SecurityWeek

Database giant Oracle on Thursday issued its pre-release announcement for its July 2012 Critical Patch Update, saying it would issue 88 new security vulnerability fixes across hundreds of Oracle products. As part of the update, Oracle will issue 4 new security fixes for vulnerabilities in the company’s flagship Oracle Database Server, 3 of which may be remotely exploitable without authentication.

nCircle, a provider of information risk and security solutions, today announced PureCloud™ Enterprise, a new scanning solution designed to help enterprises address the common gaps in security visibility. PureCloud Enterprise enables scan results to be integrated into the nCircle Suite360 Intelligence Hub™ to provide users with a single view of security risk, consolidated reporting and analytics.

San Francisco, California-based DocuSign, a provider of electronic signature technology and services, today announced that it has raised a massive $47.5 million in funding to help accelerate growth.

Computer graphics technology firm NVIDIA, a company that holds more the 5,000 patent and credited with inventing the GPU, on Thursday said it had shut down its “NVIDIA Developer Zone,” after the online community for developers had been hacked.

A few heart freezing moments:• A phone call that begins with the words: We have your child – we want $250,000 to guarantee her safe return. If you go to the police, you will never see her again.• You receive a thick manila envelope with compromising pictures of you and a young woman, not your wife. You’ve been invited to a local bar to talk.

Earlier this week, SecurityWeek detailed the shutdown of the DarkComet project by its creator, because his works were used to attack protesters in Syria. The RAT had an interesting lifespan, and it was used in several attacks, according to Arbor Networks.Jean-Pierre Lesueur, who was responsible for bringing DarkComet to life, said that DarkComet was developed and given away for free, as long as people didn’t use it for malicious purposes.

Taking a break form the normal spin-cycle of security news, assets from the once popular Digg.com have been sold for $500,000, or 0.0005 Instagrams (Instagram was purchased by Facebook for a cool $1 billion earlier this year).At one point, Digg was valued at $175,000,000, but the shift to sites like Reddit (Digg’s longtime Web rival) and Twitter as an instant news source eventually caused the site’s decline.

After Reuters reported that China’s ZTE Corp (ZTEC) had sold monitoring equipment to Iran, in addition to software and technological goods manufactured in the U.S. – something that is forbidden under trade embargos – the Department of Commerce initiated an investigation. Now, according to an FBI affidavit, it has emerged that ZTE Corp went out of its way to impede the Department of Commerce’s inquiry.

Phandroid, a web site dedicated to Android news and discussion, is urging all of its users – more than a million of them in fact – to change their passwords after a server hosting their online forum was hacked earlier this week. News of this latest compromise comes after a string of security incidents this month, leaving some to wonder what’s next.

Using technology to steal high-tech cars is not new. In my book, When Gadgets Betray Us, I use the example of Radko Soucek, a car thief from the Czech Republic who would steal luxury cars off the streets of Prague in about twenty minutes. Soucek used a laptop preloaded with an algorithm for specific makes and models of cars to help him decipher the keyless entry and ignition sequence.

Three months after announcing a partnership with several security companies to provide free antivirus, Facebook has now established a new service Malware Checkpoint for users worried their computer may be infected.

Perimeter E-Security, a provider of email hosting and IT security services, today introduced a new offering designed to provide email users with easy access to their entire mailbox archive on virtually any device, from any location.

Microsoft has issued a security advisory, and encouraged users of Windows Vista and Windows 7 to disable the Windows Sidebar and associated gadgets. The move comes just before a scheduled talk at BlackHat this month, where researchers will explore the types of flaws that exist in existing gadgets, as well as other weaknesses.

Instagram "Friendship" Vulnerability Exposed Users' Private Photos and Profile InformationSpanish researcher Sebastián Guerrero published an advisory on Wednesday, detailing what he called a ‘friendship’ vulnerability in the popular image application, Instagram. The imaging social phenomenon fixed the flaw within hours of his public disclosure.

Hackers Expose More Than 450,000 Accounts Taken From Yahoo! Voices Service