Dennis Fisher

ORLANDO, Fla. — As part of his continuing effort to reshape the company, Sanjay Kumar, president and CEO of Computer Associates International Inc., on Sunday announced that he has reshuffled CAs marketing, support and product-management organizations. Each of the companys six brand units is now aligned vertically, with the development, marketing, support, quality assurance and […]

Problems with Microsoft Corp.s Windows Update are causing the automated scanning service to mismanage patches, leaving IT managers to wonder whether the systems they thought were safely patched are actually vulnerable. WU, which was originally meant for consumers but is used widely in the enterprise as well, checks a customers PC for needed product updates […]

Microsoft Corp. has issued a patch for a buffer overrun vulnerability in some versions of its SQL Server database software that could enable an attacker to execute code on a vulnerable machine. The flaw, which affects SQL Server 7.0 and 2000, occurs when extended stored procedures validate input to the database. The procedures are external […]

A new variant of the Klez worm is making the rounds on the Internet, spreading rapidly in Asia and parts of Europe. Klez.H is a mass-mailing worm that is little different from its older siblings in that it spreads by mailing itself to all of the addresses in the infected machines Microsoft Corp. Outlook address […]

There is a security vulnerability in several Microsoft Corp. products that run on the Macintosh platform that researchers say could be fertile ground for the development of a worm. The flaw is a buffer overflow associated with the way that the applications handle a lengthy subdirectory in a particular file. It affects Internet Explorer 5.1 […]

More than 15 percent of the SSL servers in the United States are using short RSA keys that are in danger of being compromised, potentially threatening the data flowing to and from those servers, according to a white paper published last week. The paper, written by Nicko van Someren, chief technology officer of Ncipher Corp. […]

Enterprise IT managers and CIOs, growing impatient with security vulnerabilities, are fighting back with language in contracts that holds software companies liable for breaches and attacks that exploit their products. This trend illustrates a shift of responsibility for attacks and virus outbreaks from users and IT staffs to vendors, which many customers feel have been […]

Reports of problems with Microsoft Corp.s vulnerability-scanning tool continued to mount Monday as more and more users say the free program finds phantom vulnerabilities and misses patches that have been applied. The problems do not seem to be isolated to any one version of Windows or any particular brand of computer. Known as the Microsoft […]

Just days after its release, users are reporting a raft of problems with Microsoft Corp.s new vulnerability scanning tool. Known as the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer, the tool scans various Microsoft products for known vulnerabilities and can also alert the user to missing or misapplied patches and hotfixes. However, some users say the tool is […]

A group of software and security vendors that is at work on a standard for disclosing security vulnerabilities hopes to have a completed document ready for public inspection within a month. The group, known as the Organization for Internet Safety, has been working on the proposal for several months and submitted a preliminary version of […]

In a move of virtually unprecedented scope, Microsoft Corp. on Wednesday released a bulletin warning of 10 new security vulnerabilities in several versions of its IIS Web server, several of which could give an attacker total control over a vulnerable system. The vulnerabilities affect Internet Information Server 4.0, 5.0 and 5.1 in varying degrees. A […]

Microsoft Corp. on Monday released a free tool designed to scan for vulnerabilities and missing patches in many of its most popular enterprise products, including Windows 2000 and Windows NT and Internet Information Services. Known as the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer, the tool, which can be downloaded at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/security/tools/Tools/MBSAhome.asp, runs on Windows 2000 and XP […]