Vulnerabilities


DigiNotar Voluntarily Files Bankruptcy

DigiNotar, the embattled Dutch certificate authority at the center of a global scandal after issuing hundreds of forged digital certificates has filed for voluntary bankruptcy today, according to a press release from parent company VASCO.

The Dangers of Second-Order Vulnerabilities

SAN FRANCISCO–There are dozens of new bugs discovered every week in popular applications, and many of them are painted as critical flaws that need to be patched immediately lest you risk the wrath of the attackers. However, in many cases, it’s not necessarily those highly publicized flaws that will end up leading to a major data theft, it’s the problems lurking underneath the top layer that are the real killers.

Morto Worm Found Squirming on Chinese MMORPG Site

The Morto Worm began to make waves just three short weeks ago after working its way through Windows’ Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) but now the worm appears to have an entirely new mode of transport: Jade Dynasty, a massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG) that is popular in China.


Two researchers have developed a new attack on TLS 1.0/SSL 3.0 that enables them to decrypt client requests on the fly and hijack supposedly confidential sessions with sensitive sites such as online banking, e-commerce and payment sites. The attack breaks the confidentiality model of the protocol and is the first known exploitation of a long-known flaw in TLS, potentially affecting the security of transactions on millions of sites.

Google has fixed more than 30 security vulnerabilities in its Chrome browser with a new version the company released on Friday. The company also paid out more than $14,000 in rewards to the various researchers who reported bugs that were fixed with Chrome 14.0.835.163.

The TED talks have long been famous for introducing a wide (albeit wired) audience to The Next Big Thing, whether it was Jeff Hann at NYU demonstrating the Minority Report-style touch-sensitive user interfaces in 2006 – years before the iPhone hit the market – or MIT’s David Merrill’s demonstration of stackable mini computers called Siftables. (OK – we’re not sure yet what the heck you can use those for.)