Security

Most web hosts offer some form of SSL in at least some of their hosting packages. Many users are confused about when it is necessary to have SSL, when it is optional, and when they do not need it at all. SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer. It is essentially …

A new report by the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) has concluded that as much as 70 percent of all spam sent in 2009 originated from domains ending in .cn, China’s top-level country domain. Furthemore, the report claims to have confirmed that nearly all of those spam messages originated …

According to a new study by Verizon Business’ compuer forensics team, 30% of data security breeches in 2008 were initiated with database exploitation. Furthermore, of all the records breached, 75% were housed in databases. As the reliance on databases grows, particularly on large-scale websites, it is more crucial than ever …

The British government has announced plans to curb Internet piracy by restricting access of repeat offenders. In collaboration with the entertainment industry and Ofcom, Britain’s broadcasting regulator, the plan includes sending letters to customers who have been suspected of downloading illegal files, such as movies. Internet service providers would be …

Dasient is a new web site service created by former Google employees, Neil Daswani and Shariq Rizvi, and Ameet Randive. The service crawls the web and detects malware, malicious software that is harmful to computers. The software locates the problematic code on the site and then quarantines it, effectively cleaning …

As the United States awaits President Barack Obama’s important nomination of his cybersecurity advisor or “cyber czar”, a position that will report directly to him, speculation about who will be tapped for the position has begun. Among the people up for consideration is Microsoft’s security chief, Scott Charney, who was …

A week ago from today, the FTC shut down California web host Triple Fiber Network (3FN) for hosting illegal content, including child pornography, malware, and the infamous “Cutwail” botnet. In a press release riddled with broken English and grammatical errors, the company responded to the shutdown. Triple Fiber blasted the …

According to two reports released by the security company Symantec, phishers and spammers are coming up with new ways to attack their victims. In the past they almost exclusively relied on forged emails and web sites. Now, social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook can be added to their lists …

The Chinese government has issued an order requiring all computers sold in China to have a government-sanctioned content filter installed. Known as “Green Dam,” the software filters obscene images and words. Computer makes must preinstall it on all computers sold in the country starting July 1. China is notorious for …

In an unexpected move, the French military took action against SnowTigers, a private BitTorrent site catering mainly to downloaders in France. The action came as a shock because private websites are not usually targeted by authorities. SnowTigers had more than 250,000 members, many of whom supported the site financially. The …