Larry Seltzer

I only partly agree with Bruce Schneier when he criticizes the anti-virus industry for not finding the Sony rootkit for all the months before it was discovered by Sysinternals Mark Russinovich. Most of Schneiers criticism actually relates to the sloth they exhibited in adding detection once the threat was exposed, and the fact that they […]

Although the legal trouble for Sony may be only starting, I think the technical discovery phase has wound down. But there are some interesting lessons to learn from the whole rootkit DRM affair beyond the obvious stuff thats been in the news. Remember that Mark Russinovich installed the rootkit on his system unknowingly, just by […]

When Zotob and other worms attacked a Windows vulnerability in August, some (yeah, thats me) were surprised that large companies were affected. After all, even a simple firewall should have blocked the attack. The problem was that many large corporate networks arent as controlled as youd think. The most common explanation is of remote users […]

Over the weekend reports began to filter in of a new network worm that focused on a variety of vulnerabilities in products typically found in Linux-based Web servers. Its been tagged by many as a Linux problem, and is, in a practical sense, although most of the vulnerabilities arent strictly Linux issues. So far theres […]

It bothers me when industry is viewed as the enemy, when vendors are assumed to do the worst and that we have to protect ourselves against them. Some of my best friends are vendors. But episodes like Sony BMGs use of a rootkit for CD copy protection make me understand the mind set. Vendor behavior […]

When it was announced recently that Verisign and ICANN have reached a settlement agreement on a lawsuit related to management of the .com domain, the attention was mostly on the extension till 2012 that Verisign gets for managing the domain. In fact, the deal is even sweeter than it seems. Starting in 2007 Verisign gets […]

“Splogging” hit the front pages recently due to a complete breakdown in control at Googles BlogSpot service. Always looking for a new way to offend people, spammers have discovered blogs, but it goes back further than the BlogSpot abuse, and the future isnt pretty. The issue with BlogSpot was that their process for setting up […]

I have a lot of experience in the software testing business, having been technical director at PC Magazine Labs, PC Week (now eWEEK) Labs, and a large private contract testing lab. Its not easy work to do well. As the size and complexity of the product being tested increases, the complexity of testing increases correspondingly. […]

The price of most things in the computer industry is driven down over time, from competition, economies of scale and advances in the technology. But one product is up over 650 percent in the last 4 years: the annual subscription to Norton Antivirus updates. In 2001 Symantec increased the price from $3.95 to $9.95, quite […]

This weeks minor deluge of major patches to Windows reminds me of the complexity of the whole patching process, and the peril that comes with stepping out of line. Stepping out of line is just the right description for the Windows XP SP3 gang at TheHotfix.net. Impatient with Microsofts reluctance to build a cumulative update […]

The irony is bitter all around. So many people like to blame Microsoft for the deluge of malware on Windows, and the it does deserve some of the blame. It was inevitable that the company would get lip for trying to address the situation. The early news on Microsofts upcoming Windows OneCare for consumers and […]

The idea of a “good worm” is obviously a tempting one. Youd think that white-hatted researchers would want to be responsible with their clients systems, but someone always wants to do it the sneaky way. Dave Aitel is a well-known researcher at Immunity Inc., a vendor of security products and services. His recent presentation on […]