President Obama's implication that the government should never have an issue accessing a person's data comes an even scarier viewpoint: being the victim of a search warrant just because you take steps to enhance your privacy.As it happens, that could become the reality if the FBI gets its way. While it's no secret that government agencies spy…
Sony had a huge weekend celebrating the PlayStation’s 20th anniversary with the release of a special edition 20th Anniversary PlayStation 4 and hosting the PlayStation Experience, at which the company revealed many new titles coming to its gaming platforms. However, Sony’s PlayStation Network (PSN) suffered outages due to denial-of-service attacks over the weekend courtesy of…
Kmart is the latest major retailer to fall prey to a hacker attack resulting in the theft of customer data. The company's IT department discovered a data breach in Kmart's payment data systems and immediately launched a full-scale investigation. Based on initial findings, it's believed that the breach began in early September.Investigators believe that the…
Privacy is becoming quite the profitable enterprise for those who can offer it. That includes Les Goldsmith, Chief Executive Officer of ESD America, maker of the CryptoPhone 500. What's special about the CrytpoPhone 500 is that it sports a Samsung Galaxy S III body with a "hardened" version of Android that has had 468 vulnerabilities…
miniLock app makes Encryption easy!
Use of encryption is on the rise. More than ever before encryption is being adopted by criminals, governments, and wise technology users. The U.S. court systems annual report on law enforcement eavesdropping in 2013 stated that encryption foiled state police attempts to serveil criminal suspects in 9 different cases. That…
If you’re in a coffee shop and you notice a few tables away a man is enjoying his beverage and logging into his iPad, can you steal his PIN? The answer to that question would depend on whether or not you could see his screen; thanks to new gadgets like Google Glass or smart watches…
Have you been a victim of a scam? Cybercriminals trick millions of innocent people into giving away sensitive information. Now you're wondering how “to mitigate this situation?” We all make stupid mistakes. But with these sorts of mistakes, you have to act fast to avoid disaster. What you need to do depends on how you were…
The National Security Agency is collecting millions of images intercepted from global communications for a facial-recognition program to identify and track intelligence targets, according to classified documents described by The New York Times.The agency is using sophisticated software to harvest "millions of images per day" from emails, text messages, social media, videoconferences, and other communications,…
A pair of healthcare organizations have agreed to pay a combined $4.8 million to settle charges that they potentially violated the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (otherwise known as HIPAA). The charges were the consequence of a data breach in which protected health information of thousands of patients was compromised.An investigation into…
Microsoft has issued a fix for a dangerous Internet Explorer bug that left the browser highly vulnerable across every major version, including those that run on Windows XP.The patch, delivered at 10 a.m. Thursday, comes out of Microsoft's usual Patch Tuesday cycle because of its severity. It affected IE 6 through 11 and allowed attackers…
Microsoft may have retired Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) last week, but it's still keeping track of the ancient browser's user share on a death watch-like website that's been running for more than three years. IE6 launched in August 2001, about two months before Windows XP shipped. Microsoft issued the final security update for IE6 on April…
The Heartbleed bug is one of the biggest security flaws the Internet has known. Internet research firm Netcraft estimates that as many as 500,000 websites could be affected. Since hackers can exploit Heartbleed to steal user data -- Canadian police yesterday arrested a man who allegedly used Heartbleed to steal user data from the government's…