BOSTON—Gathered in the subterranean confines of a decommissioned vault in the basement of the Boston Stock Exchange, a panel of IT security experts told the assembled crowd that short of locking all their proprietary information in such a contraption, there may be little hope for securing their data.
Researchers from Microsoft’s anti-malware engineering team are working on an automated way to sort through the thousands of malware families and variants attacking Windows computers.
The company unveiled its plans at the EICAR (European Institute for Computer Anti-Virus Research) conference in Hamburg, Germany, proposing the use of distance measure and machine learning technologies to come up with automatic classification of viruses, Trojans, spyware, rootkits and other malicious software programs.
Microsoft confirmed Wednesday that it will continue to patch third-party products that impact Windows.
Tuesday, Microsoft pushed out a patch to Windows XP, 98, and Millennium users for Flash Player, an Adobe-owned multimedia application that’s bundled with those operating systems. It was the first time that the Redmond, Wash. developer had issued an update for a non-Microsoft product using its Windows Update service.
ICANN’s rejection of the controversial .xxx supported Top Level domain (STLD) moved the issue of a dedicated porn area on the Web back to ground zero: its opponents expressed relief Thursday that the demise of the proposed TLD will keep children from easy access to adult sites while advocates of the TDL domain complained that an opportunity to control porn site watching has been lost.ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) clamped a tight lid on the issue, forbidding its directors — who voted 9 to 5 to reject the domain proposal — from discussing the issue for 48 hours. ICANN said it will release details on the vote next week.
File this under the downside of computer dating: a German computer technician was sentenced to life in prison Tuesday for dissecting and eating a victim he met on the Internet.
The bizarre case of the “Rotenburg Cannibal” initially came to light after an Austrian student found another posting by the defendant who was trolling the Internet. Armin Meiwes claimed he was only following the wishes of Bernd Juergen Amando Brandes, who was a willing victim, according to Meiwes. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3286721.stm
If, as an analyst suggested Tuesday, Microsoft plans to begin patching more than its own software, its first effort got off to a rocky start. By Wednesday, Windows users were complaining of glitches in updating Adobe’s Flash Player through the Windows Update service.
The prosecution of alleged Pentagon uber-hacker Gary McKinnon shows that the US is failing to take even basic precautions to protect its military systems, according to a reformed computer hacker accused of similar crimes 10 years ago.
Mathew Bevan, whose hacker handle is Kuji, was accused of breaking into US military computer systems but escaped without punishment when a 1997 case at Woolwich Crown Court was dropped after a long-running legal battle.
May 08, 2006 (Computerworld) — Just because you use a Mac, don’t think you’re any more secure than a Wintel user.
A sharp increase in the number of flaws discovered in Mac OS X suggests that the operating system from Apple Computer Inc. may soon be every bit as prone to malicious attacks as Windows, according to a report released last week by the SANS Institute, a Bethesda, Md.-based security training and research firm.
UPDATED: A Yankee Group report published today predicts imminent doom for anti-spyware makers with the release of Windows Vista. But don’t plan a funeral for WebRoot and Ad-Aware just yet. First, Microsoft has to sell the darned operating system.
Microsoft (Quote, Chart)still has not spelled out the system requirements for Windows Vista, with less than a year to go before its release.
Silex Technology America said Monday it has released a biometric system that requires a fingerprint swipe before a user can access an enterprise wireless LAN.
The company said that its Bio-NetGuard product is aimed at protecting corporate wireless networks from intrusions.
