Security

Microsoft got a fiery start to 2015 when Google last week publicized a kernel vulnerability in Windows 8.1 Update. Google Project Zero's James Forshaw, who discovered the flaw, ranked it as a high-severity issue. Although Forshaw reported it to Microsoft last September, the company had not yet fixed...

Hacker Jan Krissler, aka "Starbug," this weekend told attendees at the 31st Chaos Computer Club convention in Hamburg, Germany, that he had replicated the fingerprints of German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leven using a standard photo camera and commercially available software from VeriFinger. K...

SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

Misfortune Cookie Crumbles Millions of Security Systems

Check Point Software Technologies recently revealed a flaw in millions of routers that allows the devices to be controlled by hackers. The company detected 12 million Internet-connected devices that have the flaw. The vulnerability, which Check Point dubbed "Misfortune Cookie," can be found in the c...

OPINION

The Big Tech Stories of 2015

Last week, we looked back at the largely untold, or under told, stories of 2014. This week, let's look ahead to some of the stories that are coming in 2015. We'll have robots, self-driving cars, armed autonomous drones, the professional proliferation of head mounted cameras, some scandals, and some ...

Vulnerabilities in Signaling System 7, telephony signaling protocols used by carriers worldwide, allow third parties to listen to people's cellphone calls and intercept text messages despite encryption, The Washington Post reported last week. German cybersecurity researchers Tobias Engel of Sternrau...

OPINION

The Untold Stories of 2014

It is time to look back at 2014, so I'll focus here on a series of stories I thought were interesting but didn't seem to catch much or any real air. Some, like what is really behind Sony's decision to pull The Interview still might take off. Hadoop analytics is one of the most powerful platforms to ...

US Mulls Response to Sony Hack

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson on Thursday said the United States "is actively considering a range of options" to take in response to the Sony hack. The hack is "very serious," Johnson said, though he refused to label it as a terrorist attack. Although there has been widesprea...

Privacy's future appears muddy at best, judging from a survey released Thursday by the Pew Research Center and Elon University's Imagining the Internet Center. More than 2,500 Internet experts and analysts were narrowly divided on whether policy makers and technology innovators would create a secure...

The now-notoriously controversial action comedy The Interview, which was expected to deliver profits of $90-$95 million for Sony, may have become a financial black hole. The movie's Thursday premiere in New York has been cancelled, and several movie theater chains have scrapped plans to screen it, f...

SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

FIDO Pursues Vision of a Password-Free World

A group of some 150 companies last week moved closer to eliminating the bane of many an online user: the password. The FIDO Alliance, which counts among its members Microsoft, PayPal, Google, Bank of America, Visa and MasterCard, released version 1.0 of its open specifications for strong authenticat...

On behalf of Sony Pictures Entertainment, high-powered attorney David Boies sent a letter to several news outlets Sunday demanding that they refrain from publishing stories based on material hackers recently stole from the company and that they destroy any of the pilfered data in their possession. T...

The Internet should be a basic human right, but access to it is increasingly unequal around the globe, said Tim Berners-Lee, founder of the World Wide Web Foundation, as he launched its annual Web Index last week. The Web has the potential to be a great equalizer, Berners-Lee asserted, but only "if ...

Iowa plans to issue digital drivers' licenses in the form of a smartphone app by next year, Paul Trombino, director of the Iowa Department of Transportation, said earlier this week at a public state agency budget hearing. The digital license will be accepted by Iowa law enforcement officers conducti...

SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

No Respite for Sony

Since the hacker group calling itself "Guardians of Peace" announced its attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment late last month, things have gone downhill for the company. After confidential documents were leaked to the Internet over several days, a denouement of sorts was reached last week, when a s...

Blackphone on Tuesday announced plans to open an app store for privacy-focused applications to run on its secure smartphone. The store is expected to launch in January. The Blackphone runs PrivatOS, a modified version of Android 4.4.2 that comes bundled with tools that encrypt phone calls, texts, e...

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