Fahmida Y. Rashid

A former IT professional at the United States subsidiary of Japanese pharmaceutical firm Shionogi pleaded guilty on Aug. 16 to charges of computer intrusion. The former employee, Jason Cornish, faces a maximum of 10 years in prison when he is sentenced in November. This is just the latest case that illustrates how enterprises fail to […]

In an analysis of recent data breachs at Epsilon, Sony and Citigroup, Protegrity observed that cyber-criminals have shifted their focus from targeting financial information to stealing personally identifiable information, the company said in its report released Aug. 17. The personal information includes names, email addresses, home addresses, health data, passwords and even sensitive corporate information.Entitled […]

Another defense contractor’s network and data has apparently fallen to the combined skills of hackers attacking Websites under the “AntiSec” banner. Members of hacktivist collective Anonymous have reportedly breached servers belonging to defense contractor Vanguard Defense Industries as part of the movement to steal and publicize documents from government agencies, according to a report in […]

About 45,000 Verizon landline workers from Massachusetts to Virginia went on strike Aug. 7, fighting management demands for contract givebacks. With the rise in mobile devices, Verizon’s landline business is declining, hence the management’s demand to Since then, Verizon has accused striking workers of illegal tactics and network sabotage. The company claimed that several cables […]

Google’s $12.5 billion offer for Motorola Mobility, if approved, isn’t likely to bring a higher level of security to Android smartphones, according to a mobile strategist.The acquisition is subject to regulatory approval and is not expected to close until late 2011 or early 2012, Google said in its Aug. 15 announcement. Motorola Mobility will operate […]

Security researchers are buzzing about the flaws in the Secure Sockets Layer system and the fact that a significant portion of the Internet is vulnerable to attack. At the recent Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, there were several reports and panels addressing various issues. Based on the PKI (public key infrastructure), the SSL […]

Mozilla fixed 10 “critical” and “high-risk” security vulnerabilities in its popular Firefox Web browser, several of which could have led to remote code execution by malicious attackers. Mozilla addressed vulnerabilities relating to memory management, heap overflows and unsigned scripts in Firefox 6, released Aug.17. The latest version arrived just two months after Firefox 5, and […]

Identity Finder released a detailed analysis of the data hacktivist collective Anonymous released Aug. 14 after successfully breaching the myBART.org Website. The attack on the Website maintained by the Bay Area Rapid Transit authority to allow riders to get service information and plan their trips was prompted by the agency officials to temporarily suspend cellular […]

The source code for the SpyEye Trojan has been released, raising the possibility that one of the most prevalent Trojans in the wild could become an even bigger threat. The leak was the work of a French researcher called Xyliton, part of the RED (Reverse Engineers Dream) Crew, who released a tutorial to crack a […]

Global spam volumes have been declining since March, but Commtouch researchers reported a massive spam outbreak that flooded user in-boxes this week. The latest spam outbreak is the largest operation seen by researchers since the end of March, Avi Turiel, director of product marketing at Commtouch, wrote on the Commtouch Caf??« blog Aug. 15. The […]