Sean Michael Kerner

KDE 5 Delivers New Linux Desktop Environment by Sean Michael Kerner KDE Is an Open-Source Project The development of the KDE desktop is an open-source project, and from a financial perspective is backed by KDE e.V., which is a registered nonprofit organization. KDE 5 Desktop Theme Default Is Breeze KDE 5 users have multiple options […]

Goodwill alone might not be enough to protect Goodwill Industries from hackers seeking to gain financial reward. Goodwill Industries is an international organization that seeks to help out families and individuals with job training and other services. Goodwill also operates a retail operation that sells donated goods to help fund its operations. According to Goodwill, […]

Once again, media outlets have been targeted by attackers seeking to gain attention and disseminate false information. The Wall Street Journal’s Facebook page was hacked July 20, and in a separate incident, MSNBC.com had some of its short link addresses redirected, according to a report on July 21. The Wall Street Journal noted on its […]

Edward Snowden doesn’t want to be known just as a whistleblower, he wants to be a defender of individual privacy. That’s a message that Snowden reiterated during a remote appearance at the Hackers On Planet Earth (HOPE) conference in New York on July 19. Snowden has been on the run from U.S. authorities for the […]

During a session at the upcoming Black Hat security conference that starts Aug. 5 in Las Vegas, independent security consultant Jesus Molina is set to expose the risks of hotel automation systems. In a Black Hat preview webcast July 18, Molina provided a few details on his talk “Learn How to Control Every Room at […]

Bitcoin continues on the path toward broader usage this week, as U.S. state governments and IT tech vendors make moves. The New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS) released its proposed framework for Bitcoin regulation on July 17. The framework involves the proposed BitLicense, which will regulate Bitcoin and other virtual currency services in […]

On May 21, eBay first publicly acknowledged that one of its databases was breached and advised users to change their passwords. In the months since then, eBay has offered little commentary on the breach—that is, until July 16, during the company’s second-quarter financial results call with analysts. During the call, both the CEO and CFO […]

In a move that could shake up the nascent OpenStack cloud market, Oracle has partnered with Mirantis for OpenStack cloud technology. The partnership will bring commercial support for Mirantis OpenStack customers that want to deploy clouds with Oracle Linux and Oracle VM technologies. The partnership does not currently extend to certify Mirantis OpenStack to run […]

Red Hat today announced the Inktank Ceph Enterprise 1.2 storage platform, the first Ceph Enterprise release since Red Hat acquired Inktank. Red Hat announced the acquisition of privately held Inktank on April 30 for $175 million in cash. While the new Inktank release is the first under Red Hat’s ownership, it was not directly influenced […]

Oracle released its July Critical Patch Update (CPU) on July 15, providing 113 security fixes impacting multiple applications within its product portfolio. While the security update is new, a pair of vulnerabilities that Oracle is fixing in its newer Oracle 12 database were fixed a year ago in the older Oracle 11 database. Oracle Database […]

Akamai Analyzes Q1 Shifts in Internet, Security Landscape by Sean Michael Kerner China Still Top Source for Attack Traffic As was the case in the fourth quarter of 2013, China topped the list as the top originating point for attack traffic in the first quarter of 2014. UPnP Increasingly a Target Universal Plug and Play […]

Love them or hate them, passwords are a day-to-day reality in the modern world and can’t be avoided. Although they are supposed to secure users, more often than not, they have been the mechanisms by which hackers are able to exploit users, too. Passwords are not dead, nor should they be, but their responsible and […]