Security: Worm Poses as FBI or CIA Email

A variant of the Sober worm disguised as an email from the intelligence agencies threatens computers.
By Priya Ganapati
November 22, 2005

The Sober email worm that first struck in 2003 has made another comeback through a variant disguised as an email from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation or the Central Intelligence Agency, becoming one of the fastest-spreading security threats in the last 24 hours, security software companies said Tuesday.

The worm is not considered highly dangerous as it does not seek to steal personal or financial information, but it can make infected computers susceptible to future viruses, which could potentially be more worrisome.

The first incidence of the latest Sober variant was detected Monday, said Patrick Hinojosa, chief technical officer of Panda Software, a Spanish security software company.

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Security: Texas Sues Sony Over Spyware

By Priya Ganapati
Suit alleges Sony installed spyware through its antipiracy software on CDs.
November 21, 2005

The state of Texas sued Sony BMG Music Entertainment on Monday for allegedly installing spyware through its copyright protection software on music CDS, making it the first state to bring legal action against the music giant in the month-old controversy.

The lawsuit alleges New York-based Sony BMG violated a recently passed Texas law, the Consumer Protection Against Computer Spyware Act of 2005, that protects consumers from hidden spyware. The state’s attorney general’s office is seeking civil penalties of $100,000 for each violation of the law, attorneys’ fees, and investigative costs.

This is the second lawsuit that Sony faces over the issue, but the first action brought by a government agency.

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Searching for Security

Sorting though data collected by intelligence agencies could be the next big growth area for technology companies.
By Priya Ganapati
November 18, 2005

The Tower of Babel built by government snoops has sparked demand for entrepreneurs who can help make sense of it all, according to a report released Friday.

Government agencies and corporations are spending nearly $1 billion a year to sort, contextualize, and analyze data in one of the most important segments of homeland security, according to C.E. Unterberg, Towbin (CEUT), a New York-based consultancy in technology and global security sectors.

Advanced data analytics, which looks for useful intelligence in videotapes, voice messages, and text, is expected to grow at 20 percent over the next five years and become a $2-billion market by 2009, according to CEUT and the Chesapeake Innovation Center, a business accelerator for homeland and national security.

“There is an overload of data spearheaded by FBI and intelligence agencies, collecting information on terrorist activities,” said Scott Greiper, senior research analyst, global security at CEUT. “The challenge is that the data collection efforts are overwhelming the ability to analyze the data and get actionable intelligence.”

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Security: Spam for the Holidays

Computer users will see more viruses, spam, and phishing during this holiday season.
By Priya Ganapati
November 17, 2005

Online consumers should click their way carefully through the holiday season, security experts warned Thursday, because spam will double, computer viruses will multiply, credit card thefts will soar, and online scams will increase as cyber thieves intensify their efforts.

The volume of spam flooding email inboxes is likely to double, peaking on Wednesday—the day before Thanksgiving, according to AppRiver, a Gulf Breeze, Florida-based spam and virus filtering service provider.

The increase is part of an annual pattern that spam-filtering services providers have been seeing for the last three years.

“Spammers realize that this is the best time to advertise to users as shopping peaks during this season and users are looking to buy something,” said Joel Smith, co-founder and chief technical officer of AppRiver.

Among the products being touted are personalized Christmas ornaments, Santa letters, and gift cards from Sears, Costco, and Home Depot. Almost all of these are fakes, and users who do fall for them are unlikely to receive the products, said AppRiver.

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Oracle Buys Two Security Firms

Software firm boosts database products with identity management solutions.
By Priya Ganapati
November 16, 2005

Database software giant Oracle said Wednesday it’s buying two security software companies in a bid to offer its database customers a secure product that will take care of their identity and access management requirements.

Oracle plans to acquire Thor Technologies, a provider of identity and access management solutions, and OctetString, a provider of virtual directory software. Both companies focus on ensuring that only authorized users have access to read and make changes to sensitive data.

The two acquisitions will help complement Oracle’s existing database products by bolstering their security and offering customers a single point for their database-related needs, said Carmi Levy, an analyst with Info-Tech Research Group, an advisory services company focused on mid-sized firms.

