Larry Seltzer

When the Bagle worm hit a couple weeks ago I couldnt believe my eyes. How could so many people fall for an attack that was so obviously yet another computer worm? My incredulity was premature, as the arrival of the MyDoom worm blew Bagle away this week. By Tuesday morning, less than 24 hours after […]

The rapidly spreading MyDoom worm (a k a Novarg.A by Symantec Corp. and MiMail.R by Trend Micro Inc.) is poised to perform a denial of service (DOS) attack against The SCO Group Inc.s Web site (www.sco.com). The new worm has many of the standard malware worm behaviors of recent attacks in addition to the DOS […]

While it came out of the oven hot on Sunday, the Bagle.A worm, also known as Beagle.A, has gone mostly stale in the days since. Security firms that monitor the presence of such worms on the Internet, such as MessageLabs,reported a downward trajectory in its spread. MessageLabs reported that it intercepted over 120,000 instances worldwide […]

A new Windows worm discovered Sunday is spreading rapidly, according to security experts and anti-virus firms. According to Ken Dunham, Director of Malicious Code for iDEFENSE Inc., more than 50,000 interceptions of the worm—known both as Bagle.A and Beagle.A—have already been noted by security firms. “Bagle started gaining significant ground in the wild as the […]

The sources of our computer security problems these days are diverse. But theres general agreement (even I agree to some extent) that one of the major sources is the overwhelming market share of the Windows platform and the single target it creates for attackers as well as legitimate software developers. This is the famous “monoculture” […]

Some people just have to be right and their critics wrong. Such looks to be the case with much of the current criticism surrounding CAN-SPAM, the federal anti-spam law that went into effect recently. We recently reported on such criticism of the law. Youd definitely get the impression, to listen to critics such as Vincent […]

When it comes to proposed technical solutions to spam, Im a pessimist in general and confirmed skeptic at heart. Such proposals, in their attempts to make spamming impossible, invariably force everyone to change all their mailing software, dooming any practical prospects of the plan. However, “invariably” could be too strong a word. For example, Yahoo, […]

If youre an Internet consumer, you need to be aware of and concerned about “phishing” and other attempts at fraud. Typically, such fraud impersonates an e-mail or Web page from a real, respectable company, in an attempt to get you to provide account information that they can use to steal money from you. If youre […]

Internet services firm Netcraft, most famous for its survey of Web server software usage, has announced a service mainly for banks and other financial organizations to track use of their name, brands, trademarks and slogans on the Internet. The service is intended to detect and facilitate quick removal of attempts at fraud, identity theft and […]

The consensus among security professionals is solid: 2003 was a lousy year for computer security. And the news wont be much better in the year ahead; things are trending for the worse. While its easy to focus on the security screw-ups of 2003—since there are so many more of them—Ill also try to dredge up […]