Joe Barton, a Texas Republican, and Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, are complaining Facebook is not answering questions about how the company tracks its users via cookies. Source In my mind, security and privacy are two sides of the same coin. To have privacy means you must have security to obtain it. Should security demand access to your data for security reasons, then privacy is invaded. A good demonstration of that in practice, is laws on the books involving sexual harassment, the [...]

Ang Cui, a researcher on embedded devices demonstrated at this year’s Chaos Communications Congress (28C3) that is possible to embed malware in a HP printer firmware using the RFU mechanism, a presentation of an extraordinary importance for any corporate or small networks since the printers are ubiquitous in any office . RFU stands for remote firmware update and is an important feature assuring the best performance and security for the printers, sort of update feature for your operating system [...]

This infographic in the source link provides clues to why Facebook is such a prime target. Source It all has to do with numbers; who has the most to have malware target. Why turn to a small community when you have millions of folk to target for the same effort. Microsoft battled all comers during the days of DOS to become the over-all winner. The results of that winning the battle of the Operating Systems has resulted in what is called the computer monoculture. According to Wikipedia, during [...]

Israel vows to retaliate after credit cards are hacked “Israel has active capabilities for striking at those who are trying to harm it, and no agency or hacker will be immune from retaliatory action,” he added, without giving further details. Source Interesting. Hacking started as a sort of way to see what was out there. It evolved to what it is today as a way to attempt to get money from people as a criminal activity. It’s been the driving force behind a lot of the malware. [...]

According to media reports, the Japanese Defense Ministry has awarded Fujitsu a contract to develop a computer virus. Source Japan finds that it has been victim to computer break ins much the same as the US with someone seeking to discover trade secrets from industry, of seeking military secrets and equipment specs, and trying to obtain political information from government offices through their computers. How nice, what could possibly go wrong with such a tool? I keep getting these images in my [...]

Freedom to install free software When done correctly, “Secure Boot” is designed to protect against malware by preventing computers from loading unauthorized binary programs when booting. In practice, this means that computers implementing it won’t boot unauthorized operating systems — including initially authorized systems that have been modified without being re-approved. Source The above is a place trying to get signatures for a petition not to have it mandatory to install [...]

QR Code Malware Picks Up Steam As mobile marketers have latched onto the convenience and cool-factor of QR codes, hackers are starting to take advantage of these square, scannable bar codes as a new way to distribute malware. Like all mobile attack vectors, it is a new frontier that security researchers say is not extremely prevalent but which has a lot of potential to wreak havoc if mobile developers and users stand by unaware. Source QR code for the URL of the English Wikipedia Mobile main page, [...]