Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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FTC demands more power against spyware
Prosecutions and fines needed to deter badware makers. Representatives of the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the consumer protection body which has seen some success in the past in bringing spammers to justice, have called for greater powers to bring down makers of malicious spyware. At a spyware forum in Washington, D.C. earlier this week,…
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McAfee acquires website trust mark firm
ScanAlert certification system bought for $51 million. McAfee has bought ScanAlert , the firm behind the ‘Hacker Safe’ trust mark logo, carried by some 75,000 websites to indicate safe practices and freedom from malware and spamming. The technology will be added to McAfee ‘s SiteAdvisor safe browsing system. In a deal worth $51 million in…
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Microsoft unveils January-June threat report
Security analysis shows rise in vulnerabilities, trojans and scamware. Microsoft has released its latest ‘Security Intelligence Report’, covering the first half of 2007, showing a steady increase in reports of software vulnerabilities, ‘potentially unwanted’ applications and trojan activity. The study found vulnerabilities continuing in an upward trend lasting since 2003, with high-severity flaws rising most…
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Spyware maker Direct Revenue closes doors
Notorious company forced out of business by legal actions. After numerous lawsuits and fines, adware and spyware maker Direct Revenue is no more. The firm behind a swathe of intrusive and malicious software products has ceased trading thanks to cases brought by New York State and the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) challenging its devious…
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Trend Micro invests in leak-prevention firm
Further data security added to portfolio. Security giant Trend Micro has acquired California-based data leak prevention specialist Provilla , to add its data protection technologies to the Trend range. Provilla ‘s software range, including its LeakProof and LeakSense leak prevention and monitoring tools, will continue to be sold and supported for the foreseeable future, and…
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PDF trojan exploits Adobe flaw
Reader/Acrobat vulnerability targeted day after patch release. A vulnerability in Adobe ‘s popular PDF-viewing software Adobe Reader and editing suite Acrobat , first reported a month ago , was patched on Monday in an update released two weeks after the company issued a workaround to minimise exposure. The following day, PDFs containing exploits for the…
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RealPlayer zero-day flaw exploited
Manufacturer responds rapidly to serious security hole. A zero-day vulnerability in the popular media playing system RealPlayer was spotted being exploited in the wild late last week, with several trojans penetrating vulnerable systems from malicious websites in silent drive-by downloads. The flaw is in a piece of code previously exploited to cause denial of service,…
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