Staying on top of the latest in software/hardware security research, vulnerabilities, threats and computer attacks.
Ryan Naraine is a journalist and social media enthusiast specializing in Internet and computer security issues.
Dancho Danchev is an independent security consultant and cyber threats analyst, with extensive experience in open source intelligence gathering, malware and cybercrime incident response.
The source code for Billy Hoffman's Jitko has leaked out onto the Internet.Hoffman was due to release the code for the JavaScript bug hunting tool at SchmooCon last month but after "higher-ups" and Spi Dynamics "change their minds," the tool was withheld from attendees.
Microsoft plans to release an emergency, out-of-cycle Windows update on Tuesday, April 3, 2006 to patch the animated cursor (.ani) vulnerability currently being used in widespread malware attacks.
On the Full Disclosure mailing list comes this announcement from a group of anonymous security researchers: During one week (2007-04-02/08), new undisclosed vulnerabilities / flaws / exploitation techniques discovered in the latest versions of the Microsoft Windows Vista operating system and softwares will be publicly disclosed on this page. This project is launched as a challenge by an unofficial team of security experts.
A private security research outfit says it notified Microsoft about the animated cursor (.ani) code execution vulnerability since December 2006, a full four months ahead of yesterday's discovery of Internet Explorer drive-by attacks.
Spammers are using fake Internet Explorer 7 (Beta 2) downloads to lure Windows users into downloading a nasty backdoor Trojan.The fake downloads are part of a massive spam run that includes an official-looking graphic (see image below) linked to Web sites that auto-launch an executable named "ie7.
[UPDATE: March 29, 2007 @ 1:15 PM Eastern] Microsoft has confirmed that this is indeed a zero-day flaw that will require a security update. Although Internet Explorer is the primary attack vector, this is a vulnerability in the way Windows handles animated cursor (.
HD Moore's open-source Metasploit Framework has been rewritten from scratch and released with 177 exploits, 104 payloads and new modules to exploit Wi-Fi driver vulnerabilities in the Windows kernel. Version 3.
If you haven't applied the "critical" patch in Microsoft's MS07-009 bulletin, now might be a good time to hit that download-and-install button.Detailed exploit code for the vulnerability -- discovered during HD Moore's MOBB (month of browser bugs) project and fixed on Patch Tuesday in February -- has surfaced on the Internet, offering malware authors step-by-step instructions on how to launch PC takeover attacks.
Less than six months after the discovery of zero-day attacks against Microsoft XML Core Services 4.0, Microsoft plans to "killbit" MSXML4 and completely remove the XML parser from its download center.
Apple's Mac OS X has a date with some of the world's smartest hackers.At this year's CanSecWest 2007 conference in Vancouver, BC, a "PWN to OWN" contest will pit security researchers against a MacBook Pro in an experiment to see how well a default Mac OS X install can survive hacker scrutiny.