SecurityFocus
computer security news portal
SecurityFocus is an online computer security portal and host of the Bugtraq mailing list. Founded in 1999 by Oliver Friedrichs, Alfred Huger, and Arthur Wong, the site served as a hub for vulnerability disclosure, security news, and community discussion. It maintained the Bugtraq ID (BID) vulnerability database, one of the most widely referenced sources in the CVE ecosystem.
SecurityFocus columnists and writers included former Department of Justice cybercrime prosecutor Mark Rasch and hacker-turned-journalist Kevin Poulsen.
History
SecurityFocus was established in 1999 in San Mateo, California. Elias Levy, who had moderated the Bugtraq mailing list since 1996, served as co-founder and chief technology officer. In July 1999, the Bugtraq mailing list was transferred to SecurityFocus from the Brown University NetSpace Project. The site also launched the BID vulnerability database and the DeepSight threat management service, which provided early-warning intelligence to enterprise clients.
On August 6, 2002, Symantec completed its acquisition of SecurityFocus. Under Symantec, the news portal content was gradually migrated to Symantec's own platforms.
“SecurityFocus” enters the record as computer security news portal. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what SecurityFocus, computer and security can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“SecurityFocus” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, SecurityFocus, computer and security provides the most credible route into that argument.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3477586. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1999, 1996 and 2002.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
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Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “SecurityFocus”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow SecurityFocus primary sources, SecurityFocus archive and SecurityFocus research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “SecurityFocus” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.