Dennis Fisher

Microsoft Corp. is in the process of reworking some of the pieces of its much-publicized and oft-criticized Next Generation Secure Computing Base technology in response to feedback from both partners and potential customers. The company is working to tweak the APIs to make it easier for other software makers to write compatible applications for the […]

Searching for a way to stem the tide of spam flooding its customers inboxes, Microsoft Corp. on Wednesday will announce that it has joined a program that certifies e-mail senders as legitimate and requires them to post a financial bond guaranteeing their continued good behavior. The program, known as Bonded Sender, is the brainchild of […]

A fourth version of the Sasser worm is now at work infecting Windows machines, and this one has the potential to cause serious network slowdowns and outages, experts say. The Sasser worm family, like its namesake, journeyman major league catcher Mackey Sasser, who once became so overcome by nerves that he couldnt throw the ball […]

Richard Clarke, the former top cyber-security adviser to the president, will be delivering a keynote speech at the eWEEK Security Summit next week in New York. Clarke will be addressing the wide range of security risks that enterprises are up against and also plans to talk about the various ways companies can protect their networks. […]

With two variants of the Sasser worm already infecting computers through a recent vulnerability in Windows, security experts now are tracking a third version of the worm and an exploit that attacks the same flaw. Sasser.C is closely related to the two earlier versions of the worm, except for the fact that it spawns 1024 […]

A new breed of sophisticated e-mail attack that is difficult to detect and defend against is further proof that cyber-criminals and scam artists are getting more serious about their efforts to steal information. The new attack is an enhanced form of phishing, scams that are defined as attempts to steal credit card data and other […]

Two new mass-mailing worms hit corporate networks Wednesday, continuing what has been a miserable spring for IT managers who have had to deal with an unrelenting rash of malware. The two newest entrants are Bagle.AA and Netsky.AB, both of which have been rated as medium risks by antivirus vendors. There is little new in either […]

MCI Inc. on Tuesday will announce a new set of managed security services, many of which involve partnerships with vendors such as VeriSign Inc. and MessageLabs Inc. In addition to traditional services offerings such as mail scanning and managed firewall, the companies plan to offer enterprises the option of a managed intrusion prevention system (IPS), […]

Network Associates Inc. on Tuesday announced earnings of 32 cents per share on revenue of $217 million for the first quarter. Although revenue was down slightly from $219 million in the first quarter of 2003, a reduction in costs boosted earnings sharply from 8 cents per share. Bookings in the McAfee Security unit—which includes the […]

Security experts on Tuesday said they are seeing evidence of what appears to be a worm exploiting the recently announced vulnerability in the Windows implementation of the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol. During the morning and early afternoon Tuesday, specialists at VeriSign Inc.s security operations center observed a large-scale exploitation of the vulnerability. While there […]

Two major security issues affecting routers hit the Internet community within hours of each other last week, sending administrators and network operators scurrying to get updated software to protect their devices before an expected wave of attacks begins. The more serious of the two problems is a critical vulnerability in Cisco Systems Inc.s Cisco IOS […]

If the recent compromises of Unix and Linux machines at supercomputing centers and research universities around the country do nothing else, they should prove once and for all that there is nothing new under the sun. To security world veterans, the pattern of attacks likely sounds eerily familiar. It is nearly identical to the methods […]