Sean Michael Kerner

Danny McPherson, the chief security officer of VeriSign, is worried about the future security of the Domain Name System (DNS), which his company helps to keep stable and secure. Among the biggest risks is the continued stability of DNS in an era where domain name collisions are growing. The DNS risks that VeriSign sees are […]

Git users, it’s time to update. A new vulnerability has been reported and was patched on Dec. 18 in the widely used open-source Git source-code management system. The vulnerability has been identified as CVE-2014-9390 and impacts Git clients running on Windows and Mac OS X. Git is an open-source source-code management system used by developers […]

The open-source WordPress blogging and content management system (CMS) released its 4.1 update on Dec. 18, providing users with new tools to develop and publish online content. The new WordPress 4.1 release has been named Dinah Washington, after the famous Jazz musician. WordPress has had a traditional of naming its releases after Jazz musicians for […]

Security vendor Trustwave Dec. 18 publicly detailed a previously undisclosed point-of-sale (POS) malware variant known as Spark. Various forms of POS malware have been taking aim at retailers throughout 2014, with one of the most pervasive being the Backoff malware. The U.S. Secret Service has warned that at least 1,000 retailers have been impacted by […]

A new report has emerged of an alleged security flaw in the Linux kernel that is being named the “Grinch,” after the character from Dr. Seuss’ classic “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas” story. In this case, however, the Grinch might not be a risk at all though, ironically, on the same day the Grinch was […]

Security vendor Rapid7 Dec. 17 announced that it has raised $30 million in a new Series D round of funding. To date, Rapid7 has raised $91 million in funding to help support its security business. Rapid7 CEO Corey Thomas is planning on using the new funds to further development of technologies to help grow the […]

Nebula today announced its latest Cosmos Enterprise Edition release with new features to enable enterprises to rapidly deploy and manage OpenStack clouds. Nebula was founded by Chris Kemp, who helped get OpenStack started while he was NASA’s CTO. Nebula’s promise since its inception has been to enable enterprises with a turnkey cloud appliance, the Nebula […]

On Jan. 1, 2015, the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) version 3.0 formally goes into effect, ushering in a new era of compliance specifications to secure payment card data. The PCI DSS 3.0 specification was approved in December 2013, giving retailers and those who handle payments a year to get ready. The […]

The popular open-source WordPress blogging and content management system (CMS) is at risk from a vulnerable third-party plug-in that many users may not even realize they are running. According to security firm Sucuri, the vulnerability may have already exposed more than 100,000 WordPress Websites to exploitation via malware known as SoakSoak. The actual vulnerability is […]

On Dec. 9, rogue torrent-tracking site The Pirate Bay went dark after Swedish authorities raided the Stockholm operations of the site. Nearly a week later, the primary domains for The Pirate Bay, which include Thepiratebay.se and Thepiratebay.org, remain offline. The Pirate Bay had provided pointers to where files could be found and then downloaded with […]

The open-source Docker project has updated the Docker engine for container virtualization to version 1.3.3, fixing a trio of security vulnerabilities. The security advisories for the Docker vulnerabilities were first publicly released on Dec. 11 although not every vendor in the Docker ecosystem has been in a hurry to update. Docker has emerged over the […]

Python 3 was first released six years ago and, at the time, the plan was for Python 2.x to eventually disappear. That hasn’t happened. Instead, Python 2.x is still widely used (many parts of the open-source OpenStack cloud platform rely on it, for example), and on Dec. 10 Python 2.7.9 was released, providing all manner […]