Brian Prince

The loosely-affiliated cyber-group ‘Anonymous’ has been tied to the compromise of the Fine Gael Website, according to reports. The attack took place Jan. 9, and compromised some 2,000 of user accounts. According to reports, the information included phone numbers, e-mail addresses and other information. One of the largest political parties in Ireland, Fine Gael said […]

Vasco Data Security International announced today it has acquired Internet trust services specialist DigiNotar. The deal was completed for $12.9 million (USD), and is part of Vasco’s plans to expand the company’s offerings. Founded in 1998, DigiNotar is an official Dutch CA (certification authority) capable of issuing, validating and registering certificates of Dutch nationals and […]

The first week of 2011 was a busy one in IT security news. It was a week that saw an acquisition by Dell, talk of trusted online identities and reports of a subpoena for Twitter. The Twitter subpoena came to light at the end of the week when it was revealed a federal judge had […]

A federal court has ordered Twitter to turn over details of accounts tied to several WikiLeaks supporters as part of the government’s investigation into the whistle-blower site. The U.S. Department of Justice obtained a subpoena for the microblogging site Dec. 14 requesting records going back to Nov. 1, 2009, that are “relevant and material to […]

Roughly 50,000 active iTunes accounts are reportedly being sold online for as little as 15 cents. According to China’s Global Times newspaper, the accounts are being sold through taobao.com, a popular Chinese-language online store, for between 1 and 200 yuan-the equivalent of between 15 cents (USD) and $30 (USD). A reporter for the newspaper tested […]

Talk of private and public partnerships for Internet security are a common refrain, and the calls were heard yet again Jan. 7 when federal officials announced plans for a new office within the U.S. Department of Commerce to coordinate federal efforts to support the creation of a trusted online identity ecosystem. Taking the concept of […]

A security researcher has poked a hole in the sandbox implemented by Adobe Systems to prevent malicious Flash files from compromising computers. According to application security researcher Billy Rios, there is a way to bypass the local-with-filesystem sandbox utilized in Adobe Flash Player. “SWFs loaded from the local file system do face some restrictions. … […]

Malware writers had a busy year in 2010. According to Panda Security, during the year, cyber-criminals created and distributed more than one-third of all existing malware ever classified by the company. The finding was included in the company’s 2010 Annual Security Report, which listed banking Trojans as the most prevalent threat, representing 56 percent of […]

Recruiting money mules may not be the sexiest part of a cyber-crime operation, but it is among the most vital tasks-something underscored last year when the FBI arrested mules tied to a gang accused of looting millions from banks around the world. According to Fortinet, mule recruiters are putting more effort into targeting specific countries […]

Microsoft is kicking off 2011 with a small Patch Tuesday release that will feature fixes for three vulnerabilities in Windows. The bugs will be patched via two security bulletins, one of which is rated “critical” and affects all supported versions of Windows. The second bulletin, rated “important,” only impacts Windows Vista. Not included among the […]