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Security: Keylogger Threats Rise 65%

Secretly installed programs that track keystrokes represent a growing security threat to consumers using PCs.
By Priya Ganapati
November 15, 2005

Threats from keyloggers, the stealthily installed programs that record computer keystrokes to help steal personal information, grew 65 percent this year, a study said Tuesday, marking a growing trend in hackers using malware for financial gain.

About 6,191 keyloggers were recorded this year, up from 3,753 in 2004, said iDefense, a security intelligence provider that is part of VeriSign. iDefense recorded 3,753 keyloggers in 2004, a huge leap over the 300 released in 2000.

“Keylogging is a very effective method for hackers,” said Joe Payne, vice president, VeriSign iDefense Security Intelligence Services. “Fraudsters can launch hundreds of these attacks around the world in seconds, gathering sensitive data to conduct large-scale monetary transfers for their illegal activities.”

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Security: Symantec Shifts Focus to Lab

Maker of Norton Antivirus now wants to create technology instead of buy it.
By Priya Ganapati
November 12, 2005

Symantec, a company renowned for buying its way into emerging technologies, now says it will focus on developing technologies at the in-house research facility it built during the past year.

The new emphasis on the Symantec Research Lab, which combines the research teams of Symantec and Veritas, could affect the future of some security startups that consider an eventual acquisition by Symantec as an exit strategy.

Symantec, which makes the popular Norton Antivirus Software, recently met with analysts and the media to showcase some of the lab’s technology. Over the next few months, the company hopes to add more people to the team and create partnerships between the lab and its various product groups.

“You can call it the coming-out of the research lab,” said CTO Mark Bregman. “The question for us is how do we build a startup company within Symantec that can operate without all the costs and infrastructure associated with putting out a Symantec product.”

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Gates Memo Rocks Microsoft

Redmond chairman predicts a 'sea change' in the software giant's approach.
By Priya Ganapati
November 9, 2005

Bill Gates wants to overhaul the way Microsoft approaches the software market, shifting toward online services and the ad-supported model championed by rivals, according to an internal email that was broadly circulated on Wednesday.

In the email dated October 30, Mr. Gates urged the company he founded to better leverage web-based software and services to make up for missed revenue opportunities realized by competitors such as Google, Salesforce.com and Skype Technologies, which was recently acquired by eBay.

Over the next few months, analysts said the various business divisions inside Microsoft are likely to incorporate the services idea into their products. It could lead to some confusion, but by early next year, a clearer plan is likely to emerge.

“When Gates sent out the Internet memo [in 1995], every single group started putting Net-related features in their products, a lot which aren’t used today because they were not well thought of,” said Rob Helm, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft, an independent Microsoft-focused consultancy firm.

Analysts said the memo showed Microsoft’s realization that it has to move faster on product development to respond credibly to competitors.

In the last four years, Microsoft has faced severe criticism over its delayed software development cycles. For instance, updates to SQL Server 2005 came nearly five years after the release of the previous version. Similarly, a trial version of Windows Vista, formerly known as Longhorn, was released in July after missing multiple deadlines.

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Security: Workers Leak Data Via IM

Study reveals slack security on corporate instant message systems.
By Priya Ganapati
November 8, 2005

Whether intended or not, employees have started leaking confidential information through instant messaging systems as they try to avoid corporate email surveillance, according to a study released Tuesday.

About four out of five companies studied by Reconnex, an enterprise risk management company, had some form of confidential data pass through their instant messaging systems during the months of August and September. Just 10 to 13 percent of companies had sensitive data pass into secured email systems, Reconnex said.

“Instant messaging is commonplace but is not properly monitored,” said Kevin Cheek, vice president of marketing at Reconnex. “We are seeing a much smaller percentage of leaks through email and more through IM which has becomes an avenue for insiders to share nonpublic information.”

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Microsoft Updates Biz Products

Microsoft launches new versions of SQL, Visual Studio and Biz Talk Server products.
By Priya Ganapati
November 7, 2005

Microsoft updated its database and developer software Monday, increasing the ability of the products to integrate in a move that could give business customers greater incentive to standardize their platforms on the company’s products.

