Matthew Hines

Spam continues to fluctuate and vary its social and technical delivery models, but there’s no question that the phenomenon of unwanted e-mail is going nowhere but straight to even more people’s in-boxes — no matter what we try to do about it. ISPs shuttered, botnets be damned, malware and cyber-crime aside, the spam epidemic has […]

At least one group of experienced government cyber-security policy makers is already throwing a wet blanket on the newly approved Consensus Audit Guidelines, itself a set of IT security best practices developed by a consortium of government agencies and their private sector partners. The Cyber Secure Institute, an effort led by former policy makers from […]

Heading into yet another annual Black Hat USA conference during which its products will no doubt be publicly hacked, cracked and attacked by numerous security researchers looking to show off their latest techniques, Microsoft is highlighting advancement of a trio of initiatives introduced last year aimed at helping to foster better information sharing among vendors […]

Every corner of the IT industry, or the business world for that matter, claims to have its own set of “rock stars.” However, unlike almost any other sector, the personalities that represent the celebrity contingent in the world of vulnerability research and ethical hacking actually look and act, in many cases, like the performance artists […]

How well do you know Twitter tweets, or do they know you? Attacks that prey on users of the Twitter social networking service have been ramping up for some time, but researchers are pointing to increasingly complex, personalized versions of the threats in recent weeks. Rik Ferguson, a researcher with TrendLabs, recently called out a […]

Paris Hilton and Pamela Anderson may not have the same celeb appeal that they had a few years ago when they routinely topped the charts as search engine fodder. However, at least in one regard, their legacy lives on in cyberspace. As we’ve seen in a number of high-profile incidents in recent weeks, when it […]

The latest malware proliferation numbers issued by McAfee only serve to reinforce that attacks continue to grow exponentially, with researchers highlighting the fact that for cyber-criminals, business appears to remain good. Malware distributors are keeping the pedal to the metal in accelerating the volume of attacks, driving the overall total of threats observed by McAfee’s […]

Some security researchers are already predicting a noticeable shift in the landscape once Windows 7 is launched by Microsoft later this year and finds its way into users’ hands over time. It’s impressive to consider how much Microsoft has been able to elevate its reputation in the security realm over the last few years, despite […]

Even in this day and age, online fraud-spewing PC killers are still trying to push users into a hot fuss by using 419 schemes to spread their scams like sawdust. The latest twist on the theme that’s sure to make you shout? Attackers are now using social networking sites to find victims who somehow pass […]

Lots of bad guys, that’s who. In the latest version of their “Who and Why Show” podcast, posted here, experts with security researchers Team Cymru highlight the growing uptake and successful use of so-called fast flux botnet infrastructure among larger numbers of cyber-criminals. Fast flux, which has been around for a good few years or […]