My favourite firewall, Zone Alarm, is being bought by another firewall maker, Check Point Software Technologies [CNet News.com]. It looks to me as if there’s quite significant consolidation within the security software industry, not just from the point of view of big guys buying the smaller guys, but of companies trying to create products that… Read More »
Virus writers are getting smarter. It’s official. The latest bi-annual Internet Security Threat Report from Symantec found that 64 per cent of all new attacks targeted vulnerabilities less than one year old. The Blaster worm, for example, appeared only 26 days after the vulnerability it exploited was announced, according to The Register. Symantec’s study… Read More »
I should have known, given the whole virus thing is big business, that if one company announces a new product, its rival down the street isn’t likely to stay silent. Hot on the heels (or maybe before, who knows) of McAfee’s upgrade to its VirusScan, Symantec Corp.announced Norton AntiVirus 2004, although tellingly it’s not ‘widely… Read More »
You’re probably heard of the computer worm that is seemingly benign: W32.Welchia.Worm targets customers infected with the W32.Blaster.Worm, deletes it, attempts to download the patch from Microsoft’s Windows Update Web site to correct the hole that allowed the worm in the first place, installs the patch, and then reboots the computer. All very nice, on… Read More »
While the corporate and government damage wrought by the Blaster worm does not appear to be as bad as it first looked, ordinary users may be in trouble. (The worm uses other infected computers to try to attack more computers, all of which then try to attack part of the Microsoft website with a message… Read More »