Dennis Fisher

A worldwide team of volunteers, using spare computing power, found the secret key for a message encrypted with the RC5-64 cipher, winning a $10,000 prize and, they say, casting some doubt on the security of messages protected by the cipher. Distributed.net, a collection of more than 331,000 volunteers who lent their machines idle processing power […]

There is a serious flaw in the VPN service included with Windows 2000 and XP that could provide an attacker with a clear path through corporate firewalls, according to an Austrian security company. The VPN (virtual private network) client and server that ship with Windows 2000 and XP use the PPTP (point-to-point tunneling protocol) for […]

A newly discovered flaw in Microsoft Corp.s FrontPage Server Extensions gives an attacker the ability to run any code of choice on some vulnerable Web servers. Microsoft issued an advisory and a patch for the problem Wednesday. The vulnerability is in the SmartHTML Interpreter in FPSE 2000 and 2002 and involves the way the interpreter […]

After nearly a year in the shadows, the Organization for Internet Safety on Thursday formally announced its formation. The group, made up of security and software vendors, is working on a set of guidelines for handling vulnerability information, which it hopes will bring some order to the chaotic world of security research and vulnerability disclosure. […]

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in collaboration with scientists from several other universities and organizations, are designing a new distributed, self-healing Internet infrastructure that they hope will be resistant to attack and failure. The project, known as IRIS (Infrastructure for Resilient Internet Systems), aims to take some of the properties of current distributed […]

Netegrity Inc. on Monday released a new version of its flagship SiteMinder software, the first in a series of new releases the access-management vendor will announce in the next few weeks. The biggest addition to SiteMinder with the 5.5 release is support for federated identity management, including the SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language) specification and […]

Microsoft Corp. on Wednesday released a patch to fix three flaws in its Java Virtual Machine, one of which gives an attacker complete control of a users machine. The release comes 10 days after news of the vulnerabilities was posted to a security mailing list. The BugTraq posting discusses more than 10 flaws although the […]

Sun Microsystems Inc. on Thursday will announce a broad security initiative that includes two new solutions, a new partner program, consulting services, training and the release of a new cryptographic technology. The new iForce Perimeter Security solution combines intrusion detection, anti-virus and other functionality and includes software from a wide variety of Suns partners, such […]

The White House on Wednesday released a draft of its cybersecurity plan, a document that many critics are already saying is too tepid and watered-down to have any real effect on the countrys network security. Richard Clarke, chairman of the Presidents Critical Infrastructure Protection Board, has been planning for several months to release the National […]

Computer Associates International Inc. on Tuesday announced a new security console designed to integrate its various eTrust technologies and support the companys new “holistic” security strategy. The eTrust Security Command Center will pull together solutions from CAs new Identity Management, Threat Management and Access Management solution lines and display information in a portal-style console. It […]

The White House has decided to delay the release of its long-awaited cyber-security plan in an effort to gain more input from industry executives and government officials. Richard Clarke, chairman of the Presidents Critical Infrastructure Protection Board, has been planning for months to release the National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace Wednesday at a high-level event […]

Security vendors are responding to customer demands for technologies that can prevent attacks, instead of simply warn of their presence. Entercept Security Technologies Inc. and TippingPoint Technologies Inc. are both set to unveil IPS (intrusion prevention system) products in the coming weeks. And a trio of leading vendors—Check Point Software Technologies Ltd., Okena Inc. and […]