Ryan Naraine

IBMs Lotus Software has shipped patches for several high-risk security holes in its popular Notes and Domino product lines. In an advisory, IBM Corp. said the most serious flaw was a buffer-overrun condition that could be exploited by a malicious user to cause the Lotus Domino server to crash, resulting in a denial-of-service attack. However, […]

Three months after promising to update its flagship Windows Media Player software to block a well-known spyware infection vector, Microsoft has still not provided security for the majority of its users. The software giants inability to ship a timely update for users of its Windows Media 9 Series has triggered new questions about Microsoft Corp.s […]

Microsofts worm-cleansing tool has been updated to detect and remove Hacker Defender, a notorious rootkit program used by malicious virus writers. It is the first time Redmond has added rootkit detection capabilities to the free Malicious Software Removal Tool, a move that underscores the increased prevalence of stealth rootkits on Windows machines. Stephen Toulouse, program […]

The Microsoft security train made its scheduled monthly stop on Tuesday, dropping off eight updates to cover 18 vulnerabilities in a range of widely deployed products. Five of the eight advisories are rated “critical” and Redmond officials are urging customers to apply at least three immediately as high-priority updates. The top three include fixes for […]

The OpenOffice.org community on Tuesday confirmed the existence of a potentially serious heap-overflow vulnerability in its freely distributed office productivity suite. The flaw affects OpenOffice Version 1.1.4 and prior and OpenOffice Version 2.0-dev and prior and could put users at risk of code execution attacks. OpenOffice.org community manager Louis Suarez-Potts confirmed that the vulnerability was […]

A private security research outfit on Tuesday warned that a “highly critical” vulnerability in the Microsoft Jet Database Engine could be exploited by malicious hackers to hijack a compromised system. The flaw, which was discovered by HexView Security Research and Assessment, affects fully patched systems with Microsoft Access 2003 and Microsoft Windows XP, including Service […]

Routing and switching giant Cisco Systems has released patches for a pair of denial-of-service and system-access flaws affecting a range of IOS-based devices. The most serious of the two flaws was discovered in the way the Cisco IOS (Internetwork Operating System) processes certain IKE (Internet Key Exchange) Xauth messages when configured to be an Easy […]

Anti-virus vendors have raised the alarm for a malicious new Trojan masquerading as a critical Microsoft security patch. The e-mail-borne attack comes just days ahead of Microsofts scheduled patch day and highlights a growing trend of using social engineering tactics to dupe users into downloading malicious files. According to an advisory from anti-virus specialist Sophos […]

A well-known security consultant last week urged cash-strapped businesses to consider using freely available open-source security tools and applications to help cope with the rising number of malicious hacker attacks. In what was a recurring theme last week at the InfoSec World Conference & Expo here, Matt Luallen, president and principal consultant at Chicago-based Sph3r3 […]

The Mozilla Foundation plans to release a new version of its flagship Firefox browser as early as this weekend to patch a known JavaScript Engine flaw. The flaw, which puts users at risk of information disclosure attacks, already has been fixed in nightly builds, and volunteers at the foundation said a final release on Firefox […]

Software developer Macromedia late Thursday released a temporary workaround to fix a critical security vulnerability in its flagship ColdFusion MX product. San Francisco-based Macromedia Inc. said the patch affects users of ColdFusion MX 6.1 for JRun4 (Updater 1). ColdFusion 7.0 is not affected. The flaw, which was discovered and reported by the ESP Group LLC, […]

Microsoft Corp. on Thursday announced plans to release eight security bulletins on April 12, including “critical” fixes for flaws in several widely deployed applications. As part of its advance notice mechanism, the software giant said five high-priority patches would deal only with flaws in the Windows operating system. Three more bulletins with a maximum severity […]