Articles by David Vranicar

No, this isn't the Catholic Church's way of appealing to comic book fans On Thursday, the website of the Vatican communications office and Vatican Twitter account ran stories on Batman. While some initially suspected hacking, Vatican officials are instead saying that there was an "internal system failure" caused by a non-native English speaker -- a...

North Korea is the suspected perpetrator of a hacking attack that knocked out a trio of South Korean broadcasters and two major banks on Wednesday South Korean officials in the capital of Seoul traced the attack to a server in China, something that meshes with previous attacks by North Korea....

Google Street View has unveiled shots from some of the world's highest mountains In addition to Argentina's Mount Aconcagua, Tanzania's Mount Kilimanjaro and Russia's Mount Elbrus, Google has now also captured photos from Everest Base Camp in Nepal....

Chinese telecom ZTE may have ended 2012 in the red, but a new report alleges there was enough in the coffers for bribes ZTE's Mongolia office is being investigated for bribery, according to China's IT Business News. The outlet is also reporting that Mongolian anti-corruption officials have already unearthed proof of bribes doled out for that countr...

March 15 marks Consumer Rights Day in China. To honor the day, state-run CCTV runs a special program to out scams, malpractice and defective products This year, CCTV set its crosshairs on Apple, declaring that the company downgraded post-sale customer service to Chinese consumers. The network claimed when Chinese customers return iPhones for repair...

Australian prime minister Julia Gillard is taking flak from the nation's tech industry for accusing IT firms of abusing the nation's skilled migration program The "457 visas" program is designed to facilitate the immigration of skilled overseas workers to fill voids in the labor force. Gillard, however, said that the nation's tech industry is abusi...

Police in Los Angeles have teamed with the FBI to investigate Russian hackers suspected of stealing and posting sensitive information about Michelle Obama, Joe Biden, law enforcement officials and Hollywood celebrities The material in question was posted on a website using .su as a suffix -- reportedly a tip-off that the perpetrators have a Russian...

Researchers at Japan's University of Tsukuba grad school have launched a virtual private network that could allow Chinese netizens to get around the country's zealous Internet police The VPN is free and utilizes volunteers who have different Internet service providers around the world. As of early Tuesday morning, there were 87 public VPN servers b...

As it continues to deny accusations that its army is involved in serial computer hacking, China is now also asking for worldwide rules and cooperation on Web-based espionage. China cited the lack of international definitions and regulations on cyberespionage as part of its first round of denialsagainst the landmark report by security firm Mandiant...

Android -- and, by extension, Google -- has too much control over China's smartphone industry, according to a white paper from China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, or MIIT. Android is used by handset manufacturers such as Huawei and ZTE, as well as Samsung, which has a solid footprint in China....

Tough week for Microsoft After Denmark announced it was seeking US$1 billion in back taxes from Microsoft, the tech giant was hit with a $731 million fine from the European Union.

Little Denmark is looking for a big check In one of the biggest tax cases in the history of the Scandinavian country with a population of 5.5 million, the Danish tax authority is seeking US$1 billion from Microsoft in back taxes.

A comedy film called Pulp will skip theaters and DVDs and instead premiere on the Xbox 360 -- the first time a feature-length film has ever been distributed exclusively on the video game console The film, which chronicles the adventures of a comic book publisher recruited by police to stop a crime syndicate, is part of what Microsoft says will be a...

What, China was just going to say nothing? On the heels of a report that China's military has for years been engaging in cyberespionage against the U.S., China's Ministry of Defense claimed that a pair of military websites were attacked more than 100,000 times per month in 2012 -- and that more than 60 percent of the attacks originated in the U.S....

Having established its credentials as a key player in the consumer smartphone world -- perhaps the key player -- Samsung is bolstering security to take a stab at business users, a demographic traditionally dominated by BlackBerry. For the past year, Samsung has been beefing upthe Android software that powers its smartphones to protect it against m...

Police in the UK have ordered Google, Twitter and Facebook to remove photographs claiming to show the recently released murderer of James Bulger, who was killed in Liverpool 20 years ago In addition to the injunctionthat bans the photos, the Guardian reported that authorities threatenedMonday to take legal action -- in the form of fines or even jai...

Step aside, Google: Now it's Facebook's turn to take flak from France A few months back, France demanded that Google pay for displaying links to French media's news articles. Next, a French Internet service provider demanded that Google pay extra for bandwidth consumed by YouTube....

North Korea is modernizing its technologies -- as only North Korea can. Foreigners are now able to bring their mobile phones into the country, with the caveat that they must purchase North Korean SIM cards upon arrival....

China's defense ministry staged a news conference Wednesday to deny and decry a report that the People's Liberation Army was engaged in cyberwarfare against U.S. corporations, organizations and government agencies The denial specifically addressed the bombshell Mandianthacking study, reported The New York Times. The study declared that the PLA's Un...

A studyon Chinese hacking practices issued by U.S. security firm Mandiant sent shock waves Wednesday through the technology and business worlds A large number of cyberattacks on American corporations, organizations and government agencies are coming from a building near Shanghai that houses, as The New York Times describes it, the "People Liberatio...