Brian Prince

Applications vulnerabilities are the honey bringing attackers out of their hives. According to an analysis by Bit9, released Dec. 16, this year’s list of applications with the most serious vulnerabilities had Adobe Reader, Acrobat, Flash Player and Shockwave at the top. For IT administrators, the findings are a reminder of the importance of keeping track […]

Adobe Systems is prepping a patch for a zero-day bug affecting its Reader and Acrobat software for release by Jan. 12. The vulnerability is considered critical by Adobe and impacts the latest versions of Adobe Reader and Acrobat for Windows, Macintosh and Unix systems. Earlier editions are affected as well. The company has not released […]

When McAfee published its list of the most dangerous Web domains, China ‘s .cn domain was among the list’s familiar faces. However, some security researchers say that may change as a side effect of China tightening its control over the Internet. Chinese authorities recently changed their domain registration process to require domain name applicants submit […]

RockYou, a distributor and creator of applications for social networking sites, was compromised by a SQL injection attack that exposed passwords and e-mails for more than 32 million user accounts. But perhaps just as troubling as the attack is that the passwords and e-mails of its user base were stored in the clear. By default, […]

Attackers are exploiting a new vulnerability affecting Adobe Systems’ Reader and Acrobat software in what are reportedly targeted attacks. According to Adobe’s Product Security Incident Response Team blog, the vulnerability impacts Adobe Reader and Acrobat 9.2, and is being exploited in the wild. “We are currently investigating this issue and assessing the risk to our […]

A report testing Australia’s controversial Web filtering plan is done, paving the way for the country to join thelist of nations with mandatory Web filtering. Stephen Conroy, who is Australia’s minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, released the report (PDF) Dec. 15 as he outlined the government’s plans. Australian authorities expect to make […]

A survey of roughly 100,000 endpoints from some 25 organizations revealed that all of them had between 10 and 30 percent security- or policy-compliance issues. The survey, performed by endpoint management software vendor Promisec, found the key issues are missing third-party agents, unauthorized peer-to-peer applications, missing Microsoft updates and out-of-date or misconfigured antivirus. Some of […]

With the acquisition of Sun Microsystems by Oracle still in the air, MySQL creator Monty Widenius has come out in strong opposition to the deal. In a blog post, Widenius urged the MySQL community to contact the European Commission regarding Oracle’s possible acquisition of Sun Microsystems, which bought MySQL AB in 2008. “Without your immediate […]

Strong two-factor authentication is falling short, and businesses need to take notice, according to a report from Gartner. In a new report, “Where Strong Authentication Fails and What You Can Do About It,” Gartner analyst Avivah Litan contends that Trojan-based, man-in-the-browser attacks are circumventing strong two-factor authentication and proving that any authentication method that relies […]

When Facebook updated its privacy settings a few days ago, the changes drew a mix of acclaim and criticism. One thing, however, was made clear-securing social networks means taking a serious approach to privacy. According to Facebook, that starts with an understanding of what privacy settings exist and taking stock of what information users want […]

Trend Micro released a report Dec. 9 highlighting what it expects to see as far as security threats in 2010. Among the more interesting predictions — attacks on cloud infrastructures will increase. Almost as if on cue, a report surfaced the same day that the Zeus Trojan was observed abusing the Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute […]

Facebook is defending changes to its privacy and security controls despite criticisms from some users. On Dec. 9, Facebook announced it was implementing a number of privacy-related changes, including the ability to control who sees what piece of content on a user’s page, a Transition Tool and simplified privacy settings. However, some users lambasted the […]