By Laura YeciesAs PC and browser security closes more and more holes, hackers are spending more time and effort finding ways to try to trick you into giving them access to your PC or giving up your personal data. Phishing, or fraudulent e-mails posing as legitimate messages, remains a popular…

By Laura Yecies There was a potential threat unveiled at the OWASP AppSec 2008 conference at the end of September, and after a little internal review we believe it worth a warning. It’s a new kind of browser attack, currently only known to be a proof-of-concept threat (meaning we haven’t…

By Laura Yecies Last month, Rob Vamosi at CNET wrote a pretty forward-thinking story called “Will you be ditching your antivirus apps anytime soon?”  http://news.cnet.com/8301-10789_3-9994679-57.htmlIn a nutshell, some people now believe you could theoretically use pure whitelisting strategies to prevent malware from infecting your PC. The idea is that your…

by Laura Yecies ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite 2009 is now here! Congratulations team, and thank you to all our ZA customers who helped in the beta testing to make this our safest, fastest and easiest release to date. A new UI, improved system efficiency and core security enhancements such as…

by Laura Yecies What’s the difference between a regular browser and a virtualized browser? Not much that you’d notice, and plenty that you won’t. And that’s the way it should be. Security should require as little intervention as possible from you. It should instinctively deflect attacks quietly in the background…

A message from ZoneAlarm …. On Tuesday, Microsoft rolled out an automatic update to all of their users.  Unfortunately, this cut off Internet access for anyone on Windows XP or Windows 2000 using the ZoneAlarm firewall.  This is the #1 free firewall in the world, and is also included in…

by Laura Yecies Here along the 101 corridor in Silicon Valley, technical jargon, acronyms and super-secret code names can at times overwhelm our daily lexicon. But when we launch a new product, it’s our responsibility to leave the techie talk behind and explain how it works in real English. Sometimes,…

By Laura Yecies What would you do if the Internet simply couldn’t be secured? If you believe all the threat reports/analysis/discoveries/warnings frenetically crossing the wires on an almost daily basis, it may seem like the hackers are winning despite over a decade of security innovation. The latest headlines have been…

By Laura Yecies (Search Strikes Back, Part #1 here)  Search continues to be a major avenue for hacker attacks. This time, existing and potential customers of the uber-exclusive Citadel Investment Group were duped into visiting a cloned site hosted somewhere in China. It’s akin to a phishing attack, except instead…

by Laura Yecies Back when I was in school (you know…when we had to walk to school in six feet of snow *uphill both ways*, and microwave ovens were the new electronic novelty), the only way to stay in touch with your friends over the summer was the home phone,…

by Laura Yecies More and more, security companies are irresponsibly creating unnecessary publicity around new attacks, misguidedly seeking credibility for their products by trying to show off their security expertise by establishing a “cutting edge” reputation. Honeypots are dispatched, threat reports sternly issued, and zero-day vulnerabilities frantically announced. The world…

by Laura YeciesWith hackers increasingly sneaking their malicious Web sites in search results, search engines are seeking ways to counsel you before you accidentally click a bad link. For example, Yahoo recently announced a deal to integrate McAfee SiteAdvisor to warn you of possibly nefarious sites. We’re glad to see…

by Laura Yecies Doesn’t it seem like every Web site wants a plethora of personal information from you today? It’s getting out of hand. “Register now” they say and, then proceed to ask everything from your favorite color to your mother’s maiden name so you can buying that rare antique…

by Laura Yecies Do you wonder what we mean when we say a legitimate Web site can be compromised to attack you? Here’s a great example. You would never, ever expect your local county Web site to give you a virus…but that’s just what some unlucky folks got when they…

Security expert Bruce Scheier grabbed the headlines with his comment, "A lot of the software on this show floor is just snake oil…", referring to the Infosec security show in London. http://www.infoworld.com/archives/emailPrint.jsp?R=printThis&A=/article/08/04/22/Lots-of-security-software-is-snake-oil_1.html He said that in the context of saying "Anti-virus is easy. Anti-virus products actually work." The phrase "snake…

This article is an eye-opener: http://www.labnol.org/software/browsers/view-stored-password-firefox-internet-explorer/1906/ In short, it shows how easy it is to retrieve the passwords you let your browser remember for you. Funny that I was prompted to let the browser remember my password as I logged in to make this blog.

An investigation of Absolute Poker is underway over allegations of cheating by an insider. http://www.4flush.com/gamblingnews/online-gambling-news/gaming-associates-confirms-possible-absolute-online-poker-audit-will-cheating-be-revealed/343/ http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/53599 http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/17/the-absolute-poker-cheating-scandal-blown-wide-open/ http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=12523924&page=0&fpart=1&vc=1 Absolute Poker, established in 2003, is ranked the 4th largest online poker destination by 4Flush.com, an information site for online gambling. Absolute Poker is based on the Kahnawake Mohawk Indian reservation that…

At the recent Marconi Society symposium, a speaker asked the sardonic question (I’ll paraphrase), "Who did more harm, the author of the Morris worm or the programmer who limited Unix passwords to 8 characters?" He was implying that forcing short passwords made them easily guessable – a bad thing. The…

PC World has a story: While we haven’t looked at it yet, version 7.0 looks promising since Zone Labs is integrating the top-performing Kaspersky antivirus engine. (To get an idea of how it performs, read our review of Kaspersky Internet Security 6.0.) The Kasperksy engine replaces a lackluster version of…

Bob Sullivan provides more details about the recovery of the stolen VA laptop and disk drive. The laptop was sold to a person from the back of a truck four miles from where the theft took place. The buyer of these questionable goods noticed flyers regarding the stolen laptop and…