Brian Prince

With calls for tighter privacy controls on the Web getting louder and louder, new research shows many users are still forgoing privacy controls and exposing themselves to risk on social networks. According to a survey of 2,000 American households by Consumer Reports, 52 percent of adults using sites such as Facebook and MySpace engage in […]

The Lower Merion School District in Pennsylvania failed to adopt official guidelines governing the use of tracking software on school laptops and left the technology open to abuse, according to a report released May 3. The 72-page report was commissioned by the school district (PDF) in response to Webcam spying allegations leveled by the family […]

Hackers have released software to jailbreak the Apple iPad as well as the latest version of the iPhone OS. The software, dubbed Spirit, works on the iPad, the iPod Touch and iPhones running OS versions 3.1.2, 3.1.3 and 3.2. With Spirit, users can run programs not approved by Apple. Unlike other jailbreaks, Spirit is untethered, […]

Enterprise adoption of virtualization is continuing its upward trend. But what about security? According to Prism Microsystems, organizations are slacking when it comes to protecting virtualized environments. A survey of 302 IT managers, security pros, auditors and administrators about their virtual deployments paints a picture of a landscape where the hypervisor is unprotected and separation […]

Microsoft has released a new version of its Producer add-in component to fix a vulnerability previously left unpatched. In March, Microsoft issued a patch for a buffer overflow vulnerability in Microsoft Movie Maker that also affected users of Producer, which is a free, downloadable tool for Office PowerPoint 2002 and 2003 designed to make it […]

8 Database Consolidation Strategy Tips for DBAs by Brian Prince Failing to Plan Is Planning to Fail Forrester reported that about 30 percent of database consolidation projects fail because of poor planning. There should be goals in mind on exactly what you are trying to accomplish and metrics to track those goals, such as reducing […]

Microsoft has confirmed reports of a cross-site scripting vulnerability in SharePoint Server 2007 and SharePoint Services 3.0. According to Microsoft, the vulnerability could allow escalation of privilege (EoP) within the SharePoint site. If an attacker successfully exploits the vulnerability, the person could run commands against the SharePoint server with the privileges of the compromised user. […]

The son of a Democratic Tennessee lawmaker was convicted April 30 for hacking the e-mail account of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin during the 2008 presidential campaign. According to authorities, a federal jury convicted 22-year-old David Kernell, son of Rep. Mike Kernell, of obstruction of justice and unauthorized access to a computer. He was acquitted […]

Symantec announced plans to acquire encryption specialists PGP and GuardianEdge Technologies. Under the terms of the agreements, Symantec will buy PGP for $300 million and GuardianEdge for $70 million. The plans represent something of a reversal for the company, which had previously declined to buy into the encryption market even as McAfee purchased SafeBoot and […]

Researchers at CA have linked the latest iteration of the malware “bundled and distributed by Trojan downloader along with Win32/FakeAV or rogue antivirus malware.” The new version of the worm is sending out “massive” amounts of spam e-mail, including spam related to “adult dating,” celebrity news and bogus online pharmacies. “This Pecoan variant communicates to […]

Former San Francisco network engineer Terry Childs was found guilty Tuesday of locking the city out of its own network. A jury convicted Childs, 45, of one felony count of denying or disrupting computer services to an authorized user. Childs was charged in 2008 after he refused to provide passwords to the city’s FiberWAN network. […]

New research from Google is shining a light on just how prevalent rogue antivirus scams have become. According to a paper presented April 27 at the Usenix Workshop on Large-Scale Exploits and Emergent Threats, in San Jose, Calif., fake antivirus programs now account for 15 percent of all the malware Google detects on the Web. […]