Brian Prince

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 […]

Security information and event management (SIEM) tools are on the spending lists of many companies concerned about security and compliance. But getting down to the business of choosing and deploying a tool can be fraught with complications ranging from dealing with hype from vendors to expectations about what the technology will do. “Internally, managing expectations […]

Symantec has cleaned up vulnerabilities in the Website for its “Hack is Wack” contest. The contest is a partnership between the security vendor and rapper Snoop Doggy Dogg to promote computer security and Symantec’s Norton products. Aspiring rappers are asked to post a rap video about cyber-crime, with the creator of the best video winning […]

Microsoft has confirmed it is investigating reports of a flaw in Internet Explorer 8 that could be exploited to attack users. A description of the vulnerability was posted Sept. 3 to the Full Disclosure mailing list by Google Information Security Engineer Chris Evans. In a proof-of-concept, Evans demonstrated how the bug-a CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) […]

Acquisitions, social network security and Google privacy were among the top items on the menu in IT security news this past week. CA Technologies started the week off by announcing plans to purchase Arcot systems for its fraud prevention technology. Arcot develops software-based digital signature and identity tools for securing online transactions. According to CA, […]