Articles by John P. Mello Jr.

A ransomware attack darkened the video surveillance system of the District of Columbia's police department eight days before the presidential inauguration of Donald J. Trump Video storage devices for 70 percent of the CCTV system were unable to record anything between Jan. 12 and Jan. 15, as police techies scrambled to combat malicious software fou...

China this week announced new measures to further restrict its citizens' access to the Internet The 14-month campaign appears designed to crack down on the use of Web platforms and services unapproved by the government, and on virtual private networks, which can used to access those platforms and services covertly....

Apple on Tuesday alerted its development community that it will be raising prices on apps sold through its App Store in the United Kingdom Several factors influence App Store price tiers internationally, including currency exchange rates, business practices, taxes, and the cost of doing business, Apple said, noting that the factors vary by region a...

Microsoft has fortified the latest version of Windows to make it more secure than previous editions, but the strongest protections will be available only to those willing to pay a steep price for them Windows 10 Anniversary Update has introduced many mitigation techniques in core Windows components and the Microsoft Edge browser, helping protect cu...

Medical device maker St. Jude Medical on Monday began deploying software designed to protect its remote monitoring system for implantable pacemaker and defibrillator devices The move came on the heels of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's warning that the company's Merlin@home Transmitter contained vulnerabilities that could be exploited by ha...

It seems like yesterday -- not 10 years ago -- that Steve Jobs took the stage at MacWorld to debut Apple's latest new gadget: the iPhone The iPhone was three devices in one, he declared at Moscone West in San Francisco. It was a widescreen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone, and a breakthrough Internet communications device....

Las Vegas is arguably the gambling capital of the world, but it's also the king city for ransomware, based on recent research Among the world's nations, the United States ranked highest in ransomware incidents, according to a Malwarebytes report on the prevalence and distribution of extortion apps. The area of the country that logged the most incid...

Lenovo watchers expected the company to announce a number of new laptops when CES rolled around, but the company surprised on Tuesday when it also unveiled new products aimed at the home technology market "The Smart Assistant and Smart Storage line probably caught everyone off guard," said Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst at Moor Insights and St...

More security vulnerabilities will appear in the software of Adobe and Apple than in Microsoft's, more attacks on the Internet's infrastructure will occur, and cybersecurity events will stoke international tensions. Those are a few of the predictions for 2017 that security experts shared with TechNewsWorld Users of Apple desktops and laptops for ye...

Fact-checking President-elect Donald Trump can be a chore, even for people paid to do it. The Washington Post wants to make it less so, with add-ons to the popular Chrome and Firefox browsers The browser extension, RealDonaldContext, is available from the Chrome Web Store or the Mozilla Foundation....

Yahoo on Wednesday revealed that Net bandits stole data associated with 1 billion of its user accounts -- one of the largest data breaches in Internet history. The theft, which occurred in August 2013, is distinct from the theft disclosed earlier this fall, in which 500 million accounts were compromised, Yahoo CISO Bob Lord explained....

Apple's new wireless AirPods are finally available The company on Tuesday began taking orders for AirPods at its online store, and said it would start delivering the US$159 earphones to customers, Apple Stores, resellers and carriers next week....

Some of high-tech's heaviest hitters will be in New York City on Wednesday to meet with President-elect Donald J. Trump On the list of all-stars expected to attend the meeting are Alphabet CEO Larry Page, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty, Intel CEO Brian Kr...

Can a new smartwatch operating system based on Linux breathe some new life into the smart wearables market? Florent Revest hopes so Revest, a French computer science student, on Wednesday announced the alpha release of AsteroidOS, an open source operating system that will run on several Android smartwatch models....

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday spoiled Apple's hopes for a big payday, scotching the US$399 million award in its successful patent infringement suit against Samsung Justice Sonia Sotomayor delivered the Court's decision, which turned on what lawmakers meant when they referred to an "article of manufacture" in a patent act passed in 1952....

Ransomware has become a gold mine for digital criminals. In the first three months of this year, electronic extortionists squeezed US$209 million from victims desperate to recover their data after it was scrambled by the malicious software, based on FBI estimates. At that rate, ransomware could funnel as much as $1 billion into criminal coffers this year...

Two leaders in the field of artificial intelligence have announced that they're open-sourcing their AI platforms After investing in building rich simulated environments to serve as laboratories for AI research, Google's DeepMind Lab on Saturday said it would open the platform for the broader research community's use....

Apple has assembled a group of robotics and data-collection experts who will use unmanned aerial vehicles -- that is, drones -- to obtain data for updates to its Maps app, Bloomberg reported Thursday. Apple, Google and others in the cartography space currently collect a lot of their data using motor vehicles equipped with high-tech gear....

China's parliament earlier this month passed a law aimed at addressing the country's concerns about hacking and terrorism, which has spiked concerns among foreign businesses and human rights advocates One interpretation of the new law is that it only codifies China's existing cybersecurity practices. However, 46 global business groups across a vari...

Apple's latest iPhone was barely out of the gate when rumors began percolating about the company's next new phone Although the iPhone 7 garnered mostly tepid reviews when it was released this summer, initial inventories sold out quickly, and the company had to scramble to meet demand....