Updates were launched for database product SQL Server 2005, developer tool Visual Studio 2005, and the business process server, the BizTalk Server 2006. The three products are integrated for collaboration across different environments and faster software delivery, Microsoft said.

The Redmond giant said the updates are built on the foundations laid in place over the last several years with significant investments in Windows Server 2003 and the Microsoft .NET software development platform.

The updates showed Microsoft’s commitment to integration and creating a seamless experience for users by bringing its various products together, said analysts.

“The three products launched today are the first wave of a tide of tightly integrated products,” said Joe Wilcox, an analyst with Jupiter Research. “While some Microsoft executives have said that Microsoft bet the company on Windows Vista, the real bet is on integrated innovation."

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Internet: Firefox Share Rises Again

The No. 2 Internet browser rides on the news of an upgrade and of reaching a key benchmark of 100 million downloads.
By Priya Ganapati
November 7, 2005

After three months of stalled growth, Mozilla's Firefox, the No. 2 Internet browser after Microsoft’s dominant Internet Explorer, is increasing its market share, thanks to recent news it had logged 100 million downloads and the release of a trial version of its upgraded browser, a report said Monday.

In October, Firefox captured 8.65 percent of the browser market share, up from 7.55 percent in September, according to a report released by NetApplications, which offers applications that measure web sites for small and medium enterprises.

Other reports have pegged Firefox’s market share to be even higher, with web traffic analytics firm OneStat saying 11.5 percent of Internet surfers globally use Firefox.

Despite the improvement, Firefox is still a long way from seriously rivaling IE’s 86.52 percent.

Nevertheless, Firefox has come a long way fast. It launched in November 2004 and now has more than 45 million users, said the Mozilla Foundation, the nonprofit group that oversees the browser’s development. The browser started at 2.69 percent market share in January and peaked at 8.71 percent in June.

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Software: BroadVision Buyout in Trouble

The lack of shareholder approval for the struggling software company’s $29-million buyout could push it to bankruptcy.
By Priya Ganapati
November 4, 2005

Nearly three months after buyout specialist Vector Capital said it would buy struggling software firm BroadVision, just over 40 percent of BroadVision’s shareholders have voted for the deal, putting the buyout process and the publicly traded company in jeopardy, the companies said.

The issue isn’t so much that shareholders are against the deal but rather that the holders simply aren’t voting. Delaware-incorporated BroadVision needs 51 percent of all shareholders to vote before a motion can be approved or denied.

This is a tougher standard than in some other states, where a majority vote solely from actual votes—not necessarily all shareholders—is considered sufficient. In some other states, a non-vote is considered a vote against the proposal.

“The conventional wisdom is that shareholders will mostly vote for a buyout like this,” said Chris Nicholson, partner at Vector Capital in San Francisco. “But we are in a peculiar situation here where it is not like shareholders are voting ‘no,’ but they are just not voting.”

Founded in 1993, the once high-flying BroadVision makes software to help enterprises create portals and e-business infrastructure. Vector Capital agreed in July to buy BroadVision for $29 million, a big discount.

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Security: Symantec Posts Dour Outlook

Shares of the security company fell nearly 9 percent after company’s warning.
By Priya Ganapati
November 1, 2005

Stung by slowing growth in both consumer and enterprise anti-virus segments and costs related to its Veritas merger, Symantec on Tuesday said it lost $251 million in its second quarter and warned it will miss Wall Street expectations for the current quarter.

The net loss equaled $0.21 per share. In the year-ago quarter, the security software maker had a net income of $135 million, or $0.19 per share. The loss was mainly due to a $284-million write-off expense and other costs related to its recent acquisition of Veritas.

Some analysts are also concerned about the potential impact of competing security products from Microsoft.

“Growth in the consumer segment could turn sharply negative as Microsoft enters the space,” said Richard Williams, an analyst with Garban Institutional Equities, a brokerage firm based in New Jersey. “It could take away a significant chunk of the business from the big three security companies of today.”

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