Symantec, McAfee To Pay $750,000 In Subscription Renewal Sett... Submitted Thursday, June 11, 2009 @ 11:41 PM Symantec company information - ( Symantec News ) crn.com -- Security vendors Symantec and McAfee will be shelling out a combined $750,000, while creating more transparency about consumer subscription terms and renewal policies as part of a settlement agreement authorized by New York's attorney general.
The $750,000 penalty was issued as part of a combined settlement after Symantec and McAfee were found to have renewed consumers' software subscriptions without their knowledge or authorization. Under the terms of the settlement, both Symantec and McAfee will have to make detailed disclosures to consumers about subscription terms and renewals, and each will be required to pay $375,000 in penalties and costs. See the complete story here.Microsoft will soon unveil free anti-virus software Submitted Wednesday, June 10, 2009 @ 01:50 PM Microsoft company information - ( Microsoft News ) Symantec company information - ( Symantec News ) reuters.com -- Microsoft Corp is getting ready to unveil a long-anticipated free anti-virus service for PCs that will compete with products sold by Symantec Corp and McAfee Inc.
A Microsoft spokesman said on Wednesday that the world's biggest software maker is testing an early version of the product with its own employees. Microsoft would "soon" make a trial version, or product beta, available via its website, he added, but declined to provide a specific date. See the complete story here.U.S. Army servers breached by Turkish hackers Submitted Tuesday, June 02, 2009 @ 05:57 PM news.zdnet.com -- Hackers based in Turkey penetrated two US army web servers and redirected traffic from those websites to other pages, including one with anti-American and anti-Israeli messages, according to a report in InformationWeek. See the complete story here.40,000 sites hit by PC-pwning hack attack Submitted Tuesday, June 02, 2009 @ 05:34 PM theregister.co.uk -- More than 40,000 websites worldwide have fallen under the spell of a sneaky piece of attack code that silently tries to install malware on the machines of people who visit them, security experts from Websense have warned. See the complete story here.Microsoft Update Quietly Installs Firefox Extension Submitted Tuesday, June 02, 2009 @ 05:21 PM Microsoft company information - ( Microsoft News ) Firefox company information - ( Firefox News ) voices.washingtonpost.com -- A routine security update for a Microsoft Windows component installed on tens of millions of computers has quietly installed an extra add-on for an untold number of users surfing the Web with Mozilla's Firefox Web browser.
Earlier this year, Microsoft shipped a bundle of updates known as a "service pack" for a programming platform called the Microsoft .NET Framework, which Microsoft and plenty of third-party developers use to run a variety of interactive programs on Windows. See the complete story here.New Windows netbooks may harbor malware Submitted Wednesday, May 27, 2009 @ 10:33 AM news.idg.no -- Kaspersky Labs is warning users to scan brand new systems for malware before connecting them to the Internet after discovering attack code on a just-out-of-the-box Windows XP netbook.
After discovering attack code on a brand new Windows XP netbook, antivirus vendor Kaspersky Labs warned users yesterday that they should scan virgin systems for malware before connecting them to the Internet. See the complete story here.DDoS Attack Leaves Five Chinese Provinces Without Internet Submitted Wednesday, May 27, 2009 @ 10:22 AM news.softpedia.com -- Millions of Chinese Internet users from the Shanxi, Guangxi, Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Hebei provinces had trouble getting online on Tuesday, because of a domain name system (DNS) chain reaction caused by an initial denial of service attack against a single provider. See the complete story here.Vista Service Pack 2 Now Ready for Download Submitted Tuesday, May 26, 2009 @ 06:21 PM pcworld.com -- Windows Vista Service Pack 2 is now available for download. The Vista SP2 update includes new support for recording Blu-ray discs straight from the Vista OS, updated support for Bluetooth v2.1, and bug fixes that address slow shutdowns and mysterious crashes. See the complete story here.Microsoft Windows HTTP Services Multiple Vulnerabilities Submitted Tuesday, April 14, 2009 @ 04:14 PM Microsoft company information - ( Microsoft News ) secunia.com -- Some vulnerabilities have been reported in Microsoft Windows, which can be exploited by malicious people to conduct spoofing attacks or compromise a user's system.
1) An integer underflow error in Windows HTTP Services can be exploited to execute arbitrary code via a specially crafted parameter returned by a malicious web server.
2) An error in Windows HTTP Services while validating the distinguished name of a certificate can be exploited to spoof a valid certificate.
Successful exploitation requires the ability to perform DNS spoofing attacks.
3) An error in Windows HTTP Services can be exploited to reflect NTLM credentials and execute arbitrary code by tricking a user into connecting to a malicious web server. See the complete story here.Microsoft killing free XP support next week Submitted Tuesday, April 14, 2009 @ 11:10 AM Microsoft company information - ( Microsoft News ) theregister.co.uk -- Microsoft will drop free support for handful of aging products next week, including consumer versions of Windows XP and Office 2003.
