Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

Compression handling issue affects swathe of products. A wide range of Trend Micro security products are affected by a flaw in the handling of files compressed with UPX, which could be exploited to shut down the product or even access a machine remotely. An update is available to circumvent the problem. The buffer overflow vulnerability…

Large-scale DDoS barrage hits top-level DNS machines. An exceptionally large Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack took place yesterday, targeting the root DNS servers at the core of the Internet. Though little detail has yet emerged about the attack, it is rumoured to have originated from South Korea, and is thought to have caused temporary…

Superbowl stadium among many hosting malware attack. Malicious Javascript has been planted on numerous legitimate websites over the weekend, attempting to take advantage of known flaws in Windows to download and activate keylogger and backdoor trojans on machines which browse the sites. An initial report was released on Friday by Websense , warning of an…

Round up of this year’s must-attend spam events. The 2007 Spam Conference will take place on 30 March 2007 at MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA . The title for this year’s conference is ‘Spam, phishing and other cybercrimes’. See http://spamconference.org/ . The Authentication Summit 2007 will be held 18-19 April 2007 in Boston, MA, USA .…

‘Dramatically more secure’… or not? January saw the full commercial release of Microsoft ‘s latest operating system: the long-awaited Vista . Since its release arguments have continued to rumble on over whether the new OS is any more secure than others. While Bill Gates has described Vista as ‘dramatically more secure’ than other operating systems,…

This month: new platform, new logo. With the overall conclusion that the release of Vista will make little difference to the overall malware landscape, VB chose this month to put a range of anti-virus products for Vista (those that were ready, that is) to the test. This month’s high-performing products also become the first recipients…

Symantec and McAfee see drops in market share. A report by analyst firm NPD Group has revealed that anti-malware heavyweights Symantec and McAfee both lost market share following the release of Microsoft ‘s consumer product Live OneCare last year. According to the report, Symantec ‘s Norton product took 64.7% of the US retail market in…

Landmark case blames advertisers for malware tactics. Three major brands, Priceline , Travelocity and Cingular Wireless , have settled a New York lawsuit charging them with using nuisance adware to promote their wares. The lawsuit, brought last April, charged the infamous Direct Revenue adware product with using deceptive and intrusive practices. The three major brands…

Report demands more resources and national IT squad. A report issued by the Metropolitan Police has admitted that, despite serious under-reporting of computer-related crime incidents, UK police forces are forced to leave many such incidents uninvestigated. The detailed report analysing the progress of the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) e-crime strategy describes advances in the technical…

Serial spammer faces more fines for abusing social system. Regular spammer and lawsuit loser Scott Richter, last seen being sued by Infinite Monkeys , faces more legal and financial trouble and the social ignominy of being barred from the popular MySpace , after the social site brought a civil case against him for spamming its…