December 15, 2009 - It used to be that end-of-year security predictions were bold and almost science-fictiony. They have become more conservative this year and therefore more reasonable. I've been barraged with them and have attempted to collect the best here.It's clear to me (continue reading...) Read more
December 15, 2009 - Starting in 2011, Internet safety will be a mandatory part of the curriculum in English schools, according to a BBC article.A filtering system is also involved with the same government strategy called "Click Clever, Click Safe". Children will be (continue reading...) Read more
December 12, 2009 - The PandaLabs blog has a screen shot of an interesting development in rogue anti-virus: One that has been optimized to look like it's part of Windows 7.The program is an exact replica of the Windows 7 Explorer shell program. (continue reading...) Read more
December 11, 2009 - One of the first things many people do to try and avoid security problems on Windows is to switch users to Firefox. It's true that Internet Explorer (continue reading...) Read more
December 11, 2009 - In the Twitter gab as last Patch Tuesday was unfolding, researcher Alex Sotirov complained that vendors weren't paying for those who found the bugs in their products, and that this was unjust.Most of the bug-finding for major products (continue reading...) Read more
December 8, 2009 - Hidden behind the Patch Tuesday updates, Microsoft released two separate security advisories and one set of updates that were not mentioned in the advance notification. The first one, "Microsoft Security Advisory (continue reading...) Read more
December 8, 2009 - The Internet seems full of people inclined not to trust Google's new Public DNS offering.The first reaction many of us waited for was that of (continue reading...) Read more
December 7, 2009 - AOL was praised by security experts in 2004 when they began offering support for RSA SecurID 2-factor authentication tokens for logging on to their services. Such tokens make phishing much, much harder. Now AOL is ending support for them.2-factor (continue reading...) Read more
December 5, 2009 - I carried around my first-ever thumb drive (a whopping 16 KB!) for a few years, until it fell apart in my pocket. Modern drives (continue reading...) Read more
December 5, 2009 - A clever, but difficult attack scenario can compromise the PIN used to protect BitLocker-encrypted drives. The attacker first has to gain access to the computer and boot it off of a specially-configured (continue reading...) Read more
December 3, 2009 - Cracking passwords is often much easier than users think, even if the passwords they use are strong. For years Passware has shipped products which can break past the protection of passwords in (continue reading...) Read more
December 3, 2009 - On Thursday night, ALWIL Software, the creators of the Avast! antivirus program, released a bad update the misidentified many programs as malware. High-profile applications such as RealTek sound drivers and certain versions (continue reading...) Read more
December 2, 2009 - Michael Greene, PC Tools VP for product strategy, noticed my post about a (continue reading...) Read more
December 2, 2009 - Great news: You've already won! There's no form to fill out, no contest, no drawing. You don't have to wire "earnest money" to a third-world bank in order to collect your prize. (continue reading...) Read more
December 2, 2009 - I like the free ThreatFire behavior-based anti-malware (continue reading...) Read more
December 1, 2009 - In the Microsoft Security Response Center Blog the company states that neither their updates nor the Malicious Software Removal Tool are responsible for the recent reports of "Black Screen of Death" (continue reading...) Read more
December 1, 2009 - It only recently made it to TechCrunch, but I noticed months ago that Panera restaurants were blocking links (continue reading...) Read more
December 1, 2009 - The "Black Screen of Death" problem we described recently has been eliciting panicked coverage on parts of the Internet and some confusion over how widespread it is. Our impression is that (continue reading...) Read more
November 30, 2009 - Security vendor Prevx is offering a patch for a debilitating bug introduced on their users' systems by the latest updates to Windows XP and Vista. The latest updates cause the system not (continue reading...) Read more
November 30, 2009 - Unless you've been in a cave or working or something like that, you know that famed golfer Tiger Woods was in a car accident recently. News outlets, respectable and otherwise, have (continue reading...) Read more