Sean Michael Kerner

Mozilla has delivered the beta version of its open-source Firefox 24 browser to provide developers and early adopters with a preview of technologies that will be generally available for consumers next month. The Firefox 24 Beta release follows hot on the heels of last week’s release of the Firefox 23 browser, which includes new security […]

For the last 10 years, the Pirate Bay Torrent search site has thumbed its nose at legal authorities around the world, making copyright-protected applications, games and movies available via its site. It’s an effort that the Pirate Bay is aiming to continue even in places where the site is blocked by ISPs and governments. While […]

Since the dawn of the Web era, one technology has steadfastly dominated as the world’s most popular Web server. That technology is the open-source Apache Web Server, commonly referred to simply as “Apache.” Internet research and security services firm Netcraft is now reporting that across the nearly 717 million Websites it has surveyed this month, […]

The chill that Americans continue to feel from the fallout over revelations related to National Security Agency surveillance of online activities is extending down the spine today as not one, but two encrypted email services are shutting down. Lavabit, an encrypted email service that allegedly counted NSA leaker Ed Snowden among its userbase, is suspending […]

The HP TippingPoint Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) sits at a very opportune place in the modern IT security threat ecosystem. Instead of just waiting to discover threats, ZDI buys security vulnerabilities from researchers in an effort to help secure both HP customers and the broader industry. Sitting at the top of ZDI for the last […]

Single sign-on (SSO) mechanisms offer the promise of users having a single credential (the sign-on) in order to log into multiple sites and services. When it comes to the Web, there are multiple sources of identity to power SSO, and open-source browser vendor Mozilla wants to be one of them. Mozilla launched its BrowserID effort […]

Microsoft has issued its advanced notification for the upcoming Patch Tuesday update cycle, set to be released on Aug. 13. I personally have never been a big fan of the advanced notification because, quite frankly, the information is somewhat vague and I prefer to just wait for the real deal and all the related important […]

When one company buys another, a lot of things are in motion, and one area that is often overlooked in my experience is security. In the case of Microsoft’s acquisition last year of enterprise social networking vendor Yammer, that apparently does not seem to be the case. Microsoft acquired Yammer in July 2012 for $1.2 […]

Google’s Android mobile operating system has emerged to become a dominant force in the smartphone landscape. Sitting at the core of Android is Linux as well as a long list of open-source technologies. Many people mistakenly think that Android itself is all open source, but the harsh reality is that from a usable handset perspective, […]

Twitter is aiming to improve security for its users with an improved two-factor log-in verification system that goes beyond the SMS-based system that the company first deployed two months ago. Security experts eWeek spoke with have mixed opinions on whether Twitter’s latest attempt at user security will really make a difference. Two-factor authentication refers to […]

For almost as long as there have been Web browsers, there have been Web browser mechanisms to help users store passwords for the sites they visit. The benefit of the password managers is ease of use for users, but inevitably in my experience, at one point or another, those browser-based password management systems fail in […]

The open-source Apache Software Foundation (ASF) is out this week with the Flex 4.10.0 update, which I consider to be a major new release of the Flex project. Flex is what was once referred to as an RIA (rich Internet application) Framework, and it enables developers to build modern expressive Websites, leveraging Adobe’s Flash technology. […]