Ryan Naraine

A new study by McAfee’s SiteAdvisor Web ratings finds that sponsored results from some of the biggest names in the search engine business contain spyware, spam, scams and other Internet menaces. The study, which was conducted by anti-spyware activist Ben Edelman and SiteAdvisor research analyst Hannah Rosenbaum, found that all the major search engines—Google, Yahoo, […]

Just call it Oracle’s May critical patch update. Three weeks after the database server vendor announced the release of its April 2006 CPU, customers are still waiting for the several important fixes. The update, which addresses 36 different product flaws, is still undergoing quality assurance testing and is not yet available for download. On April […]

For some Windows users, there will be two Patch Tuesdays in April. The Redmond, Wash. software maker plans to rerelease the problematic MS06-015 update on April 25 to correct an issue that has caused system hangs, Windows crashes and the appearance of strange dialog boxes after the original patch was installed. “[We have] re-engineered the […]

Database server giant Oracle on April 18 shipped its scheduled quarterly critical patch update with fixes for 36 security vulnerabilities in several enterprise-facing products. The mega update includes a fix for a gaping flaw in the Oracle PL/SQL Gateway that was reported to Oracle more than six months ago and was the subject of a […]

Malicious hackers are using hijacked Web servers and compromised sites to launch a wave of zero-day attacks against an unpatched flaw in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser. The first wave of drive-by downloads was spotted on March 25, and security experts tracking the attack say the threat is growing at a rate of 10 new malicious […]

Microsoft plans to release a pre-patch advisory with workarounds for a “highly critical” vulnerability that could put millions of Internet Explorer users at the mercy of malicious hackers. The advisory, which will be posted here, acknowledges a code execution hole that was discovered and publicly reported by Secunia Research of Copenhagen, Denmark. Secunia said in […]

Apple is getting a lecture on its security response process from the unlikeliest of places. In a classic flipping of the script, a Microsoft program manager who regularly serves as the public face of the software maker’s security response process rapped Apple for the way it handles security guidance to customers. In a series of […]

With the security of its flagship Mac OS X operating system facing intense scrutiny, Apple Computer on March 1 released a software update with patches for more than a dozen security vulnerabilities. The first security update from Apple for 2006 comes less than a week after the release of exploit code for Safari browser flaw […]

Russian anti-virus specialist Kaspersky Lab has discovered evidence of the first mobile phone Trojan targeting J2ME (Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition) devices. The sample Trojan, identified as Redbrowser.A, works on most phones with J2ME support, raising fears that malware writers are expanding the target beyond just Symbian-based smart phones. Redbrowser.A is a J2ME-based Java Midlet […]

SAN JOSE, Calif.—Microsoft has found an unlikely backer for its ambitious InfoCard online ID management system. At the RSA Conference here, Verisign dispelled the notion of a rivalry with Microsoft over identity management and announced that its new VIP (Verisign Identity Protection) network—which is backed by Yahoo and eBay—will work seamlessly with InfoCard in Windows […]

Microsoft plans to start selling the Windows OneCare Live PC security bundle for $49.95 a year for up to three personal computers. The service, which has gone through several beta revisions, will hit the market in June this year as a self-updating utility featuring virus scanning, firewall protection, data backup and PC cleanup tools. The […]

Microsoft’s security response team is investigating reports of a remotely exploitable buffer overflow in HTML Help Workshop, the standard help system for the Windows platform. The software vendor’s investigation follows the public release of a proof-of-concept exploit for the flaw, which is caused by a boundary error within the handling of a “.hhp” file. Security […]