Larry Seltzer

Internet security research firm iDefense has announced a series of vulnerabilities and patches for a variety of Unix- and Linux-based products. A stack-based buffer overflow was revealed in version 3.00 of Xpdf, a popular viewer for reading PDF files, usually created by Adobe Acrobat. “Remote exploitation of a buffer overflow vulnerability in the xpdf PDF […]

It sure caught me by surprise. After Microsofts early warning indicated that the five vulnerability disclosures this week would be no more than “Important”—as opposed to “Critical”—I figured no biggie, I went out for the day. Well, if this is what Microsoft doesnt call “Critical” then their standards have changed. MS04-045—known far and wide as […]

Encryption has been an important feature of many Internet protocols for some time now. Transfers between mail servers havent historically been protected, but there is a protocol available to encrypt them, and everyone should now look to implement it. TLS (Transport Layer Security) is easy to use. Of course, how easy it is depends on […]

So Roger Thompson thinks that spyware is the next great menace to computer users? Not surprising since hes been in the business of fighting spyware for a while, much longer than most of the security software establishment. Thompson was vice president of product development at PestPatrol when CA bought that company just a few months […]

Microsoft Corp. has made available for download the first release candidate of a major security update to Windows Server 2003. The 316MB download contains many of the changes that Windows XP Service Pack 2 brought to that operating system against buffer overflows and other common attacks, including specific support for “no execute” processors. /zimages/3/28571.gifHow has […]

When I look back at all the major bad security news in 2004, I wonder how the worlds computing infrastructure still manages to get up in the morning. It looks a lot worse in retrospect than it felt while it was going on. Year of the worm The year began with several new and successful […]

Sometimes its really sad to see a product die. And then theres Windows NT 4. Yes, it seemed like a good product when it came out, and maybe it was. But Windows 2000 was a much, much better one, and its been out for about five years now. Customers have had enough time to extricate […]

Internet research firm Netcraft is reporting that most Web sites targeted by an anti-spammer campaign by Lycos Europe are being effectively taken down. The campaign uses a screen saver program distributed by Lycos Europe on its MakeLoveNotSpam.com site. As of Thursday morning the site itself was inaccessible. According to anti-virus vendor F-Secure, at least one […]

Microsoft has issued a patch, out of its normal security patch cycle, for a critical bug in Internet Explorer versions from 6.0 up to but not including Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2). According to the advisory issued by Microsoft, the bug could allow remote code execution on an affected system. The bug was publicly […]

Some observers are concerned that new rules governing the transfer of Internet domains between domain registrars that went into effect on Nov. 12 will facilitate theft of those domains and “slamming” by registrars. The new rules, originally announced by ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) on July 12, were “approved unanimously by […]

Comparative testing of anti-virus products is complicated, and very few people outside of the vendors do it. The most popular measure of performance is a list of viruses called the Wild List, and some popular tests and certifications are based on it. But, unlike viruses, the wild list updates very slowly. In fact, everything in […]

In a move that was totally expected, if a little early, Yahoo has announced that it will put its money where its mouth is and start checking Yahoo Mail with its DomainKeys system. /zimages/3/28571.gifClick here to read more about Yahoos DomainKeys announcement. The company had told me that it would do so by the end […]