News to know: Microsoft's social bookmarking; Google vs. Viacom; Adventures in Linux; Facebook   27 May 2008 10:19 GMT
Notable headlines: Mary Jo Foley: Microsoft to showcase social bookmarking at TechEd Larry Dignan: Google: Viacom's YouTube lawsuit threatens DMCA. Full complaint. Techmeme Ed Bott: Why is fear-mongering such a popular security sales tactic? ...
Source: ZDNet

TJX staffer sacked after talking about security problems   27 May 2008 09:52 GMT
He says he tried to work through official channels, but after getting no satisfaction and turning to the blogosphere, a young security researcher has been fired from his TJX day job for blabbing about new troubles at the famously breached store chain.

Source: Computerworld

Five steps to successful and cost-effective penetration testing   27 May 2008 04:48 GMT
Whether you hire outside consultants or do the testing yourself, here are some tips for making sure your time and money are well spent.

Source: Computerworld

Five free pen-testing tools   27 May 2008 04:48 GMT
Security assessment and deep testing don't require a big budget. Some of most effective security tools are free, and are commonly used by professional consultants, private industry and government security practitioners. We provide you with five to grow on.

Source: Computerworld

Why is fear-mongering such a popular security sales tactic?   27 May 2008 03:00 GMT
In this month's CIO magazine, Bruce Schneier publishes one of his best columns ever. "How to Sell Security" starts with a common-sense argument about the psychological dynamics of why and how we as humans respond to sales pitches. It ends with this astute observation about why some computer security companies...
Source: ZDNet

Open source software security improving   26 May 2008 23:17 GMT
You cannot say something's good or bad unless you benchmark or compare it against something else. According to the Linus's Law, "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow", a mentality which when combined with static code analysis of the most popular and widely used open source projects such as Firefox,...
Source: ZDNet

Tracking down the Storm Worm malware   26 May 2008 14:44 GMT
What is the current state of Storm Worm activity, how many infected IPs are found to host the malware on a daily basis, which are the latest domains used by the Storm Worm, and which countries have the largest infected population? You can easily find that out, if you keep...
Source: ZDNet

Zero Day Threat   26 May 2008 04:25 GMT
In this book excerpt, the authors of Zero Day Threat: The Shocking Truth of How Banks and Credit Bureaus Help Cyber Crooks Steal Your Money and Identity detail how Microsoft missed the boat on cybercrime.

Source: Computerworld

Global Dispatches   26 May 2008 04:25 GMT
The U.K. National Health Service confirms that a tape containing personal information on 38,000 past and present patients was lost in transit; and Alibaba.com and Intel are jointly developing a PC for small and midsize Chinese companies.

Source: Computerworld

Google hosting malware? Google says they were!   24 May 2008 03:17 GMT
Google isn't hosting malware anymore, but according to a tool they provide that lets you check up on any domain, their own google.com at one point was indeed hosting malware software that is installed on a users machine without their consent. After doing some digging, Tony Ruscoe found that...
Source: ZDNet