Ryan Naraine

The state of California is mounting a legal challenge to a recent Federal Communications Commission ruling that VOIP phone services sold by Vonage Holdings Corp. were exempt from state and local regulations and tariffs. In a petition for review filed with the U.S. Court of Appeal for the Ninth Circuit, the Public Utilities Commission of […]

Microsoft Corp. has quietly released a “critical” Windows XP Service Pack 2 update to fix a serious flaw in the Windows Firewall utility. “After you set up Microsoft Windows Firewall in Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2), you may discover that your computer can be accessed by anyone on the Internet when you use […]

Microsoft Corp. has bought into the anti-spyware business. Just two months after Chairman Bill Gates dropped a strong hint that Microsoft planned to do something about the spyware scourge, the Redmond, Wash., company announced the acquisition of Giant Company Software, a New York-based startup with a highly rated anti-spyware application. Financial terms of the purchase […]

Microsoft’s sudden acquisition of highly rated anti-spyware startup Giant Company Software has set the cat among the pigeons. As competitors rush to spin the news as a “validation” of the nascent anti-spyware sector, analysts predict that Redmond is working on an enterprise-class product combining spyware- and virus-fighting capabilities. “We believe Microsoft will come out with […]

A new virus strain masquerading as electronic Christmas cards is accounting for one in every 10 e-mails hitting in-boxes, security experts warned Wednesday. The W32/Zafi-D worm, which originated in Hungary, is using mass-mailing and P2P (peer-to-peer) techniques to squirm through in-boxes and slow network traffic to a crawl. The worm, which poses as a Christmas […]

Microsoft on Tuesday released fixes for five vulnerabilities in Windows products, including a patch for a known security issue in the WINS (Windows Internet Name Service) name server. As expected, the company released five advisories with “important” severity ratings but warned that four of the five could lead to code execution attacks. Microsoft typically rates […]

Microsoft’s monthly patch day for December will produce security updates for five vulnerabilities affecting Windows users, the company said Thursday. In an advance notice, the software giant said the maximum severity rating for the five updates is “important.” Some of the security updates may require a restart. The prerelease of basic information ahead of the […]

NEW YORK—Spyware will replace the mass-mailing worm as the biggest nuisance—and security threat—facing businesses in 2005. That’s the chilling assessment from Roger Thompson, director of content research security management at Computer Associates International Inc. Thompson used the spotlight of the InfoSecurity 2004 conference here to highlight the growing threat from spyware and adware “pests” and […]

Microsoft’s decision to scrap plans for Windows 2000 Service Pack 5 has effectively killed all hopes that security enhancements built into Windows XP SP2 will be back-ported to Windows 2000. Following a spate of recent analyst reports warning of long-term security problems with the platform, some enterprise customers anticipated that Redmond would reconsider the Service […]

Microsoft Corp. has issued a workaround for a newly discovered security issue in WINS (Windows Internet Name Service) that could lead to malicious code execution. Just days after research outfit Immunity Inc. issued an advisory, Redmond confirmed that the WINS vulnerability could make it possible for an attacker to take control of a WINS server […]

Microsoft Corp. has scrapped plans for Windows 2000 Service Pack 5. Instead, the software giant announced that a Windows 2000 Update Rollup will be released in mid-2005 to replace SP5 as the final security patch for the operating system. According to a message posted on Microsoft’s Windows 2000 site, “The Update Rollup will contain all […]

Users of America Online Inc.’s Winamp media player are at risk of remote code execution attacks because of a flaw in the software, according to a warning from a security research firm. The flaw, which Secunia rates as “highly critical,” has been reported in Winamp versions 5.05 and 5.06. Prior versions also may be affected. […]