Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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Texan firm sues whole security world
Swathe of major security providers cited in patent infringement case. A small Texan firm has taken on the mightiest corporations from across the security and anti-malware industry, launching a patent infringement suit against most of the major players in the field. The company, Information Protection and Authentication of Texas LLC (IPAT), holds a pair of…
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UK to adopt Euro police hacking scheme
Remote search and cyber patrol plans approved. The UK Home Office has signed up to a European initiative, proposed in November, to grant police forces greater powers to hack into computers and monitor internet traffic in search of incriminating evidence. The UK police already admits to engaging in cyber-espionage on occasion, in some cases with…
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CastleCops closes down
Security community project comes to an end. Well-known volunteer group CastleCops , which ran campaigns to identify and bring down spamming and phishing operations for over five successful years, has been quietly shut down. The website, formerly hosting a range of resources, forums and reporting systems and bookmarked by many security watchers, now carries only…
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Symbian SMS pest highlighted
Mobile exploit attack disables messaging. A presentation at a popular hacking forum has brought much attention to a flaw in the SMS processing in some versions of the Symbian mobile operating system, in use in many mobile phones from leading manufacturer Nokia among others. The flaw can be exploited with a specially crafted SMS message,…
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MS to release out-of-band patch for critical IE vulnerability
Users advised to patch ASAP. Microsoft is set to release an emergency out-of-band patch for the vulnerability in its Internet Explorer browser reported last week. Attacks via the vulnerability have been shown to work on a wide range of Windows and IE variants, and have been widely seeded to both malicious websites and legitimate sites…
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IE zero-day danger growing
Large numbers of users vulnerable to unpatched problem. The as-yet unpatched vulnerability in Microsoft ‘s Internet Explorer browser, reported last week and coinciding with the release of the monthly ‘Patch Tuesday’ security updates, is becoming more serious by the day as more and more infected websites appear to be attempting to exploit the flaw to…
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FTC goes after scareware scammers
Courts crack down on pushers of rogue anti-malware. The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has announced a successful move to persuade a US district court to shut down a major player in the rogue anti-spyware business. The company behind the notorious WinFixer and XP Antivirus scams has been issued with a temporary restraining order barring…
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Patch Tuesday released closely followed by emergency update
Bumper crop of patches plus further fix leave known holes open. This month’s ‘Patch Tuesday’ security bulletin from Microsoft contained eight separate updates, two more than previously announced, covering a total of 28 vulnerabilities. Six of the updates were labelled ‘critical’, although some sources rate all equally high and find the flaws covered susceptible to…
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Worm targets MS08-067 vulnerability
Exploit attack patches flaw once system penetrated. A worm has been seen taking advantage of the vulnerability in Microsoft ‘s Windows Server Service , patched out-of-cycle last month in the MS08-067 announcement. The worm takes advantage of machines yet to be patched by tardy administrators, and once it is installed it proceeds to patch the…
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