Dennis Fisher

Cache Flow Inc. on Wednesday announced that it has changed its name to Blue Coat Systems Inc. to reflect a new focus on selling security appliances. The company also unveiled its first new product, the SG800, designed to inspect and filter Web traffic entering the network through TCP port 80. The appliance is installed behind […]

Security researchers have found a new flaw in Microsoft Corp.s SQL Server database software. The problem lies in the SQL Server agent, which is responsible for various functions, including running scheduled jobs and restarting the database service if it stops. By default, low privileged users can add jobs to the SQL queue and specify the […]

Crypto fans take heart, PGP is here to stay. A group of venture capitalists and veteran high-tech executives on Monday announced the formation of a new company called PGP Corp. that has purchased Network Associates Inc.s remaining PGP assets and released PGP 8.0, a new version of the beloved encryption application. And, in a move […]

Microsoft Corp.s commitment to security, specifically its Trustworthy Computing initiative, is being questioned after its inaction regarding two new reports of security vulnerabilities in its products, security experts say. Twice in the past three weeks, experts have issued reports of security flaws in Microsoft products, and both times the company remained silent, making no immediate […]

For nearly a year, federal officials have been telling anyone willing to listen that terrorists have the knowledge and equipment to carry out sophisticated information warfare attacks against targets in the United States. This declaration is usually followed by an ominous warning that a “digital Pearl Harbor” is around the corner. Bureaucrats have used this […]

Microsoft Corp. on Thursday issued a patch for a critical flaw in Windows 2000 that could allow an attacker to run code with system-level privileges on vulnerable machines. The vulnerability lies in the Network Connection Manager (NCM), a component of Windows 2000 that controls all the network connections managed by a given host. One of […]

Security vendors, beginning to take the spread of peer-to-peer applications seriously, are marshaling their forces on two fronts in an effort to protect both P2P users and their employers. Check Point Software Technologies Inc. and McAfee.com Corp. this week have announced new P2P security initiatives, taking different tacks in their quest to catch up to […]

Palisades Systems Inc. on Tuesday introduced a new version of its PacketHound security and monitoring appliance, adding new reporting and tracking capabilities. The appliance operates in passive mode and sits in the network traffic flow, monitoring inbound and outbound connections, much as a firewall does. The difference is that PacketHound uses a database of signatures […]

There is a severe flaw in Microsoft Corp.s ubiquitous Internet Explorer browser that could enable a malicious Web site operator to hijack user sessions and steal their credit card numbers and other sensitive data. The flaw lies in the way that IE verifies the validity of digital certificates issued to Web sites that offer SSL […]

A group of security experts working on a plan for responsible vulnerability disclosure met here earlier this month to set the final details of their organizations structure and discuss the status of their plan. The group, known informally as the Organization for Internet Safety, has been collaborating for nearly a year and said it hopes […]

A new online authentication technology developed by researchers at Lucent Technologies Inc.s Bell Labs could finally make true single sign-on in the enterprise a reality. In addition, it has the potential to add tighter security to similar sign-on efforts by the Liberty Alliance Project and Microsoft Corp. The software, called Factotum, is unique in that […]

Two cryptography experts and a graduate student have identified an attack on the widely deployed PGP e-mail encryption software that enables an attacker to decode an encrypted mail message. The attack itself is not new, but it had been thought to be impractical. However, a new paper to be published today by Bruce Schneier, chief […]