Dennis Fisher

Security researchers have been warning about the weaknesses and issues with JavaScript and iframes for years now, but the problem goes far deeper than even many of them thought. A researcher in the U.K. has developed a new technique that uses a combination of JavaScript-based timing attacks and other tactics to read any information he wants from a targeted user’s browser and sites the victim is logged into. The attack works on all of the major browsers and researchers say there’s no simple fix to prevent it.

The pervasive bulk surveillance performed by the NSA and other government agencies that’s been revealed in recent weeks relies on court orders, as do other kinds of legal access operations, such as wiretapping or lawful intercepts. Those orders are shrouded in secrecy and the organizations that receive them often comply immediately without asking any questions, a response that can sometimes be a mistake.

The new BlackBerry 10 operating system contains a number of security improvements and upgrades over earlier versions, but there are still some features and functions that an attacker may be able to exploit.

When a new piece of malware surfaces, it’s typically analyzed eight ways from Sunday by a long list of antimalware and other security companies, government agencies, CERTs and other organizations who try to break it down and classify its capabilities. There’s a lot of duplicated effort there, and a group of researchers is building a new tool called CrowdSource that is designed to take advantage of the existing analysis capabilities in the community and perform automated malware analysis to provide rich reports on each new sample.

Microsoft is expanding its MAPP program that shares attack and protection information with other security vendors and will now be sharing some data with incident responders, as well. The new system will enable organizations such as CERTs and internal IR teams to exchange information on specific attacks and general threats.

It’s said that each man’s death diminishes us all in some way. But some passings take a bigger piece than others. The death of Barnaby Jack is one of those, having left a major hole in the security community and let a lot of air out of the room.

Dennis Fisher talks with Martin Roesch, the author of the Snort IDS and founder of Sourcefire, about the evolution of Snort from a side project to an open-source security powerhouse to the technological basis for a hugely successful company.