Security

Tata teams with Stanford on privacy

Tata Consultancy Services, India's largest software services company, has signed a five-year research and development pact with Stanford Uinversity to develop technology for data privacy. Tata will also become an industrial partner in the TRUST initiative sponsored by the National Science Foundation. Most of the current members are U.S. universities such as Stanford and Cornell or U.S.-based companies. Under the pact, experts at Stanford will come to Tata's Pune India facilities while Tata's security consultants will come to Palo Alto.

Tata, along with other Indian software companies, are pushing their way up the software … Read more

Can't we all get along?

Rioting that erupted over the controversy surrounding a Danish cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammed has spilled beyond Afghanistan and onto the Internet.

A number of Danish Web sites have recently been defaced by hackers, who have scrawled anti-Danish sentiments across the sites, according to a report by security firm F-Secure.

One Danish site now warns in bold red letters: "don't ever talk about our prophet," while another site carries an ominous warning: "I will bomb myself in Demark very soon, as my brothers in Islam did in UK."

Meanwhile, one site, Zone-h, cites a list of Danish and Western web-servers that have received a number of Islamic attacks, … Read more

A storm is a brewing...

A select group of federal agencies and companies will be put to their cyber security preparedness to test this week, as part of the Homeland Security Department's Cyber Storm, according to a report in Federal Computer Week.

The national test, which will include Cisco Systems, Intel, Microsoft, Symantec and federal Defense and Justice departments, will span a week. During that time, assessments will be made on how well the U.S. is prepared to guard against and respond to a cyber attack.

Hopefully it will be better than putting the test into action. Cyber Storm was initially scheduled for November, … Read more

Security companies gang up on spyware

Five makers of security software on Monday said they have created guidelines for defining spyware and for testing anti-spyware products.

The companies--McAfee, Symantec, Trend Micro, ICSA Labs and Thompson Cyber Security Labs--say that their guidelines could ultimately result in a standard method that buyers can use to rate and evaluate anti-spyware products.

The software makers are part of a larger organization, called the Anti-Spyware Coalition, which is working to standardize industry terms and technology for battling spyware.

Next on the group's agenda: Defining threat naming conventions, intelligence-sharing best practices, and emergency information distribution guidelines. The group says it will … Read more

Ancient flaws leave OS X vulnerable?

OS X contains unpatched security flaws of a type that were fixed on alternative operating systems more than a decade ago, claims a security researcher credited with finding numerous bugs in Apple Computer's increasingly popular platform.

Neil Archibald, a senior security researcher at software security specialists Suresec, told ZDNet Australia that as Apple's market share increases, OS X will come under more scrutiny by security researchers, who he believes will find plenty of "low-hanging bugs."

Archibald, who has already discovered a number of security vulnerabilities in OS X, speculates that should Apple's market share continue … Read more

Spammer fined $5 million

A Minnesota man who has been called "the poster child for the Can-Spam Act" was ordered this week to pay America Online more than $5.3 million for violating the federal anti-spam law.

The order, against Christopher William Smith, of Prior Lake, Minn., was reported on Thursday by the Associated Press. AOL said the judgement was the largest it has ever received in a junk e-mail case.

Smith, who operated under the name Rizler, sent billions of junk e-mails advertising "generic" Viagra and porn sites, according to the report. He is now in jail awaiting trial … Read more

New worm crawling through blogs?!

I spotted it on Christopher Boyd's Vital Security blog. Chris is a Microsoft security MVP and security research manager at FaceTime, an instant messaging security company. However, this worm appears to have spread much further and has slithered around the world.

The worm is actually an animated GIF image. Bloggers all over have embedded it in their blogs and link to the creator's Web site.To infect your blog, you have to copy and paste a piece of HTML code into your blog.

This is funny, but on the flipside, however, there could be some security implications if … Read more

Microsoft, Washington state in spyware suits

Microsoft and Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna on Wednesday plan to announce a pair of lawsuits related to spyware. The legal action will be among the first filed under a new state antispyware law that went into effect in July 2005.

The cases are meant to help protect consumers from spyware, according to a Microsoft media alert sent Tuesday. The announcement of the law suits is scheduled for 9 a.m. Wednesday in Seattle.

Hackers threaten donor information at Notre Dame

Hackers broke into a computer system at the University of Notre Dame earlier this month, and may have accessed personal and financial information of donors, according to a school spokeswoman.

Hilary Crnkovich, Notre Dame's vice president of public affairs declined to disclose how many donors may be at risk in an interview with CNET News.com, but said that the hackers may have made off with Social Security numbers, credit card information and check images.

"The (computer) server that was potentially affected, was taken off line immediately," Crnkovich said. "The university continues to explore safeguards and … Read more