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- ZDNet Author Biography
Adam J. O'Donnell, Ph.D. is an R&D engineer who has focused on computer security since 2000. He currently is the Director of Emerging Technologies at Cloudmark, a messaging security company located in San Francisco.Adam early on mastered the art of writing in complete sentences, using both hands and one foot....- more about Adam O'Donnell »
ZDNet Resources
- "No more free bugs"? There never were any free bugs
- Vulnerability researchers have always extracted value out of their work, even before there was a monetary value placed on exploits. Security researchers at last week's CanSecWest conference dramatically announced their new philosophy that software vulnerabilities should no longer be given away. The movement cites the existence...
- Tags: Researcher, Vulnerability, Exploit, Security, Adam O'Donnell
- Blog posts 2009-03-24
- A password vault is as mandatory as anti-virus
- We all need to get out of the mindset that our primary e-mail address combined with a single universal password are our credentials for the world. Admit it. You have one password. You may even have half a dozen variations on your childhood cat's name,...
- Tags: Password, Antivirus, Adam O'Donnell
- Blog posts 2009-03-17
- Why cyberwarfare sounds more like AK-47s than like stealth bombers
- Cyberwarfare consisting of citizen militias and the digital equivalent of cheap rifles does not preclude the existence of more effective weaponry. First, a history lesson. The second half of the twentieth century witnessed a shift in warfare from battles fought by large standing armies...
- Tags: Rifle, Army, Productivity, Government, Security, Adam O'Donnell
- Blog posts 2009-03-15
- Botnets and illicit file swapping: the original "cloud computing"
- The primary motives that are being cited for cloud computing, such as lower operational cost, scalability to elastic demand, and high availability, have all been addressed before in the underground. Have you ever heard of this thing called "Cloud Computing"? I have, and apparently it is...
- Tags: File-swapping, Cloud Computing, Phishing, Security, Spam And Phishing, Adam O'Donnell
- Blog posts 2009-03-13
- DDoS applications becoming democratized, tools of protest
- In a presentation at SOURCE Boston, Dr. Jose Nazario of Arbor Networks stated that DDoS applications are moving from the domain of trained attackers to tools for the average person to voice a political statement. During his presentation, Nazario covered the major political DDoS events from the...
- Tags: Distributed Denial Of Service, Tool, Security, Adam O'Donnell
- Blog posts 2009-03-11
- MySpace using Cloudmark anti-spam for in-network abuse
- Last week Twitter user Fausto Cepeda asked Ryan if we could go beyond discussing straight security news and talk about product and technology trends on the blog. It was perfect timing. Cloudmark (disclosure: yes, this is my employer) has announced that they have been providing anti-spam...
- Tags: Cloudmark, Anti-spam, MySpace, Spam, Security, Viruses And Worms, Spam And Phishing, Adam O'Donnell
- Blog posts 2009-03-09
- U.S.'s cybersecurity director has resigned.
- Rod Beckstrom, an author and Silicon Valley entrepreneur, has resigned the position of National Director of Cybersecurity. Mr. Beckstrom's position, which reported to the head of DHS, involved wrestling the all of the different Federal agencies into forming a coherent cybersecurity policy. His role...
- Tags: Cybersecurity, Security, Adam O'Donnell
- Blog posts 2009-03-08
- Russia kinda-sorta owns up to Estonia cyberwar
- Radio Free Europe is reporting that an official from Putin's party has publicly stated that he orchestrated the 2007 DDoS Attacks on Estonia. The information security and military communities have been speculating for the past two years about who were the primary actors behind the 2007 Estonian...
- Tags: Distributed Denial Of Service, Radio Free Europe, Security, Adam O'Donnell
- Blog posts 2009-03-08
- Design specs on the president's helicopter found on Iranian systems; leaked via P2P
- Design specs on the President's helicopter, Marine One, have been found on an Iranian server, according to a security firm that gathers intelligence on peer-to-peer networks. According to P2P intelligence firm Tiversa, a soon-to-be-ex-employee of a Bethesda-based military contractor installed a P2P app on their cleared desktop...
- Tags: Software, Security, DLP, P2P, Helicopter, Peer To Peer (P2P), Internet, Adam O'Donnell
- Blog posts 2009-03-01
- Microsoft confirms 0-day in Excel, expands list of vulnerable systems
- Microsoft has confirmed that the code execution vulnerability reported yesterday in Excel is real, and has expanded the list of vulnerable systems. Microsoft has stated that the code execution vulnerability discovered by Symantec, now known by CVE number 2009-0238, is legitimate. They have also expanded their...
