Security

Hackers have been infiltrating Microsoft services by sending emails to targets saying their Live IDs have been used to distribute unsolicited email, and their accounts will be blocked unless they click on an embedded link and fulfill new security requirements, Kaspersky researcher Andrey Kostin repo...

Malware has been turning computers into what security pros calls "zombies" since the turn of the century. Ever since, the security industry has struggled to keep pace with new malware variants to keep the threats in check. An approach called "containerization" adds a promising new way to control the...

Americans are deeply troubled by surveillance, data collection and the security of their data that's held by government agencies and private companies, Pew Research has found. The combined results of two surveys -- one of 500 adults between August and September last year and one of 460 adults betw...

The Justice Department is stepping up its program to engage more actively with the private sector on dealing with cybercrime and cybersecurity breaches. "We in government know that we cannot go it alone in fighting cybercrime. We need a strong partnership with you in the private sector," Assistant A...

There's a common perception that implementing comprehensive IT security to protect against today's sophisticated threats and attacks is a difficult and expensive task, and that the benefits of replacing current solutions, even if highly ineffective, are seldom worthwhile. This mindset has resulted i...

U.S. government agencies can significantly improve their ability to deal with cybersecurity problems by utilizing big data analytics. However, agencies are finding it difficult to fully benefit from these advanced analytical tools for a variety of reasons -- including dealing with the sheer volume o...

A U.S. Court of Appeals has ruled, in essence, that the NSA's collection of metadata concerning Americans' communications is illegal. The court vacated U.S. District Judge William Pauley's December 2013 ruling in ACLU v. Clapper, and remanded the case to the lower court. Pauley had granted the gover...

The U.S. Supreme Court last month granted a request from Spokeo, a data aggregator, to consider whether the legal basis litigants must meet to file a claim in federal court should be broadly or narrowly defined. In the case, Spokeo, Inc. v. Thomas Robins, Thomas Robins is a resident of Virginia acti...

Text-based usernames and password pairs should be replaced with biometric credentialing, such as vein recognition and ingestible security tokens, suggests Johnathan LeBlanc, PayPal's global head of developer evangelism. Celebrities have been mortified, Sony Pictures Entertainment brought to its knee...

Two cybersecurity bills approved this week by the U.S. House of Representatives pose a threat to citizens' privacy, according to opponents of the measures. Both bills, H.R. 1560 and H.R. 1731, aim to improve sharing of cybersecurity information between businesses and government agencies. "'Informati...

Illumio, a 2-year-old cybersecurity startup, last week announced it had raised $100 million in a Series C round of financing, bringing its total funding over the past 27 months to more than $142 million. New investors Accel Partners and BlackRock Funds joined Investors Formation 8, Andreessen Horowi...

Lawyers help their clients as they negotiate confidential business transactions, hold intellectual property, manage funds and litigate disputes, among many other business activities. In the ordinary course of business, lawyers also maintain numerous confidential documents and data of and about their...

Five police departments in Maine, whose networks are linked together so they can share files, recently deposited bitcoins worth 300 euros into a Swiss bank account as ransom for their records. The departments' management system was locked down by Megacode ransomware, which scrambled their data and r...

The Electronic Frontier Foundation this week filed a complaint against the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration for secretly collecting data on all telephone calls to as many as 116 countries, possibly going back to the 1990s. The suit was filed on behalf of Human Rights Watch. Many of the calls wer...

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission, which is at the forefront of regulating the impact of information technology on consumers, is bolstering its technical resource capabilities through a new Office of Technology Research and Investigation, or OTRI. The FTC is concerned about the failure of commercial...