According to a new security report from Sophos , "drive-by" download attacks now constitute more than half of malware attacks on Web users. And one drive-by exploit in particular accounts for 31 percent of the Web attacks detected by the company's security software in the second half of 2011—a package called Blackhole. [......]
Archive for the ‘Policy & Law’ Category
In an interview with Reuters , former National Security Agency Director Mike McConnell claimed that the US has already used cyber attacks against an adversary successfully. And it's just a matter of time before someone unleashes cyber attacks on US critical infrastructure, he warned. [......]
Motorola's own patent war against Apple rages on, as the company has filed a new lawsuit in the US targeting Apple's iPhone 4S and iCloud service. Motorola's new lawsuit, filed in the US District Court of Southern Florida, asserts six patents against the iPhone 4S, with four of those same patents asserted against iCloud[......]
Since 2005, the global production of oil has remained relatively flat, peaking in 2008 and declining since, even as demand for petroleum has continued to increase. The result has been wild fluctuations in the price of oil as small changes in demand set off large shocks in the system. [......]
Since the shutdown of Megaupload, stories have erupted about the life and exploits of the company's founder, a self-styled "Dr. Evil" of file sharing. Kim Dotcom's opulent digs, high-end cars, fondness for models and other Bond-villain-esque behaviors have been splashed across websites and have confused evening newscasts for the last week[......]
President Obama will present the annual State of the Union address to Congress this evening. Mozilla and PBS have teamed up to add an interactive facet to the event. [......]
Google has unveiled a new privacy policy covering the majority of its products, allowing for more sharing of user-specific information across Google services. Read More: Official Google Blog Read the comments on this post [......]
A federal judge has ruled that a Colorado woman can be compelled to decrypt her encrypted laptop so that the police can inspect it for incriminating evidence. The woman, Ramona Fricosu, is a defendant in a mortgage scam case. She had argued that the Fifth Amednment's privilege against self-incrimination protected her from having to disclose the password to her hard drive, which was encrypted using PGP Desktop[......]
The Mega-gavel On Thursday, the US government unsealed a 72-page indictment against Megaupload. The file locker was one of the largest sites on the Web, and major copyright holders had accused it of facilitating widespread copyright infringement[......]
An English court has sentenced a juror to six months in prison for contempt of court after she performed research on the Internet and forced the abandonment of a criminal trial. Psychology lecturer Theodora Dallas, 34, was a member of the jury in the trial of Barry Medlock, accused of causing grievous bodily harm. She looked up certain information related to the trial on the Internet, came across information concerning Medlock, and told her fellow jurors what she had found. [......]
Apple's end user license agreement for the iBooks Author app has generated extensive controversy among authors and publishers. Namely, the agreement restricts paid distribution of "works" created with the software to the iBookstore only. [......]
More than six months after it first launched, Google+ is set to finally allow users to create accounts using pseudonyms. Google announced that it planned to do so back in October in response to complaints from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and others, who said pseudonyms are necessary to ensure freedom of expression for people in danger of retribution for speaking out on controversial topics[......]
IFPI's music map of legal services In order to protect itself from piracy, the worldwide recording industry needs a few favors from governments and corporations around the globe, and a major new digital music report (PDF) from the industry's worldwide lobby IFPI lays them out. [......]
The impact of Megaupload's shutdown on other file hosting sites is spreading. Just as FileSonic recently disabled file sharing , presumably to avoid prosecution for enabling illegal distribution of copyrighted material, the site FileServe has now done the same. [......]
