Paul F. Roberts

A new analysis of last years Witty worm by three university researchers documents the worms spread and claims that U.S. military computers and inside knowledge about vulnerable systems were an early propellant for the worm. The report, which was published by Abishek Kumar, a student at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), claims to […]

The FBI is investigating a security breach on a computer system at Stanford Universitys Career Development Center, according to a statement posted on the universitys Web site. The May 11 breach occurred from outside Stanfords network. Data on 9,600 clients and 300 recruiters, dating to 1995, were stored on the system. The data included names, […]

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission plans to issue a statement Tuesday urging ISPs to take a tougher stance on compromised computers known as “spam zombies,” which could include cutting off Internet access for the machines, which experts believe are responsible for sending out huge volumes of unsolicited e-mail messages. The FTC will join with government […]

Computer viruses and remote control programs called bots are adopting features from stealthy programs called rootkits to avoid detection, security experts say. New versions of Rbot, a ubiquitous and malicious remote control program, copy and paste features from a well-known open-source rootkit called Fu. The new features make Rbot invisible to system-monitoring tools and are […]

The recent appearance of the Oscabot-F IM worm is the latest in a series of increasingly serious attacks affecting instant messaging networks, a trend that is forcing IT managers to choose between banning the popular chat technology and opening their networks to a host of IM-borne worms and viruses. Attacks against major IM networks rose […]

A software update will allow XML gateways from Reactivity to handle large attachments to XML messages securely, the company said. The Belmont, Calif., company plans to announce the Multi-Mode Messaging update for its Adaptive Message Architecture on Monday. The new feature allows organizations to scan large message attachments for formatting consistency, message integrity and malicious […]

Computer viruses and remote control programs called bots are adopting features from stealthy programs called rootkits to avoid detection, according to researchers at Finnish anti-virus software company F-Secure. New versions of Rbot, a malicious and ubiquitous remote control program, have features copied and pasted from a well known open-source rootkit called FU. The new features […]

The U.S. Department of Defense is soliciting bids for a massive anti-spyware software contract that will protect systems across the military. The deal could be a major opportunity for anti-spyware startups to score a victory against established anti-virus vendors. The solicitation from the DISA (Defense Information Systems Agency) is for an automated spyware detection, eradication […]

Two security companies, Preventsys Inc. and Intellitactics Inc., announced new technologies at the Information Security Decisions show here that bridge the gap that exists in many enterprises between teams that monitor security issues and operations staffs that are responsible for patching and maintaining systems on enterprise networks. Preventsys, of Carlsbad, Calif., debuted its IT Operations […]

Pinched by tough, new data-privacy regulations on the one hand and aging Internet protocols on the other, IT security administrators said they are struggling to balance security with the needs of users and regulations and are losing hope that the war on malicious code will ever be won. On and off the show floor at […]