IT Security

October 2009 saw the biggest Microsoft security update - both in terms of breadth and depth of patches delivered  and bugs fixed. However, we have seen three updates to this October Security update over the past few weeks. On October 14, Microsoft offered up a workaround for a problem with MS09-056, then corrected several errors in MS09-062 last week. The company also revised an August update, MS09-043, last week to correct a patch-detection error that may have left some corporate users who receive updates via Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) un-patched. Now, the Internet Explorer (IE) 8 Patch MS09-054 was updated on November 3rd ... Read Full Story

The most important thing which most of the system users are skeptic about is, whether the free antivirus software is better or the paid ones? As a matter of fact, some of the vendors offer free trial versions but paid full versions; some may provide you even full versions free of cost; and various other will provide you full antivirus software for some bucks. Here arises a heap of questions. Which product should be bought and which not? Which one is the efficient and best among hundreds of antivirus products available on internet? The answer to these questions may vary from one individual to ... Read Full Story

The Mozilla Firefox browser has just received an update, and you should probably download it if you want to protect your computer from nearly a dozen critical vulnerabilities. Firefox 3.5.4, released earlier this morning, is being called a security and stability update. It doesn’t add new features, but instead directly deals with Firefox stability issues, fixes a few bugs (i.e. the ability to re-submit crash reports), and most importantly, patches up a group of security vulnerabilities. And from reading the list of fixed security issues, we recommend you upgrade as soon as possible. Here are the security issues this version of Firefox patches: - ... Read Full Story

ActiveX vulnerabilities have posed a security challenge for some time, and they're likely to be a challenge for quite some time to come. Look at examples such as Microsoft's patches this summer, which included a fix for Internet Explorer (MS-09034) and another (MS-09035) for Visual Studio 2005 and 2008. These updates were released to protect users from a security hole in technology employed by developers to create powerful web-based application elements. More specifically, the flaws resided in the Active Template Library (ATL), which is a framework of code that helps to ease the creation of Component Object Models (COM) and ActiveX controls. Microsoft has ... Read Full Story

The number of phishing URLs has reached a record high during the second quarter of 2009, according to internet fraud and brand-protection vendor MarkMonitor.More than 150,000 phishing URLs were established during the second quarter of 2009, surpassing previous record highs set during the first quarter of 2007, according to MarkMonitor's Brandjacking Index report for summer 2009, released Monday. Typically there is a gradual uptick in the number of phishing URLs from month to month, Fred Felman, chief marketing officer at MarkMonitor, told SCMagazineUS.com on Monday. But in this case, there was a huge spike, primarily due to Rock Phish-style attacks that rely on botnets ... Read Full Story