Articles by John P. Mello Jr.

Results 1481-1500 of 2127 for John P. Mello Jr.
SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

Study: Google Play Apps Go Beyond Need-to-Know

An analysis of more than 400,000 apps in the Google Play store has revealed that more than 100,000 of them pose a potential security risk to their users The analysis of the Android apps released last week by cyber security vendor Bit9 examined the security permissions requested by the programs. It found that 72 percent of the 412,000 programs exami...

Russian Hacker Gets a Taste of His Own Malware

After a persistent series of attacks on its government computers by a Russian hacker, the Republic of Georgia got mad and refused to take it anymore ...

SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

Legacy Applications a Threat to Windows 8 Security

Windows 8 finally made it to prime time last week. This version of Microsoft's operating system makes significant improvements in its security stance, said Alex Balan, senior product manager at Bitdefender, but some of them are likely to be undermined by users wedded to old programs The way the Windows 8 user interface handles applications is a sig...

SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

Bogus Apps Litter Android With Malware

Android is one of the most popular mobile operating systems in the world. As a result, it's also one of the most popular mobile operating systems to be targeted by malware writers Malware aimed at Google's Android platform increased sixfold during the quarter that ended in September, according to a report released Monday by Trend Micro....

MiniFlame Drops Cyberbombs on High-Value Targets

Security researchers have identified a new offshoot of the notorious Flame espionage malware. The malware, called "miniFlame," creates a backdoor in the systems that it infects. That backdoor can then be used by an attacker to gain access an infected machine. The attacker can then write files to the compromised computer, snatch files from it or snap screenshots of its display...

SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

Panetta Sounds Clarion Call for Cybersecurity Action

While U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta did some silicon saber-rattling last week by raising the prospect of a preemptive strike against cyberattacks, he also delivered a wake-up call to Wall Street and Congress about cybersecurity Panetta's message to the business leaders gathered at a meeting in New York of the Business Executives for Nation...

Lytro Gives Photogs Handier Controls, Snappy New Colors

Lytro is giving users of its shoot-now, focus-later digital camera more control over the photos they capture with the innovative snapper With the new additions to the Lytro announced Tuesday, shutterbugs will be able to control the camera's shutter speed, light sensitivity (ISO) and bright-light exposure settings, as well as lock the exposure in a ...

SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

Big Businesses Walloped With Climbing Cybercrime Costs

Cybercrime costs continued to climb in 2012 according to a report released Monday by the Ponemon Institute The study of 56 large organizations showed that the average annualized cost of cybercrime for the businesses was US$8.9 million a year compared to $8.4 million a year ago. Losses for the firms ranged from one $1.4 million to $46 million....

2nd-Gen Nest Thermostat Slims Down, Smartens Up

If thermostats were cars, Nest Labs' would be a Cadillac Selling for US$249, the gadget brings design verve -- the company was founded by Tony Fadell, the former leader of the team at Apple that designed numerous generations of the iPod and iPhone -- and mobile technology to a device that barely registers on many consumers' consciousness scale....

SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

Tizzy Over Bank Cyberattacks Unwarranted, Say Researchers

A week-long cyber attack on some of the nation's largest banks last week most likely wasn't the Armageddon headline writers made it out to be "It's ridiculous to consider an attack that takes your website offline for a few hours the world's worst nightmare scenario," Jeffrey Carr, CEO of Taia Global and author of Inside Cyber Warfare: Mapping the C...

Tesla Sings the Body Electric With Solar Supercharger Stations

Electric car maker Tesla Motors on Tuesday introduced a network of solar-powered rapid charging stations for its vehicles beginning with several locations across California The network of "supercharger" stations already is in operation in six California locations: Folsom, Gilroy, Coalinga, Lebec, Barstow and Hawthorne. Tesla makes its cars in Fremo...

SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

Feds Back Projects to Bolster Online ID Verification

When Paul Steiner published his 1993 cartoon in The New Yorker with the caption, "On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog," little did he know it would become a mantra among security professionals, especially those concerned about authenticating identities on the Net The job of finding ways to identify dogs in cyberspace has been assigned to the...

IT Security Police: ‘Step Away From That IE’

Internet Explorer is too dangerous to use, according to warnings from throngs of security experts, including Germany's Federal Office for Information Security The German government agency issued an alert that advises citizens to avoid using Internet Explorer and use an alternate browser until a patch can be found for a vulnerability discovered last...

SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

Hacker Claims Old-School Tactic Brought GoDaddy to Its Knees

Someone with the Twitter handle @AnonymousOwn3r made a grab for 15 minutes of fame last week by claiming responsibility for taking down the network for Internet's largest registrar, GoDaddy GoDaddy discredited that claim. "The service outage was not caused by external influences," CEO Scott Wagner said in a statement. "It was not a 'hack' and it wa...

SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

ID Theft Gives Apple Another Security Black Eye

Once upon a time, security shiners involving Apple were as rare as Windows Vista lovers, but now it seems that a week doesn't go by without the name of Steve Jobs' baby being dragged through the digital mud Last week's episode involved the hacktivist group AntiSec and the FBI. AntiSec claimed it compromised an FBI laptop and stole more than 12 mill...

BitTorrent Sharers Beware: You Are Being Watched

Swappers using the popular file-sharing protocol BitTorrent are spied on constantly by monitoring services, some of them seeking to identify media pirates, researchers at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom reported Tuesday Monitoring is particularly intense for files that are currently popular among sharers -- less so with less popu...

SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

Java Patch May Be Just a Finger in the Dam

Oracle acted swiftly last week to close a zero-day vulnerability in its Java technology, but given Java's track record, that patch is just one hit in a long game of wackamole played with hackers A number of security companies discovered the vulnerability over the weekend of Aug. 25. They noticed that a popular and notorious root kit, Blackhole, was...

Firefox 15 Goes on a Memory Diet

Better management of memory and updates highlight the latest release of the Mozilla Foundation's Web browser, Firefox 15 Firefox's development team has steadily improved the browser's memory management over recent months, but with this release of the program, it's targeting a major contributor to the software's piggish memory ways: add-on applicati...

SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

Security Sleuths Lay Blame on Apple for SMS Vulnerability

Research released last week fingered the iPhone as the source of a text messaging exploit that could be used to steal sensitive information from smartphone users or work mischief on their hardware The flaw, revealed by a well-known security researcher and jailbreaker of iPhones, involves the "reply to" line in SMS messages....

Feds Roll Out Wireless Crash Avoidance Test Program

The Starship Enterprise has its deflector shields to defend itself from attacks by enemy weaponry, and if all goes well with a pilot program launched Tuesday by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), road warriors will have wireless systems to defend themselves from collisions with other vehicles Under the year-long Safety Pilot program set i...

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