Lisa Vaas

It is now possible to plant a bullfight on the highway to block your parents from coming home too early (SatNav Code 1456), plant a bomb alert at your house (SatNav Code 1516) or misdirect a rival to a meadow, where you can then confront him and steal his girlfriend, because, as the GPS hackers […]

Apple released 25 security patches for Mac OS X on Thursday, the most serious of which could allow a remote attacker to crash a system or execute arbitrary code. The patches address holes found throughout the Mac operating system, from the VideoConference framework to placement of the Login window. Some of the patches address holes […]

Two shiny, new and delightfully unpatched Mac systems were sitting ducks at the CanSecWest security conference on April 19, while top-notch hackers were clustered in hotel rooms, frantically trying to remotely pwn the systems before the show organizers had a chance to apply 25 patches Apple released on the same day. Apple released the security […]

VANCOUVER, British Columbia—Hackers with scrounged-up data ask the same question as dogs whove caught the school bus: What do we do with it now? Roelof Temmingh has the answer, at least for rogue hackers, in the form of a framework that makes identity theft a much easier proposition. The framework, which is in the early […]

VANCOUVER, British Columbia—Malicious JavaScript is getting smarter. Its now able to fingerprint victims Web browsers, vulnerable components and accessible CLSIDs, and deliver custom-tailored exploits, according to Dr. Jose Nazario, senior security engineer for Arbor Networks. Nazario was referring to NeoSploit, a new malware tool hes seen in the wild that carries at least seven distinct […]

Microsoft says it hopes to patch the hole in its Domain Name System Server—which is now leaving vulnerable PCs open to a worm attack—by “no later” than Patch Tuesday in May. Microsoft teams are working around the world and around the clock to get a fix out for the May 8 security bulletin release, the […]

With a worm exploiting the unpatched zero-day vulnerability in Microsoft’s Domain Name System Service mere days after it was discovered, Microsoft on Monday urged customers to apply workarounds the company had provided in its earlier security advisory. The W32/Delbot-AI worm, aka Nirbot or Rinbot, is infecting PCs via a vulnerability in the way the Windows […]

Another Skype worm has been released that spreads by sending a malware link to online friends in Skype users’ contact lists. Before sending a message containing the malware link, the Trojan sets the infected user’s status to Do Not Disturb and, as a side effect, silences call or message alerts. F-Secure has a screenshot of […]

Think botnets are bad now? We aint seen nothin yet. A select group of some 40 security researchers gathered on April 10 in the first Usenix event devoted to these networks of infected machines. The invitation-only event, called HotBots, was held in Cambridge, Mass. At the event, researchers warned that botnets—which can contain tens or […]

Until proper security policies and enforcement are in place, the use of iPods in the workplace could mean employees walking out the door with a pocket full of sensitive data and thus should be banned, according to security firm NextSentry. Employee use of removable storage devices such as memory sticks and CDs to extract company […]

F-Secure has received a sample submission of a virus for iPods running on Linux, showing that “the computer underground is actively studying new platforms such as portable devices,” according to Chief Research Officer Mikko Hyppönen. The virus, sent to F-Secure in a .zip file called Oslo, doesn’t work on iPods running the default iPod operating […]

Microsoft hasn’t outpatched itself; it’s hitting its normally scheduled April 10 Patch Tuesday with four Windows security bulletins, at least one of which is rated critical, according to Microsoft’s Security Bulletin Advance Notification site. The company on April 3 posted a patch, MS07-017, that it had rushed out to fix a critical flaw in Windows’ […]