Fahmida Y. Rashid

Retailers are seeing an uptick in Web attacks driven mainly by malware exploit toolkits as cyber-criminals attempt to steal credit card information, according to Dell SecureWorks. Hacking attacks against retail customers were up 43 percent from January to September, Dell SecureWorks said Oct. 10. The Dell SecureWorks Counter Threat Unit stopped 91,500 attackers per retail […]

Log management vendor LogRhythm unveiled the latest version of its Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) platform with advanced capabilities to correlate data. LogRhythm 6.0 offers pattern recognition and responsive monitoring and can automatically remediate issues, the Boulder, Colo.-based company said Oct. 12. The platform allows organizations to be faster at detecting and responding to […]

Dennis Ritchie, creator of the C programming language and co-developer of the Unix operating system, died at home after a long illness. He was 70 years old. Google engineer and former colleague Rob Pike publicly posted the news on Google+ Oct. 12, writing, “I trust there are people here who will appreciate the reach of […]

Nowadays, when a Website is unavailable, may people immediately assume it has been hacked. However, sometimes, it is just a software or hardware glitch. The most recent example appears to be Research in Motion. BlackBerry users in North America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Brazil, Chile, and Argentina experienced service disruptions. There were issues […]

Coinciding with the launch of its new iCloud service, Apple has rolled out massive updates fixing scores of security vulnerabilities in Mac OS X, iOS and related software. The latest mobile operating system, iOS 5, went live Oct. 12, which requires the latest version of iTunes to install. Apple released a new version of its […]

Sony locked out 93,000 users on the PlayStation Network, Sony Entertainment Network and Sony Online Entertainment services after detecting mass log-in attempts into individual accounts. Attackers attempted to use a list of username and password combinations obtained from an unknown source to try to access PSN, SEN and SOE accounts, Philip Reitinger, Sony’s new chief […]

Despite the recent increase in mobile malware, the good news is that cyber-criminals are not yet seeing a lot of financial returns from compromised phones, Symantec researchers found. The goal for criminals is to make money, but at the moment, they are eking out low revenue for their efforts, Symantec researchers wrote in its “Motivations […]

Two separate groups of attackers, most likely funded by a nation-state, were behind the attack on RSA Security, the company’s senior executives said at a conference. Two unidentified hacker groups who had not previously worked together collaborated on the attack against RSA Security earlier this year, Tom Heiser, president of the EMC subsidiary, and Art […]

Less than 1 percent of exploits discovered in the first half of 2011 took advantage of zero-day vulnerabilities, according to a report from Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing group. Social engineering, brute-force attacks and auto-run threats continue to make up the bulk of attacks enterprises are seeing on their systems and networks, according to the latest Security […]

A software program used to intercept online communications is capable of doing much more, the German Government has admitted. The program, Quellen-TKU, was submitted anonymously to The Chaos Computer Club for analysis. Dubbed “R2D2” by antivirus vendors and “Bundestrojaner light” by the hacking group, the group discovered several backdoor functionalities. “Our analysis revealed once again […]

Microsoft fixed 23 vulnerabilities across eight security bulletins as part of its October Patch Tuesday release. October’s Patch Tuesday release resolved issues in Internet Explorer versions 6 through 9, all versions of Microsoft Windows from XP through 7, .NET and Silverlight, Microsoft Forefront Unified Access Gateway and Host Integration Server, Microsoft said Oct. 11. Two […]

McAfee announced a network security framework designed to provide network administrators with intrusion prevention systems that provide context, content and application awareness. The new network security framework integrates intrusion prevention systems with advanced features such as application visibility and integrated threat context, McAfee said Oct. 11. The framework is based on Network Security Platform 7 […]