Bill Lindner

With the release of Windows 7 just a few months away, security experts have begun touting the widespread positive impact Windows 7 will have on PC protection and the online community. Despite the occasional outbreak of critical security patches, ... Microsoft has been able to steadily improve its security image since launching the Trusted Computing initiative more than five years ago. (Source: eweek.com ) Win7 to Help Strengthen Security Purewire Principal Researcher Paul Royal touted three specific Windows 7 modifications that he believes will help thwart application vulnerabilities, rootkits ... (view more)

Microsoft recently revealed the release of 20,000 lines of Open Source Linux device driver code, including three device drivers to the Linux kernel community for inclusion in the Linux tree. The code will be available to the Linux community and ... customers alike to enhance the performance of the Linux operating system when it is virtualized on the Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V operating system, including the R2 release. Hyper-V is a technology made by Microsoft which provides "cost savings ... [of] server hardware ... by consolidating multiple server roles as separate virtual machines ... (view more)

A massive data mining system aimed at identifying terrorists may have continued to operate under an executive order signed by President Bush in October 2001, despite an order to shut it down by Congress. In 2001 the Defense Department was briefed on ... the Total Information Awareness (TIA) program developed by Admiral John Poindexter. TIA was concocted to created a massive database program that would be accessible to the CIA, the FBI, and numerous other police agencies around the U.S. President Continued Program In the summer of 2002, JetBlue, Inc. turned over the names and addresses of 1.5 ... (view more)

Researchers at security firm Inverse Path plan to demonstrate how standard power sockets (used in a home, for instance) can be used to eavesdrop on what is being typed onto a computer keyboard. They plan to make a presentation at the Black Hat ... Security conference taking place in Las Vegas from July 25-30 this year. The researchers found that poor electrical shielding on some keyboard cables can result in data being leaked into power circuits. Analyzing such information allowed the researchers to see what was being typed on a keyboard. So far, demonstrations of the attacks have worked at ... (view more)

When you can't get any states to participate in your flawed National ID scheme, what do you do? If you're the U.S. government, you change its name and try again. With the death of the REAL ID Act comes a replacement bill that poses many of the same ... threats, including what the Campaign for Liberty refers to as a federal grab for personal information. Now the act has been renamed and referred to as an enhanced or higher security driver's license. In reality, however, the only way to resolve the problem is to repeal it, not rename it. (Source: campaignforliberty.com ) After 9/11, the government ... (view more)

Under the questionable guise of cyber security, the National Security Agency (NSA), in partnership with The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and AT&T, will be monitoring private-sector networks. The surveillance will continue despite the ... government's allegations that the NSA will only be scrutinizing data going to or from government systems. Whenever a person visits a 'dot-gov' (.gov) web site or sends an email to a government employee, their actions will be screened for potential harm to the network. NSA's History of Illegal Surveillance It's unclear exactly who is in charge of the ... (view more)

Just in time for the announcement that the National Security Agency (NSA) will be pervasively monitoring private networks comes news that cyber attacks attributed to North Korea paralyzed major South Korean and U.S. government web sites. Eleven ... South Korean organizations, including the presidential Blue House, the Defense Ministry, the National Assembly, Shinhan Bank, Korea Exchange Bank and top Internet portal Naver, and coincidentally, eleven U.S. sites including the U.S. Treasury Department, Secret Service, Federal Trade Commission and Transportation Department, went down or experienced ... (view more)

The company responsible for creating a database containing thousands of identities collected at U.S. airports has shut down. And so, the question remains: what happens to your personal information when a government-sponsored National ID scheme like ... 'Clear' suddenly shuts down? The fate of more than a quarter million people whose fingerprints, social security numbers, home addresses and other revealing personal information allegedly designed to help hasten traveler clearances at airports is hanging on that question, and even the government doesn't know the answer. (Source: yahoo.com ) Who ... (view more)

Makers of the popular Firefox web browser, Mozilla, are working on new technology that it hopes will remove the threat of Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attacks that have compromised legitimate websites for years by injecting pages with malicious code. ... XSS vulnerabilities allow hackers to unsuspectingly inject malicious code into pages that persuade users to click on links launching drive-by downloads . Content Security Policy (CSP) to Stop XSS Attacks Drive-by downloads are made possible because content received from a web server's response is treated the same, regardless of whether it's ... (view more)

Harry Potter fans wanting to illicitly download movies such as 'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince' are being advised to wait until the movie is released. Cybercriminals are reportedly targeting popular peer-to-peer (P2P) networks in order to ... take advantage of fans wanting to download the movie in advance of its screening. When a user comes across optimized, illegitimate links to download the movie, they are baited by offers to watch Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince online for "free." When the user clicks the link, they are redirected to an online blog post containing ... (view more)