Apple Adds Anti-Hacker Features to QuickTime

Sunday, April 13th, 2008

Apple is quietly adding several key anti-hacker security features into its flagship QuickTime media player as part of a deliberate plan to reduce the effectiveness of malicious exploits. The XPMs (exploit prevention mechanisms) have been fitted into the WIndows and Mac OS X versions of QuickTime 7.4.5, a new update that ...

Vista Security Is Annoying by Design

Saturday, April 12th, 2008

If you're running Windows Vista, you're familiar with User Access Control (UAC). It's the security subsystem that pops up those irritating dialog boxes asking whether you really want to install software, or modify system files, or write to the Registry. UAC may be Vista's most-hated feature, but as it turns out, ...

Data Security Tips for CIOs: Wiping the Hard Drive

Friday, April 11th, 2008

Security issues are on the minds of all CIOs these days. Whether the CIO of a 1,300-student liberal-arts college or that of a 13,000-employee Fortune 100 company, never before has the issue of data security been more important. Besides a record-breaking year of data breaches, legislation such as Sarbanes-Oxley, Gramm-Leach-Bliley ...

Web Users in Malware Crosshairs

Wednesday, April 9th, 2008

Online malware attacks are becoming more pervasive, targeted, and refined as the underground threat economy continues to evolve and take on the characteristics of an organized industry. The latest iteration of Symantec's Internet Security Threat Report -- covering its research over the final six months of calendar 2007 and released on ...

Why Your Computer Runs So Slowly

Wednesday, April 9th, 2008

The first thing I suspect when someone tells me that their PC is running slowly is that they may be dealing with adware or spyware. Typically, a computer infected with this type of malware will display other symptoms as well. Odd behavior such as pop-up ads, your internet home page ...

Windows 7, Successor To Vista, May Ship Next Year

Friday, April 4th, 2008

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates said his company might ship a new version of its Windows operating system as soon as 2009.The news agency Reuters quoted Gates on Friday as saying that Windows 7 may be released "sometime in the next year or so." That would put the software ahead of ...

USB malware on the rise

Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008

Around a tenth of all malware is designed to use portable storage media, such as removable USB drives, as an attack and spread vector. Security firm ESET said that 10.3 per cent of malware detections last month were identified as files containing information on programs to be run automatically when removable ...

Researchers dive into memory dumps

Monday, March 31st, 2008

Building on earlier research into cold-boot attacks on computer memory, two consultants showed off their prototype tools for grabbing passwords from untended computers, during a session at the CanSecWest conference last week. The consultants -- Sherri Davidoff and Tom Liston, both of security firm Intelguardians -- found that numerous Windows and ...

Cryogenically frozen RAM bypasses all disk encryption methods

Saturday, March 8th, 2008

Computer encryption technologies have all relied on one key assumption that RAM (Random Access Memory) is volatile and that all content is lost when power is lost. That key assumption is now being fundamentally challenged with a $7 can of compressed air and it’s enough to give every security professional ...

Building a Future-Proof PC

Saturday, March 8th, 2008

It happens to us all: You put together your latest home-built PC masterpiece and before you've even downloaded your first Windows XP patch, some new technology comes along, or the price of an existing one drops, and you find yourself wishing you'd waited just another few days, weeks, or months. ...