security

Over at CNET News.com sister site TechRepublic, Jason Hiner lists the "Top 10 biggest technology belly flops of 2007." From huge security breaches to questionable feature sets, Vista, the iPhone, and the Pentagon... Fans of tech snark will appreciate the way Hiner weds careful analysis and scathing critique.

Read the full story at TechRepublic.

When it comes to gentility and airline security, we may have something to learn from Nairobi International, where they have the decency, and the equipment, to allow you to keep your shoes on.

Nairobi joins Madrid, Prague, and Budapest in deploying the MagShoe, a "high-speed, shoes-on, portable footwear weapons detection system," at their respective airports. U.K. and U.S. airports may be next.

The MagShoe is a metal detector designed to test shoes and ankles in the ongoing fight against foot-borne threats. A passenger simply steps on what looks like a twin mud scraper/shoe buffer, and … Read more

The bad news about Facebook's Beacon program, user tracking, and privacy concerns just keeps piling up. Now Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook are under fire from consumers, journalists, activist and advocacy groups, and even its own advertising partners.

Today's biggest revelation, reported by PC World, is that "Facebook has confirmed findings of a CA security researcher [Stefan Berteau] that the social-networking site's Beacon ad service is more intrusive and stealthy than previously acknowledged, an admission that contradicts statements made previously by Facebook executives and representatives," including email correspondence between Berteau and Facebook's privacy department, as well as statements made by Facebook vice president Chamath Palihapitiya to The New York Times.

Facebook confirmed Stefan Berteau's specific allegation that Beacon tracks the off-Facebook activties of members even when they are logged out of the social-networking site. … Read more

David Maynor responds to the Macalope's post below.

To start with, lets [sic] settle that dydl isn't a library so Apple's ASLR implementation is just peachy thread in his comments section.

That's a misreading or misrepresentation of the discussion in the comments section. The point was whether or not, as Maynor said, Apple lied about its implementation of ASLR. The Macalope's seen no evidence they lied about it. He's not happy with the way it's portrayed in the Leopard materials, but it's not a lie.

But contrary to Maynor's contention, the … Read more

It's hard to like the Windows Task Manager. It's clunky, makes drilling into computer's processes nigh impossible, and offers little help into what's going on. Like most native Windows tasks, though, there are freeware replacements available. Today we're looking at three of them: Process Explorer, Security Process Explorer, and Process Manager 2 Lite, all of which have recently received updates.

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Today the FBI announced the completion of Bot Roast II, the second phase of an ongoing investigation into the creation and use of botnets for illegal online activity. Botnets are networks created by remotely controlling several hundred or several thousand compromised computers worldwide. In 2007, botnets have been used by criminals in various ways to make money online. The ongoing investigation, in at least one specific case, is being assisted by the U.S. Secret Service.

Among the results announced today are three new indictments, the guilty pleas from two others, and the sentencing of three others. To date, the … Read more

Comodo Firewall Pro gets a major revision from its publisher, upgrading to version 3 with some significant changes. Most importantly, user complaints about resource hogging when version 2 came out have been all but eradicated with the new model.

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In the late 1990s, we all predicted big things around managed services. As we close 2007, we are all predicting big things for Software as a Service (SaaS). What's old is new again but this time we may be right.

Case in point, managed security. A few years ago, enterprise security professionals were too proud and too paranoid to even think about outsourcing security management. As Bob Dylan sang, "the times, they are a changin'." According to a recent ESG Research survey 50 percent of large organizations (i.e. more than 1,000 employees) are either "… Read more

There would have to be something seriously wrong with us if we willingly discussed infections--digital or other. But virus protection is something we all need, and what better way to protect ourselves than to use the scariest-sounding anti-virus software on the planet?

BullGuard Internet Security 8 launched recently, and immediately appealed to us as it combines anti-virus, anti-spyware, firewall, spam filter, online backup and technical support. That's almost everything you could ever need from a digital prophylactic--for 44.95 pounds a year (about $93).

Old-school file sharers should remember BullGuard: It was built into the Kazaa P2P client to … Read more