Brian Prince

Those participating in denial-of-service attacks in support of WikiLeaks may not be as anonymous as they think. According to an analysis (PDF) of the Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC) tool by researchers from the University of Twente in the Netherlands, the tool does not protect the Internet Protocol (IP) address of its users. The revelation […]

Malware, Hacks and Leaks: The Top 10 Security Stories of 2010 by Brian Prince Operation Aurora In January, Google announced it fell victim to a cyber-attack that also impacted dozens of other companies. Immediately, the finger-pointing began, with China playing the role of chief suspect. Although the Chinese government officially denied involvement, the speculation remains. […]

Cyber-attacks and other twists and turns tied to the WikiLeaks controversy continued to dominate the news this past week. The story of the whistle-blower site has taken a number of twists and turns. The week started with the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in the U.K. on sexual assault accusations first levied in Sweden […]

Key people involved with WikiLeaks have reportedly resigned to start up their own rival whistle-blower site. The new site is dubbed Openleaks, and will debut on Dec. 13, according to Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter. The news follows the arrest this week of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who was picked up by police in the U.K. […]

Researchers at Armorize Technologies discovered recently that Google’s DoubleClick was serving a banner ad laced with malware. According to Wayne Huang, CTO of Armorize, his company first discovered the malware Dec. 4 via its HackAlert service, which scans Websites every day. The company discovered the drive-by-download serving from a piece of JavaScript delivered through Internet […]

With Patch Tuesday looming, Microsoft is investigating new reports of a zero-day vulnerability impacting Internet Explorer. Exploit code for the vulnerability was posted Dec. 8 on the Full Disclosure mailing list. The bug affects Internet Explorer versions 6, 7 and 8 across multiple versions of Windows, including Windows 7 and Windows Vista. There is no […]

Microsoft has plans for a gigantic Patch Tuesday next week, when it will plug 40 security vulnerabilities across a number of products, including critical bugs impacting Internet Explorer and Microsoft Windows. The bugs will be squashed by a total of 17 security bulletins, two of which are rated “critical.” One of the two critical bulletins […]

The No. 1 challenge facing database professionals: There just aren’t enough hours in the day, according to a recent survey. In a poll of 1,230 IT pros (PDF) by Embarcadero Technologies, roughly 43 percent cited time as their key challenge when it comes to projects. Another 40 percent cited poor planning. Roughly half (53.5 percent) […]

The WikiLeaks controversy has spilled far beyond discussions of classified documents into the realm of cyber-security, where reports of denial-of-service attacks against everything from MasterCard to PayPal have flooded the press. Behind those reports, though, is the growing issue of opt-in botnets powered by users who intentionally install software to take part in cyber-attacks. The […]

RSA, EMC’s security division, is advising customers to apply a two-year-old patch for its Adaptive Authentication product after a researcher discovered hundreds of banking Websites are still open to attack. RSA Adaptive Authentication is a risk-based fraud prevention and authentication platform that measures risk indicators to identify suspicious activities. According to RSA, versions 2.x and […]