Fahmida Y. Rashid

A year after forking the OpenOffice.org project to create a community-driven office productivity suite, The Document Foundation estimated that LibreOffice has 25 million users worldwide. The Document Foundation and the LibreOffice marked their first anniversary on Sept. 28. OpenOffice.org developers originally created LibreOffice to break the software away from Oracle’s control after it appeared that […]

Retailers and merchants are still falling short of payment card security requirements, according to a new report. The latest Payment Card Industry Compliance Report found that a majority of small businesses in the United States, Europe and Asia have fallen short of maintaining compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS), Verizon Business […]

Mozilla fixed eight known security flaws in the latest version of the popular Firefox Web browser. Mozilla also fixed a cross-site scripting bug in Firefox 6, six weeks after its release. Firefox 7, released Sept. 27, contains fixes for six “critical” and two “moderate” vulnerabilities in Firefox, according to Mozilla’s security advisory. The Firefox 6 […]

BoxTone has added automated compliance management capabilities to its mobile device management software. The Enterprise Mobile Management platform has been updated to include a fully automated policy and compliance management engine, a real-time mobile security dashboard, analytics, alerting and audit reporting, BoxTone said Sept. 26. The EMM directly integrates with policy and security systems such […]

The Department of Defense is planning to extend the cyber-defense pilot program in which it shares classified threat intelligence with defense contractors and other companies. The Defense Industrial Base Cyber-Pilot provides member organizations with classified information about viruses, malware and other cyber-threats to help them defend against sophisticated attacks and network intrusions. The pilot will […]

Attackers are increasingly targeting email marketing firms and corporate email accounts to power their spam campaigns, Websense Security researchers reported. Websense Security Labs has observed a rise in spam being sent from corporate Webmail accounts, wrote David Saunders, email threat research team manager at Websense Security. More and more webmail accounts belonging to email marketing […]

The Senate Judiciary Committee approved three data security and privacy bills over strong objections from Republican members last week. The opposition may complicate efforts to pass comprehensive cyber-security legislation this year, observers said. Committee members voted along party lines, 10 to 8, on Sept. 22 to approve the bills introduced by Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), […]

Senators Al Franken (D-Minn.), Chris Coons (D-DE) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) are questioning the recent announcement by General Motors subsidiary, OnStar, that it would continue collecting data from customers even after they cancelled their service. OnStar collects data about the movements of its cars equipped with the OnStar service. The information is not just limited […]

Unknown attackers compromised the main Website of open-source database MySQL and served malware to unsuspecting visitors for a short period of time on Sept. 26. Attackers injected JavaScript code on MySQL.com, owned by Oracle, to divert visitors to malicious Websites hosting the BlackHole exploit kit, which automatically downloaded malware to the victimized computers, according to […]

Homeland Security and Commerce departments are considering a voluntary program in which Internet service providers will proactively detect infected computers participating in a botnet. The Department of Homeland Security, National Telecommunications and Information Administration and the National Institute of Standards and Technology published a request for comments on the proposal, posted on the Federal Register […]