security

The German government has issued an official warning that citizens should avoid using Internet Explorer. It's a response to a recently discovered flaw in the browser that is believed to have been exploited by hackers attacking Google in China. ... Germans Expect Flaw to be Widely Exposed Soon The warning comes from the Federal Office for Information Security, known locally as the Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik (BSI). The warning, which was translated via Google Translate, read: "The BSI expects that [the Internet Explorer] vulnerability will be used [very soon] for attacks on ...<a href="/news/5401/avoid-internet-explorer-says-german-government" class="more-link">view more

If you're still running an old version of Adobe's popular Flash player plug-in, you'd better update, says Microsoft. The software giant, which rarely tells customers to halt their use of another company's wares, has had it with the many bugs and ... security vulnerabilities in Flash Player 6.0, released several years ago. In response to multiple bugs and a slew of security vulnerabilities, Microsoft has through its most recent Security Advisory (#979267) told users that they should either uninstall Flash Player 6.0 or immediately switch to a newer edition of the plugin. Threats Include Remote ... (view more)

A new report suggests Microsoft has now pocketed a 6 per cent global market share for its new operating system (OS) Windows 7. That's good news for Microsoft, but it could spell big trouble for users in both the developed and developing world who ... don't make the upgrade from Windows XP. In a frightening new report earlier this week, Finland's most prominent security company F-Secure found that the global shift towards Windows 7 could open up a new gap between users of the new, more secure operating system and those stuck with the outdated and soon-to-be unsupported Windows XP. Shift to Win7 to ... (view more)

A range of security experts say the crusade by search engines to include "real-time" results from social networking sites will undoubtedly make life easier for hackers. Such word comes hot on the heels of a report suggesting sites like Facebook and ... Twitter now pose a risk to businesses. As we reported last week, Google is trying out a new feature which lists results for a search term in real time . That means that for popular topics there's no longer a lengthy waiting period while web pages are scanned and indexed: instead they are constantly monitored and appear in a special results section ... (view more)

Seadragon Seadragon a nifty online viewer designed for very large images. Seadragon.com (from Microsoft Labs) is a free web service designed to view, zoom, pan-into, and share large images on the internet without degrading them or otherwise making ... them smaller. http://www.seadragon.com Win7 Security Compliance Toolkit From Microsoft: The Windows 7 Security Compliance Management Toolkit provides an end-to-end solution to help you plan, deploy, and monitor the security baselines of computers running Windows 7 and BitLocker Drive Encryption in your environment. http://technet.microsoft.com Today ... (view more)

With the limited number of hacks being reported for popular smartphone models like the Apple iPhone , many owners feel an added sense of safety when pressing the "on" button. However, according to a statement made by computer security firm F-Secure, ... people need not worry about protection against viruses, so much as protection against spying tools. F-Secure stressed their concern over the ever-increasing number of companies selling spyware products that target smartphones like the iPhone and BlackBerry, where users could manually install the spyware themselves. Phone Spyware: Infects in Two ... (view more)

The iPhone has been hit by a virus for the second time this month. And this time the consequences are more significant than an unwanted picture of Rick Astley . A couple of weeks ago, a worm virus left some users of the iPhone with the image of 80s ... singer Rick Astley as their wallpaper. The virus only worked on phones which had been jailbroken: that is to say, their owners had altered them so that they could run software without Apple's authorization. Unfortunately, some of those who did so left the handset prey to a major security breach if they failed to change the default password for ... (view more)

A recently released security report from Microsoft warns that cyber crooks are digging deeper into computers in order to steal and control data. The Security Intelligence Report reveals that rogue security software ("scareware") was the biggest ... threat during the first half of this year. Worm Activity on the Rise In a recent report, Jeff Williams, Microsoft's Malware Protection Center principal architect noted that rogue security software is no longer the primary tool for hackers and that worm activity, particularly the Conficker and Taterf worm, are on the rise. Scareware usually ... (view more)

One of the most visible changes in Windows 7 is that the User Account Control (UAC) system has been made less irritating than with Vista. However, a security firm says that less hassle comes with a price. The UAC system, which debuted in Vista, ... means that once installed, software is not automatically able to run without restraint. Instead, when it wants to perform an action which will change Windows itself, a pop-up box asks the user for permission. The user must be logged in under an administrator account to give this permission. Vista Users: UAC Most Annoying The idea was to put a block on ... (view more)

Comodo Internet Security Comodo Internet Security (CIS) is a free, multi-layered security application that keeps hackers out of your PC. Built from the ground up with your security in mind, CIS offers 360 degrees of protection by combining powerful ... antivirus support, an enterprise class packet filtering firewall, and an advanced host intrusion prevention system called Defense+. Unlike the stripped down versions of commercial software that other software vendors offer for free, this is the full, completely functional version of the product. http://www.comodo.com Dotmobi Make your page ... (view more)