Dennis Fisher

The Electronic Privacy Information Center has filed a federal lawsuit alleging that two government agencies have ignored the centers repeated Freedom of Information Act requests for information on data privacy. EPIC filed its suit in United States District Court for the District of Columbia on Monday, charging that the departments of Justice and Treasury have […]

Looking to grab a larger piece of the rapidly expanding authentication and authorization market, Novell Inc. this week rolled out its new security suite, SecureAccess. The new suite is meant to be a one-stop shop for security software and comprises six Novell products: eDirectory, NDS Authentication Services, iChain, Novell Modular Authentication Services, SecureLogin and BorderManager. […]

Symantec Corp. on Wednesday reported third-quarter earnings of $0.78 per share, well above the $0.64 per share that analysts had expected. The Cupertino, Calif., security company also reported gross revenue of $290.2 million for the quarter, a 20 percent increase over the $241.8 million for the same period a year ago. Those numbers, however, are […]

Crackers are actively exploiting a dangerous flaw in Sun Microsystems Inc.s Solaris operating system that gives attackers complete control over a vulnerable system, according to a new advisory released by the CERT Coordination Center. Researchers first identified the vulnerability, which also exists in several other operating systems, in 1999, and CERT issued an advisory last […]

One of Microsoft Corp.s key e-commerce sites is currently offline after a security researcher found that the site was vulnerable to a common security problem known as cross-site scripting. The Microsoft Developer Store at Developerstore.com has been unavailable for several days, and there is no indication when it may be back online. An Argentine security […]

The business software alliance is taking its aggressive and somewhat controversial campaign against pirated software to 10 more areas this month. Under its Grace Period campaign, the BSA is using letters and radio ads to offer businesses in selected cities the opportunity to avoid penalties and acquire licenses for any illegal software they may have […]

Hacker attacks that exploit flaws in commercial software have caused tens of billions of dollars in damage in the past year. The Code Red worm alone is estimated to have cost enterprise users more than $2 billion. Software companies have hidden behind user agreements that protect vendors from liability for such damages, and few victims […]

The amount of malicious activity on the Internet is increasing at a frightening rate and shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon. 2001 marked the third consecutive year that the number of security incidents handled by the CERT Coordination Center doubled compared with the previous year. The center, based at Carnegie Mellon University in […]

Virus researchers have discovered a potentially dangerous new virus that deletes all files on an infected computer and also formats the machines C: drive. The virus hasnt infected many computers yet, but Symantec Corp. has given it a High rating for both damage and distribution, meaning the potential for widespread infections is considerable. JS.Gigger.A is […]

A new report issued Tuesday by the National Academy of Sciences adds yet another voice to the chorus warning that the nations information systems are poorly protected. The authors of this study go further, however, and suggest that the government should consider holding software vendors liable for security breaches in their products. The report concludes […]