Top Story
Angry Birds and other Facebook apps score low on privacy
April 22, 2012 | 1 Comment
A new service that grades how each of Facebook’s top third-party apps respects consumers’ privacy was released late Sunday by research firm PrivacyChoice. The free tool, Privacyscore for Facebook, spells out privacy policies and tracking practices of more than 200 top Facebook apps, including games, work-related programs and sharing apps.
Online tracking is fueling a heated national debate over whether new do-not-track laws are needed to safeguard …more
Another Lisabeth Salander-like hacker-hero is born
April 25, 2012 | 1 Comment
A killer cop. Eight dead prostitutes. A reclusive Brazilian sex trader. Toss in an amoral hacker, named JD, rallying to aide two old friends, who just happen to be Massachusetts state police detectives, and you have the recipe for Dennis Fisher’s new thriller, Motherless Children.
Fisher squeezed out time around his day job as editor of Kaspersky Lab’s security blog, Threatpost, to pen and publish his first novel, …more
Why network forensics should become ongoing maintenance
April 12, 2012 | 8 Comments
Company network attacks — and successful intrusions — continue at a steadily rising pace, for a litany of reasons. The core driver is a complex dynamic. We continue to expand commercial uses of the Internet, pumping more cloud services, social media and mobile devices into the mix.
The end result is an ever expanding canvas of attack surfaces for highly skilled and motivated cybergangs to tap into corporate databases. In this LastWatchdog guest post, …more
Workarounds arise as Apple readies cure for Mac infections
April 12, 2012 | 4 Comments
If you suspect your Mac might be one of the 600,000 or so computers infected with the Flashback virus, Finnish antivirus company F-Secure has issued a free tool that detects and removes the nasty infection.
Another detection tool you can use has been made available by Russian antivirus firm Kaspersky. Meanwhile, Apple has issued a statement indicating that it is continuing to work on an …more
The cloud collaboration conundrum
April 9, 2012 | 3 Comments
The core mantra of those marketing cutting-edge technology often boils down to the notion that you can never have too many connections. More and more connections — to friends, co-workers, events, work projects and what have you — are desirable and achievable, now that the Internet has been fully assimilated as the globe’s commercial transactions backbone, the underlying spin goes.
However, many of these new ways to …more
Mobile devices carry intrinsic security flaws
April 9, 2012 | 1 Comment
By Byron Acohido, USA TODAY, 09Apr2012, P1B
Those cool mobile devices beloved by consumers carry deep-rooted security flaws that are only now being discovered and addressed.
That’s the upshot of two recent deep examinations of popular mobile devices. The findings highlight how designers of the current generation of smartphones and tablet PCs failed to fully account for the security and privacy implications.
“Today’s smartphones and tablet devices perform the …more
Why Apple needs to be more forthcoming with patching
April 6, 2012 | 4 Comments
Henry
The disclosure of a massive botnet comprised entirely of Macs is serving as a lightning rod for the community of a few hundred top virus hunters who would like to see Apple become more collaborative about defending the Internet against cybercriminals.
“Maybe Apple will feel a little of the pain their users are now feeling and get serious about being more candid and perhaps …more