Ryan Naraine

Google Inc. has quietly patched a potentially dangerous security flaw in two of its business-facing services after a private security research outfit warned that malicious hackers could exploit the bug to hijack sensitive user information. The vulnerability was flagged—and fixed—in the Google AdWords and Google Services subdomains. Because both sites use data from the Google […]

Microsoft Corp. has not yet launched a paid anti-virus product, but questions about software bundling and unfair competition are already swirling in Europe. Rival Symantec Corp. acknowledged late this week that it has responded to a request for information from European Union regulators regarding the state of the security market and Symantecs role in it. […]

Weblog pioneer Dave Winer has sold his Weblogs.com ping server to Internet and telecommunications services giant VeriSign Inc. News of the deal swirled around the blogosphere all day Thursday and was confirmed by Michael Graves, technology evangelist for VeriSigns Real Time Web team. Financial terms of the deal were not released but bloggers tracking the […]

It figures to be a busy patch day for Windows system administrators next Tuesday. As part of its monthly security update release cycle, Microsoft Corp. plans to ship nine bulletins with fixes for holes in the Windows operating system. An advance notice from Redmonds security response center said eight of the bulletins will address bugs […]

Less than a year after its acquisition of enterprise anti-virus vendor Sybari Software Inc., Microsoft Corp. is revamping and rebranding the flagship Antigen product line. The product will now assume the Microsoft name and a new virus scan engine that was internally developed at Redmond using technology acquired from GeCAD Software Srl. The Antigen line […]

Microsoft moved a step closer to becoming a key player in the Internet security business with the announcement Thursday of a new enterprise-class anti-spyware product featuring technology to thwart viruses, worms and kernel rootkits. The new offering, dubbed Microsoft Client Protection, will go into limited beta before year-end with a full rollout expected in 2006. […]

Convinced that businesses will use nonmalicious worms to cut down on network security costs, a high-profile security researcher is pushing ahead with a new framework for creating a “controlled worm” that can be used for beneficial purposes. Dave Aitel, vulnerability researcher at New York-based Immunity Inc., unveiled a research-level demo of the “Nematode” framework at […]

Anti-virus specialist Symantec Corp. has confirmed a high-risk vulnerability in multiple enterprise-facing products and warned that a successful exploit could lead to code execution attacks. The company released a security alert to acknowledge the flaw, which was flagged in the Symantec Antivirus Scan Engine: Web Service Administrative Interface. “The remote exploitation of a buffer overflow […]

The Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday moved to the courts to shut down an operation that secretly installed spyware and adware that could not be uninstalled from infected machines. The FTCs complaint, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire, accuses Odysseus Marketing and its principal, Walter Rines, of using the lure […]

The Mozilla Foundation has temporarily pulled the plug on its SpreadFirefox.com marketing site after a hacker break-in put user accounts at risk. The non-profit Foundation, which has used the site to launch grassroots campaigns to support the Firefox Web browser, said the site will remain offline until October 15 while the site is rebuilt from […]