Today, an internet milestone is reached with the 25th anniversary of the day the first dotcom website was registered. Back in March 1985, Symbolics computers in Cambridge, Massachusetts made history with an internet address ending in dotcom. Later that year, another five companies followed suit, effectively setting the very slow trend moving. It wasn't until…
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Exploiting Weakness in RSA Security Technology
Three University of Michigan computer scientists say they have found a way to exploit a weakness in RSA security technology used to protect everything from media players to smartphones and e-commerce servers. RSA authentication is susceptible, they say, to changes in the voltage supply to a private key holder. While guessing the 1,000-plus digits of…
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How To of ‘Aurora’ Attack
Do you have branch offices in China? iSec has published a new report outlining the severity of the attacks on Google.cn, allegedly by the Chinese government, dubbed 'Aurora' attacks. Up to 100 companies were victims, and some are speculating that resistance to such attacks is futile. The report lays out the shape of the attacks…
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Data Breaches Cost Over $200 per Customer Record
The cost of a data breach increased last year to $204 per compromised customer record, according to the Ponemon Institute's annual study. The average total cost of a data breach rose from $6.65 million in 2008 to $6.75 million in 2009. The Ponemon Institute based its estimates on data from 45 companies that publicly acknowledged…
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Google Docs to Allow Storage of Any File Type
Google is opening up its Docs hosted office productivity suite so that users can store any type of file in it, giving the popular software-as-a-service product an important online storage component. The functionality will be rolled out over the coming weeks to all Docs users, both the ones who use the stand-alone suite as well…
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TSA Security Leaks- TSA Blames Bloggers
While the government investigates how an alleged terrorist was able to bring a bomb onto a U.S.-bound plane and try to blow it up on Christmas Day, the Transportation Security Administration is going after bloggers. Steve Frischling and Chris Elliott both wrote about a directive to increase security after the incident, and both were served…
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Congress Commits to Fighting Piracy
Recently, the United States Congress agreed to provide $30 million in new funding to put towards the battle against piracy. On Monday, authorities reported another victory on the piracy front- great success on a recent year-end piracy crackdown which is code-named Operation Holiday Hoax. These new pledged funds will target personnel and programs which were…
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Microsoft Promises Choices to the EU Commission
Microsoft's offer of allowing Windows users to choose which Internet browser they use has been accepted by the European Commission, ending its antitrust investigation of the company's impressive position in the browser market. The company promises it will offer users of Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 a choice screen through which they can…
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Russia and U.S. Talk Internet Security
The United States has begun planning talks with Russia and a United Nations arms control committee to strengthen Internet security and limit military use of cyberspace. American and Russian officials have very different interpretations of the talks so far, but the simple fact that the United States is even participating represents a significant policy shift…
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Hackers Use Amazon’s Cloud
Security researchers for Amazon recently spotted the Zeus botnet running an unauthorized command and control center on the company's EC2 cloud computing infrastructure. This is the first known time that Amazon Web Services' cloud infrastructure has been used for this type of illegal activity, according to onw of the security researchers in question. The hackers…
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