]

New malware research from Barracuda Networks highlights the challenge facing Google, Bing and other search engines. In its Barracuda Labs 2010 Midyear Security Report, which the company will present in Las Vegas at Defcon 18 later this week, Barracuda analyzed more than 25,000 trending topics and nearly 5.5 million search engine results across Google, Bing, […]

McAfee announced plans July 29 to acquire mobile security vendor TenCube in a continued push by the company to expand its capabilities for mobile devices. The move, made for an undisclosed sum, is the second purchase in the area of mobile security that McAfee has made in the past few months. In June, the security […]

As a former National Security Agency director, retired Gen. Michael Hayden has seen firsthand the sometimes nebulous realities of cyber-warfare. During his keynote July 29 at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, Hayden discussed those realities, emphasizing the importance of clearly defining what cyber-war really is. The question of what constitutes a cyber-attack […]

For those looking for information about the latest exploits, vulnerabilities and information protection strategies, the first day of briefings at this year’s Black Hat conference in Las Vegas was no disappointment. Jeff Moss, founder and director of Black Hat, started the day out with this question: What security problems have we fundamentally solved? In an […]

The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) has established a user certification program for IT professionals dealing with cloud computing. According to the CSA, the Certificate of Cloud Security Knowledge (CCSK) is meant to ensure people with responsibilities related to cloud computing are aware of security threats and best practices for securing the cloud. “Cloud represents the […]

A three-month investigation by SecureWorks has uncovered an innovative check fraud operation that is estimated to have counterfeited $9 million in checks in the past year. Gone are the days when thieves had to use low-tech methods such as check kiting to defraud banks. According to SecureWorks, a group of Russian cyber-criminals are using a […]

Apple has patched a bug in Safari just 24 hours before it featured in a researcher’s presentation about browser exploits. The Safari AutoFill flaw was among 15 fixed by Apple July 28 in a Safari update. All but two of the bugs reside in the WebKit browser engine. Several of the WebKit bugs could lead […]

Law enforcement officials have identified and arrested the person they said is the mind behind one of the largest botnets on the Web. According to the FBI, the Slovenian Criminal Police identified and arrested a 23-year-old known as “Iserdo,” who stands accused of creating malware known as “Butterfly Bot” that was used to build the […]

A new report on the economic impact of cyber-crime found the average organization is paying a pretty penny, but that price can be cut through good governance. According to the report, which was prepared by the Ponemon Institute and commissioned by ArcSight, the average cost of cyber-attacks at the 45 organizations that were analyzed was […]

Apple lost a bid to have jailbreaking the iPhone declared a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. In a decision today, the U.S. Copyright Office and the Library of Congress sided with the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s contention that jailbreaking the iPhone was not prohibited by the act. The decision comes (PDF) as part of […]

Security questions posed by third-party content are nothing new for Website owners. But a look at how widespread third-party widgets, applications and advertisements are on the Web-and how that affects the security landscape-underscores how much of a challenge this is becoming for Web 2.0 organizations. According to security company Dasient, a new Web page is […]