Safety Security & Privacy

Facebook has become a major part of the way we interact with one another. Unfortunately with its growing popularity, the service has been plagued by spam and phishing scams and many have been affected by this. To help combat this, the social network established its anti-virus marketplace six months ago in order to make your Continue Reading →

Eye scanners have always been one of the security devices people think of when they think “high-tech” and “high security.” But they’re not perfect yet, some can be fooled with contacts or even pictures, but new pushes into detecting your personal eye jiggle could change that. The eye-movement system, being developed by Oleg Komogortsev, of Continue Reading →

US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta warned in a speech about cybersecurity on Thursday that the agency is aware of foreign perpetrators that have remotely gained access to control systems for vital American infrastructure, such as chemical, electricity and water plants, as reported by The Wall Street Journal. “We know that foreign cyber actors are Continue Reading →

Security consultants have independently confirmed a serious security weakness that makes it trivial for hackers with physical control of many computers sold by Dell, Acer, and at least 14 other manufacturers to quickly recover Windows account passwords. The vulnerability is contained in multiple versions of fingerprint-reading software known as UPEK Protector Suite. In July, Apple Continue Reading →

Microsoft this week announced the release the 13th volume of its bi-annual Security Intelligence Report (SIRv13). The 146-page document looks at malware (and general security) trends for the first half of 2012. One of the biggest shifts, according to Microsoft, has been the growth of key generators and its link with the spread of malware. Continue Reading →

Concerns about the potential for a national security threat posed by the Chinese networking concern Huawei have been simmering at a low intensity for some time. They burst out into the full glare of publicity today with the release of a report by the House Intelligence Committee saying that Huawei and another Chinese telecom-equipment concern, Continue Reading →

Cybercriminals are once again targeting Skype users, although this time they are using ransomware and click fraud on their victims. For the uninitiated, ransomware is malware which restricts access to the computer it infects (either by encryption or locking the system and spamming with prompts), demanding a ransom paid for the restriction to be removed. Continue Reading →

A shadowy but well organized hacker group in the Middle East has disrupted the electronic banking operations of America’s largest financial institutions in recent days, underscoring U.S. vulnerability to online terrorism. A group identifying itself as Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters attacked the websites of Wells Fargo, U.S. Bancorp and Bank of America. The strikes Continue Reading →

Seven rent-to-own companies and a software maker are settling charges with the Federal Trade Commission that rental computers illegally used spyware that took “pictures of children, individuals not fully clothed, and couples engaged in sexual activities.” As per the course, the FTC slapped the hand of DesignerWare of North East Pennsylvania and the rent-to-own companies. Continue Reading →

You’d think that the people who are technologically proficient would have learned by now, but that seems to not be the case. Romanian researcher Radu Dragusin reports that data from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) was kept on an unsecured FTP server for “at least one month” previous to his discovery. Though Continue Reading →