Security

Seeking to take advantage of the many exciting online bargains this holiday shopping season? Be cautious about those e-mail promotions. Some of them contain more than deep discounts and free shipping offers -- they may contain malware. Security vendors and messaging companies alike report heightened...

Summer is behind us, but recent memories of credit card processing breaches are still haunting security-conscious consumers, safety-minded merchants and bustling banks. While CardSystems Solutions made media headlines in June after a computer virus captured the private information of millions of con...

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and BitTorrent yesterday announced a collaborative effort to curb film piracy. BitTorrent Founder and CEO Bram Cohen's technology allows Web sites to make large content files available online. The MPAA was concerned that the technology is frequently u...

A flaw in Google Sitemaps is allowing users to see the statistics for AOL, MSN, and any other Internet property with a Google Verification File on its server, according to Search Engine Roundtable, a search engine and marketing forum. The flaw allows users to view the top search queries and top sear...

Microsoft said it had formed alliances with three partners to beef up the anti-phishing technology in several of its products, including the soon-to-be-released Internet Explorer 7 and its MSN Search toolbar. The Micrososft Phishing Filter, which will be available in updates of Windows and in the Wi...

Less than half the consumers using the Internet feel safe shopping online, according to a survey expected to be released today by Symantec, a maker of anti-virus and security software. The survey, based on a sample of 2,400 consumers, revealed that some 60 percent of those respondents felt less than...

A new report says losses tied to fraudulent e-commerce activity will reach US$2.8 billion this year as professional scammers target fast-growing e-tail sites that are too large to manually verify each purchase but haven't yet implemented sophisticated anti-fraud measures. CyberSource, which offers p...

Jeanson Ancheta, 20, installed pop-up adware on the commandeered computers and rented his "botnet" -- or network of computers compromised by Trojan horses that allow remote control of the infected machine -- to other hackers for profit, prosecutors say. Ancheta is charged with 17 federal counts incl...

A fruitless prosecution against a teenager in English court highlights the inadequacy of that nation's cyberlaws to cope with denial of service attacks. The youth was accused of sending 5 million e-mails to a former employer, thereby shutting down the company's servers. The case did not fail because...

Government -- and industry -- executives are moving forward with plans to increase the use of authentication technologies, and prevent fraud online. The Direct Marketing Association, based in Chicago, two weeks ago issued a set of rules for its members, and the federal government, a few days earlier...

The standards for setting charges -- and later sentences -- for hackers differs dramatically on a state by state basis. But one thing is increasingly clear -- authorities are stepping up action against hackers of mobile phones, PDAs and conventional computer systems. New developments in mobile phone...

Federal authorities have broken up a massive piracy ring that they say was capable of producing millions of counterfeit music and software CDs. Three California men face a range of charges after being indicted by a federal grand jury in San Francisco on counterfeiting charges. The charges resulted f...

Symantec has announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire an agent-less IT security compliance software company in a US$209 million all-cash transaction. Symantec said the acquisition of BindView Development Corporation would allow it to offer customers an end-to-end solution for p...

Saying a consumer that is aware of online threats is essential to a strong U.S. economy, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has launched its most ambitious effort yet to educate Americans on the dangers lurking on the Web. The FTC joined today with cybersecurity experts in government and the private...

The FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies are investigating allegations of fraud by small charities -- or organizations posing as such charities -- that arose in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Online bill payment service PayPal, stepping up its security in response to the concerns over onli...