News (24)

US Homeland Security still infected with Trojans?

The man in charge of IT security for the US Homeland Security department may lose his job after the revelations that his department's IT systems have misconfigured firewalls, suspicious botnet activity, trojans and virus infections. Read more »

BusinessWeek site hacked

Hackers have broken into BusinessWeek's online site and set up an attack scenario in which visitors to a section of the site could have their own computers compromised and their data stolen, a security researcher said on Monday in the US. Read more »

Government targets itself with phishing attack

Governments have had to target themselves with phishing attacks in order to highlight weak points in their security and protect national secrets from espionage, according to a report published this week by Sans. Read more »

Black Hat with a Vista twist

Black Hat is not just about breaking and entering this year as Windows Vista and IE7 come under the spotlight. Read more »

Security guru wants access to bug databases

Security expert Ross Anderson has called for empirical research to be conducted into whether open source or closed source software is more secure, and into the impact that development practices such as extreme programming (XP) have on code quality. Read more »

Oracle defends security record

Oracle has shrugged off criticisms of its recent security record, saying that one of the company's biggest security concerns is that its customers are so used to being secure that they are not used to applying patches. Read more »

Oracle no longer a 'bastion of security': Gartner

Analyst group Gartner has warned administrators to be "more aggressive" when protecting their Oracle applications because they are not getting enough help from the database giant. Read more »

Study: Few bugs in MySQL database

A source-code analysis of the MySQL database, a popular open-source program at the heart of many Web sites, revealed few bugs compared with the number found in commercial code, testing company Coverity said Friday. Read more »

New hacker trick may expose Oracle databases

A new attack technique increases the risk of commonly found bugs in Oracle's database software, a security researcher has warned. Read more »

IDC Web site defaced by 'eco-terrorists'

The Web site of Global IT research firm IDC has been hacked by a group purporting to be Brazilian environmental terrorists to serve a message urging people to take action over global warming. Read more »

Features (32)

Should you hire an ex-hacker?

Hiring a hacker as a chief security officer may sound crazy, but it has paid off for one company. See why an ex-hacker might be your smartest hire ever. Read more »

UNIX tools track down hackers

Catching malicious hackers isn't impossible. With the right tools, you can gather important information to help stop hack attacks. How can you use common UNIX tools to hunt down network attackers? Read more »

Knowledge is power against hacker schemes

Most IT managers neglect to tell users how to avoid falling prey to the dangerous hacker technique of social engineering. Here's what you need to know. Read more »

Six steps to secure sensitive data in MySQL

If you're using MySQL, there are some easy things you can do to secure your systems and significantly reduce the risk of unauthorised access to your sensitive data. Read more »

Removing a tricky hacker tool

Antivirus programs are good at detecting and removing many threats, but some lethal files and hackerware can slip through the cracks. How do you get rid of a hacker tool that you can't delete? Read more »

Security in the Web 2.0 Era

At the Gartner Symposium ITxpo 2008 in Sydney this week, Andrew Walls, the research director and security analyst at Gartner presented "Security in the Age of E-Commerce and Web 2.0". Read more »

Avoid security vulnerabilities in your CGI programs

CGI makes creating Web-executable programs quick and easy--both for you and for hackers. Learn about some of the explicit security vulnerabilities of CGI and how to avoid them. Read more »

CGI wrappers for Apache-based apps can boost security

CGI scripts represent a big potential security risk in Web development, but using CGI wrappers can help insulate your servers from attack. Here's an outline of how to create CGI wrappers to protect an Apache Web server. Read more »

Bulletproof persistent cookies to increase security

Web browser cookies can enhance the user experience by providing additional functionality and ease of use. However, from an administration point of view, cookies are a security concern. Encrypt your cookies with this simple technique. Read more »

Ten commandments for the security-conscious programmer

Here are the steps from Builder AU that you should take to keep hackers and other security threats at bay. Read more »

Blog (1)

Google destroys Security Through Obscurity

Chris Duckett [blogs:betaliving] -- Google Labs' new Code Search makes it easier for hackers to find database username and password details by entering strings that are commonly used within configuration files. Read more »

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