Security

While most people in the media take this time to offer interesting retrospectives on the year that was, security company McAfee has prepared its predictions for hacker threats in 2010. It forecasts a troubling year for Adobe software, which McAfee ... believes will be heavily targeted in 2010. McAfee made the forecast in its 2010 Threat Predictions report, which argued that popular tools Adobe Reader and Flash would become big targets for hackers intent on spreading malware across the worldwide web. McAfee also predicts social networking sites and HTML 5 could be threatened, too. Adobe Offers ... (view more)

Hackers could soon be listening to your cellphone call. That's the word from the Chaos Communication Conference in Berlin, an annual get-together for hackers. Cryptographers at the conference say they've been able to crack a code that, on a normal ... day, prevents the interception of mobile phone calls by forcing those phones to consistently change frequencies across a list of about eighty channels. Since those not working for a cellphone company would have an almost impossible time knowing the sequence of this frequency change-up, hackers usually have no way of intercepting more than a few ... (view more)

Kisses have the power to alleviate pain, mend a broken heart and show someone you care. Now, thanks to a security researcher in Asia, "Kisses" also have the ability to rid your smartphone of malicious spyware. Kisses, a free software application, ... can detect spyware and hidden programs on most BlackBerry devices and tell users what is going on inside their mobile phone. Cell Phone Spyware a Big Problem The presence of spyware has become problematic in recent months, primarily due to the fact that many malicious spyware programs can be purchased for as little as $50. For that nominal ... (view more)

When security officials decide to "go after" computer malware, most conduct their actions from a defensive standpoint. For most of us, finding a way to rid a computer of the malware suffices -- but for one computer researcher, however, the change ... from a defensive to an offensive mentality is what ended the two year chase of a sinister botnet once and for all. For two years, Atif Mushtaq had been keeping the notorious Mega-D bot malware from infecting computer networks. As of this past November, Mega-D had forced more than 250,000 PCs to do its bidding via botnet control. That's when Mushtaq ... (view more)

With the holiday season attracting droves of online shoppers to Internet retail sites, a planned malicious online attack was almost inevitable. Fortunately, the distributed denial-of-service (DDos) attack that was supposed to wreak havoc on ... Wal-Mart, Amazon and a host of other major chain websites was limited to a select geographic location and resulted in minimal damage. The afternoon prior to Christmas Eve saw a number of online retail sites suspend their services without notice, at the height of the Christmas rush. The good news, however, is that the attack lasted about an hour and the ... (view more)

In an effort to improve security on their social networking platform, Facebook has rolled out a new feature that allows users to decide which friends are entitled to see which photographs, videos, and similar. Almost anyone who has a MySpace, ... Facebook or Twitter account can relate to having a few people on their friends list who are outside of their inner circle. As a token of understanding, Facebook is "tightening the reins" in regards to the amount of information certain friends are allowed to see. 350 Million People Affected In the coming days, all Facebook members will be required to ... (view more)

A new report suggests Microsoft has now pocketed a 6 per cent global market share for its new operating system (OS) Windows 7. That's good news for Microsoft, but it could spell big trouble for users in both the developed and developing world who ... don't make the upgrade from Windows XP. In a frightening new report earlier this week, Finland's most prominent security company F-Secure found that the global shift towards Windows 7 could open up a new gap between users of the new, more secure operating system and those stuck with the outdated and soon-to-be unsupported Windows XP. Shift to Win7 to ... (view more)

In the past, Russia and America were rivals. But now, it appears that that two are joining forces to fight a common foe, with hopes of tightening Internet security for the near and distant future. Insiders are calling the talks a new-age Geneva, ... akin to the nuclear arms discussions of an older generation. The purpose of these new meetings is to reduce the number of hacker attacks on major institutions, including government agencies, banks, businesses, and the military. According to reports, it's believed a common policy on cyber security will help reduce the number of these attacks, some of ... (view more)

A barely-noticed letter from Yahoo to the U.S. Marshals Service has revealed surveillance policies that allow the US Justice Department to request wiretaps of its users. The 12-page letter (in PDF format), in response to a Freedom of Information Act ... request, claimed that Yahoo couldn't provide the information on their policies because their pricing scheme would 'shock' customers. (Source: rawstory.com ) A Yahoo lawyer wrote that if the pricing information was disclosed, it would be used to shame Yahoo and other companies and to traumatize their customers. (Source: rawstory.com ) Yahoo: ... (view more)

A range of security experts say the crusade by search engines to include "real-time" results from social networking sites will undoubtedly make life easier for hackers. Such word comes hot on the heels of a report suggesting sites like Facebook and ... Twitter now pose a risk to businesses. As we reported last week, Google is trying out a new feature which lists results for a search term in real time . That means that for popular topics there's no longer a lengthy waiting period while web pages are scanned and indexed: instead they are constantly monitored and appear in a special results section ... (view more)