Security Bites Podcast: FBI cracks down on bot herders

This week the FBI sent out a press release stating that 1 million homes may be infected with bots. Arbor Networks' chief research officer talks with CNET editor Robert Vamosi about "Operation Bot Roast."

Microsoft has released its June 2007 security bulletin, which includes six updates; four are designated "critical" by the software giant. Two of the patches affect Windows Vista, with one critical patch specific to Internet Explorer. One of the "important" patches affects Microsoft Office.

Within hours of Apple's public release of the beta for Safari 3.0 for Windows, three security researchers independently found holes in the new browser. Researcher Aviv Raff highlighted in a blog post the company's product statement, which reads: "Apple's engineers designed Safari to be secure from day one." Raff found a vulnerability, a memory corruption error that could allow an attacker to insert malicious code on a Windows machine, within three minutes using publicly available tools.

Check Point Software Technologies has released an updated ZoneAlarm 7.1 that's designed to work with Windows Vista's architecture. This is the first true two-way firewall for the Windows Vista environment. Windows Vista includes the Windows Firewall, however, it blocks only inbound traffic, allowing all "except where excepted" outbound traffic. This may seem like a fine distinction, but it can be huge. If you acquire a remote-access Trojan on your Windows Vista machine, Microsoft may not flag the outbound traffic.

According to Trend Micro, a Trojan horse that downloads a certain YouTube video could compromise your computer. The video appears to be an episode of Afterworld, a Web TV series about a society where technology is dead.

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