Categories: security

White House Appoints Cybersecurity Czar

Posted by: Arik Hesseldahl on December 22

Now that the Obama Administration has named the person who will be charge of national cyber-security issues, the question will now turn to what that person will need to do…

Twitter: Keeping the Bad Guys at Bay

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on April 13

Twitter, it turns out is more than just a way to keep up with what’s going on in the world, or among your acquaintances, in 140-character micro-blog posts. It’s…

The AT&T Outage: Sabotage vs. Hacking

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on April 09

There has been a lot of buzz this week about hackers, possibly sponsored by the Chinese government, mounting cyber-attacks on the U.S. power grid. Today we learned that there’s more…

Conficker Worm Continues to Baffle the Experts

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on April 09

The Conficker worm, which did not bring the Internet to its knees or do much of anything else on April 1, continues to evolve in ways that have security experts…

New Bill Would Regulate Business Cybersecurity

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on April 01

Business expected tougher environmental, financial, and labor regulations from the Obama Administration, but it looks like the feds may be getting ready to move into a new area: the information…

Fearing ‘Cyber Katrina,’ Obama Candidate for Cyber Czar Urges a ”FEMA for the Internet’

Posted by: Keith Epstein on February 18

For all the fears of sophisticated digital intrusions preoccupying many computer security professionals, President Obama’s leading candidates for “cyber czar” also are focusing on an all-too-human vulnerability: The nation’s…

NSA, DHS, Industry Gang Up on Dangerous Software Errors

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on January 12

Computer security experts have warned for years that the endless cycle of software flaws and exploits will only be broken when we create incentives for software authors and publishers to…

Cracks Emerge in a Web Security Scheme

Posted by: Aaron Ricadela on December 30

Like many computer security threats, a new weakness in Web commerce emerged today from the grass roots. Researchers said Dec. 30 they’d used 200 PlayStation 3 video game consoles to…

Measuring the Market for Hacked Data

Posted by: Aaron Ricadela on November 24

Cyber criminals have assembled a black market for information worth $276 million, according to a new study by computer security company Symantec, which is spotlighting the results as these underground…

Microsoft to Stop Charging For Home PC Security

Posted by: Aaron Ricadela on November 19

Two years after jumping into the PC security software market, Microsoft is scaling back its ambitions there. The company said Nov. 18 it’s discontinuing its $50-a-year OneCare software in favor…

How encryption fails

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on March 05

In a comment on an earlier post of mine about how Princeton researchers cracked disk encryption on computers, John Hollingsworth asks how this sort of thing happens when encryption technology…

How Vulnerable Are Encrypted Hard Drives?

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on February 24

It looks more research is needed before we find out just how safe new disk drives with built-in hardware encryption are. A group of researchers at Princeton created a stir…

Scary threats Get Scarier

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on January 14

It used to be that if you avoided sketchy Web sites and were very careful about clicking on links in e-mail messages, your odds of acquiring a nasty worm or…

Computer security: The feds lead the way

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on April 16

The federal government is finally using its vast purchasing clout to do something about the leaky security of Microsoft Windows. The Office of Management & Budget has decreed that all…

Web 2.0 Worm Is Making Rounds

Posted by: Olga Kharif on February 27

My colleague Catherine Holahan just wrote to tell me about a virus that’s making the rounds on the Web. Check out her guest blog below: You’re probably well aware of…

Has Symantec Turned a Corner?

Posted by: Sarah Lacy on July 28

Finally, Symantec had some undeniably good news when it reported earnings on July 26. Ok the profit numbers looked bad thanks to some merger related expenses. But revenue for the…

Identity theft gets personal

Posted by: Steve Hamm on May 23

The bad news came in a harmless looking package. It was a letter from Wells Fargo Home Mortgage informing me that a computer containing my name, address, social security number,…

Update: John Thompson Takes the Mic Afterall

Posted by: Sarah Lacy on January 26

I just got a call from someone at RSA, who read my posting on Symantec’s revolving door. Turns out, Symantec CEO John Thompson will be doing that keynote on Feb….

Symantec’s Revolving Door

Posted by: Sarah Lacy on January 24

Things just keep looking dicier at Symantec. First there was the controversial Veritas merger. Then came fears of McAfee cannibalizing the consumer business through its relationships with internet service providers….

The Insider Threat

Posted by: Steve Hamm on January 20

The idea of companies spying on their employees creeps me out. Yet I realize that businesses have to protect their personal and proprietary information from insiders just as carefully as…

Black Hats redux

Posted by: Steve Hamm on August 03

I’ve been able to track down some additional info concerning this Cisco/Black Hat dustup. My posting of last Friday elicited a bunch of comments. Almost all negative. My reference…

The Black Hats must be gloating

Posted by: Steve Hamm on July 29

What a miserable week for software security! First, on Wednesday, a smartass researcher outed a problem in Cisco router software at the Black Hat security confab in Las Vegas—potentially exposing…

Pod Slurping To Threaten Security

Posted by: Olga Kharif on July 26

iPod slurping could soon become a major security threat for companies. Equipped with a special program, an iPod digital music player can download more than 20,000 files an hour from any computer it’s connected to. Thus, there’s a potential for an intruder or a company insider to steal vital information.

Does the US need another anti-virus company?

Posted by: Steve Hamm on July 08

Between them, Symantec, McAfee, and Trend Micro just about have the US market for anti-virus software sewed up. But here comes Russia’s Kaspersky Lab trying to gain a foothold. The…