Fahmida Y. Rashid

A lawsuit filed in Washington state accused Microsoft of tracking Windows Phone users without their consent even after users have opted out of information sharing. Microsoft is allegedly developing a targeted location-based advertisement system and is using Windows Phone users to collect the information about the locations of cell towers and wireless networks, said plaintiff […]

The United States Department of Homeland Security warned the security community about potential attacks from hacking collective Anonymous over the next few months.The Sept. 2 security bulletin from the DHS National Cyber-Security and Communications Integration Center warned financial services companies to be on the lookout for attackers operating under the Anonymous umbrella to “solicit ideologically […]

It seems Anonymous and law enforcement authorities are busy one-upping each other. Someone gets arrested, the hacktivist collective expresses its anger by defacing yet another Website. It’s becoming a never ending cycle. In the latest round of one-upmanship, Anonymous attacked and defaced the Texas Police Chief Association Website on Sept. 1. The attackers also leaked […]

Successful attacks typically exploit zero-day vulnerabilities and frequently change the attacking domains and code binaries to avoid detection, according to a new FireEye report. About 80 percent of enterprises in the report were hit with more than 100 new infections per week in the first half of 2011, according to a report from FireEye Malware […]

The Internet expanded by 2.5 percent in the second quarter of 2011 over the first quarter, VeriSign reported in its latest report. There were 5.2 million more domains by the end of the second quarter, the report found. More than 215 million domain names were registered across all top level domains at the second quarter […]

It has not been a good week for WikiLeaks, what with its documents being leaked and its being hit by a denial of service attack from Anonymous. Oh, the irony. Earlier this week, whistleblower WikiLeaks made public over 250,000 diplomatic cables belonging to United States diplomats without redacting any sensitive information, such as the names […]

Intel Capital, the chip giant’s global investment organization is investing in mobile device security vendor Mocana, Adrian Turner, CEO of Mocana, told eWEEK. The investment is part of a strategic partnership between the two companies to collaborate on both hardware and software security, Mocana said Sept. 1. Mocana declined to discuss the specific amount Intel […]

Android Google based its Android mobile operating system on a Linux kernel. At latest estimates, Android is dominating the smartphone market with more than 40 percent market share, according to research firm Canalys. Google’s Chrome OS for laptops is also based on Linux. OS of Choice for Servers Linux now runs the majority of the […]

California has updated its data breach notification law to further define what organizations have to do in case customer data is stolen. The bill, SB-24, updates California’s current data breach notification law by requiring organizations to include in the breach notification letters the specifics of the security incident and advice on steps customers should take. […]

Juniper Networks has rolled out antivirus and other security measures specifically to protect virtual machines in its virtual gateway platform. The new vGW Virtual Gateway offers virtualization-specific antivirus protections and continuous monitoring against malware and external intruders. Juniper, which made the announcement Aug. 29 at the start of the VMworld conference in Las Vegas, is […]

Attackers have compromised several key servers at kernel.org, which houses the source code for the Linux kernel. The likelihood of attackers modifying the actual source code is very low since the code is distributed across thousands of developer machines, according to developers who help maintain the code. Attackers modified a number of files and logged […]

Virtual desktops with security built-in are coming soon to enterprises and IT service providers, according to Symantec and VMware. Symantec and VMware expanded their strategic partnership to offer desktop-as-a-service applications with integrated security and management, Symantec said Aug. 31. The combined offering will combine Symantec Endpoint Protection and the Altiris Client Management Suite with VMware’s […]