Brian Prince

A new report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies highlights the financial damage of cyber-attacks on critical infrastructure, but also paints a picture of IT security that is in turns good and bad. The report, “In the Crossfire: Critical Infrastructure in the Age of Cyberwar” (PDF), was commissioned by McAfee and includes information […]

A software engineer is highlighting the challenges facing mobile application stores in an upcoming presentation at Black Hat DC. In his presentation Feb. 3, software engineer Nicolas Seriot will focus on applications for the Apple iPhone, and how Apple’s guarantees of privacy and applications can fall short at the App Store’s virtual door. “In late […]

A Nebraska man agreed this week to plead guilty in connection with attacks on Web sites for the Churchof Scientology, becoming the second person to do so since the investigation began. Brian Thomas Mettenbrink of Grand Island, Neb., will plead guilty to the misdemeanor charge of unauthorized access of a protected computer. Under the deal, […]

Google has beefed up the latest version of its Chrome browser with new security protections designed to help developers build secure Websites. In Chrome 4, which was released Jan. 25, Google added three new security features: strict transport security, cross-origin communication with postMessage and reflective cross-site scripting (XSS) protection. Strict transport security requires a browser […]

Symantec reported $1.551 billion in revenues in the third quarter of fiscal 2010, due in part to growth in its consumer business. The company reported GAAP net income of $300 million for the quarter, compared with a $6.82 billion loss for the same quarter the previous year. About 31 percent of the revenues came from […]

As Oracle lays out its integration plans for newly acquired Sun Microsystems, the two rivals it has most obviously affected in the database space are IBM and Microsoft. The acquisition of Sun brings with it MySQL, a database that has grown in popularity during recent years, particularly for businesses focused on Web 2.0. With the […]

Some pranks just aren’t funny. Today, we find our case in point in a new Windows worm that has spread from Slovakia to computers around the world. According to ESET, it is widely believed Win32/Zimuse A and Win32 Zimuse B started as a prank to infect the fans of a motorcycle club in the central […]

Two new reports from Forrester Research project that roughly 40 percent of enterprises and small and midsize businesses plan to increase their IT security budgets in 2010. The reports, released Jan. 25, found other commonalities: A large percentage of both groups expect spending on network security to increase and have declared data security “critical.” According […]

The Chinese government is fighting back against accusations it was involved in any way in the recent cyber-attacks that struck more than 30 enterprises, calling such talk “groundless.” “Accusation that the Chinese government participated in cyber-attack, either in an explicit or inexplicit way, is groundless and aims to denigrate China,” a spokesman of the Ministry […]

Bredolab, Spam and the CAPTCHA-Cracking Biz by Brian Prince Bredolab on the Rise After being relatively dormant at the beginning of the year, Bredolab began pushing Webwail Jan. 11, leading to a surge in activity. Special Delivery This is an example of a spam message containing the Bredolab Trojan. Here, the malware is disguised as […]

Data breaches are not getting any cheaper to deal with, and companies that jump the gun on notifications can end up paying the most. In its fifth annual study on data breaches, the Ponemon Institute discovered that about 36 percent of participants notified their breach victims within one month, but ended up paying $219 per […]

Database security vendor Imperva released an analysis of 32 million passwords exposed in the Rockyou.com breach. What they found is not good. According to their analysis, the three most commonly used passwords are “123456”, “12345” and “123456789.” Other common passwords include “Password” and “iloveyou.” Their analysis echoes a paper written by researchers at the University […]