Articles by John P. Mello Jr.

Bug bounty programs are used by individual software makers to improve the quality of their products, but they can have incidental benefits for all software makers, too. One of those is to encourage bug hunters to wear a white hat instead of a black one "An overwhelming majority of people have a vested interest in a secure Internet," explained Alex ...

Motorists in the United States are increasingly at risk of cyberattacks and violations of privacy, as more and more technology is added to their cars "New technologies in cars have enabled valuable features that have the potential to improve driver safety and vehicle performance," said a report released on Sunday by the office of Sen. Ed Markey (D-...

Some proposed rules that the Federal Communication Commission maintains will prevent content discrimination on the Internet drew fire on Thursday from two policy interest groups A four-page "fact sheet" on the rules was released Wednesday by FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. In it, the chairman outlined what he's proposing to the full commission, which is ...

With Wall Street breathing down its neck for growth, Twitter on Tuesday launched a new advertising initiative that aims to boost revenues and add to its more than 284 million members The initiative aims to expand the reach of "Promoted Tweets" on Twitter. Promoted Tweets are ads that Twitter inserts into its members timelines. Currently, promoted T...

For months, the security community has been waving a red flag about how the nascent Internet of Things could become a cybercriminal's paradise. Last week, those admonitions were given some credence when the Federal Trade Commission recommended that the makers of IoT gadgets adopt some "best practices" to protect consumers from potential violations of their privacy and security...

Since 2010, when it began paying security researchers to find flaws in its programs, Google has paid more than US$4 million to bug hunters. Now it's prepared to pay even more The company announced Friday that it's expanding its Security Rewards Programs to include payments to researchers before they find bugs in Google's software....

Amazon on Wednesday announced WorkMail, a play for the enterprise email market. Offered by Amazon Web Services, WorkMail is aimed at companies that want to move their on-premises email services to the cloud WorkMail reduces complexity and cost, Amazon said. With all mail infrastructure relocated to Amazon's cloud, a company no longer need be concer...

Twitter on Tuesday announced two new offerings that could bolster its efforts to compete with Facebook. The new tools will let users create private groups of up to 20 members; they also will be able to shoot, edit and share video from within Twitter's mobile app Twitter members already can conduct one-on-one private conversations using its direct m...

Hackers are like gold miners. Once they find a rich vein for their malware, they mine it until it's dry.Point-of-sale terminals are such a vein, and it doesn't appear that it's one that's about to run dry any time soon Following the success of the Target breach in 2013, the hacker underground was quick to rush more POS malware to market....

Google may have contributed to violating the First Amendment rights of three journalists working for WikiLeaks two and a half years ago, when it turned over to the FBI all their email, subscriber information and metadata Google informed the journalists -- Sarah Harrison, Kristinn Hrafnsson and Joseph Farrrell -- about its actions last month....

BlackBerry CEO John Chen set off a barrage of online chatter Wednesday when he proposed that any rules the United States adopts to preserve Net neutrality also should guarantee application neutrality Chen made the proposal in a letter to the chairmen and ranking members of two U.S. congressional panels -- the Senate Committee on Commerce and the Ho...

Millions of Net surfers use obvious passwords to log on to websites, but their numbers appear to be declining SplashData on Tuesday published its annual list of the top 25 most common -- thus worst -- passwords leaked online. In the top spot was "123456," followed by "password" and "12345."

Businesses spend an average of US$1.27 million a year chasing cyberthreats that turn out to be dead ends. That is one of the findings in a report released last week on the cost of containing malware In a typical week, an organization can receive nearly 17,000 malware alerts, although only 19 percent of them are considered reliable, according to the...

Apple will introduce a stylus to accompany its expected new, larger iPad, an analyst with a good scorecard in predicting Apple products wrote in a research note on Sunday Speculation about a 12.9-inch iPad Pro to be launched this year has been grist for the rumor mill for months, but the prediction of an Apple stylus is a new development....

Verizon advertising partner Turn is using the carrier's Unique Identifier Header, or UIDH, to maintain tracking cookies on smartphones even after privacy-minded users have deleted them, Jonathan Mayer, a computer scientist and lawyer at Stanford University, reported this week Turn shares the cookies with dozens of major websites and advertising net...

Security questions recently have been raised about Docker, a promising technology for running applications in the cloud. Docker is an open source initiative that allows applications to be run in containers for flexibility and mobility only dreamt of in the past "Since the 70s, programmers have been talking about reusable code and the ability to mig...

Recent research from security firm Cloudmark has raised doubt about the purported connection between North Korea and last November's intrusion on Sony Pictures Entertainment's computer networks The FBI last week continued to press its case that North Korea was behind the cyberattack, which flooded the Net with intellectual property, confidential co...

FBI Director James Comey has "very high confidence" that North Korea was behind last November's cyberattack on Sony, he said at a cybersecurity forum held last week at Fordham University. The attack resulted in large amounts of intellectual property, confidential communications and employee data being posted on the Internet for public view New evid...

A proposed national data breach reporting law, aimed primarily at protecting consumer privacy, headlined several initiatives the Obama administration announced Monday The Personal Data Notification & Protection Act clarifies the obligations of companies when there's been a data breach. It includes a requirement to notify customers within 30 days o...

An estimated US$5.2 million was stolen over the weekend from Bitstamp, a digital currency exchange.It has suspended services pending an investigation The company assured its customers that bitcoins held with Bitstamp prior to suspension of services were completely safe and would be honored in full....