Stories about: NAI

Free. It's the magic word for an ever-expanding wealth of downloadable software and online services. Free doesn't necessarily mean good, however, and hunting for freebies can mean sifting through a lot of junk.

Eliot Spitzer, the disgraced New York governor making headlines in the US this week for being linked to a prostitution ring, is perhaps best known for his aggressive takedown of unethical Wall Street firms during his days as attorney general. But the former prosecutor also played a big role in cleaning up the high-tech and network industries.

There's now one more reason to be security-conscious while using MySpace.com: fake Microsoft updates.

Consumers fed up with having their online activities surreptitiously tracked, recorded and profiled by online marketers and advertising networks have a new ally.

A coalition of nine privacy and consumer groups have proposed a U.S. do-not-track list that would allow consumers to opt out of advertising efforts that track their movements online.

Banner advertisements for a security application said to report false or inflated threats appeared for at least a few days on Microsoft's instant messaging (IM) program, prompting warnings from security analysts.

Microsoft has not released its PowerShell scripting technology in commercial products yet, but a group of hackers has already written a prototype virus for it.

Ever since Dan Geer was fired in 2003 from @stake.com for being an author of a paper on negatives of a computing monoculture, I've seen article after article recommending that administrators do away with their computer monocultures as a way of minimizing or defeating malware and hackers. A computer monoculture is a paradigm that says if all your computers are of one type or OS platform, you are more at risk for malicious attack due to all the commonalities the attacker can use.

A worm that affects Linux systems and spreads by exploiting Web server-related vulnerabilities has been reported by antivirus companies, but so far Linux.Plupii, which is also known as Lupper, hasn't spread much and isn't seen as much of a threat.

McAfee has updated its line of network intrusion prevention system (IPS) products with two new IntruShield hardware appliances for large enterprises and Internet service providers (ISPs).

Sniffer Technologies took its first steps out from under the umbrella of McAfee, emerging on Friday as a new, independent and privately held company called Network General.