Ryan Naraine

Convinced that businesses will use nonmalicious worms to cut down on network security costs, a high-profile security researcher is pushing ahead with a new framework for creating a “controlled worm” that can be used for beneficial purposes. Dave Aitel, vulnerability researcher at New York-based Immunity Inc., unveiled a research-level demo of the “Nematode” framework at […]

Anti-virus specialist Symantec Corp. has confirmed a high-risk vulnerability in multiple enterprise-facing products and warned that a successful exploit could lead to code execution attacks. The company released a security alert to acknowledge the flaw, which was flagged in the Symantec Antivirus Scan Engine: Web Service Administrative Interface. “The remote exploitation of a buffer overflow […]

The Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday moved to the courts to shut down an operation that secretly installed spyware and adware that could not be uninstalled from infected machines. The FTCs complaint, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire, accuses Odysseus Marketing and its principal, Walter Rines, of using the lure […]

The Mozilla Foundation has temporarily pulled the plug on its SpreadFirefox.com marketing site after a hacker break-in put user accounts at risk. The non-profit Foundation, which has used the site to launch grassroots campaigns to support the Firefox Web browser, said the site will remain offline until October 15 while the site is rebuilt from […]

Symantec on Monday announced plans to shell out $209 million in cash to gobble up BindView Development, a company that sells policy-compliance and vulnerability management software. The deal marks the third acquisition for Symantec Corp. in the last two months and signals an aggressive move by the Internet security vendor to expand its security offerings […]

The Mozilla Foundation on Friday shipped a new version of its Thunderbird mail client to plug a potentially serious URL parsing security hole affecting Linux users. The open-source group described Thunderbird 1.0.7 as a “security and stability update” that provides a comprehensive fix for the URL parsing bug that was also flagged in the Firefox […]

Virus writers are actively exploiting a security vulnerability in the Microsoft Jet Database Engine that remains unpatched more than five months after it was first reported to the software giant. The mail-borne exploit, which camouflages itself as a Microsoft Access file, infects Windows machines through a “highly critical” flaw in the Microsoft Jet database engine—the […]

Finnish anti-virus specialist F-Secure has dived headfirst into the crowded anti-spyware market, rolling out a new consumer-facing security suite that promises to detect unwanted programs before a PC becomes injected. F-Secure Corp.s new F-Secure Internet Security 2006 offers technology to tackle the problem of inadvertently installed spyware and adware programs that sneak onto computers via […]

Using data drawn from Yellow Page listings, a Denver-based entrepreneur is getting ready to take on Google, Yahoo and Microsoft in the local Web search business. Perry Evans, who pioneered online mapping with MapQuest Inc. in the 1990s and co-founded instant messaging company Jabber Inc., is set to ship a technology platform that promises to […]

The nations air traffic control system is wide open to malicious hacker attacks because of “significant weaknesses” in the Federal Aviation Administrations network security maintenance, according to a warning from the U.S. GAO (Government Accountability Office). The Congressional watchdogs startling findings formed part of an update to a study first conducted in 2000 into the […]

The legal battle against adware and spyware programs has taken a new turn with a pair of putative class action complaints against Direct Revenue and 180Solutions, two companies facing allegations of installing online tracking software through security holes and making it virtually impossible for computer users to remove the unwanted programs. Now that a judge […]

Users of Microsofts flagship Internet Explorer browser are sitting ducks for security bypass attacks, according to a warning from a private researcher. A spokesperson for the software giant acknowledged the MSRC (Microsoft Security Response Center) is investigating public reports of the flaw, which has been rated “moderately critical” by Secunia Inc. “We are not aware […]