SmoothWall has taken the wraps off a new rack-mounted web filtering appliance that uses the company's Guardian web filtering technology.

Finjan has uncovered what appears to be one of the largest bot networks controlled by a single cybercrime gang, with 1.9 million infected zombie computers forming the swarm.

AVG, the producers of one of the most popular free anti-virus applications, is now offering a free URL checking utility.

Although VOIP afficionadoes are wont to promote the encrypted nature of Skype Internet telephony calls, it's now becoming accepted that the use of a compressed data mode within Skype opens the gates to pattern recognition and slow, but steady, text-based decoding of the voice transmissions as a result.

It's been a complicated take-over, apparently, but Check Point Software Technologies has at last completed the acquisition of Nokia's security appliances business which was announced last year.

Powerpoint, Porn and Twitter

The organisers of the main Black Hat security conference - which takes place at the Moevenpick City Centre hotel in Amsterdam's Piet Heinkade this Thursday and Friday - have announced that presenters will reveal no less than six high profile vulnerabilities at the event.

The operators of Paul McCartney's web site were caught with their electronic pants down this week after the portal was found to be serving up malware.

Samsung, a name better known for its PC and mobile phone offerings, has signed veteran value-added distributor Wick Hill to handle its IT security products in the UK.

Even though version D of the Conficker worm failed to cause havoc - as was widely predicted - on April 1, the worm's methodology continues to cause problems in the shape of an updated version of the Neeris worm.

Hispasec Sistemas, one of Spanish-speaking world's rising IT security stars, has enhanced its online malware analysis service to accept programmes of up to 10 megabytes, as well as supporting an impressive 23 languages via its on-screen interface

Ghost in the machine The Information Warfare Monitor published a report on GhostNet, a cyber-espionage network that it discovered after conducting a security audit for the Dalai Lama's Tibetan Government in Exile. Almost 1300 machines were discovered in a micro-botnet controlled from servers mainly in Chinese IP blocks. The 30% of machines that it identified were of high importance to Chinese interests, it found. The Dalai Lama has condemned the whole affair, and the Chinese government is denying everything.