Dennis Fisher

In a major change of heart for both sides, government representatives and corporate CIOs are for the first time pledging to share more information with each other in an effort to improve security across the nations critical IT infrastructure. The coming together is the result of efforts over the last month by the federal government—namely, […]

After several days of extensive forensic work, officials at Gentoo Technologies Inc. believe that they have identified the vulnerability and exploit that were used to compromise one of the servers that house the code for the companys Linux distribution. The attacker appears to have used a combination of the recently discovered flaw in the do_brk( […]

In the latest of what is becoming a string of high-profile attacks on Linux, someone broke into one of the servers used to distribute versions of Gentoo Linux on Tuesday. Officials at Gentoo Technologies Inc. on Wednesday posted a message in the companys online forums detailing the attack. The executives sought to reassure users and […]

When the top security minds from the federal government and the private sector meet in Silicon Valley Wednesday, there will be no shortage of conversation topics, given the current state of security in the United States and the upheaval and lack of direction that has characterized the governments security ranks of late. But the elephant […]

IBM is developing a technology that will give enterprises a deeper understanding of their exposure to privacy problems and automate the process of defining which users are tapping a networks assets and how theyre using them. The tool is at the forefront of an evolving trend in corporate America in which privacy considerations are beginning […]

The number of active security researchers has grown by leaps and bounds in recent years, and for many of them, research is not just a hobby but a profession. To help legitimize this calling and impose a bit of structure in what can be a chaotic industry, a prominent researcher has proposed a kind of […]

Security professionals took note of a critical new vulnerability in the Linux kernel that could enable an attacker to gain root access to a vulnerable machine and take complete control of it. An unknown cracker recently used this weakness to compromise several of the Debian Projects servers, which led to the discovery of the new […]

The outlook for 2004 for the technology industry may be bright, as many experts say we are in the beginning stages of a rebound, but there are more dark days ahead for the security community. Using the spate of DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks against a handful of high-profile Web sites in early 2000 […]

A new Trojan horse hidden in an e-mail purported to be carrying pornographic pictures is beginning to make the rounds on the Internet. The Trojan is known as Sysbug and provides its creator with a backdoor into infected systems running versions of Windows from 95 through XP. It copies itself to the Windows installation folder […]

Microsoft Corp. is preparing a series of major changes to the security capabilities in the Windows client and server platforms, and they will further lock down the companys flagship operating systems. In separate service packs due over the next six months, the Redmond, Wash., software developer plans to add several security features to Windows XP […]

An unknown cracker this week compromised several machines belonging to the Debian Project, including servers that house the projects bug-tracking system and security components. Officials from the project said they discovered the intrusion within the last 36 hours and are still working to restore all of the affected machines. Debian is an open-source operating system […]

LAS VEGAS—If software vendors and security companies dont get their act together and start producing better products, users will begin dropping off the Internet out of sheer frustration, predicted John Thompson, chairman and CEO of Symantec Corp., in his keynote speech at Comdex here Wednesday. Thompson challenged vendors to begin turning out more secure software […]