Articles by John P. Mello Jr.

Huawei Technologies last week unveiled lithium-ion batteries that recharge in minutes rather than hours The batteries, developed by Huawei's Watt Lab, recharge 10 times faster than their competitors and can reach 50 percent capacity in two to five minutes, the company said....

ISIS has rebuffed the declaration of cyberwar Anonymous issued on Sunday "The #Anonymous hackers threatened in new video release that they will carry out a major hack operation on the Islamic state (idiots)," reads a message posted Monday in a Telegram channel believed to be affiliated with ISIS hackers....

TheTor Project last week claimed theFBI paidCarnegie Mellon University $1 million to crack the anonymity of Tor users Tor's claim appears to have been triggered by areport last week in Motherboard that said the FBI's arrest of an alleged member of the Silk Road 2.0 drug ring was based on "information obtained by a 'university-based research institu...

ThePew Research Center on Tuesday released a report on permissions and mobile applications found in the Google Play store The number of permissions requested by a mobile app can be a deal breaker for six out of 10 smartphone users, Pew found....

Bitdefender on Monday released a free decryption tool designed to wrest data from the grip of a rare type of ransomware that's been plaguing Linux servers Details for performing the decryption are available on the company's website....

Here's the problem with most programs aimed at killing malicious software: They need someone to tell them something's malicious What if, however, the programs had the smarts to identify bad code on their own? That's what a company calledDeep Instinct says its security solution, launched last week, can do....

Although teens and tweens have more choices than ever when it comes to media activities, watching television and listening to music are their top preferences, according to a report Common Sense Media released this week Among tweens, ages 8 to 12, watching TV was the top media activity, with nearly 62 percent saying they did it every day. For teens,...

Instagram last week began offering packaged videos tied to topical events, starting with a stream of video content to celebrate Halloween In launching a curated content initiative, Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, is following in the steps ofSnapchat andTwitter. Snapchat launched Live Stories in June, and Twitter introduced a feature called M...

The good news about mobile malware in 2015 is that growth has slowed down. The bad news is that the malware entering the market is more virulent than ever While there hasn't been a sharp rise in the volume of mobile malware this year, the increasingly malicious nature of the types of malware and attacks is alarming,Blue Coat Systems said last week ...

The latest version of Apple's streaming media set-top box, expected to hit U.S. retail stores on Friday, has gathered a bundle of mixed early reviews Some reviewers saw great potential in the US$149 diminutive black box designed to pump movies, TV shows, games and apps from the Internet to a television set. Others found plenty to criticize....

Qualcomm on Tuesday announced a muscle video camera for surveillance systems It's part of the company's Snapdragon 618 IP camera platform. The unit combines a six-core, 64-bit processor; next-generation graphics crunching; and embedded digital signal processing....

The padlock on a browser's address bar is supposed to give Net travelers some security in insecure virtual space, but that's not always the case. Some dangerous flaws lurk behind the padlock They can weaken the effectiveness of encrypted Internet connections and compromise TLS/SSL processes, including domain validation, end-to-end encryption, and t...

Hackers hypothetically could turn Fitbit health bands into PC-infecting malware carriers, Fortinet security researcher Axelle Apvrille demonstrated Wednesday in a presentation at the Hack.lu conference in Luxembourg. Apvrille showed how it was possible to access a Fitbit's Bluetooth connection and, in a mere 10 seconds, infect it with a maliciou...

Bad actors are exploiting an obscure technology found in telecommunications networks around the world to track mobile users and engage in fraud, and they could be costing carriers millions of dollars in lost revenues The technology, called "SS7," is a signal protocol developed in the 1970s for setting up phone calls....

Tesla Motors' stock price on Tuesday dropped more than 11 percent followingConsumer Reports' withdrawal of its favorable recommendation for the company's Model S sedan Poor reliability contributed to Consumer Reports' decision to withdraw its recommendation, although it noted that 97 percent of Tesla owners surveyed said they would buy a car from t...

The cybersecurity pact the United States and China agreed to last month hasn't stopped Chinese hackers from continuing their efforts to steal intellectual property from U.S. companies, CrowdStrike said Monday "Over the last three weeks, CrowdStrike Falcon platform has detected and prevented a number of intrusions into our customers' systems from ac...

Siri and other smartphone digital assistants may do your bidding -- but they may do a hijacker's as well That's what two researchers discovered when they began to tinker with the effects of radio waves on smartphones. They could use the waves to issue commands to any Android or iOS phone running Google Now or Siri....

Edward Snowden's legacy gained another chapter last week when the European Court of Justice rejected an agreement between the United States and European Union that created a Safe Harbor for U.S. companies handling personal data of overseas citizens In essence, the agreement provided that a U.S. company's word that it had adequate safeguards in plac...

Facebook on Tuesday revealed it's experimenting with making video clips easier for users to find in its mobile and desktop applications In coming days, a limited number of users will see the additions, which include a video button at the bottom of its iPhone app and in the Favorites menu of its website....

Apple recently disabled its Apple News app for users in China, according to multiple reports triggered by software developer Larry Salibra's alerts last week Although Apple is mum on the subject, users based in China have begun complaining on the Internet about the News app being unavailable in that country....