News - Security

Google tackles piracy by removing millions of URLs

Google is removing URLs from its search function, but before anyone cries foul, it's letting people know about it.

The tech giant released a new edition of its Transparency Report today, which shows who is requesting URLs be taken down, the copyright owners, and all the targeted domains since July 2011. Everything that's being deleted is allegedly copyrighted or pirated material -- mostly from software and entertainment companies.

Google has been releasing the Transparency Report for the last two years, but before today the only available information was government requests to remove content and disruptions in the search more

Kaspersky to cut phisher lines before they hook you

SAN FRANCISCO--Ever click a link to a Web site and discover that while it looks like your banking site, or Facebook, the URL didn't match your expectations? That's called phishing. Kaspersky revealed a new feature at a reviewer's conference here yesterday that the company says can stop such credential-stealing attacks before you get hooked.

Automatic Exploit Prevention, as the feature is called, is expected in the Kaspersky 2013 security suites due in August. The premise behind it is simple: Phishing attacks are on the rise, due in large part to the plummeting cost of entry to the more

New Jersey mayor, son accused of hacking recall Web site

New Jersey is a complex place.

So complex that it even has a town called West New York. The mayor of that little town, Felix Roque, may well be a complex man himself.

For authorities are accusing him of becoming so upset by a movement to recall him that, together with his son, he allegedly took down the recall Web site.

No, he didn't turn up at the site owner's house with machetes and men with deep set eyes and obvious intentions. Instead, the FBI says Roque and his son Joseph sneaked their way illegally into RecallRoque.com.more

Yahoo fumbles security in Axis browser launch

Yahoo made its first foray into the browser business this evening, but did it give us an unfinished product?

As my colleague Rafe Needleman explains, Axis is an aggressive product designed to eliminate the middleman in the usual search process and take visitors from query process straight to the desired page.

However, this doesn't appear to be the only step Yahoo skipped; the struggling Internet pioneer also left out an explanation of its terms of service. A search for those basic rules turns up a placeholder page that informs users:"Terms will go here."

Granted, most users don't more

Notorious Bredolab virus creator is sentenced to prison

The man who elaborated and then spread the Bredolab virus, which infected roughly 30 million computers worldwide, was sentenced to four years in prison by an Armenian district court yesterday, according to Wired.

Georgy Avanesov, a 27-year-old Russian citizen of Armenian descent, was first nabbed in 2010 after Dutch authorities took down a large Bredolab network made up of about 140 different infected computer servers. Shortly after this seizure, global spam levels fell by 12 percent.

Avanesov confessed that he developed the Bredolab malware in 2009 and made it available to others via computer servers in Holland and France, according more

Proposed NY ban on anonymous posts comes under fire

In an attempt to combat cyberbullying, some New York state legislators want people who post mean-spirited personal attacks online to be prepared to identify themselves.

A resulting bill, known as the Internet Protection Act (IPA), wouldn't stop with cyberbullying. If it became law, the legislation would also prevent people from posting anonymous criticism of local businesses or making "baseless political attacks," wrote James Conte, a member of New York's state assembly and one of the bill's sponsors.

"With more and more people relying on social media and the Internet to communicate and gather information," Conte wrote in more

Malware increases on all platforms, McAfee says

Malware increased significantly across several platforms in the first quarter, with PC malware reaching the highest levels in four years, according to a McAfee report released today.

The first-quarter report (you can read the full PDF below) also noted a huge increase in malware -- short for malicious software -- targeting the Android platform and a rise in Mac malware. The findings indicate total malware could reach the 100 million mark within the year, with the U.S. being the primary source of cyberattacks, according to a press release from McAfee.

McAfee said 8,000 total mobile malware samples were more

FBI quietly forms secretive Net-surveillance unit

The FBI has recently formed a secretive surveillance unit with an ambitious goal: to invent technology that will let police more readily eavesdrop on Internet and wireless communications.

The establishment of the Quantico, Va.-based unit, which is also staffed by agents from the U.S. Marshals Service and the Drug Enforcement Agency, is a response to technological developments that FBI officials believe outpace law enforcement's ability to listen in on private communications.

While the FBI has been tight-lipped about the creation of its Domestic Communications Assistance Center, or DCAC -- it declined to respond to requests made two more

Anonymous attacks Justice Dept., nabbing 1.7GB of data

In a hack it dubbed "Monday Mail Mayhem," Anonymous claims to have collected and released 1.7GB of data from the U.S. Department of Justice yesterday.

"Within the booty you may find lots of shiny things such as internal emails, and the entire database dump," the hacker group wrote on the AnonNews Web site. "We Lulzed as they took the website down after being owned, clearly showing they were scared of what inevitably happened."

The group did not specifically say why it initiated the attack. Instead, it cryptically announced that, "We are releasing data to spread information, to allow more

Clueful scans your iOS apps for privacy behavior

A new iOS app aims to make app privacy more transparent and easier to stay on top of, especially when it comes to information-tracking you might not have even realized what was going on behind the scenes.

Security firm Bitdefender today rolled out Clueful (iTunes), an app that lets you see what information other applications installed on your phone might have access to.

Once installed, the $3.99 app scans your device to see what's installed and puts it in an ordered list that can be filtered based on the various kinds of behavior. This includes things like: