Dennis Fisher

Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday will announce a set of changes designed to improve the security and privacy of its Passport online authentication service. The company will include all of the changes in version 2.5 of the Passport service, due later this month. The most significant change requires users to submit a valid e-mail address as […]

Cisco Systems Inc. on Tuesday released a bulletin detailing more than a dozen security vulnerabilities in its popular 3000 series of VPN concentrators. The effects of the vulnerabilities range from denials of service to password disclosure to illicit network access. All of the 3000 series concentrators and the Cisco VPN 3002 Hardware Client are affected […]

Its been an interesting year so far for Network Associates Inc. The Santa Clara, Calif., security giant has been involved in an on-again, off-again courtship with McAfee.com Corp., which finally agreed to be acquired earlier this month; in an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission that resulted in a restatement of earnings reports from […]

A serious flaw in the ActiveX control that handles Web-based certificate enrollments in all versions of Windows enables an attacker to corrupt any certificate stored on a users machine. By exploiting this vulnerability, an intruder could access and corrupt a users trusted root certificates, EFS (encrypted file system) encryption certificates and e-mail signing certificates, among […]

The Liberty Alliance Project on Wednesday announced that more than two dozen new organizations have joined the alliance, including some big names, such as Sprint Corp. and the Internet2 consortium. The alliance also announced it will hold its first all-hands meeting in Chicago on Sept. 19. The new members run the gamut of industries, from […]

The Bush administration has plans to create a centralized facility for collecting and examining security-related e-mail and data traffic and will push private network operators to expand their data-gathering initiatives, according to an unreleased draft of the plan. The proposed cyber-security Network Operations Center is included in a draft of the National Strategy to Secure […]

Crypto fans, take heart. PGP is here to stay. A group of venture capitalists and high-tech executives last week announced the formation of a company, PGP Corp., which has purchased Network Associates Inc.s remaining Pretty Good Privacy assets and released PGP 8.0, a new version of the popular encryption application. In a move sure to […]

In an effort to bolster the nations cyber-security, the Bush administration has plans to create a centralized facility for collecting and examining security-related e-mail and data and will push private network operators to expand their own data gathering, according to an unreleased draft of the plan. The proposed cyber-security Network Operations Center is included in […]

Microsoft Corp. on Thursday released patches for a host of vulnerabilities in several of its products, including Internet Explorer, Windows NT, Windows 2000 and XP Professional. The largest set of flaws is in IE, for which Microsoft released a new cumulative patch covering six new vulnerabilities as well as all previously discovered flaws. Among the […]

After months of refusing Network Associates Inc.s advances, McAfee.com Corp. on Friday finally accepted its former parent companys acquisition offer. For each share of McAfee.com stock, Network Associates, of Santa Clara, Calif., will pay $8 in cash and 0.675 of a share of its stock. This is the fourth time that NAI has offered to […]

There are three security vulnerabilities in an ActiveX control included in several of Microsoft Corp.s most popular applications that give an attacker the ability to execute code and read files on a remote machine. The flaw itself is in the Office Web Components (OWC) 2000 and 2002 software, which is included with Office 2000 and […]

Microsoft Corp. has alerted some of its customers to a security vulnerability in a software application used to download beta releases and other limited-release software from the companys Web site. The flaw in the File Transfer Manager could enable an attacker to take control of a vulnerable machine, Microsoft said in its note to customers. […]