Items tagged with security
Belkin has an intriguing suite of WeMo-branded smart devices for home automation, including light switches, motion detectors, integration with appliances, and more, but security firm IOActive recently discovered multiple vulnerabilities in WeMo--vulnerabilities that Belkin says it has now patched. Belkin’s statement on the subject reads...
Read more...
It's not too often that a vendor chooses to remain silent about vulnerabilities plaguing its product(s), and it's even rarer to remain silent when fixes are available. For those using N or AC-based ASUS routers, though, it's important to take note: A number of rather serious vulnerabilities might exist if your...
Read more...
Another day, another hack. This time it was the Forbes website that was compromised, and once again it’s the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) that claimed responsibility for the hack. Forbes posted a message on Facebook announcing the hack and said that anyone who’s registered with the site should change their...
Read more...
Here's something you're probably aware of: privacy is a major issue, and it's becoming bigger by the day. Just this week, Kickstarter's servers were infiltrated, just months after Target suffered one of the world's most serious data exploits. Companies are flowing out of the blue with a myriad methods to solve all of...
Read more...
If you’ve ever wondered how exactly NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden was able to access as much as he did, it’s apparently because he had help. According to an L.A. Times report, at least three other NSA workers helped him--wittingly or not. An NSA memo says that one of the three was an active-duty...
Read more...
If you’ve ever used Kickstarter, you should change your password immediately, as the site reports that it has been hacked. “On Wednesday night, law enforcement officials contacted Kickstarter and alerted us that hackers had sought and gained unauthorized access to some of our customers' data,” reads...
Read more...
Senate democrats introduced new legislation called the Smartphone Theft Prevention Act (senate bill 2032), which would mandate a killswitch option on all smartphones. The big four wireless carriers as well as the CTIA are all on record as being against such measures, but if the bill passes, they won’t have much...
Read more...
Although news about Target’s huge data breach broke almost two months ago, the post-mortem has persisted, and a security firm has posted a detailed breakdown of what went wrong. The story is unnerving, to say the least, as it’s not so much about system-wide failures or anything so big as it is about how...
Read more...
Google’s quest to purchase Nest, maker of smart, connected thermostats and smoke detectors, is complete. The search giant’s $3.2 acquisition has been approved, per a Google regulatory filing. The move brings Nest and all of its human resources, most notably former Apple senior VP Tony Fadell, under the...
Read more...
If you're willing to accept at face value Flappy Bird developer Dong Nguyen's public stance on why he removed the popular title from iTunes and Google Play, then perhaps a bit of kudos are in order, even if you don't agree with his decision. It's not often that you see a sense of responsibility trump the almighty dollar, and in this case,...
Read more...
Making lemonade out of a situation wherein his credit card info was stolen in the UK and the thief went on a shopping spree, PayPal president David Marcus took the opportunity to preach the gospel of PayPal. “My card (with EMV chip) got skimmed while in the UK. Ton of fraudulent txns. Wouldn't have happened if merchant accepted PayPal…”,...
Read more...
Have you been feeling paranoid lately that you're being watched? Maybe you are. Thanks to the whistle-blowing efforts of former CIA employee Edward Snowden, we know that the U.S. government monitors all kinds of Internet activity, everything from instant messages and emails to Skype calls and more. Maybe your Facebook...
Read more...
Bitcoin digital currency is somewhat controversial as many people are just completely confused by it, but that hasn’t stopped Bitcoin from being used around the world--nor has it protected the currency from cybercriminals. SecureMac detailed the discovery of a Trojan called OSX/CoinThief.A that specifically...
Read more...
There was a moment there when the Snapchat guys were feeling pretty hot. Their mobile app was exploding in popularity, and Facebook practically begged to buy the service for a cool, but the company rejected the $1 billion offer--and then the $3 billion offer Facebook made thereafter. You could call it chutzpah or...
Read more...
You're a unique individual. Not just in the way you look, dress, and act, but also in the way you smell. Don't be offended, we're not saying you smell bad, we're just having a little talk about science. If you didn't have a unique scent, it would be difficult for dogs to track you using their noses, but part of the...
Read more...
You may have only paid $50 for your smartphone on subsidy, or even received it for free after inking a two-year service agreement with your wireless carrier. It's actually worth much more than what you bought it for -- several hundred dollars more -- making these easily swiped handsets mighty attractive to thieves...
Read more...
Wondering why it's still a good idea to run security software on your system even if you practice safe computing habits? One reason is because even legitimate websites get hacked, and depending on the extent of the attack, visiting what you thought was a benign domain could open up a can of worms. It doesn't matter how large the site is either...
Read more...
It took all of a minute after Google announced Glass for privacy concerns to come to the forefront, and since then, the company has worked hard to calm everyone's fears. While Google itself might not bundle software that has the potential to invade someone else's privacy, there's little to stop a third-party...
Read more...
The web is a treacherous place and even the safest of surfing habits won't necessarily keep you completely isolated from all the dangers out there. You can visit a site that you've loaded up in your browser a thousand times, but if it's been compromised, you could be the one to pay the price. Luckily there are capable...
Read more...
Last summer, and not too long after Edward Snowden exposed the extent of NSA's spying tactics, The Guardian newspaper in the UK was forced to destroy all of the data that had been provided to it. At the time, I don't remember this news gaining much traction, but it's an important blip on the timeline to note. No...
Read more...
It’s becoming more tedious to be a Yahoo! Mail user these days. The Gmail-ish redesign a few months ago was supposed to bring many attractive changes to the email service, but it launched with an annoying auto-forward bug, and anecdotally, performance has been slow and buggy from what I’ve experienced...
Read more...
You'd have to imagine that the birds in Angry Birds are some of the angriest around, but last night, a "friend" of the hacking group Syrian Electronic Army saw it fit to add to their angst. For an undetermined amount of time, an image was plastered on the main Angry Birds site that changed the name to "Spying Birds"...
Read more...
