Articles by John P. Mello Jr.

A new version of Google's personal computer operating system, Chrome OS, was released for developers Tuesday. It adds design elements of more conventional offerings like Windows and OS X The new Aura interface includes a home screen with a task bar, or shelf, from which you can launch applications. Previous versions required all activity to take p...

In what could be the largest mass infection of Mac computers to date, the Flashback Trojan was estimated to have reached some 700,000 Macs by the end of last week The Trojan is being planted on the Macs by owners who've been lured to infected Web pages that send a malware downloader to their computers as soon as they land on the page....

Two zombie networks infamous for stealing banking information and spewing spam were hit with a right-left combination last week by botnet fighters Using the power of the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, Microsoft, along with organizations representing the financial services industry, took down two command-and-contr...

Microsoft continued to expand its television offerings for members of its Xbox Live Gold service Monday by adding HBO Go, Major League Baseball video and Comcast's on-demand video service Comcast Xfinity TV allows Xbox Gold members to access the cable carrier's expansive library of entertainment programming whenever they want it....

Iran apparently has developed an antivirus program to neutralize the notorious Stuxnet virus that put a kink in the country's nuclear development program in June 2010 Iran has vowed to distribute the antivirus program for free in about a month, according to Trend, a publication that describes itself as a private media outlet in Azerbaijan....

Security experts have been debating for years the merits of whitelists versus blacklists in securing an enterprise, and last week the debate continued to rage with the release of some test results from the Tolly Group The group tested three endpoint protection programs: McAfee Endpoint Protection Suite, Symantec Endpoint Protection 12.1 and Parity ...

Nearly 80 percent of organizations have experienced a data breach in the last two years due to employee negligence or maliciousness That was one of the findings in a study released last week by the Ponemon Institute and sponsored by antivirus software maker Trend Micro....

Google tore down the silos around its app, music, movie and ebook stores Tuesday and melded them into a single outlet called "Google Play." The move emulates Apple's highly successful iTunes model. "Apple has set the standard with the iTunes store where you can get books and music and apps all in one place, so this is a logical thing for Google to ...

Before your company finds itself embroiled in a lawsuit over a data breach that spills personal information about your customers all over the Internet, you might want to take a look at some recent research by Carnegie Mellon and Temple Universities Data breach victims are six times less likely to file litigation against a company if they receive fr...

A camera that allows photographers to control the focus in a picture after it's shot is set to start shipping on Friday ...

Google on Tuesday rebuffed a request by a European Union privacy body to delay implementation of changes in the search giant's privacy policies set to take effect on March 1 "[W]e have notified over 350 million authenticated Google users and provided highly visible notifications on our homepage and in search results for our non-authenticated users,...

Internet privacy appeared on the big stage last week when the Obama administration unveiled its plans on the subject, which included a bill of rights for consumer privacy The president's privacy framework evoked reactions from stakeholders ranging from enthusiastic to guardedly optimistic....

Google's privacy practices came under fire again last week for undermining the privacy practices of someone else. Namely, Apple Apple is one of the few browser makers that turns off by default a website's ability to push third-party cookies to a Web surfer....

A deal worth billions to Yahoo has reportedly hit a snag The deal between Yahoo and two of its Asian partners, China's Alibaba Group and Japan's SoftBank, has reached an impasse, according to a report Tuesday in The Wall Street Journal. The accord would, among other things, save Yahoo US$4 billion in U.S. taxes....

Mobile shopping received a setback last week when security researchers discovered flaws in Google Wallet that could potentially expose its PIN to enterprising hackers When Google introduced its wallet, it bragged that it was secure because transaction information was stored in a "secure element" in Wallet-enabled phones. What researchers at a secur...

Google has brought its Chrome Web browser to the Android Market A beta edition of the browser is available from the app shop now for free, but since its operation is restricted to the latest version of the mobile operating system, Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), only about 1 percent of Android's millions of users will be able to take the software...

Google last week announced it's beefed up security at the Android Market with a malware sniffing system called "Bouncer." Bouncer analyzes new and existing apps, as well as developer accounts. Before apps are allowed to be sold in the market, they're analyzed to see if they contain any known malware, spyware or trojans....

Social networks are popular with lots of folks, including terrorists. That's why the FBI is looking for a contractor that will design an "early warning system" for it based on monitoring chatter on the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Google+ To identify potential "bad actors," the agency will be looking for terrorist keywords like "gangs," "small po...

Encrypting data on your computer may protect you from hackers and thieves, but it won't protect you from crime investigators That was the finding of a federal district court in Colorado Monday in a case involving a woman who refused to decrypt the files on her laptop for government prosecutors....

As far as SOPA's critics are concerned, "if something works, break it" seemed to be the motto of the U.S. Congress last week as it rushed to pass a controversial bill that security experts maintained could throw a bomb into the gearbox of the Internet The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), filed in the U.S. House of Representatives, and its Senate coun...