Items tagged with security
It's not often that people feel compelled to side with Google on the topic of privacy, but the company's newest CEO, Sundar Pinchai, gives us a great reason to. As Brandon covered in great detail yesterday, Apple has been ordered by U.S. Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym to provide the FBI access to an iPhone 5c that was...
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A medical center located in Hollywood, California, paid hackers 40 bitcoins worth nearly $17,000 in U.S. currency to decrypt its files that were being held ransom. The ransom amount is far less than the $3.6 million that was being thrown around when news of the security breach went public, but is no less disheartening...
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Could you go a full day without using your PC? It might not be all that difficult on a casual basis, but for workers at Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, they've had the challenge of servicing patients without the aid of any computer systems for over a week due to a malware outbreak and subsequent ransom...
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It's easier than ever to protect data online and elsewhere. Encryption is ubiquitous and while it's impossible to insure that your data well-secured from the likes of the government, there's no excuse for not taking important steps to increase your own personal protection as much as possible.
That latter is...
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The term "IoT" has been floating around for a while and many who care about privacy have been put on high alert. "Internet of Things" devices can help make our lives better. They can allow us to change the temperature with our smartphones or even unlock doors. They could help us track vital stats during a workout...
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In the fall of 2014, Google lost a valuable man: Andy Rubin. While Rubin had his hands in a number of important projects at the big G, none were more important than his creation of Android in 2003. Today, Android is the most widely-used mobile OS; one that's even making its way to convertible PCs. To call that...
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It seems certain that we've all managed to wind up on a website at some point in time that had misleading elements, such as fake download buttons. While piracy is going to be the first thing that springs to many minds when this kind of sketchiness is brought up, it's hardly exclusive to that area. Some websites that...
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If you think that the likes of the NSA needs to rely on zero-day exploits to get their job done, you apparently have things completely wrong. At the USENIX Enigma security conference in San Francisco this week, the NSA's chief of Tailored Access Operations, Rob Joyce said that it's his team's sheer talent makes its...
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We've all misplaced things—keys, smartphone, USB flash drive—but have you ever lost half a dozen hard drives? Healthcare provider Centene Corporation did and it's currently conducting an "ongoing comprehensive internal search" for the missing HDDs, the company announced this week.
Centene discovered it was six hard...
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Another day, another report of a security breach, this latest one affecting Wendy's, a nationwide chain of fast food restaurants. Wendy's has hired a security firm to help investigate claims that someone hacked its systems, a decision the chain made after being alerted to potential credit card fraud tracing back to...
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If you're surfing the Internet with a browser (a rarity, we know), there's a new bug to be cautious of. With a bit of simple JavaScript, a browser's HTML5 History API can be called upon thousands of times, ultimately causing a meltdown. Of course, a dedicated website (CrashSafari.com) exists to act as a proof of...
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Computer hackers accessed personally identifiable information and financial details belonging to around 1,400 University of Virginia workers as part of an email phishing scam, the University announced. An internal investigation determined that the culprits first accessed the stolen records in early November 2014 and...
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Internet and computer security is a very complex field that continues to challenge even the experts as new compromises and hacks are developed, discovered and exploited. However, password security, you would think is a pretty simple, straight-forward topic. Drop in a string of characters that are hard to guess and crooks and hackers looking
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Synaptics was been working on a comprehensive, yet simple to use, fingerprint authentication technology that the company hopes will make a big splash with gamers and corporate users alike. Although it’s had a couple of names over the last year or so, Synaptics’ upcoming IronVeil technology -- as it is now known -- is...
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Over the past couple of years, and especially since the Snowden revelations, the general public has become more aware of the importance of protecting themselves while enhancing their privacy. You might think, then, that the majority of those folks would be in favor of abolishing warrantless wiretapping of our Internet...
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It's a sad reality we must all face: some groups want nothing more than to intrude on our personal lives, gaining information that should be kept private. A notable group is of course the US government, which Edward Snowden proved to us over the past two years many times over is relentless when it comes to information...
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Have you ever seen a dog chase its own tail? That pretty much describes what's going on at BBC News this morning. The site suffered a pretty large distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack earlier today, one that knocked out the company's entire network and iPlayer streaming service, causing grief for web visitors...
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Security outfit AVG is catching some heat for a Chrome browser extension that left millions of users vulnerable to a variety of online attacks. Called "AVG Web TuneUp," it automatically gets installed into Chrome as part of AVG's antivirus product. That's problem number one. Problem number two is that it presented...
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2015 has proven to be a massive year for Adobe's Flash plugin, but for all the wrong reasons. Flash is already infamous for being one of the most vulnerable pieces of software on the planet, but in 2015, 316 bugs were found and squashed. That comes out to about 6 bugs per week for a piece of software that's used by the vast majority of notebook
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If were experiencing random weirdness and seeing other player's personal information when you log into Valve's Steam online gaming service today, you're not alone and no, you don't have to worry about some sort of holiday zombie attack on your account. It does appear the Steam platform was having serious issues...
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Password security is one of those things you either have or you don't. If you're password is a combination of alphanumeric characters and symbols with varying punctuation, congratulations, you're in much better shape than the guy who uses "12345," the same as found on his luggage. That said, traditional password input...
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A hot topic brought up often in the search for America's next president is the security and privacy of the country's citizens. Unfortunately, such matters rarely find themselves in the hands of politicians who truly understand what they're talking about, and we saw just such an example again Saturday night, during the...
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