Sam Costello

The cost of computer security incidents continued to rise in 2001, to a total of US$456 million, while only 34 per cent of victims of such crime reported it to law enforcement, according to a recent survey.

McAfee Security introduced a new version of its GroupShield antivirus software for Microsoft Exchange 5.5, giving administrators the option to scan e-mail via multiple methods and extending content filtering to attachments and file names.

The security holes exploited by Code Red and Nimda, worms that experts said had the potential to knock the entire Internet offline, attacked long-standing vulnerabilities in Microsoft Corp.'s IIS (Internet Information Services) Web server software caused by a type of error made through bad code writing: the buffer overflow.

After announcing late Thursday that its chief executive officer, chief operating officer and executive vice-president of worldwide marketing had all left the company, networking gear maker Enterasys Networks Inc. also said that it expects to report losses for both the fourth quarter of 2001 and the first quarter of 2002 and that it will restructure.

Microsoft Corp. announced two new moderate-risk security holes that affect Windows NT and Windows 2000 late Thursday and offered patches to fix both.

The Internet has become a riskier place for businesses since the fall of 2001 and doesn't look to be any more secure in the near future, according to security firm Internet Security Systems Inc., which released its security incident figures for the first quarter of 2002 Wednesday.

Online auction powerhouse eBay Inc. closed a security hole in a password-maintenance feature late Tuesday that could have allowed attackers to take over a user's account and commit fraud.

Two new security flaws in Microsoft Corp.'s Office XP productivity suite could be combined to allow attackers to take over a system, according to independent security researcher Georgi Guninski.