Al-Qaeda support group Al-Ekhlaas has improved the encryption software it now provides to its online members, according to one security researcher who examined the software, known as "Mujahideen Secrets 2."

By monitoring tiny fluctuations in the Earth’s magnetic field caused by a passing plane, a team of European researchers has developed an innovative system to increase airport safety even in the worst weather conditions. Using magnetic field detectors, a team of researchers, led by Uwe Hartmann and Haibin Gao of Saarland University in Germany, has developed a unique system to pinpoint the location of aircraft at airports even in places where other traffic monitoring systems face difficulties.

A recent security study’s findings are probably likely to shock a little bit the increasing number of open source projects’ fans. Nowadays, writing open source software seems to have become kind of a trend, but despite its obvious benefits, this set of principles and practices seems to be prone to security glitches and this is quite a risky side effect.

MOUNT LAUREL, N.J. (AP) - The online porn industry is abuzz with news of a security breach at a company that works with adult subscription Web sites.

New Jersey-based Too Much Media told customers last month that hackers had been able to access the subscriber lists of various sites.

Now it appears the stolen information is being used to bombard subscribers with junk e-mails from competing adult sites.

New Windows-based "downloader" malware known as Trojan-Downloader.Win32.Diehard has surged to the top of Kaspersky Lab's "Virus Top Twenty" list a for December because of its "explosive propagation," the security firm said Wednesday.

A downloader is a type of malware, which loaded onto a victim's machine, can enable the attacker to download many other types of malicious code to exploit and control it for activities ranging from spam to information theft.

The healthcare services company moved 50 of its 70 applications to Linux over the last two years and will complete the process with the remaining 20 within a year or two.

Three years ago, McKesson's Acute Care Solutions offered its hospital and doctors' office applications to run under IBM (NYSE: IBM)'s mainframe AIX or other larger server Unix. But customers were bringing smaller Intel (NSDQ: INTC)-based servers into their hospitals and doctors offices. A small doctor's group had little use for an eight or 12-way Unix server, but a two-way Intel or AMD server was about right.

The current state of software, security, and virus protection is a mixed bag. Amidst questions of Vista's security prowess over Windows XP, a new report set to be released by German computer magazine c't next month says the accuracy of antivirus software is waning. Particularly when it comes to detecting new, unfamiliar attacks, the 17 software packages tested dropped in average effectiveness by nearly 50 percent in 2007.

Veracode launched a new version of its binary code analysis service on Monday that focuses specifically on helping software engineers find potential backdoor vulnerabilities in their programs.

While some applications security companies scour source code for flaws, such as Fortify, and others specialize in testing programs already running in production, such as Cenzic, Veracode is spinning itself as an alternative by channeling its efforts into looking for vulnerabilities in binary code and offering the capabilities as a fully-hosted service.

Gwava, the developer of security software, plans to introduce today a product that lets enterprises easily track and find text messages and phone calls that BlackBerry users send and receive.

The software should appeal to enterprises that need to comply with regulations that require them to track employee communications. Key to the Retain for BlackBerry Enterprise Server is that it doesn't require any client software. That means an IT administrator can manage it fully from the back end.