Fahmida Y. Rashid

After EMC’s RSA Security disclosed earlier this year that unknown attackers had breached its systems via an e-mail with a malicious attachment, security researchers wondered what the file had contained and how exactly it had breached the security company. Researchers at F-Secure think they may have finally found the attacking file. Timo Hirvonen, an anti-malware […]

Increasing risks to the electrical grid will require utilities to invest a total of $4.1 billion between 2011 and 2018 in cyber-security for industrial control systems, research firm Pike Research said Aug. 23. The investments will be part of the larger upgrade to the nation’s energy grid, which include the installation of smart meters. In […]

At the Black Hat security conference earlier this month in Las Vegas, a security researcher stood on stage and demonstrated how a malicious third party could transmit wireless commands toremotely disable his insulin pump. During his Aug. 4 demonstration, Jerome Radcliffe declined to disclose the name of the manufacturer who made his pump and the […]

A denial-of-service tool that exploits a security flaw in the Apache Web server software is available in the wild. The Apache team is working on a fix and is expected to roll it out over the next few days. Called “Apache Killer,” the DoS tool appeared Aug. 19 on the “Full Disclosure” security mailing list. […]

Shortly after the source code for the Zeus banking Trojan was leaked earlier this year, security researchers predicted malware developers would add Zeus features to existing malware to create complex and sophisticated variants. Researchers identified two such samples this week. Portions of Zeus code appear to have been added to a computer worm called Ramnit, […]

Twitter has announced it will begin to turn on HTTPS by default for all users. This is good news, as Web services need to start protecting their users from man-in-the-middle attacks. Twitter rolled out HTTPS to its users earlier this year, but made it an optional setting. Users concerned about security had to enable HTTPS […]

Certificates: What Pays and What Doesnt Average premium pay for 237 certified skills continued its poor performance, declining nearly 2 percent in market value. See which skills are still gaining and which ones aren’t in as high demand … IT Security IT security certifications in general have declined in value, but three, Cisco ASA Specialist, […]

A solo attacker has hacked into an events management company and obtained sensitive information belonging to 20,000 individuals, many of whom were United States government employees or contractors. The cyber-attacker posted an Excel spreadsheet containing log-in credentials and personal information for 20,000 people obtained from allianceforbiz.com, according to a blog post signed by “Thehacker12” on […]

Trend Micro updated its suite of antivirus and Web security products with new capabilities to protect users from fake antivirus and scams on social networking sites. The new Titanium 2012 builds upon the security overhaul the company did for the security suite in 2010 by adding two new scanning engines to detect fake antivirus programs […]

The tremendous popularity of mobile devices and their subsequent appearance in the workplace means organizations have to worry about data-stealing malware as well as the danger of lost and stolen devices. The increased risk to personal and corporate data is an opportunity for the mobile-security industry, and the global market for mobile security is expected […]

Internet audience tracking and analytics firm comScore is being accused of surreptitiously collecting Social Security numbers, credit card information and passwords from consumers. The company is also accused of using its data collection software to tamper with user systems and stealing information from saved documents, according to a proposed class-action lawsuit filed in the United […]

The PHP Group has fixed the serious bug in the cryptographic function in PHP 5.3.7 and pushed out the fix a day later in the latest PHP 5.3.8. The PHP Group released PHP 5.3.7 on Aug. 18, but developers were told to not upgrade to that version after the bug in how the crypt() function […]