Monthly Archives: July 2009

McAfee to acquire MX Logic

I am very excited to announce a critical milestone in the growth of our Security-as-a-Service business. McAfee has agreed to acquire MX Logic. MX Logic is a leading provider of cloud-based security services including email and web filtering, and email archiving and continuity. Adding MX Logic’s solutions to McAfee will provide us with the most Read more…

Tags: Acquisition, Mid-Market, Security-as-a-Service

Another Record Quarter

Today we announced our second quarter 2009 financial results. These results demonstrate that, despite a challenging economic environment, our strategy is working. In addition, we are pleased to announce the acquisition of MX Logic, the leader in cloud-based security. This will help McAfee drive additional growth in the small and midmarket segments and creates the Read more…

Remote BIND 9 DoS Vulnerability Patched

A new, remotely exploitable denial-of-service (DoS) vulnerability affecting BIND Version 9 was reported by ISC on July 28. It’s also reported that exploits have been seen in the wild.  Because BIND is widely used, these attacks can affect many critical infrastructures. Here’s a little description of the problem. The vulnerability exists in the DNS dynamic-update Read more…

Q2 Threats Report Released–It's All About Botnets and Spam

Today we released our Q2 Threats Report. Some old trends have continued. Some new trends and threats have been established, and some old “friends” have even outdone themselves. Spam volumes have increased 141 percent since March, continuing the longest ever streak of increasing spam volumes. We also highlight the dramatic expansion of botnets and the Read more…

iPhone 3GS and BlackBerry (In)securities

This week’s (potential) major fail goes to Apple for the iPhone 3GS security. As reported by Wired and others, it seems the new 3GS encryption touted by Apple in their “iPhone Security Overview” isn’t so secure after all. The official description of the new feature sounds pretty good: iPhone 3GS offers hardware-based encryption. iPhone 3GS Read more…

FSA fines HSBC companies $7,500,000 for data security issues

Following on from my recent posts regarding fines and the cost of data leakage (TJX and Cornell), I thought I’d also bring to your attention the latest initiated by the FSA (Financial Services Authority of UK) against HSBC – On 22nd July A tidy penalty of £4,550,000 ($7.5m) for two failures to protect personal information. HSBC will get a nice 30% discount on this for early payment, leaving them with a bill for £3,185,000 ($5.26m) plus their own internal costs.

Counting Badness

Following up on the recent post by my colleague Dave Marcus concerning malware growth, the guys from AV-Test in Germany just released their updated stats. To avoid confusion when comparing the different numbers, here’s a quick explanation of the different counts: AV-Test counts unique binaries. Unique means different cryptographic hashes. So the same Trojan, obfuscated Read more…

New Zero-Day Attacks Use PDF Documents

As we already mentioned multiple times in the past, exploits that take advantage of newly discovered holes in popular applications represent a growing threat to Internet users. Many, if not most, computer systems are vulnerable to these attacks. More evidence shows zero-day attacks remain the preferred choice of cybercriminals. Today, a new unpatched Adobe vulnerability Read more…

Malware Is Their Business…and Business Is Good!

I cribbed the title from Megadeth–I admit it. However, when looking at this year’s growth in malware it seems disturbingly appropriate. Global economic downturn or not, malware production continues at a record-setting pace because this is how many cybercriminals make their money. (Malware long ago stopped being about fun and bragging.) We at Avert Labs Read more…

The Only Way to Keep Up is to Leap Ahead – Part 1 of 2

Did you know that encryption was part of the stimulus package? Just one sign that consumer privacy has quietly moved to the forefront of legislative priorities. This legislation is the latest in a series of important decisions for protecting consumers and their data. On February 12, 2002, we forever changed the way we think about Read more…