software bug

More than $250,000 is offered by Microsoft to programmers who can develop new security defense for Windows OS family to protect users against attacks that exploit the software bugs.

Microsoft's Blue Hat Prize announced on Wednesday at the Black Hat security conference will pay $200,000 for the best “novel runtime mitigation technology designed to prevent the exploitation of memory safety vulnerabilities.” The two runners up will receive $50,000 and a MSDN Universal subscription valued at $10,000, respectively.

This week Apple Inc released an update to fix a problem in its iOS software that allowed its mobile devices to collect and store users’ location data. Last week Steve Jobs promised to adjust the company's mobile software to store less location data.

The update is available through iTunes stores. Besides, it automatically pops up when an iPhone or iPad is synced, said it "contains changes to the iOS crowd-sourced location database cache."

Researcher Aviv Raff has found that the application used to install Adobe's ubiquitous Reader and Flash has flaws which can be exploited to remotely install malware on end user PC.

Being an ActiveX script, the Adobe Download Manager is used to install or update Reader or Flash using Internet Explorer. The researcher revealed that it can be exploited to install any file he wishes simply by tricking a user into clicking on a link on the Adobe.com domain.