Items tagged with security
According to a new report, the NSA once paid the RSA Security $10M to implement a flawed security standard as the default protocol in its products. This new information builds on allegations from September that claimed the RSA had deployed a flawed, broken cryptographic standard. The new allegations, like much of what...
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Target on Thursday confirmed reports that hackers gained access to credit and debit card data during the holiday shopping season. According to Target, around 40 million payment card accounts may have been impacted between November 27 and December 15, 2013. That time frame falls right in the midst of the some of the...
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Earlier this month, we talked about the frustrating key-logger botnet call Pony, and it now appears that we couldn't make it through the rest of the month without having to discuss another. While the Pony botnet affected the PC, this latest one, dubbed Android.Spyware.MisoSMS by security firm FireEye, targets Android...
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If you’re responsible about managing passwords for your email and other online accounts, you’re probably juggling a bunch of memorized passwords or using software that stores them for you. The FIDO Alliance wants to make online passwords a thing of the past and have us providing our credentials via pluggable devices, thumbprints,...
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Following news that tech giants Google, Facebook, and Yahoo were taking measures to shore up their encryption and other ways to thwart spying from the likes of the NSA, Microsoft is taking the same bull by the horns. The company announced that it will be expanding the encryption of its services, “reinforcing...
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Here's a bit of news that's far from deserving of a "Giddyup!": Thanks to the work of a botnet called "Pony", hackers have gained access to credentials for over 2 million individual accounts. These accounts span the entire gamut: Facebook, Twitter, Google (Gmail), and even a payroll service provider - perhaps the most...
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If you have ever lost a mobile phone, or worse, had one stolen, an announcement out of CTIA this week might bring a little bit of comfort. A global, multi-carrier database for tracking lost or stolen phones has now been completed, which builds on the initial efforts launched last year by AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile...
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At the end of any given year, it's usually pretty easy to draw up a list of things that the past 12 months will go down in history for. While there are a number of things that could make 2013's list, on the technology side of things, privacy and security will undoubtedly be at the forefront of many people's minds...
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Tis the season to shop until you drop, and rather than risk getting run over by savage shoppers who wouldn't think twice about trampling a toddler if it meant winning the race to the electronics section at Wally World, more and more people are finding it more convenient to shop online during Black Friday. That will...
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Sony's been the target of more than one high profile hacker attack in the past few years, so it's understandable if the company is a bit on edge. To underscore that point, Sony Europe recently took the "precautionary measure" of resetting passwords for some PlayStation Network users in which irregularly activity was...
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It seems that there's a lot more to the MacRumors story we reported over the weekend, and what's now becoming known is a bit worrying for anyone running vBulletin's forum software and users who contribute to communities that run on it. Previously, we discussed that tech site MacRumors experienced a database breach...
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Breaching the security of a website or Web service should be one of the most difficult tasks on earth, but given the fact that not a week can go by where we don't learn of some security issue at a major firm, it's clear that most of the Web is seriously lacking in setting up proper barriers. In recent months, Adobe...
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When the NSA forced several major tech companies including Facebook, Google, and Yahoo to cough up data on their users, one got the sense that it was a situation of an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object. The first round of that battle went to the NSA because it had (some shadily-acquired) court documents...
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You can debate all day long how much of a threat malware truly poses to Google's Android platform, but if you want to err on the side of caution, there are antivirus solutions available to you. The most popular appears to be AVG's free AV app, which just leapfrogged over 100 million downloads on Google Play. That's an...
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Patch Tuesday is right around the corner (tomorrow, in fact), and in advance of its monthly update package, Microsoft is giving a heads up that this month's will contain three "Critical" patches and five labeled as "Important." A Critical rating is the most severe and indicates a vulnerability whose exploitation could allow code execution...
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Heads-up, if you're running older versions of the Windows operating system, Microsoft Office or Microsoft Lync communication platform software. Microsoft released a security advisory noting that the TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) image handler in some of these older Microsoft software suites is subject to a...
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In enterprise environments, it's long been accepted that keeping a particular machine "100%" safe requires little more than keeping it off of an external or internal network, making sure to disable its network devices - wired or otherwise - and of course, disabling its optical drives and USB ports. A machine can't get...
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If you're still rocking Windows XP, we admire your dedication and ability to squeeze over a decade of use out of an operating system you presumably purchased long ago (nobody pirates XP, right?), but the end is nigh if you care at all about security. Come April 2014, Microsoft will cease supporting the legacy OS, thereby leaving your system...
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As the Internet has grown up before our very eyes, a bevy of security protocols have taken shape to protect its users from ill-willed computers and those who program them. It may sound a bit dystopian, but Google has been one of the companies on a mission to make security easier and more foolproof for the masses. As...
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Making money while running a social media service is difficult. Companies like Facebook and Twitter have struggled to monetize their platforms on both desktop and mobile, while striking balances that don't royally tick off users with obnoxious advertising. But in a world where dubious advertising and branding...
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After the revelations came forth of NSA spying this past summer, few companies jumped to action quite like Mozilla. Without much delay, the company patched-up a specific exploit in Firefox that the NSA had taken advantage of, and since then, it's been amping up security in other ways, such as with disabling cookies by...
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Not long after the initial NSA leaks escaped Edward Snowden's head this past summer, a handful of tech companies assured their customers that personal information stored with them is secure. One such company is Apple, which went on the record to state that even if the government demanded it, the company would be...
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