The security company Qualys this week demonstrated how to reverse-engineer a Microsoft patch in order to launch a denial-of-service attack on Windows DNS Server.

In its latest annual security report, Microsoft claimed some progress in fending off vulnerabilities that allow remote code execution.

While IT shops and vendors struggle to apply security practices to virtualized systems, a startup called virtualization to secure all types of devices.

Five dollars for control over 1,000 compromised email accounts. Eight dollars for a distributed denial-of-service attack that takes down a website for an hour. And just a buck to solve 1,000 captchas.

Although Mac users are more likely to experience virus-free computing than Windows PC owners, there is nothing inherently more secure about Apple's operating system, and in certain respects Mac OS X is more vulnerable than Windows, a security expert tells Network World.

Google is shedding some of the secrecy around its data center practices, with a new video that shows extensive security measures and the destruction of old hard drives to prevent leakage of customer data.

Microsoft says it did not "intentionally limit" access to Hotmail's HTTPS encryption service in foreign countries where freedom of expression is under attack.

Spammers are moving on from mass e-mail blasts to targeted attacks using social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, Cisco security executive Tom Gillis said Monday.

Microsoft has refreshed the Windows Azure software development kit to fix a bug that can expose cookie information to clients who have built applications on top of the cloud platform.

"Virtualisation is not inherently insecure. However, most virtualised workloads are being deployed insecurely."

Google and the Google-owned YouTube received more than 10,000 requests for user data from government agencies in the six months ending Dec. 31, 2009, according to newly released data.

Sixty percent of virtual servers are less secure than the physical servers they replace, the analyst firm Gartner said in new research Monday.

The Open Group is forming a new cloud computing committee that brings vendors and end-user organizations together to develop a common understanding about how cloud services should be deployed safely and effectively.

A hacker has reportedly obtained and distributed more than 300 confidential documents pertaining to Twitter's business affairs. The documents were reportedly stored on Google Apps.

A major VMware security initiative announced more than six months ago has still not resulted in any new products, but VMware and partners this week are demonstrating several prototypes of technology that will better secure virtual machines.