RSA

Microsoft looks to health care for improved security

SAN FRANCISCO--Microsoft wants to make tomorrow's tech-security world work a lot like tomorrow's health care industry.

While the comparison has long been made in the security industry, with threats like "viruses," Scott Charney, corporate vice president in Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing group, noted that the response to those problems has fallen short in areas where health care has proved more agile.

"Every year there's a new version of the flu," Charney said to attendees of this year's RSA Conference. "There was a time before SARS, and a time before H1N1. And … Read more

Bill Clinton bars press from RSA talk this week

SAN FRANCISCO--Bill Clinton is scheduled to speak at a computer security conference here on Friday, but you may not hear much about what he has to say: the former president has suddenly grown shy of journalists.

Signs popped up today at the RSA Conference inside the Moscone Center announcing: "Due to contract restrictions, anyone wearing a press badge will not be allowed into Friday afternoon's keynote sessions."

Clinton is scheduled to deliver the 1 p.m. "closing keynote" that day. He charges as much as $350,000 per speech, according to a CNN.com article. … Read more

88 percent of firms show Zeus botnet activity

Most major U.S. corporations--up to 88 percent of the Fortune 500 companies--may be affected by botnet activity from computers compromised by the Zeus data-stealing Trojan, according to an RSA study released Wednesday.

RSA's FraudAction Anti-Trojan services analyzed data stolen by Zeus from infected computers in August and traced evidence back to IP addresses and e-mail addresses belonging to the corporations, said Sean Brady, manager of the Identity Protection and Verification Group at RSA, which is the security division of EMC.

Specifically, "domains individually representing 88 percent of the Fortune 500 were shown to have been accessed to … Read more

Selective sharing

Many of us have used peer-to-peer file-sharing programs that allow us to connect to networks with thousands of other users, sharing music, movies, and more. What if you could take that same concept and shrink it down so that the only people on the network were the ones you invited? Retroshare allows you to do just that. This simple program lets users create private file-sharing networks for the easy transfer of files between friends, family, or co-workers--and no one else.

The program's interface is plain and intuitive, with its major features represented by graphical buttons. Adding other people to … Read more

RSA 2010: Taking on cyberthreats

These days, it seems everyone has cybersecurity on the brain--the White House, Web and software giants, and vendors specializing in products designed to stomp out online threats. They've all descended on San Francisco this week for the annual RSA security conference.

Symantec exhibit makes cybercrime tangible In a highly visual, hands-on display at RSA, the security firm shows tools and methods used for cybercrime and identity fraud. (Posted in InSecurity Complex by Elinor Mills) March 4, 2010 3:52 PM PST

Study lauds IE for blocking Web's social attacks The study, funded by Microsoft, concludes that Microsoft's … Read more

Symantec exhibit makes cybercrime tangible

SAN FRANCISCO--For many people, the concepts of botnets, software exploits, and underground marketplaces are fairly abstract. To solve that problem, Symantec has created a Black Market exhibit that attempts to make these virtual ideas more tangible.

The security company gave tours of its Black Market at the RSA security conference here this week.

"We really wanted to create a sensory experience so that everyone would realize that cybercrime is happening to us all the time. We tried to portray the view that you are being scammed and defrauded $20 at a time," Rhonda Shantz, vice president of consumer … Read more

Study lauds IE for blocking Web's social attacks

An updated study has found that when it comes to blocking Web sites used in efforts to trick people into installing malware, Internet Explorer has widened its lead over the four other most-used browsers.

NSS Labs, a product analysis company, issued a third installment of an ongoing study of how well browsers avert socially engineered attacks that try to exploit a person's trust with a Web address that actually installs and runs malware. The upshot: "Windows Internet Explorer 8 provided the best protection against socially engineered malware," stopping 85 percent of the attacks at 562 sites.

In … Read more

Feds weigh expansion of Internet monitoring

SAN FRANCISCO--Homeland Security and the National Security Agency may be taking a closer look at Internet communications in the future.

The Department of Homeland Security's top cybersecurity official told CNET on Wednesday that the department may eventually extend its Einstein technology, which is designed to detect and prevent electronic attacks, to networks operated by the private sector. The technology was created for federal networks.

Greg Schaffer, assistant secretary for cybersecurity and communications, said in an interview that the department is evaluating whether Einstein "makes sense for expansion to critical infrastructure spaces" over time.

Not much is known … Read more

Microsoft exec: Infected PCs should be quarantined (Q&A)

SAN FRANCISCO--In his keynote at the RSA security conference on Tuesday, Scott Charney, Microsoft's corporate vice president of Trustworthy Computing, suggested that the security industry should follow the health care model of quarantining infected PCs to prevent them from being used to send spam and conduct denial-of-service attacks.

In a follow-up interview afterward, Charney elaborated on his vision for reducing the damage from botnets and explains how infected computers should be kept off the Internet just like doctors quarantine sick people and smokers are restricted as to where they can light up in public.

Q: So you teased us … Read more