Stories by Robert McMillan

It was a bad idea from the start, but even as bad ideas go, this one went horribly wrong.

Microsoft filed lawsuits against five companies Thursday, accusing them of using malicious advertisements to trick victims into installing software on their computers.

With many who bank online now wary of phishing attacks, criminals are adding fake live-chat support windows to their Web sites to make them seem more real.

For National Veterinary Associates, the decision to block the Web was sealed with a virus.

Google will offer cloud-computing services designed specifically for U.S. government agencies starting next year, the company announced Tuesday at NASA Aims Research Center.

Virus writers keep getting sneakier. In an effort to evade detection, they've begun hiding their command and control instructions in legitimate Web 2.0 sites such as Google Groups and Twitter.

White House Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra will explain how the federal government plans to offer cloud computing services to U.S. agencies at a Silicon Valley press event set for next Tuesday.

Microsoft says that cyber-criminals are starting to exploit an unpatched bug in its IIS server software that was made public earlier this week.

Amazon and Microsoft have been pushing cloud-computing services as a low-cost way to outsource raw computing power, but the products may introduce new security problems that have yet to be fully explored, according to researchers at the University of California, San Diego, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

July was a tough month for Adobe Systems' security team. So tough, in fact, that the company's second-ever quarterly patch release will arrive a month late, Adobe's security chief said Thursday.

Oracle database administrators who are worried they might have to skip Oracle's user conference next month to fiddle with security updates can relax. Oracle is cutting them a break and releasing its next set of patches a week later than planned.

A hacker has posted code that could be used to take over a system running Microsoft IIS (Internet Information Services) server.

Symantec has posted a software fix after hundreds of users reported problems with a buggy update of the company's flagship Norton AntiVirus software.

Why spend millions of dollars campaigning when you can hack an election for less than 100 grand?

Citing tough economic times, security vendor Websense plans to trim 5 percent of its workforce.