News

• Copies of anti-censorship software used in Iran and Syria contain keylogger

  By Lucian Constantin | 30 May, 2012 15:11

  Rogue copies of Green Simurgh, an Internet proxy software application used in Iran and Syria, have been found to contain malware that records users' activities and keystrokes.

• Yahoo leaks private key, allows anyone to build Yahoo-signed Chrome extensions

  By Lucian Constantin | 24 May, 2012 16:41

  Yahoo was forced to release a new version of its Axis extension for Google Chrome after the original one contained a private key that allowed anyone to digitally sign extensions in Yahoo's name.

• Microsoft opens New York research lab, hires mainly Yahoo researchers

  By John Ribeiro | 03 May, 2012 17:03

  Microsoft is opening Thursday a research lab in New York city that aims to benefit from interaction with the academic and tech communities in the metropolitan area, as well as attract new talent to Microsoft, the company said.

• Most of the Internet's top 200,000 HTTPS websites are insecure, Trustworthy Internet Movement says

  By Lucian Constantin | 27 April, 2012 02:51

  Ninety percent of the Internet's top 200,000 HTTPS-enabled websites are vulnerable to known types of SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) attack, according to a report released Thursday by the Trustworthy Internet Movement (TIM), a nonprofit organization dedicated to solving Internet security, privacy and reliability problems.

• Russian-speaking cybercriminals earned $4.5 billion in 2011, researchers estimate

  By Loek Essers | 24 April, 2012 14:07

  Russian-speaking hackers earned an estimated US$4.5 billion globally using various online criminal tactics and are thus responsible for 36 percent of the estimated total of $12.5 billion earned globally by cybercriminals in 2011, Russian security analyst firm Group-IB said in a report published on Tuesday.

• Vodafone protects smartphone communications with 'Secure SIM'

  By Mikael Ricknäs | 06 March, 2012 04:15

  Vodafone has developed a new SIM card that can be used on smartphones to provide secure access to data networks and tap-proof telephone calls as well as email and text message encryption, the operator said on Monday at the Cebit trade show.

• Mozilla gives CAs a chance to come clean about certificate policy violations

  By Lucian Constantin | 21 February, 2012 01:24

  Mozilla has asked all certificate authorities (CAs) to revoke subordinate CA certificates currently used for corporate SSL traffic management, offering an amnesty to any CAs that had breached Mozilla's conditions for having their root certificates ship with its products.

• Crypto experts analyze millions of X.509 certificates, call RSA crypto flawed

  By Ellen Messmer | 15 February, 2012 10:27

  Cryptography researchers collected millions of X.509 public-key certificates that are publicly available over the web and found what they say is a shockingly high frequency of duplicate RSA-moduli keys.

• Startup with heavy Russian connections offers crypto authentication service

  By Ellen Messmer | 14 February, 2012 22:33

  Can a security startup based in Bedford, N.H., which relies on Russian cryptography expertise from Moscow, bring about a revolution in the way that users authenticate to gain access to websites today and secure data?

• Researchers crack satellite encryption

  By Ellen Messmer | 09 February, 2012 09:27

  Researchers at a university in Bochum, Germany claim to have cracked encryption algorithms of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) that are used to secure certain civilian satellite phone communications.

• Why one insurance company ditched its own hardware- for a cloud -based SAN

  By Ellen Messmer | 09 February, 2012 01:29

  Why do some enterprise managers decide to brave their way into the new and unknown of cloud-based services? Sometimes it's simply because the old technology just isn't working out that well anymore.

• Twitter to open source Android security tech

  By Nancy Gohring | 21 December, 2011 08:25

  Twitter plans to open source some of the Android security products built by the developers behind Whisper Systems, which Twitter acquired last month.

• Get Clicking: Free Downloads That Are Worth a Donation

  By Erez Zukerman | 13 December, 2011 01:30

  People often think of software as either commercial (including shareware), or free (including open-source offerings). But somewhere in between lies another large category of software: donationware. The creators of such programs give the software away for free, in the hope that appreciative users will donate to support the application or a cause the developer wishes to promote. In this article I cover lesser-known gems.

• MobileIron's management software prepares for Android

  By Nancy Gohring | 30 November, 2011 22:00

  MobileIron hopes to help businesses prepare for what it believes will be an onslaught of Android phones in 2012 with an updated version of its mobile device management software.

• Twitter scoops up mobile security developer Whisper Systems

  By Nancy Gohring | 29 November, 2011 06:26

  Twitter may be planning to boost its mobile security options with the acquisition of Whisper Systems, a company that offers security products for Android phones.