Security & Privacy

In one of the first independent tests of third-party security suites on Windows 8, nearly all antivirus and anti-malware software tested well. What may surprise you is that even without a third-party suite, Windows 8 is relatively resistant to modern threats like zero-day attacks, according to the report.

Independent German security suite evaluators AV-Test.org publish bimonthly tests that rate the effectiveness of the biggest Windows security suites out there and rated all 26 of the suites they tested on Windows 8 in January and February as "certified," including Windows 8 itself. This is because Windows 8 comes … Read more

Facebook users in the U.K. are being treated to the same premium charges their counterparts in the U.S. have been hit with when sending messages to certain high-profile members on the social network, as well as people outside their circle of friends.

According to U.K. news site The Sunday Times, Facebook users in the U.K. late last week started being charged as much as 10 British pounds (about $15) to send messages to celebrity-status Facebook members. Olympic diver Tom Daley and former Children's laureate Michael Rosen are the most expensive celebrities to contact.

Facebook last year announced what it called a "small experiment" … Read more

Anonymous claims that a cyberattack launched against Israeli government Web sites this weekend has caused billions of dollars of damage, although Israeli officials say there have been no major disruptions.

The group claimed it hacked more than a dozen official Israeli Web sites, including those for the Israel Police, the Prime Minister's Office, the Israel Securities Authority, the Immigrant Absorption Ministry, and the Central Bureau of Statistics. The country's page for the Ministry of Defense was offline today as well, which Anonymous took credit for hacking in a tweet:

Anonymous Operation Israel | Target: DOWN | mod.gov.il | #Anonymous … Read more

When Mark Zuckerberg and friends debuted Facebook Home yesterday, they downplayed the ever-growing importance your data has for the company. While the Facebook-obsessed may love Home, chances are your privacy won't feel welcome at all.

Facebook has earned a reputation for developing new products and features that are respectful of user privacy, and then slowly, sometimes with great subtlety and sometimes with mastodon-like lumbering, walking those policies back to a decidedly less-respectful state.

There's little indication that Facebook Home will be any different. At the Facebook Home question-and-answer session that followed Thursday's announcement, Zuckerberg said, "Analytics … Read more

Anonymous continues to target North Korea with its latest round of exploits.

Citing the threat posed by the North Korean government, the "hacktivist" group defaced the country's official Twitter and Flickr accounts yesterday.

The North Korean Twitter feed now displays a series of tweets with links that poke fun at the country's leader Kim Jong-un. One linked image portrays Kim Jong-un in a less than flattering light and criticizes him for "threatening world peace with ICBMs and nuclear weapons" and "wasting money while his people starve." The country's Flickr account shows … Read more

In September 2011, security companies first noticed a new malware scam for OS X, which posed as a fake Adobe Flash installer, and hence became known as Flashback. Unlike prior scams, this malware took on some new approaches to tricking users by infecting common browsers, disabling Apple's XProtect system, and eventually morphing into a Java-based exploit that resulted in approximately 600,000 Macs being infected worldwide.

The Flashback malware has been seen as one of the more widespread and successful attacks on the OS X platform, but while it was eventually snuffed out a year later, it left everyone … Read more

A Huawei executive has acknowledged that the telecommunicatons equipment maker will not see growth this year in the United States.

In a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal, Huawei executive Bob Cai, who is in charge of the firm's wireless marketing division, said there will be no growth margin in the U.S. market in 2013.

Although Huawei does expect to see growth from Asian and European markets as mobile device and network demands continue to rise, security concerns have led to government officials in Europe and the U.S. advising caution when using or purchasing Huawei's … Read more

Samsung has tapped Absolute Software to embed the corporate security solutions provider's patented persistence technology onto its mobile devices -- most notably onto the upcoming Galaxy S4 smartphone.

Headed for Samsung Knox when it debuts this year, Absolute boasted that Samsung's mobile devices will then be the first worldwide to offer "constant, tamper-proof security connection for tracking, wiping, recovery and IT servicing" by including its endpoint security and management software.

For reference, Knox is Samsung's mobile security platform for professional and personal accounts on enhanced versions of Android.

The Vancouver, B.C.-headquartered company said … Read more

Google's "new" privacy policy, launched a little over a year ago, is still causing headaches in Europe. But a new pan-European investigation into the policy may cause greater troubles for the search giant.

The French data protection authority, the Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertes (CNIL), said today that the search giant has failed to respond to its requests to make changes to its controversial privacy policy and has handed the case to European member states to deal with the matter locally.

The U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands were first involved … Read more