On April 14, the Redmond giant ends "mainstream" support for Office 2003 in addition to Windows XP Home and Professional. This means the software will no longer include no-charge incident support, warranty claims, design changes, and bug fixes not related to security. See the complete story here.Microsoft to patch Excel hole, seven others Submitted Thursday, April 09, 2009 @ 02:52 PM Microsoft company information - ( Microsoft News ) news.cnet.com -- Microsoft on Tuesday said next week's Patch Tuesday would include eight patches, five of them critical, including one addressing a vulnerability in Excel.
A company representative declined to confirm whether the patch for its spreadsheet software addresses a vulnerability that has seen "zero-day attacks" which target unpatched security holes. But given the fact that both that Excel vulnerability and the Excel patch slated for Tuesday affect Microsoft Office 2000, 2002, 2003, and 2007, as well as Microsoft Office 2004 and 2008 for the Mac, it could be the same weakness. See the complete story here.Microsoft Must Pay $388 Million To Settle Patent Claim Submitted Thursday, April 09, 2009 @ 02:37 PM Microsoft company information - ( Microsoft News ) informationweek.com -- Microsoft has been hit with one of the largest patent awards on record, as a jury on Thursday ordered the software maker to pay $388 million to a security vendor that claims Redmond misappropriated its technology. See the complete story here.Spies 'infiltrate US power grid' Submitted Thursday, April 09, 2009 @ 02:32 PM news.bbc.co.uk -- The US government has admitted the nation's power grid is vulnerable to cyber attack, following reports it has been infiltrated by foreign spies. See the complete story here.Conficker begins stealthy update Submitted Thursday, April 09, 2009 @ 02:24 PM news.bbc.co.uk -- The Conficker worm has started to update infected machines with a mystery package of data.
Computer security firms watching the malicious program noticed that it sprang into life late on 8 April. See the complete story here.Microsoft killing free XP support next week Submitted Thursday, April 09, 2009 @ 12:07 PM Microsoft company information - ( Microsoft News ) theregister.co.uk -- Microsoft will drop free support for handful of aging products next week, including consumer versions of Windows XP and Office 2003.
On April 14, the Redmond giant ends "mainstream" support for Office 2003 in addition to Windows XP Home and Professional. This means the software will no longer include no-charge incident support, warranty claims, design changes, and bug fixes not related to security. See the complete story here.Spam overwhelms e-mail messages Submitted Wednesday, April 08, 2009 @ 12:10 PM Microsoft company information - ( Microsoft News ) news.bbc.co.uk -- More than 97% of all e-mails sent over the net are unwanted, according to a Microsoft security report.
The e-mails are dominated by spam adverts for drugs, and general product pitches and often have malicious attachments. See the complete story here.How the Conficker Problem Just Got Much Worse Submitted Friday, April 03, 2009 @ 03:06 PM i.gizmodo.com -- On the surface, April 1 came and went without a peep from the dreaded Conficker megaworm. But security experts see a frightening reality, one where Conficker is now more powerful and more dangerous than ever.
In the first minute of April 1, Conficker did exactly what everyone knew it was going to do: It successfully phoned home for an update. And while it was fun to imagine what nasty payload that update may have included (it was fun, wasn't it?), the result was not outwardly catastrophic; rather than a blueprint for world domination, the update contained instructions on how to dig in even deeper. See the complete story here.Bill Would Grant President Unprecedented Cyber-security Powers Submitted Friday, April 03, 2009 @ 02:59 PM eweek.com -- The Cybersecurity Act of 2009 introduced in the Senate would allow the president to shut down private Internet networks. The legislation also calls for the government to have the authority to demand security data from private networks without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule or policy restricting such access.
The headlines were all about creating a national cyber-security czar reporting directly to the president, but the Cybersecurity Act of 2009 introduced April 1 in the U.S. Senate would also give the president unprecedented authority over private-sector Internet services, applications and software. See the complete story here.Microsoft helps keep Koobface virus off Facebook Submitted Thursday, April 02, 2009 @ 06:07 PM Microsoft company information - ( Microsoft News ) news.cnet.com -- Microsoft is working with Facebook to keep the persistent Koobface virus off the popular social-networking site, the companies said on Thursday.
"In working with Facebook, we were able to add detection of Koobface to our Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT), which checks computers running Windows software to detect and remove viruses," Jeff Williams, a principal group program manager for the MRST, wrote in a guest post on the Facebook Blog. See the complete story here.Giant Internet worm set to change tactics April 1 Submitted Friday, March 27, 2009 @ 03:45 PM google.com -- The fast-moving Conficker computer worm, a scourge of the Internet that has infected at least 3 million PCs, is set to spring to life in a new way on Wednesday — April Fools' Day.
That's when many of the poisoned machines will get more aggressive about "phoning home" to the worm's creators over the Internet. When that happens, the bad guys behind the worm will be able to trigger the program to send spam, spread more infections, clog networks with traffic, or try and bring down Web sites. See the complete story here.