- Tags: Microsoft Corp., Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Office, Office Suites, Software, Adam O'Donnell
- Blog posts 2009-02-24
- Brand spanking new Excel 0-day being exploited in the wild
- Symantec is reporting that a new remote vulnerability has been discovered in Microsoft Excel 2007, and that this vulnerability is being exploited in the wild. Details are sparse, but it looks like Symantec has discovered a code-execution vulnerability in Excel 2007 and Excel 2007 SP1. The...
- Tags: Brand, Vulnerability, Microsoft Excel 2007, Details, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Office, Security, Office Suites, Software, Adam O'Donnell
- Blog posts 2009-02-23
- Competitors for the next hash standard found to have security-related coding flaws
- As further proof that no one is immune to making mistakes, two of the algorithms competing to be the next hash standard were found to contain buffer overflows. The government board in charge of nominating standard cryptographic algorithms, NIST, has been holding a competition to choose the...
- Tags: Algorithm, Flaw, Buffer-overflow, Engineering, Security, Viruses And Worms, Adam O'Donnell
- Blog posts 2009-02-23
- Why I am against pure net neutrality
- While it may sound like treating all ISP traffic equally is a good idea, mandating strict net neutrality hurts computer security for all of us. Those of you who are tech heads and reside in the United States should all be familiar with the Net Neutrality debate,...
- Tags: Security, Traffic, Internet Service Provider, Net Neutrality, Internet Service Providers (ISPs), Internet, Adam O'Donnell
- Blog posts 2009-02-22
- Do we need a new internet? No, but we do need more researchers.
- The New York Times ran an article on a new academic research project whose goal is to redesign the Internet from scratch. The most valuable product that will come from this effort is not new technology, but formally trained security researchers. This past weekend the old...
- Tags: Researcher, Internet, Adam O'Donnell
- Blog posts 2009-02-17
- Microsoft announces industry alliance, $250k reward to combat Conficker
- Microsoft has announced an alliance of various industry partners whose goal is to fight the Conficker worm. The announcement is short on actionable methods for stopping the worm, but it does include one gem: a $250,000 US bounty for information leading to the capture of those responsible for the...
- Tags: Adam O'Donnell, Alliance, Cyberthreats, Jose, Management, Microsoft Corp., Security, Strategy, Viruses And Worms, Worm
- Blog posts 2009-02-12
- Kaspersky suffers attack on support site, no apparent data breach
- Word came out this weekend that the U.S. support site for the AV Vendor Kaspersky Labs was compromised by attackers. Earlier this week an attacker used a SQL Injection attack to compromise a section of the usa.kaspersky.com website and posted a list of database tables fetched via...
- Tags: Kaspersky Lab, Attacker, Attack, Kaspersky, Security, Databases, Enterprise Software, Software, Data Management, Adam O'Donnell
- Blog posts 2009-02-09
- Social networks have taught us cryptography (probably) won't stop spam
- On a regular basis I receive blog comments and suggestions on what magical technologies will put spam out of business. There are many valid techniques for stopping spam, but signing e-mails and e-mail senders is not one of them. After my recent post on the impact...
- Tags: Social Networking, Web, Network, Cryptography, Public-Key Cryptography, E-mail, Cyberthreats, Spam, Online Communications, Security, Spam And Phishing, Adam O'Donnell
- Blog posts 2009-02-08
- The psychological impact of false positives
- False positives, or the act of marking legitimate content as being malicious, are an unfortunate but unavoidable consequence of rapid response security technologies. They are relatively rare, unseen events, that make the news only when something goes horribly wrong. Security filters in both the real world...
- Tags: Antivirus, Error, Type II Error, American Citizen, Viruses And Worms, Security, Adam O'Donnell
- Blog posts 2009-02-03
- "Zombies ahead!" sign says something about SCADA security
- An electronic road sign hacked to alert drivers to hoards of the undead provides a nice pedagogical example of why SCADA security is such a "big deal". Earlier this week a road sign was hacked to warn drivers about zombies disturbing their evening commute. The hack itself...
- Tags: Security, SCADA, Zombie, Enterprise Software, Software, Adam O'Donnell
- Blog posts 2009-01-29
- Mac malware will become endemic amongst high-risk groups
- Two Mac trojan outbreaks were spotted in the past week leaving several people, including myself, to wonder if the tipping point for the Mac malware epidemic has arrived. Frankly, I don't know, but I tend not to think so. I do think, however, that Mac malware will now...
- Tags: Apple Macintosh, Trojan Horse, Malware, Spyware, Adware & Malware, Cyberthreats, Viruses And Worms, Security, Adam O'Donnell
- Blog posts 2009-01-26
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