Websites are playing a critical role for the candidates in the 2016 U.S. presidential primary season. These sites are used to encourage voters and educate the people of their platform, but even these candidates are susceptible to hacks and security problems, impacting their campaign or their image. Each presidential candidate has a website, but which … continue reading
The Strata and Hadoop World Conference in San Jose kicked off this morning with tutorial sessions covering all manner of Apache projects and Big Data challenges. While the attendees learned about techniques, the vendors were busy announcing and detailing their latest and greatest Big Data software products. Security was a popular topic as Hadoop implementations … continue reading
1&1 Mail & Media, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft and Yahoo want to ensure e-mails are secure. The companies have sent the Internet Engineering Task Force a proposal for a new system that provides better encryption. The proposed system, SMTP Strict Transport Security (SMTP STS), is designed to address the STARTTLS extension to SMTP. According to the … continue reading
The five matches between champion Go player Lee Sedol and Google’s artificial intelligence program Alpha has come to a close. AlphaGo came out on top, beating the 9-dan professional player four times. The AP noted that this game was thought to be unbeatable by a computer. The head of the DeepMind team, Demis Hassabis, said … continue reading
There’s a lot of emphasis nowadays on having secure passwords, as well as changing passwords often to keep your information and accounts safe from hackers. Despite what some IT professionals have said in the past, one woman with the Federal Trade Commission has suggested that changing passwords less will actually keep systems safer. Lorrie Cranor, … continue reading
Google is giving developers an early look into its upcoming Android operating system: Android N. The company said it is giving developers the preview earlier than usual in order to give them more time to address feedback and make changes. “By releasing a ‘work in progress’ build earlier in development, we have more time to … continue reading
Multiple technology companies have been offering support to Apple during the FBI encrypted iPhone dispute, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation is among the many organizations that disagree with the government’s request to break into an iPhone. Yesterday, the EFF filed an amicus brief in support of Apple’s fight against the court order. The brief is … continue reading
It’s no secret that computer security is a difficult area of expertise. At the annual RSA Conference in San Francisco this week, attendees were treated to a host of solutions to solve their security woes. As usual, however, software development is not the focus. Robert Griffin, chief security architect at RSA, agreed that developing secure … continue reading
The ACM Turing Award, presented by the Association for Computing Machinery, is often referred to as the “Nobel Prize of Computing.” Today, Whitfield Diffie, former chief security officer at Sun Microsystems, and Martin E. Hellman, professor emeritus of electrical engineering at Stanford University, were recipients of the 2015 award for their contributions to modern cryptography. … continue reading
Recent reports show Google and other technology companies are standing with Apple in the FBI/Apple conflict, while others like Bill Gates sided with the FBI. Meanwhile, Apple’s engineers have begun developing new security measures that would make it impossible for the government to break into a locked iPhone, even if they do win the fight. … continue reading
Personal privacy vs. national security. That’s the issue at stake today as the FBI has asked Apple to hack into the phone of one of the shooters in the San Bernardino, Calif., terror attack in December. On the face of it, the stance by Apple’s Tim Cook seems genuine enough. People have come to trust … continue reading
Tim Cook released a message to Apple customers yesterday, saying the United States government has demanded that Apple take an unprecedented step that threatens the security of Apple customers. Cook wrote that the company opposes this order, which has implications far beyond the legal case at hand. He said that for years Apple has used … continue reading
