Sean Michael Kerner

One of the key tools used by IT security professionals to defend against botnets is blacklisting the suspected IP address of command and control (C2) nodes. But what happens when those nodes are being discovered through normally valid Website traffic? That’s what security firm FireEye is reporting in a new study detailing the activities of […]

On April 7, 2014, the security world transformed with the disclosure of the Heartbleed vulnerability, and that was never more evident than with Wednesday’s disclosure of the VENOM (Virtualized Environment Neglected Operations Manipulation) flaw. Heartbleed was perhaps the first security vulnerability to get its own Website at the point of disclosure, with its own logo […]

The Naikon hacker group is exploiting government, civil and military organizations in the Philippines, Malaysia, Cambodia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand, Laos, China and Nepal, according to a new report from security firm Kaspersky Lab. The Naikon hackers, active for the last five years, have a repertoire of 48 backdoor commands in their toolset to […]

Data center availability and backup vendor Veeam today announced that it has been successful in defending itself against claims alleged by Symantec over patent infringement. In total, Veeam has been able to get seven Symantec patents to be deemed as invalid. “In February 2012, Symantec filed its first patent infringement lawsuit against Veeam and in […]

Canonical, the lead commercial sponsor behind the open-source Ubuntu Linux operating system, today announced an expansion of its push to embed Linux in everything from phones to refrigerators—and now network switches. The Snappy Ubuntu Core Linux operating system, a minimal version of Ubuntu Linux that provides an improved updating and security model, is designed for […]

Back in 2010, the Linux Foundation first launched its Software Package Data Exchange (SPDX) effort that helps to build out and identify software components in a standardized manner. Since then, use of SPDX has grown, and on May 12 the SPDX 2.0 specification was announced. The new specification aims to be even more comprehensive in […]

Mozilla today released an update to its open-source Firefox Web browser, providing security fixes and several new capabilities. Firefox 38 follows the Firefox 37 release, which debuted March 31. Firefox 37 was noteworthy in that it marked the debut of a new security approach known as opportunistic encryption. With opportunistic encryption, Firefox was supposed to […]

Fidelis Cybersecurity today announced that it has acquired privately held security vendor Resolution1, whose core product is the Resolution1 Platform for security incident response. Financial terms of the deal are not being publicly disclosed at this time. The current Resolution1 team will become part of the Fidelis management team, led by Peter George, CEO of […]

A group of Rackspace staffers announced today that they are leaving the company and creating a startup, called ScaleFT, to tackle the challenge of cloud management and access. Rackspace—which has been the home base for many innovative cloud technologies, including OpenStack—is backing the effort by participating in a $800,000 seed financing round for ScaleFT. At […]

In September 2014, David Goeckeler took over the management of Cisco’s security business, becoming the senior vice president and general manager of Cisco’s Security Business Group. Goeckeler replaced Chris Young, who is now the general manager of Intel Security. In a video interview with eWEEK, Goeckeler details what his job is all about and what […]

OpenStack Kilo Cloud Platform Gains Nine New Capabilities By Sean Michael Kerner Ironic Brings Bare-Metal Servers to OpenStack The Ironic project now enables OpenStack cloud administrators to deploy and manage workloads on bare-metal server infrastructure. Erasure Codes Land in OpenStack Swift Storage In the OpenStack Swift object storage component, initial support for erasure codes debuts […]

Security firm LightCyber announced the 3.0 release of its Manga active-breach-detection platform on May 7, providing a detailed overview of new features that will become generally available this summer. The company’s Magna 2.8 release was announced in January of this year. With LightCyber Magna 3.0, one of the big new capabilities is a feature known […]