Cybersecurity

Oh, there have been some good National Security Agency revelations. Like the one about the NSA tapping German Chancellor Angela Merkel's phone. Or the one about the NSA planting agents inside World of Warcraft, or impersonating Facebook in a global quest to spread malware. Delicious as all those sto...

The National Security Agency reportedly possesses a system that enables it to record telephone calls -- all telephone calls -- in a foreign country, and review conversations for up to a month after they took place. The system is said to be akin to a time machine, allowing for retroactive snooping on...

SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

Target Breach Lesson: PCI Compliance Isn’t Enough

"Target was certified as meeting the standard for the payment card industry in September 2013. Nonetheless, we suffered a data breach." Those words by Target Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer Gregg Steinhafel affirmed what security experts know as gospel: Compliance does not equal sec...

When I was 10 years old, I took my first trip to Disney World. The futuristic rides in Tomorrow Land were my favorites. In particular, I loved "The Carousel of Progress," which, at the time, was an attraction designed by General Electric to showcase its new technologies at the 1964 New York World's ...

CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted on Facebook that he called President Obama to complain about NSA surveillance. "The Internet is our shared space," he wrote. Most people and companies "work together to create this secure environment and make our shared space even better for the world. When our engineers w...

The latest Snowden revelations about NSA surveillance activities indicate the agency could infect millons of computers with malware, and has spoofed Facebook servers to capture traffic from targets. Documents previously leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden include detailed descriptions of its ...

Apple, Microsoft, Google and Cisco have accumulated enormous amounts of money via interest payments from the U.S. government, according to a report from the UK's Bureau of Investigative Journalism. The companies together hold $163 billion in U.S. government debt. Of that $163 billion, $124 billion i...

A powerful U.S. senator has accused the CIA of spying on a network drive legislative staffers used to prepare a report on abuses -- including torture -- in the agency's detention and interrogation program. The search may have violated not only the separation of powers clause of the U.S. Constitution...

Security forces in Ukraine, where tensions are running exceedingly high after weeks-worth of turmoil, have accused the Russian army of tampering with its mobile communications. In addition, cyberattacks have been carried out against Ukrainian news websites and social media, which have been smeared w...

Officials partaking in China's National People's Congress, which began Wednesday, have been asked to please not mess around on their mobile devices during the session. A state-owned newspaper published a list of rules for attendees, including this one: "Do not use your phones to send text messages o...

SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

Galaxy S5 Could Win Over Mobile Payment Skeptics

Consumers love their smartphones, but a substantial number of them don't love using them to pay for purchases. With Samsung's introduction of its Galaxy S5 phone last week, the company is betting it can change some of those consumers' minds on that subject. Like Apple's iPhone 5s, the S5 has a finge...

Less than two months after publicly announcing that he was pulling out of the RSA Security Conference because RSA had accepted a $10 million contract from the NSA, F-Secure chief researcher Mikko Hypponen appeared somewhat mellowed. He alternated between criticizing RSA and offering an olive branch ...

Britain's Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, reportedly intercepted and collected millions of images of people via Yahoo webcam chats, some of which were sexually explicit. As part of the surveillance program, dubbed "Optic Nerve," GCHQ saved images from webcams on agency databases reg...

Boeing this week filed an application with the United States Federal Communications Commission for a secure Android smartphone called the "Black" that will self-destruct if anyone tries to physically open the case. The company will offer it to the U.S. defense and security communities. "With hardwar...

TECH TREK

Windows XP to Live On in China

A handful of Chinese Web companies are banding together to provide user support -- system upgrades, security services and the like -- to domestic users after Microsoft turns out the lights on Windows XP. Microsoft announced that it's going to punt on Windows XP in early April. Alas, an estimated 25-...

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