Larry Seltzer

Worms and other malware employ a variety of techniques to find new systems to attack. Many of them scan the network for systems containing specific, remotely exploitable vulnerabilities. Some of the fastest and most successful worms, such as Slammer and Code Red, worked this way. HP thinks two can play at that game. The company […]

Security researchers have discovered another vulnerability in Windows XP Service Pack 2, but it doesnt appear to be an immediate threat. The researcher who uncovered the drag-and-drop flaw in Windows XP SP2 earlier in the week has reported that a new vulnerability exposes a hole in the lockdown of Internet Explorers My Computer security zone. […]

Microsoft Corp. has issued a hotfix for Windows XP Service Pack 2 to solve a problem about which many users have complained: programs that attempt to connect to loopback addresses other than 127.0.0.1 get error messages. The problem—one of several that have appeared in the newly released SP 2—has been reported by many VPN users […]

When I first saw the advisory “Flaws in SP2 security features,” written by Jürgen Schmidt of Heise Security, I just laughed and blew it off as a big nothing. Now, I agree that it illustrates limitations in one of the new security features of Windows XP Service Pack 2. But a flaw? Thats a hard […]

What would you do if your Windows computer suddenly became unresponsive? Or if you could no longer access the Internet? Viruses and spyware can cause that, even when youre running up-to-date protection against them. Tools arent perfect, and its possible that some malware sneaked by. If you cant get online, youre stuck with the tools […]

Nobodys surprised by the application problems cropping up as users install Windows XP Service Pack 2. As I said in my last column, you have to expect these, plan for them, and not let it dissuade you from making the migration as soon as is practicable. But Microsoft has begun to address these both generally […]

Ive seen reports of people who are shocked! Shocked to hear that there are applications and network configurations that fail to function under Windows XP Service Pack 2. After years of complaining about security problems in Windows, Microsoft finally does the right thing and plugs many of the holes even at the cost of breaking […]

A flaw in an old but still popular version of Microsoft Exchange Server could allow an attacker to execute code on other clients systems, according to a security bulletin released Tuesday by Microsoft, along with a patch for the flaw. The bulletin, designated MS04-026, was the sole new security bulletin Microsoft released Tuesday for the […]

Two security research and consulting companies have reported a vulnerability in the AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) program that could allow an attacker to run arbitrary code on another users Windows-based system. iDEFENSE Inc. reports in its advisory that oversized values passed to the “goaway” function of AIMs “aim:” URI handler may be used to overwrite […]

The anti-virus business is an interesting one. On the one hand, its amazingly competitive on a worldwide basis, even if Symantec dominates the U.S. consumer market; there are a lot of companies in this business. But its also a disappointing business technologically. The companies are not out to solve a problem as much as to […]

The new firewall in Windows XP Service Pack 2 is not by any means the most important security advance in the service pack. Other changes, principally locking down the My Computer zone in Internet Explorer, will have more profound implications for security of the average system. But its not unimportant. Had Microsoft done the Internet […]

A researcher performing a source-code audit on a popular graphics library has found multiple security vulnerabilities in it that could be used to crash programs or execute attack code. The PNG library (libpng) is a collection of graphics routines to manipulate PNG (portable network graphics) files. PNG (Portable Networks Graphic) is a graphics format that […]