Dennis Fisher

As Richard Clarke prepares to step down as chairman of the Presidents Critical Infrastructure Protection Board and adjust to life in the private sector, questions remain about the boards place and utility in the new Department of Homeland Security. Clarke plans to resign within the next few weeks after 30 years of government work. For […]

The security researcher whose code was used as a template for the Slammer worm is now reconsidering his position on releasing sample exploit code. David Litchfield, co-founder of Next Generation Security Software Ltd., in Surrey, England, said in a post to the BugTraq mailing list Wednesday that hes concerned that some future code of his […]

Richard Clarke, the presidents top information security adviser, is planning to retire within the next month, leaving a power vacuum at the top of the governments security structure at a crucial point in the development of the nascent Department of Homeland Security. Clarke, chairman of the Presidents Critical Infrastructure Protection Board, has been the driving […]

A prominent U.K.-based security vendor well-known for finding dangerous vulnerabilities in a variety of software said on Monday that it would no longer work with the CERT Coordination Center after CERT personnel gave advance notice of several new vulnerabilities to a software vendor and some government officials. Researchers at Next Generation Security Software Ltd. were […]

Its been one of the dirty little secrets of the security industry for years: Software patches dont work. Its not that they dont fix the problems that theyre designed to solve; they do. Despite technical problems with some patches, most notably regression errors and incompatibility issues in patches from Microsoft Corp. and others, hot fixes […]

Microsoft Corp. is stepping up its Trustworthy Computing efforts as it readies the release of Windows Server 2003—a product viewed by company executives and customers alike as a crucial test of the security programs effectiveness. The server, due in April, is the first product from the Redmond, Wash., developer to be designed and built from […]

As corporate IT departments go about the business of cleaning up their networks, there are strong indications that the SQL Slammer worm that brought down portions of the Internet over the weekend is based on the work of an obscure Chinese cracking group. Signatures within the worms source code indicate that a group known as […]

Cisco Systems Inc. on Friday agreed to acquire intrusion-prevention software vendor Okena Inc. for $154 million in stock. The deal is an interesting one for Cisco, which has traditionally focused far more energy and resources on its huge networking business than its VPN and firewall lines. But the purchase sends a clear signal that the […]

When CacheFlow Inc., one of the better known names in the caching and content-delivery markets, last summer changed its name to Blue Coat Systems Inc. and decided to focus on security, it seemed like a risky move. Blue Coat stepped onto a playing field crowded with other security appliances, but the company has partnered with […]

RSA Security Inc. on Thursday reported a net loss of $49.8 million, or $0.88 per share, on revenue of $61 million for the fourth quarter of 2002. Those numbers represent a three percent decline in revenue from the same period in 2001. The company also reported a loss of $96.8 million for all of 2002, […]

Security experts are cautioning systems administrators not to overreact to news of a newly discovered attack that under some circumstances can compromise users HTTP authentication credentials. News of the attack began spreading earlier this week after a security company posted on its Web site a white paper detailing what it said was months of research […]

There is a serious vulnerability in several versions of the popular Solaris operating system that enables a remote attacker to access any file and obtain root privileges on a vulnerable machine. The flaw affects Sun Microsystems Inc.s Solaris 2.5.1, 2.6, 7, 8 and 9 running on Sparc-based or Intel Corp.-based servers. The vulnerability lies in […]