Brian Prince

Researchers from the University of California-Santa Barbara have created a free spam-filtering service for Twitter that detects malicious accounts and forwards the information to the microblogging service for enforcement. The service, dubbed Spamdetector, is the brainchild of Ph.D. student Gianluca Stringhini. “We started studying social network spam one year ago,” Stringhini said. “With the rise […]

Attackers are spamming out malware hidden within e-mails targeting Facebook issues. The scam starts with an e-mail claiming to contain a password reset feature for Facebook. Instead, users who open the attachment are greeted by Bredolab, a Trojan downloader that installs other types of malware on infected computers. In this case, the first thing the […]

Researchers at Panda Security found traces of the notorious Mariposa botnet on a Vodafone HTC Magic smartphone for the second time in as many weeks. According to the Panda blog, the latest malware-infected phone belonged to an employee of a security company in Spain called S21Sec. “This guy had also purchased an HTC Magic direct […]

The buzz around the NoSQL movement in the past year has grown considerably, to the point where advocates organized a one-day conference in Boston just last week to discuss its future. Recent announcements from Twitter and Digg.com supporting a NoSQL approach added fuel to this buzz, and while its ultimate growth among enterprises remains a […]

Spammers have their favorite words, too. An interesting analysis by Symantec compared the language patterns of the busiest botnets on the Web. Starting with an examination of a random sample of global spam over a one-week period, Symantec found spammers often used generic words punctuated with an exclamation mark to create additional effect. For example, […]

Microsoft is disputing Core Security Technologies’ description of a security issue impacting Microsoft’s Virtual PC software as a vulnerability. Core Security issued an advisory March 16 for what its researchers described as a bug in the software that allowed users to circumvent various security measures in Windows. According to Core Security, there is a vulnerability […]

A new version of a controversial cyber-security bill was introduced to the Senate March 17 with updated language to lessen opposition from the tech industry and civil libertarians. The new draft avoids a major sticking point regarding the expansion of presidential powers in the event of a national cyber-emergency. When the bill was introduced last […]

Researchers in EMC’s RSA security division have uncovered an extensive infrastructure propping up the attackers behind the Zeus Trojan. The findings reflect part of the reason the disruption of Troyak-AS March 9 only caused Zeus traffic to slow, as opposed to stopping it in its tracks. Troyak is just one part of a larger cyber-crime […]

Apparently, the Koobface gang likes to work on weekends. According to research from Zscaler, the number of command and control servers tied to Koobface jumped to 122 March 14 – 57 percent of which were in the United States. The number of command and control servers fluctuated up and down all last week before hitting […]

Researchers at Core Security Technologies issued an advisory March 16 about a new security vulnerability that leaves users of Microsoft’s Virtual PC software open to attack. According to Core Security, certain versions of the Virtual PC hypervisor contain a vulnerability that allows attackers to bypass Windows security mechanisms, including Data Execution Prevention (DEP) and Address […]

Reports that law enforcement agencies use social networking sites like Facebook for investigations have touched a nerve with some, but opinions are divided as to whether lines are being crossed. The discussion was put into focus March 16 with the release of a U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) document touching on the use of social […]

McAfee is taking a swing at securing cloud environments with a new service aimed at software-as-a-service providers. Dubbed the McAfee Cloud Secure program, the service is essentially designed to compliment annual audits of security and process controls many cloud vendors undergo for certification purposes. With McAfee Cloud Secure, McAfee officials said they will partner with […]