Sean Michael Kerner

In the cloud world, there are applications that can be enabled with a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offering and then there are the infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) providers on which the PaaS itself can be run. VMware spinoff Pivotal, today announced that its open-source Cloud Foundry PaaS will now leverage the OpenStack IaaS from Piston Cloud Computing. Additionally, Joshua […]

Sitting behind Verizon’s annual Data Breach and Investigations report is the Vocabulary for Event Recording and Incident Sharing, or VERIS, a framework for understanding and recording security breaches. One of the most import aspects of the Verizon DBIR is the sharing of information about how data breaches happen, Chris Porter, managing principal for the Verizon […]

If someone doesn’t play by the rules and still wins, should he be rewarded? That’s a question that the information security industry is now grappling with. Late last week, a security researcher defaced the Facebook wall belonging to CEO Mark Zuckerberg in an attempt to convince the social networking giant that there was a security […]

The stable Linux 3.10 kernel received not one, but two updates in the span of less than seven hours on Aug. 20, after a small development mishap. The new updates provide additional driver and stability support for Linux 3.10, which was recently designated as a long-term supported kernel, which will be maintained for at least […]

Google is updating the stable version of its Chrome browser to version 29.0.1547.57 across the Windows, Mac and Linux operating system platforms. The new update includes at least 25 security fixes as well as an improved Omnibox search capability and a new browser reset feature. In any given Google Chrome update, Google credits and rewards […]

Firefox 24: The Road to Australis by Sean Michael Kerner Firefox 23 Recently Updated on Windows The most recent stable update for Firefox is version 23, first released Aug. 6. An incremental Firefox 23.0.1 update issued Aug. 16 fixed a trio of bugs in spell-checking, video and audio features. Firefox 23 Runs Well on Mac […]

The open-source FreeBSD operating system is often in the shadow of its open-source cousin, Linux. FreeBSD is, however, a mature and stable operating system that is now quite literally at the very core foundation of what makes the Internet work. Global DNS and dot-com Top Level Domain operator VeriSign is among FreeBSD’s users and is […]

Earlier this month, a pair of private email services shut down over fears that they could not guarantee user privacy in the wake of the recent revelations about the National Security Agency’s domestic online surveillance activities. Now, that fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) has claimed another victim—the popular Groklaw, a Linux and open-source legal site. […]

Facebook is one of the world’s most popular social networking destinations and a favorite target for hackers and security researchers alike. Two incidents this past week demonstrate the breadth and the limitations of Facebook’s current security model. In the first incident, a security researcher exposed a vulnerability in Facebook by publicly exploiting the account of […]

In March of this year, cyber-attackers launched the largest distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack against the Internet ever reported. At the heart of efforts to blunt that attack was the CloudFlare platform, which was able to successfully defend against the massive onslaught and keep its clients online throughout the epic attack. How did CloudFlare do it? […]

The open-source PHP language is one of the most widely deployed technologies on the Web today, powering millions of Websites (including eWEEK). This past week, two important updates were issued for PHP, providing both security and bug fixes. Like many things in the open-source world (and technology in general), there isn’t just one version of […]

The Washington Post reported Thursday, Aug. 15 that it had been the victim of an attack by a group known as the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA). The intrusion involved both a phishing attack against a staff writer’s Twitter account as well as some Washington Post page redirections by way of an exploit of the Outbrain […]