Fahmida Y. Rashid

Despite the flurry of privacy bills that have been introduced in Congress recently, legal experts don’t expect to see a comprehensive privacy-protection law being passed anytime soon. There have been a lot of discussions about implementing the “Do Not Track” measure to give consumers a way to opt out of data tracking and to control […]

The volume of malware continued to increase in April as online scammers and malware distributors took advantage of major events according to security experts. Fake antivirus software and poisoned image search links were particularly prevalent in April. There were over 73,000 new variants of malware released daily in April, a 26 percent increase over April […]

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 […]