Security

As Linux increasingly hits the enterprise and consumer mainstream, a growing number of security threats are emerging which prey on holes in applications and files managed by desktop users. On Wednesday of this week, Linux vendors Red Hat, Novell and Mandrakesoft released patches for several vulnerab...

A developer of security software for Linux had some harsh words yesterday for what he sees as a lax attitude toward security in the operating system's community. "Linux is being presented by commercial vendors as a professional, enterprise-ready product," Brad Spengler, of grsecurity, said. "When it...

A vulnerability in Mozilla's open-source Firefox browser could be exploited, security experts have warned. Despite the hoopla about the superior security of Firefox, Secunia Research reported that the browser could be used by malicious people, know as phishers, to spoof the source URL displayed in t...

A company that makes a tool for finding bugs in software code disclosed this week that the Linux kernel is far less flawed than many programs people pay money for. According to San Francisco-based Coverity, its source-code auditing tool found the Linux 2.6 kernel had 985 bugs in its 5.7 million line...

Microsoft users may feel as though they're the only ones constantly under attack from hackers, but they're not alone with that dubious distinction. Late last week, Red Hat, the Raleigh, North Carolina-based Linux provider, was also hit. The threat came in the form of a fake security warning. The e-m...

Leading open source vendor Red Hat said it will buy certain security-related assets of Netscape Security Solutions from America Online in a deal worth US$25 million. Red Hat said it will integrate the products it is buying, including the Netscape Directory Server and Netscape Certificate Management ...

A consortium of French Linux firms are poised to work on developing a highly secure Linux operating system for business, defense and government use. The effort is being funded by the French Ministry of Defense, which chose Paris-based Linux vendor Mandrakesoft as the project leader. The other French...

Open-source spam killer SpamAssassin 3.0 was released Wednesday, and while the new version has more features than its predecessors, it is in the licensing where it deviates the most from past versions. Previously, the software was available under either the GPL or the Perl Artistic License. For 3.0,...

If you ever feel in need of a lesson in humility, try reading through the TCP/IP RFCs and related literature. I have two questions I have no idea how to answer but rather naively expected that reading this material would help. It didn't, in truth because I didn't understand most of it; so now I'm as...

Linux vendors have issued patches to address vulnerability in Qt, a software toolkit that simplifies writing and maintaining GUI applications for the X Window system. The flaw was unveiled by security researcher Chris Evans, who uncovered a heap overflow in the BMP image decoder in Qt versions prior...

At this week's Crypto 2004 conference in California, several papers were presented that demonstrated vulnerabilities in algorithms that are often used to create digital signatures. Although the results are preliminary, many in the security community are concerned about what such weaknesses might mea...

"Service Pack 2 is a significant step in delivering on our goal to help customers make their PCs better isolated and more resilient in the face of increasingly sophisticated attacks," said Bill Gates, chairman and chief software architect at Microsoft.

Microsoft of Redmond, Washington, is reportedly finalizing a far-ranging security patch for its Windows XP operating system. The patch, to be known as Windows XP Service Pack 2, should be available some time this month.

Evans Data today released survey results showing that 90 percent of Linux systems have never been infected by a virus, and nearly 80 percent have never been hacked. The survey of 500 Linux developers worldwide was conducted earlier this month. The respondents' answers were compared to another survey...

A man in Florida has been indicted on 144 charges of conspiracy, unauthorized access to a protected computer, device fraud, money laundering and obstruction of justice, after hacking into the database of a high profile marketing company. Scott Levine, 45, is accused of breaking into systems at Acxio...