John Lister

A leading security firm says targeting personal data is becoming less of a priority for online criminals. Instead, there's now a greater effort to unlawfully access corporate data, including trade secrets. Word of this new trend comes to us courtesy ... of a McAfee report based on a survey of around 1,000 IT managers in seven countries. Only 1/3 Of Companies Publicly Admit Data Breach Perhaps the most dramatic finding was that previous estimates of data breaches may have been much lower than was reality, as just 30 per cent of companies questioned said they always make breaches public. Around 60 ... (view more)

An unspecified number of email users may be indirect victims of a recent data breach at a major marketing company. The breach was at Epsilon, which operates online mailing lists for many major companies, including seven of the ten largest firms in ... America. It's rumored that "millions" of email addresses may have been compromised in the attack. (Source: forbes.com ) The data theft means users should be on high alert for so-called email " phishing " attempts. Massive Data Breach a Gold Harvest for Online Scammers Epsilon says the breach involved the data relating to 2 per cent of its ... (view more)

Google is reportedly testing a streaming music service. It doesn't necessarily mean a public launch is imminent, however; the company would still have to reach an agreement with record labels, which may be complicated by the nature of the service. ... Google Music wouldn't be a download service in the same way as the iTunes store. Indeed, it's possible it wouldn't necessarily involve buying music at all. Streaming Music Across Devices a Possibility The idea is to provide a legal way for users to stream music from one device to another. While precise details are under wraps, it appears there would ... (view more)

In taking advantage of a security loophole, hackers have hijacked as many as four million website pages over the past week. It's thought to be the biggest attack of its type, ever. The attacks have been dubbed LizaMoon, named after the first ... destination to which visitors of hijacked sites were redirected. The hijack campaign has proven to be incredibly successful: on the first day, security firm Websense estimated 28,000 web sites were affected, but within three days that figure had risen to 500,000. Two days later and the number of affected pages were estimated to be as high as three or four ... (view more)

A computer security company has apologized after its software mistakenly reported that new Samsung laptops carry malicious software. The confusion was due to security software labeling a legitimate folder directory as being infected. The claims were ... first made by tech writer Mohamed Hassan in an article for Network World. He wrote on Monday that after buying a new Samsung laptop, he ran a security software check and found two cases of a keylogger known as Starlogger. A keylogger is a malicious application that records all keystrokes made by the user and returns them to the application's ... (view more)

Microsoft has announced that it won't be sending out Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) by automated update until the end of June this year. Originally, the plan was to send the Internet Explorer 9 update as an automatic download, providing the Windows ... Automatic Updates feature was enabled. The timeline for the automated update was to be scheduled for March 21, but that has since changed because Microsoft says the delay is a necessity due to its widespread corporate use. (Source: zdnet.com ) Internet Explorer 9 Rollout Cause of Delay Two-Fold There are two reasons being given for the June timetable. ... (view more)

The European Union (EU) has come under harsh criticism of late for upgrading its computer networks to Windows 7 without first considering other operating systems. It's just emerged that at a "secret meeting" last December, the European Commission ... (which is the administrative wing of the EU, responsible for applying the laws produced by elected politicians) decided to upgrade computers across the European political system to run Windows 7. (Source: pcworld.com ) Controversial Decision Gives MS Big Boost The controversial element of the decision was that it was made without putting the ... (view more)

The organization that oversees the distribution of Internet domain names has given final approval to ".xxx", a domain dedicated to adult subject matter. The new domain is known as a generic top-level domain, meaning it is the final part of a website ... address and isn't country-specific (like .ca for Canada and). This is the first new top-level domain since 2004's .pro for professionals. It could be the last to get specific approval, as there are plans to open up the system so that individuals and organizations can register and control their own top level domains using any word or ... (view more)

Microsoft looks to be working on an interactive television product, likely in the form of a set-top box. That would put it in direct competition with rivals Apple and Google. Speculation about the move has been spurred by the fact that a Microsoft ... executive's company bio has been revised. Tom Gibbons, who'd previously worked in Microsoft's general hardware and mobile devices divisions, is now listed as the company's "corporate vice president of TV & Service Business". Given his background, it does seem logical that he'd be working on physical devices in the new role. According ... (view more)