Security

Apple has been forced to do some serious damage control when it no doubt would rather be rallying fans for its big iPhone launch next week. The Labor Day weekend was barely over when news broke that a number of celebrity accounts on Apple's iCloud service had been cracked and some embarrassing photo...

The iCloud security issue that's been in the headlines all week should be a great big wake-up call to everyone. The cloud is coming; however, we are still in the very early days. Security threats keep growing, so it is important for both individuals and companies to be prepared. The news this week s...

Home Depot may have experienced a massive security breach -- possibly on a greater scale than last year's Target breach, which affected an estimated 110 million people. Home Depot on Wednesday said it was investigating the possibility, following security researcher Brian Krebs' Tuesday alert. Multip...

Domain name registrar Namecheap on Monday reported that it was besieged Sunday night by cyberattackers who employed username and password data possibly stolen by the so-called CyberVor hacker gang. "CyberVor" is the name Hold Security used last month when it reported the theft of 1.2 billion online ...

Hackers appear to have stolen data from JPMorgan Chase and at least one other U.S. bank in retaliation for economic sanctions against Russia. The raid on the banks' computer systems reportedly resulted in the theft of gigabytes of sensitive data. JPMorgan did not confirm the incident. However, the F...

Gov. Jerry Brown on Monday signed into law a bill requiring that anti-theft measures be incorporated into all smartphones sold within California. The measure applies to phones manufactured after July 1, 2015. Though it doesn't specify the particular technologies used to enable that capability -- bot...

Twitter has reported success with its BotMaker spam-prevention system. Because Twitter operates in real time, BotMaker is designed to work fast to eliminate spammers. Its main goals are to bar spam accounts from being created, to reduce the time they spend on Twitter if they do show up, and to reduc...

A conflict between Google's push to make the Web more secure and its Trusted Store program may be costing at least one business money. Pegasus Auto Racing Supplies, which encrypts all the pages on its website, reportedly has had its application for Google's Trusted Stores program turned down. Think ...

A recent proposal in the U.S. Senate to curb the impact of electronic surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency could enhance privacy for citizens and benefit businesses as well. However, major information technology companies that help the government collect telecom and Internet data s...

Yahoo and Google last week announced they'd be teaming up to secure their Web mail systems with encryption by the end of next year. "Our goal is to make end-to-end encryption fully available in 2015," Yahoo Vice President of Information Security Alex Stamos said at the Black Hat hackers' conference ...

California is poised to enact a consumer-friendly law requiring smartphone manufacturers to install "kill switches" -- that is, antitheft technology that would be activated by the carrier when a consumer alerts it that a device has been stolen or lost. The technology not only wipes the device of per...

Google on Wednesday announced that it has begun factoring websites' use of HTTPS into its search rankings, resulting in more favorable results for those that use the security-minded protocol. "Over the past few months we've been running tests taking into account whether sites use secure, encrypted c...