Fahmida Y. Rashid

Hidden Under the Car The tracking device is mounted under the car and is designed to be inconspicuous. And the courts have thus far ruled that an FBI agent can sneak onto your driveway to slip it under your car. The FBI Vehicle Tracker The device actually has two parts, the GPS receiver and the […]

PDF files, which convenient for sharing documents via e-mail, have also become a popular attack vector. While Adobe has worked hard to fix vulnerabilities in Acrobat and Reader, it has been a challenge for IT departments to make sure all versions of the software within the enterprise are up-to-date. On May 9, HBGary released AcroScrub, […]

Four hackers gained access to a database of fox.com e-mail accounts and Twitter accounts of two affiliates just for fun, or “lulz.” Calling itself Lulz Security, the group appeared to have stolen login credentials for e-mail and LinkedIn accounts belonging to Fox.com employees, and a database file containing names, phone numbers and e-mail addresses of […]

Adobe released Flash Player 10.3 with enhanced privacy controls and security fixes for 11 remote code execution vulnerabilities. A mere month after Adobe rolled out an update to Adobe Flash Player to address several zero-day vulnerabilities Adobe updated the software again on May 12. The Flash Player had 11 serious bugs, some of which “could […]

Facebook rolled out three new security measures to try to prove that it cares about user privacy. The social networking site now features two-factor authentication to secure the login process, a secondary step to thwart clickjacking scams and a new surfing tool to rate the safety of links, Clement Genzmer, a Facebook security engineer, wrote […]

A new bill to give the federal government the power to shut down Websites “dedicated to infringing activities,” is currently making the rounds in the U.S. Senate. The bill, if passed, would give the government the power to shut down piracy sites. “Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property” or […]

The Obama administration has unveiled a cyber-security plan to provide protection for critical infrastructure, data-breach-notification laws and cyber-defense. The plan closely endorses the bill sponsored by Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada that is currently under consideration in Congress. The White House proposal addresses how to protect critical infrastructure, including electric grids, financial systems and transportation […]

Google’s newly announced Chromebook poses some interesting security concerns, as it protects the endpoint while leaving the data vulnerable to attackers, a Kaspersky Lab expert said. Announced at Google I/O conference on May 11, the Chromebook is a Chrome OS-based netbook that stores all the information in the cloud. There is no local storage, so […]

Software piracy jumped 14 percent worldwide, costing software companies about $59 billion, according to the Business Software Alliance. However, a security firm said the total costs should be much higher. The rate of software piracy hit 42 percent worldwide but is most concentrated in emerging markets, the Business Software Alliance found in its annual report […]

Enterprises interested in using Ubuntu Server to power their cloud infrastructure will be using the OpenStack cloud platform and not Eucalyptus, Canonical announced. The decision was not entirely unexpected. Future versions of Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud package will be based on the OpenStack as a foundation technology, Canonical said at the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Budapest, […]

Botnets continue to be the backbone of cyber-crime, with four of the top 10 threats in 2010 getting regular instructions from malicious command-and-control-servers, Microsoft said in a recent report. Phishing on social networks also became more prevalent in 2010. While the Taterf, Rimecud, Conficker and Renos worms continued to wreak havoc on user systems, attacks […]

The extent to which Microsoft will integrate Skype into its existing products remains unclear and will give security vendors some headaches after the acquisition. If Microsoft’s $8.5 billion deal for Skype goes through, the VOIP (voice-over-IP) provider will become a business division within Microsoft headed by Skype CEO Tony Bates. Skype’s services will be meshed […]