Articles by John P. Mello Jr

Microsoft had to temporarily disable Skype's password reset feature last week after a Russian hacker revealed a simple way to lock users out of their accounts All an attacker needed to know was an email address associated with an account in order to hijack it. That address could be used to create a new account, which could then be used to reset the...

Surveillance of Internet users by governments around the world is on the rise, Google concludes in its latest Transparency Report, which details government requests it receives for information about its users. The United States tops the list of countries making requests for user data "This is the sixth time we've released this data, and one trend h...

Chevron was infected with the Stuxnet malware in 2010, the company revealed last week, raising concerns about the effectiveness of cyberweapons as a policy tool Because of Stuxnet's design, it didn't do any damage to Chevron's computers, but the fact that a cyberweapon created to attack Iran's nuclear capability ended up on the systems of an Americ...

Microsoft will phase out Windows Live Messenger, its consumer instant messaging platform, over the next several months as its users are moved to Skype, the company announced this week Microsoft hopes to smooth the transition to Skype for Live Messenger users by allowing them to log in to Skype with their Microsoft ID so that contacts in one program...

An analysis of more than 400,000 apps in the Google Play store has revealed that more than 100,000 of them pose a potential security risk to their users The analysis of the Android apps released last week by cyber security vendor Bit9 examined the security permissions requested by the programs. It found that 72 percent of the 412,000 programs exami...

After a persistent series of attacks on its government computers by a Russian hacker, the Republic of Georgia got mad and refused to take it anymore ...

Windows 8 finally made it to prime time last week. This version of Microsoft's operating system makes significant improvements in its security stance, said Alex Balan, senior product manager at Bitdefender, but some of them are likely to be undermined by users wedded to old programs The way the Windows 8 user interface handles applications is a sig...

Android is one of the most popular mobile operating systems in the world. As a result, it's also one of the most popular mobile operating systems to be targeted by malware writers Malware aimed at Google's Android platform increased sixfold during the quarter that ended in September, according to a report released Monday by Trend Micro....

Security researchers have identified a new offshoot of the notorious Flame espionage malware. The malware, called "miniFlame," creates a backdoor in the systems that it infects. That backdoor can then be used by an attacker to gain access an infected machine. The attacker can then write files to the compromised computer, snatch files from it or snap screenshots of its display...

While U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta did some silicon saber-rattling last week by raising the prospect of a preemptive strike against cyberattacks, he also delivered a wake-up call to Wall Street and Congress about cybersecurity Panetta's message to the business leaders gathered at a meeting in New York of the Business Executives for Nation...

Lytro is giving users of its shoot-now, focus-later digital camera more control over the photos they capture with the innovative snapper With the new additions to the Lytro announced Tuesday, shutterbugs will be able to control the camera's shutter speed, light sensitivity (ISO) and bright-light exposure settings, as well as lock the exposure in a ...

Cybercrime costs continued to climb in 2012 according to a report released Monday by the Ponemon Institute The study of 56 large organizations showed that the average annualized cost of cybercrime for the businesses was US$8.9 million a year compared to $8.4 million a year ago. Losses for the firms ranged from one $1.4 million to $46 million....

If thermostats were cars, Nest Labs' would be a Cadillac Selling for US$249, the gadget brings design verve -- the company was founded by Tony Fadell, the former leader of the team at Apple that designed numerous generations of the iPod and iPhone -- and mobile technology to a device that barely registers on many consumers' consciousness scale....

A week-long cyber attack on some of the nation's largest banks last week most likely wasn't the Armageddon headline writers made it out to be "It's ridiculous to consider an attack that takes your website offline for a few hours the world's worst nightmare scenario," Jeffrey Carr, CEO of Taia Global and author of Inside Cyber Warfare: Mapping the C...

Electric car maker Tesla Motors on Tuesday introduced a network of solar-powered rapid charging stations for its vehicles beginning with several locations across California The network of "supercharger" stations already is in operation in six California locations: Folsom, Gilroy, Coalinga, Lebec, Barstow and Hawthorne. Tesla makes its cars in Fremo...

When Paul Steiner published his 1993 cartoon in The New Yorker with the caption, "On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog," little did he know it would become a mantra among security professionals, especially those concerned about authenticating identities on the Net The job of finding ways to identify dogs in cyberspace has been assigned to the...

Internet Explorer is too dangerous to use, according to warnings from throngs of security experts, including Germany's Federal Office for Information Security The German government agency issued an alert that advises citizens to avoid using Internet Explorer and use an alternate browser until a patch can be found for a vulnerability discovered last...

Someone with the Twitter handle @AnonymousOwn3r made a grab for 15 minutes of fame last week by claiming responsibility for taking down the network for Internet's largest registrar, GoDaddy GoDaddy discredited that claim. "The service outage was not caused by external influences," CEO Scott Wagner said in a statement. "It was not a 'hack' and it wa...

Once upon a time, security shiners involving Apple were as rare as Windows Vista lovers, but now it seems that a week doesn't go by without the name of Steve Jobs' baby being dragged through the digital mud Last week's episode involved the hacktivist group AntiSec and the FBI. AntiSec claimed it compromised an FBI laptop and stole more than 12 mill...

Swappers using the popular file-sharing protocol BitTorrent are spied on constantly by monitoring services, some of them seeking to identify media pirates, researchers at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom reported Tuesday Monitoring is particularly intense for files that are currently popular among sharers -- less so with less popu...