Dennis Fisher

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 […]

ATLANTA—When Internet Security Systems Inc. began in 1994, it was one of the pioneers in the intrusion-detection and vulnerability-assessment markets. The companys Internet Scanner software, written by founder and chief technology officer Christopher Klaus, was one of the first applications to be able to find and fix software vulnerabilities. But security threats and attacks have […]

RSA Security Inc. is developing an online identity management technology that, for the first time, puts the control of personal data in the hands of users. The technology, known as Nightingale, is set to be unveiled at the RSA Conference in San Francisco in April. With the system, users would store their personally identifiable information […]

After taking most of last year off, the worlds virus writers seem to be making up for lost time early this year. A new virus, known as Sobig, spread rapidly on the Internet last week, infecting machines worldwide. The virus appears to attack Windows machines running Microsoft Corp.s Outlook e-mail client. MessageLabs Ltd., a Gloucester, […]

Sun Microsystems Inc. last week unveiled its first new identity management product based on the Liberty Alliance specification it helped create. Sun ONE (Open Net Environment) Identity Server 6.0 is not a breakthrough product, but customers, competitors and other Liberty Alliance members will be watching its progress closely. Identity Server is the first major product […]