Fahmida Y. Rashid

While corporate giants such as IBM, Novell,and Red Hat continue to play a significant role in Linux kernel development, wireless companies and their suppliers are rapidly stepping up, according to a report from the Linux Foundation. The Linux Kernel Development report, released Dec. 1, examines how fast it’s growing and the developers contributing to the […]

Red Hat acquired cloud application deployment and management platform firm Makara to boost its platform-as-a-service credentials. Red Hat and Makara executives discussed the acquisition during a morning phone conference Nov. 30. Red Hat has been “delivering scalable and flexible cloud infrastructure” before cloud computing became popular, said Paul Cormier, executive vice president and president of […]

Botnet Boon: How Scammers Cash In by Fahmida Y. Rashid Rob the Bank: Zeus Trojan Clicking on links in spam or opening malware attachments lets the Zeus Trojan compromise vulnerable browsers. The Trojan captures log-in credentials and stealthily siphons off small amounts of money from the bank account. The FBI arrested a gang that stole […]

The developers behind the Zeus and SpyEye Trojans have joined forces to create one major botnet, with sophisticated capabilities to attack user bank accounts, according to security researchers. Malware authors aren’t sitting still as law enforcement officials arrest cyber-gangs stealing millions of dollars from compromised bank accounts. There is a lot of financial incentive to […]

After weeks of speculation, Seagate Technology has ended discussions with private equity firms about taking the company private. Instead, it will start a $2 billion stock repurchase program. The company made the announcement after the stock market closed Nov. 29. Seagate canceled talks “principally because it determined that the indications of the valuation range were […]

Apple is notoriously reticent about providing information about upcoming products, but that doesn’t stop the Apple faithful from speculating. The latest rumor making the rounds of Apple blogs predicts the next MacBook Pro notebook will move to solid-state drives. Mark Reschke from the Three-Guys-And-A-Podcast blog wrote Nov. 24 that Apple will be launching the “all-new […]

A report on virtual security management underscores the wide gap between what needs to be done to secure virtualized environments and what IT managers are actually doing, said CA Technologies on Nov. 29. Business and IT executives across 15 countries reported serious security concerns about data sprawl, hypervisor privilege, and other privacy and compliance issues […]

Comcast subscribers up and down the East Coast lost Internet access on Nov. 28. While the company said access was restored, there were still a handful of users reporting issues as of Monday morning. Comcast’s customer service initially reported an “Internet-related issue” on Twitter under the account Comcastcares late Sunday evening before following up with, […]

Expanding their focus from Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals, cyber-criminals are also targeting invitations to Thanksgiving dinner, security researchers warned Nov. 24. Users searching for Thanksgiving Day invitations online may encounter dangerous malware, according to a security alert posted by CyberDefender Research Labs. The researchers found a “high concentration” of fake antivirus products that […]

More online storage companies are increasing storage limits for free accounts in order to attract new users and to keep existing ones from switching elsewhere. The latest storage service to boost storage limits for free accounts from 2GB to 5G is Pro Softnet, with its IDrive Online Backup product. Mobile Media also said its Jupiter […]

Novell’s ZENworks PC management suite illustrates the unsettled times in which many Novell customers now find themselves. The company Nov. 11 released the latest version of the software, which offers businesses greater manageability and virtualization capabilities. Then, less than two weeks later, Novell announced that it was being bought by Attachmate. Now users are beginning […]

Microsoft has decided to remove its Drive Extender storage technology from the upcoming versions of Small Business Server Essentials, Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials and Windows Home Server. The decision was announced Nov. 23 on the Windows Home Server blog by Michael Leworthy, a Microsoft product manager. Noting that “large hard drives of over […]