Security

Consumers' understanding of what encryption does apparently doesn't determine whether they use the technology, as iPhone owners are much more likely to use encryption than Android users. Most Android phones are not encrypted, either by user choice or manufacturer design. About 95 percent of all iPho...

Tens of millions of Linux PCs and servers, as well as 66 percent of all Android mobile devices, are vulnerable to a zero-day flaw that could allow users with lower-level privileges to gain root access, according to Perception Point, which announced its discovery last week. The local privilege escala...

Researchers last week revealed a zero-day flaw that lets attackers take over a Linux system by pressing the backspace key repeatedly. Pressing backspace 17 to 20 times will overwrite the highest byte of the return address of the grub_memset() function, ultimately causing a reboot by redirecting cont...

Open source developers apparently don't adhere to best practices such as using static analysis and conducting regular security audits, found Coverity's Spotlight report, released Wednesday. The Coverity Scan service, which is available at no charge to open source projects, helped devs find and fix a...

The connected car is becoming a reality, but the gadget-filled roadways it travels will be paved with several options for in-car technologies. These choices pose challenges for carmakers. Whichever technology wins the race, one of the biggest concerns for OEMs is their electronic security. The Linux...

Software developers routinely use open source components to boost productivity and improve the quality of their code. The problem for enterprises is that companies using open source must properly manage it and comply with its licensing, as with any third-party code. That becomes difficult to do when...

The Web has been abuzz with discussion of the HeartBleed flaw. Security vendors and experts have been falling all over themselves to offer advice on detecting or mitigating the flaw; consultants have been offering businesses advice on how to deal with the problem; businesses with websites have been ...

In the war against malware, a new strategy is taking shape. The good guys are preparing to demolish the bad guys' most effective weapons: rogue websites. The Secure Domain Foundation will tackle the identification and prevention of Internet cybercrime through a series of steps designed to interfere ...

Security and privacy concerns may be far outweighed for many users by the convenience and appeal of the cloud, but users need to view cloud access as more than just another storage utility on the desktop. That's according to Derek Labian, CEO of cloud storage service MediaFire. Instead, cloud users ...

As CEO of AlienVault, Barmak Meftah faces enemies every day who play out their attacks from faraway lands using seemingly unbeatable weapons. One of the weapons AlienVault uses with the support of the open source community is a global report called the Open Threat Exchange that tracks threats to com...

GoAnywhere OpenPGP Studio is an easy-to-use, cross-platform desktop tool by Linoma Software that protects files using the OpenPGP encryption standard. Why opt for this relative newcomer instead of other, more mature open standards-based encryption solutions? If for no other reason, OpenPGP Studio is...

Politics may make for strange bedfellows, but there's no comparison to the match-ups that occur in the business world. Consider this: Mozilla, which has been flexing its muscles of late and pushing into the smartphone business and foreign markets, announced on Wednesday that it has teamed up with th...

Android has become a mobile malware magnet, according to F-Secure. A whopping 79 percent of all mobile malware targeted the Google OS in 2012, based on a new report from the firm. That was up from 66.7 percent in 2011 and just 11.25 percent in 2010. The fourth quarter of 2012 was particularly bad,...

Sandia National Laboratories announced on Tuesday that it has set up a network of 300,000 Android virtual handheld computing devices to study large networks of smartphones. The project, called "MegaDroid," is expected to result in a software tool that will let other cyber-researchers model similar e...