Brian Prince

Between the attacks by “Anonymous” and censorship efforts by various governments, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks were a familiar feature of news stories in 2010. But while the sophistication of attacks may have grown during the past year, efforts by Internet service providers have not kept pace, according to research by Arbor Networks. In a 12-month […]

EMC released a free version of its data warehousing technology Feb. 1 with an eye toward developers and big data analytics. The release of the Community Edition of the EMC Greenplum Database joins the Greenplum Data Computing Appliance in the tree of fruits from the company’s acquisition of Greenplum last July. The freeware, which mixes […]

Mozilla has added the Do Not Track HTTP header discussed last week to the pre-beta build of the upcoming version of Firefox. The HTTP header is Mozilla’s answer to consumer concerns about online behavioral tracking by advertisers. “If you’d like to try out the feature, grab a nightly build; I must warn you though, these […]

Oracle is pitching new integration in its update to Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler as an answer to the collaboration needs of development teams. In version 3.0, Oracle has added integration with Subversion, an open-source tool that helps developers track changes to their source code. Generally, users check their code into a central repository to […]

The penalties for being out of step with compliance mandates are not going away, and neither is the cost of keeping up with regulations. However, a new report from the Ponemon Institute revealed that more compliance audits can actually have the effect of lowering the price tag. According to the study (PDF), which included responses […]

User privacy was in the news this past week when Mozilla and Google proposed their own answers for concerns about online behavioral tracking by advertisers. Mozilla entered the fray Jan. 23 when it proposed adding a “Do Not Track” HTTP header to the Firefox browser to send a signal to Websites that users do not […]

Microsoft issued an advisory on a Windows security vulnerability today after exploit code for the bug went public. The bug, which lies in the MHTML (MIME Encapsulation of Aggregate HTML) protocol handler, can be exploited to cause data leakage. Though proof-of-concept code for the vulnerability has already gone public, the company said it is unaware […]

A security researcher has uncovered a way to exploit a data-leak issue affecting Google Android users. Xuxian Jiang, an assistant professor at North Carolina State University, discovered the bug while working on what he described as an Android-related project. The flaw, he wrote in an advisory, impacts Android 2.3 and is of the same nature […]

The purported head of a rogue antivirus operation has agreed to pay roughly $8.2 million to the Federal Trade Commission to bring a 2-year-old case to a close. According to the FTC, Marc D’Souza and his father, Maurice D’Souza, will pay the money to settle accusations that they profited from a scheme to scam consumers […]

The FBI executed 40 search warrants across the country Jan. 27 as part of an ongoing investigation into distributed denial-of-service attacks launched in “Operation Payback.” The raids came the same day U.K. authoritiesarrested five people believed to be tied to the loosely affiliated group Anonymous, which has taken credit for the attacks. The suspects in […]