Larry Seltzer

I was trolling the antivirus sites recently looking for a hot threat and was overcome by the dominance of old, endemic ones that have dropped to “low” status. Sasser aside, its been a while since there was a worm threat out there worth worrying about—and far longer since we had a mail worm that made […]

A big part of the brain surgery Microsoft is performing on Windows XP Service Pack 2 is support for new “NX” features in x86 processors. These features allow software (the Windows OS in this case) to mark certain areas of program memory as non-executable. Since a large number of remote attacks—Blaster and Sasser, for example—rely […]

The author of the Sender Policy Framework (SPF) specification has announced a proposal to converge the specification with aspects of Microsoft Corp.s Caller-ID spec. Microsoft is expected to follow up with its own announcement soon. SPF and Caller-ID are two of the more prominent efforts to introduce authentication to the SMTP protocol, filling in holes […]

You couldnt call Symantecs purchase of Brightmail a big surprise. The two companies are corporate cousins. Theyre so related they must go to each others houses for Thanksgiving. Brightmail Inc.s president and CEO, Enrique Salem, is a former head of the security business unit at Symantec Corp. A bio on Brad Kingsbury, vice president of […]

Many people have told me that the conventional approach to anti-virus protection is a hoax, or at least suboptimal. The answer, obvious to some people, is that protection should be generic to attack techniques, not specific to particular attacks. Its a great dream to have, and theres little arguing against it. We all know that […]

AusCERT, Australias national computer emergency response team, released an advisory Thursday identifying a vulnerability in the 802.11 wireless specification that could open wireless networks to denial-of-service attacks. The advisory targets a new cause for concern among wireless network administrators. Until now, concerns about Wi-Fi security have focused on weak encryption and lack of authentication in […]

Microsofts policy for the upcoming Service Pack 2 for Windows XP with respect to pirated copies of the operating system stirred a minor controversy in the media recently. A report elsewhere had claimed that Microsoft would be allowing even users of pirated copies to install the update. A tad incredulous, we called to check and […]

Symantec has acknowledged several serious bugs in several of its client security products in both corporate and consumer editions. The problems, reported to Symantec Corp. by eEye Digital Security, involve several functions of the products but one specific file, SYMDNS.SYS. Symantec has provided a brief description, stating that fixes for all of the problems are […]

Despite reports indicating that Microsoft Corp. was planning to allow users with pirated copies of Windows XP to install Service Pack 2, the company has confirmed to eWEEK.com that this will not be the case. “Recent press reports indicating Windows XP Service Pack 2 will install on pirated or illegal copies of Windows XP are […]

Microsofts security alerts for May were posted this afternoon. And the list was refreshingly short. The single new vulnerability revealed does allow for remote code execution by an attacker, but with many limitations on the attack, leading Microsoft to classify the problem as “important.” The problem is in the Windows Help and Support Center in […]

Tuesday is Microsofts monthly patch day, and Im going to make a prediction: more of the same. Were going to see holes in Internet Explorer and Windows discovered by security research firms, who will get themselves quoted and otherwise mentioned all over the news because they discovered the problems and reported them to Microsoft. One […]

Will we ever see something like the Sasser worm for the Macintosh or Linux? Its an interesting question, and not just for academic reasons. Undoubtedly, many people who choose these platforms do so because they think it immunizes them from the sorts of attacks Windows users must deal with. This past week saw the announcement […]