Archive for the 'Security' Category


The “secure software” dilemma

Thursday, June 8th, 2006

It’s quite a dilemma when a software product is billed as more secure than another…. several days back when Mozilla Firefox released v. 1.5.0.4 which fixed a number of security issues, I saw someone comment “I thought firefox was supposed to be secure.” I think there’s a misunderstanding when it comes to software. I think […]

Big trouble – you don’t have any viruses….

Thursday, June 8th, 2006

You know, I’ve seen soooo many antivirus vendors that are somewhat ethically challanged claim that cookie files are a big threat, or in worse cases files that the “free” antivirus test downloaded are dangerous “you should be glad we got here in time – where’s our $30 to fix things…” kind of message, but from […]

New malware sightings

Thursday, June 8th, 2006

Incidents.org had an entry in the last couple days on a malware infestation that was interesting and showed a couple things. 1) You can’t bet on antivirus to keep you safe (the initial installer was not detected by most AV vendors – suspicious by 1.) (If you think about it, this makes perfect sense – […]

The security of remote tech support (ultravnc sc or x11vnc with wrapper script)

Tuesday, June 6th, 2006

Well, I’ve got a nice way of doing “easy” one click (or one cut and paste) light desktop support for windows or linux, one uses ultravnc sc, the other uses x11vnc with a special wrapper script. So, what security flaws are there in this process? Well, for starters, I see the biggest vulnerability for the […]

Big Go-Daddy hosting attack

Friday, June 2nd, 2006

In what feels like a continuation of recent bad news related to major hacks and data losses…..George Ou reports on a BIG hack of GoDaddy hosting customers. There was also a big hack-athon by Turkish hackers over the last week that will be recorded as the biggest mass-web-site-defacement on record… There seems to be a […]

Firefox 1.5.0.4 out….

Thursday, June 1st, 2006

I haven’t seen news to this yet, just found it on Mozilla.com, but the 1.5.0.4 release of firefox seems to have been released sometime today. (1.5.0.4 of Thunderbird was announced earlier today.) I don’t know how quick Google is at directing to the new version of firefox, but I’ll include a link in this message […]

Circuit City Support forum serving up trojan….

Thursday, June 1st, 2006

Embarrasing…. and a big pain in the neck for any of their visitors… It seems as though if you’ve visited Circuit City’s Support Forum with an unpatched Internet Explorer, you likely have a trojan/backdoor of some sort on your pc. (Assuming Explorer hasn’t been patched since January. In reality – if you haven’t updated explorer […]

Ernst & Young loses laptop, exposes almost 250k hotels.com customers – database mayhem roundup

Thursday, June 1st, 2006

The Register is reporting on Ernst & Young’s loss of a laptop which had information on around 243,000 hotels.com customers. Apparently Hotels.com was notified on May 3rd. Apparently the laptop made use of a password as the only security measure. From the article….    Send article as PDF   

Wiping data from hard drives

Thursday, June 1st, 2006

How often do I get to talk about this? Yahoo News has an article on a couple who, a year ago, took their PC to Best Buy to have the hard drive swapped. Best Buy assured them that the drive would be destroyed…. Recently they got a call from a guy in Chicago that had […]

Windows Automatic Updates now checking Genuine Advantage…

Thursday, June 1st, 2006

According to ibnlive.com started today (June 1st) Microsoft will be utilizing their Genuine Advantage check through the Automatic Update feature. Up until now, you have only been prompted for the Genuine Advantage check when visiting the Windows update site directly. (I can only assume the Genuine Advantage check is the method the article speaks of […]

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