The Honeynet Project has released a new freebie honeypot client tool that lets security pros and researchers automatically detect and dissect bot infections and other malware attacks on client machines.

Over the last few years, security threats have grown and altered dramatically and so have the defences. Traditional firewalls, installed over three years ago, are often not best suited for current threats and don’t protect against a number of newer threats.

D-Link routers may have been infected by a worm or bot according to security researchers at Symantec. However, the company has backtracked on its intitial reports that a bot had definitely been identified.

After years of fighting the hacker wars, today’s Websites are still a long way from being secure, according to a new research report.

Red Hat is freeing up the source code behind its identity management and security system in a bid to show that open source software is more secure than rival technologies..

Bluetooth has been a big success in the mobile world, but primarily for just one application: wireless headsets. These are extremely popular and with good reason: You can’t beat the convenience, and they are have become quite inexpensive.

At one time, IT departments concerned themselves with hardening the perimeter. The idea was Medieval: build a fortress around yourself and don’t let outsiders in. Then came remote workers. Then chat apps. Then Web mail. And then mobile devices.

There’s nothing like telling a good horror story to encourage your employees — from senior executives to rank-and-file workers — to do their part in improving IT security. Cisco Chief Security Officer John Stewart has all the technological tools in the world at his fingertips to help keep the networking giant’s data and operations locked [...]

VMware has identified and fixed seven security bugs in the free version of its hypervisor, which could let hackers launch denial-of-service attacks, change user privileges and forge RSA key signatures.

Many companies spend a small fortune and deploy a small army to secure themselves from the many security threats lurking these days. But all those efforts can come to naught when making any of these common mistakes. The results can range from embarrassing to devastating, but security experts say that all are easily avoidable.

Last month the TrueCrypt Foundation released TrueCrypt 5.0, which finally introduces a Linux GUI for the cross-platform encryption application. TrueCrypt 5.0’s numerous other enhancements include a Mac OS X port, XTS operation mode, the ability to encrypt a system partition or drive under Windows, and the addition of the SHA-512 hash algorithm.

The rapid evolution of “Web 2.0” has sparked the convergence of social networking on a massive scale and the adoption of new combinations of technologies that significantly increase the so-called ‘attack-surface’. This combination offers irresistible opportunities to organised crime.

eEye Digital Security tomorrow will make its first foray into the Web vulnerability space — with a new member of its Retina Security Scanner family that roots out Web application flaws. eEye founder and former CTO and chief hacking officer Marc Maiffret first revealed eEye’s plans to add Web application scanning to its portfolio in [...]

The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) has attracted renewed interest lately, but not in a good way: The bad guys are now using the ‘70s disco-era file transfer technology to serve up bot malware, and even as a backdoor into some enterprises that neglect to lock down their FTP servers.

Microsoft today issued four updates to fix at least a dozen security vulnerabilities in its Office software products. All of the updates earned Microsoft’s "critical" label, meaning attackers could exploit the flaws to break into Windows systems with little or no help from users.

Miscreants have created a strain of malware capable of removing rootkits from compromised PCs, only to install almost undetectable backdoor code of its own. The Pandex Trojan stops previously installed rootkits from working by removing their hooks into system calls.

The developers of the open source media player VLC have closed several security holes. These would have allowed attackers to inject and execute malicious code using manipulated Realtime data streams or crafted video files. The latest version, 0.8.6e, is available to download and fixes the flaws.

As I mentioned in my last article, security policies serve to protect (data, customers, employees, technological systems), define (the company’s stance on security), and minimize risk (internal and external exposure and publicity fallout in the event of a breach).

The reality is that not every organisation has upgraded to Windows Vista. With Windows XP (launched in 2001 and still being sold) Microsoft have released service pack 3, the latest and probably the last version.

NetworkMiner is a passive network sniffer/packet capturing tool for Windows with an easy to use interface. It can detect operating systems, sessions, hostnames, open ports etc. without putting any traffic on the network. NetworkMiner can also parse PCAP files for off-line analysis.