Ryan Naraine

The destructive Sobig.F mass-mailing virus has been programmed to stop working on September 10 but that’s not necessarily good news for IT guys around the globe. That’s because security experts expect a more sophisticated variant of the Sobig worm to start crawling through inboxes immediately after the September 10 deadline. “Sobig.G is very likely. It […]

Wireless device maker Research in Motion said demand for its e-mail device remains strong despite analysts’ fears that a crucial patent loss could chase enterprise customers away. The Canadian firm, which was slapped with a 53 million patent infringement judgment recently, said preliminary results show second quarter revenues will be in the range of $123 […]

Security research firm Secunia has recommended that users of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser disable ActiveX controls and plugins to protect against a variant of the “Object Data” vulnerability. The Secunia warning comes just one week after Microsoft issued a cumulative patch for the IE browser that carried a ‘critical’ rating. However, in a special update, […]

Wireless device maker Research in Motion (RIM) has released a new version of its BlackBerry Enterprise Server for Microsoft Exchange to fix a series of security vulnerabilities. An advisory from the Ontario, Canada-based RIM urged IT admins to apply the BlackBerry Enterprise Server 3.6 Service Pack 1a for Microsoft Exchange to plug a denial-of-service hole […]

With virus and spam threats putting e-mail security on the front-burner, Dallas-based message protection specialist Zix Corp. on Thursday moved to beef up its product set with a $7 million acquisition of Elron Software. Zix, which markets software that protects enterprise clients from viruses, spam and electronic attacks, paid $6 million in stock and a […]

Microsoft on Wednesday issued security alerts for five new vulnerabilities discovered in software products, including a “critical” flaw that affects some versions of the popular Office suite. The vulnerability exists in the way Microsoft’s Visual Basic for Applications checks document properties passed to it when a document is opened. “A buffer overrun exists which if […]

With the rapid growth of online identity theft eroding consumer confidence in the e-commerce sector, heavyweight tech firms, including Microsoft, Amazon.com, Verisign and eBay are teaming up to counter the growing scourge. The industry-wide group — Coalition on Online Identity Theft — launched in tandem with the Arlington, Va.-based trade group Information Technology Association of […]

With scam artists, spammers and virus writers all using the e-mail inbox as their main target, e-mail has become a daily nightmare for legitimate online publishers and marketers as they cope with mail filters, blacklists and irate subscribers. Enter RSS , the XML syndication format that allows publishers to shuttle content to news aggregators and […]

The aftershocks of a whopping $521 million patent infringement ruling against Microsoft are beginning to reverberate. Already, there is word the software giant plans to make changes to its flagship Internet Explorer browser as a result. The expected IE tweaks are a direct response to a jury ruling earlier this month that Microsoft much shell […]

The FBI, acting with other federal law enforcement agencies, arrested a Minnesota teenager on Friday and charged him with writing a variant of the destructive MSBlaster worm. The 18-year-old, identified as Jeffrey Lee Parson, was taken into custody on Friday morning, FBI and members of the U.S. Attorneys office said at a press conference Friday. […]

A group of independent webcasters opposed to “unreasonably high” royalty rates has filed suit in federal court accusing the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) of antitrust violations. The Webcaster Alliance, a trade group representing about 400 small online broadcasters, accused the RIAA of unlawfully inflating Webcasting royalty rates to force small webcasters out of […]

The recording and motion picture industries have lined up a throng of allies to beef up a crucial appeal to overturn an earlier court ruling that two popular file-sharing could not be held liable for copyright infringement by users. In support of the appeal filed on August 19, four separate amicus (friend-of-the-court) briefs have been […]