Fahmida Y. Rashid

At long last, Twitter is rolling out HTTPS to provide a layer of security for users looking for a way reduce the chances that hackers will eavesdrop on their social networking. Users now have the option to choose the application security setting to always use HTTPS when accessing Twitter.com, Carolyn Penner, a Twitter spokesperson, wrote […]

Even as users download Internet Explorer 9, there are a number of organizations still tied to Internet Explorer 6 because they need to keep running a critical legacy business application. For those users, a new plug-in may help them make the jump to a more secure Web browser. Browsium released UniBrows, an Internet Explorer add-on […]

Months after WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange promised to post documents from a major financial institution, a member of Anonymous released e-mails allegedly related to Bank of America’s foreclosure practices. The e-mails were provided by a former Bank of America employee who claimed the bank withheld critical information from regulators and sensitive data was deleted. A […]

Organizations were hit by more distributed denial-of-service attacks in the second half of 2010, and their applications were knocked offline because of poorly implemented defenses, according to a Web hacking report. The number of DDoS attacks jumped 22 percent to become the most frequently used attack vector in the second half of 2010, Trustwave found […]

It didn’t take long for iPhone developer and hacker Comex to jailbreak the Apple iPad 2. An image showing an iPad 2 running Cydia, a Debian package management system for the iOS, surfaced online a mere two days after the new tablet launched. Cydia is a software application that allows users to find and download […]

Adobe will be fixing a critical vulnerability in its Flash Player, Adobe Acrobat and Reader X. There are already exploits in the wild for Flash, Adobe said. When exploited, this critical vulnerability could crash the system or allow the attacker to take complete control of the affected system, Adobe said in a security advisory March […]

A hoax SMS text message claiming the radiation from Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant may hit the Philippines is making the rounds, causing a panic among the country’s residents. The Philippines’ Department of Science and Technology confirmed the hoax on March 14. However, this is just one of dozens of different hoaxes emerging in the […]

Under a settlement agreement, Twitter will be obligated to establish a more rigorous information-security policy to prevent user accounts from being hijacked. The United States Federal Trade Commission finalized its settlement with Twitter over charges that the micro-blogging site did not safeguard user privacy and misled users about its security practices. The commissioners finalized the […]

Data breaches, mobile security and malicious links in Google search seemed to be on everyone’s mind this week. Hours after the devastating earthquake in Japan, cyber-criminals had already poisoned the search results for “most recent earthquake in Japan.” The malicious links directed users to a fake antivirus page. By midday, it appeared that pages referencing […]

Cyber-criminals are equal opportunity attackers, as they are just as likely to target customers of smaller regional banks and credit unions as they are to go after large banks and credit card companies. Members of Grow Financial Credit Union, a credit union in Tampa, Fla., recently found this out the hard way. Customers received phishing […]