John Ribeiro
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Surveillance reform measure blocked in the wake of Orlando killings
The U.S. House of Representatives voted down an anti-surveillance amendment after some of its members expressed concern about its impact on the fight against terrorism, in the wake of Sunday’s massacre at a nightclub in Orlando.The measure was proposed by Congressman Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, and Congresswoman Zoe Lofrgren, a Democrat from California, as as an amendment to the Department of Defense Appropriations Act.It would prevent warrantless searches by law enforcement of information on Americans from a foreign intelligence communications database and prohibit with some exceptions the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency from using any funds appropriated under the Act to require that companies weaken the security of their products or services to enable surveillance of users.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Surveillance reform measure blocked in the wake of Orlando killings
The U.S. House of Representatives voted down an anti-surveillance amendment after some of its members expressed concern about its impact on the fight against terrorism, in the wake of Sunday’s massacre at a nightclub in Orlando.The measure was proposed by Congressman Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, and Congresswoman Zoe Lofrgren, a Democrat from California, as as an amendment to the Department of Defense Appropriations Act.It would prevent warrantless searches by law enforcement of information on Americans from a foreign intelligence communications database and prohibit with some exceptions the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency from using any funds appropriated under the Act to require that companies weaken the security of their products or services to enable surveillance of users.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Facebook, Google, Twitter sued by father of Paris terror victim
The use of social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Google’s YouTube by terrorist groups for propaganda, recruitment, fundraising and other activities has come into sharp focus recently. It seemed inevitable that these companies would at some point be blamed for the misuse of these forums and become targets of lawsuits from families of victims. A lawsuit filed in a federal court in California by the father of Nohemi Gonzalez, a victim of the Paris terror attack in November, charges that Twitter, Facebook and Google “have knowingly permitted the terrorist group ISIS [Islamic State group] to use their social networks as a tool for spreading extremist propaganda, raising funds and attracting new recruits.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Samsung to acquire US cloud services firm Joyent
Samsung Electronics is acquiring U.S. cloud services company Joyent as it builds its services business around mobile devices and the Internet of Things.The financial details of the transaction were not disclosed. Joyent will operate as a standalone subsidiary under the new dispensation and continue providing cloud infrastructure and software services to its customers.Samsung said Thursday the acquisition would give the smartphone maker access to its own cloud platform to support it in the areas of mobile, IoT and cloud-based software and services.The South Korean company said it had evaluated a number of providers of public and private cloud infrastructure but zeroed in on Joyent in San Francisco as it saw “an experienced management team with deep domain expertise and a robust cloud technology validated by some of the largest Fortune 500 customers.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Safari 10 to turn off Flash by default
Apple's Safari is driving another nail in the coffin of Adobe Flash by no longer telling websites that offer both Flash and HTML5 that the plug-in is installed on users' Macs.The Mac maker is planning similar measures with other plug-ins like Java, Silverlight and QuickTime. This move will force websites with both plug-in and HTML5-based media implementations to use their HTML5, it said.When Safari 10, the new version of its browser, ships this fall, it will by default behave as though common legacy plug-ins on users’ Macs are not installed, wrote Apple software engineer Ricky Mondello in a post.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Safari 10 to turn off Flash by default
Apple's Safari is driving another nail in the coffin of Adobe Flash by no longer telling websites that offer both Flash and HTML5 that the plug-in is installed on users' Macs. The Mac maker is planning similar measures with other plug-ins like Java, Silverlight and QuickTime. This move will force websites with both plug-in and HTML5-based media implementations to use their HTML5, it said. When Safari 10, the new version of its browser, ships this fall, it will by default behave as though common legacy plug-ins on users’ Macs are not installed, wrote Apple software engineer Ricky Mondello in a post.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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US company’s China employee allegedly stole code to help local government
The U.S. has charged a Chinese national, Xu Jiaqiang, with economic espionage and theft of the source code of a clustered file system belonging to his former U.S. employer, which he is alleged to have stolen for his own benefit and that of the National Health and Family Planning Commission in China.The charges against Xu highlight the intellectual property risks faced in other countries by development operations of U.S. companies, particularly in those countries the U.S. suspects could be involved in economic espionage.Xu, who was initially arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in December and was charged with one count of theft of trade secrets, is scheduled to be arraigned on a superseding indictment of charges of economic espionage on Thursday in a federal court in New York, the Department of Justice said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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US company’s China employee allegedly stole code to help local government
The U.S. has charged a Chinese national, Xu Jiaqiang, with economic espionage and theft of the source code of a clustered file system belonging to his former U.S. employer, which he is alleged to have stolen for his own benefit and that of the National Health and Family Planning Commission in China.The charges against Xu highlight the intellectual property risks faced in other countries by development operations of U.S. companies, particularly in those countries the U.S. suspects could be involved in economic espionage.Xu, who was initially arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in December and was charged with one count of theft of trade secrets, is scheduled to be arraigned on a superseding indictment of charges of economic espionage on Thursday in a federal court in New York, the Department of Justice said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Symantec to acquire Blue Coat for $4.65 billion
Security company Symantec is to acquire Web security provider Blue Coat for US$4.65 billion in cash in a deal that will broaden the portfolio of security technologies the combined company can offer customers as they move to the cloud.The deal, which is expected to be closed by the third quarter, will also see Greg Clark, CEO of Blue Coat, taking over as CEO of Symantec and joining its board at the the closing of the transaction. Symantec, well-known for its anti-virus software, has been looking out for a new CEO since April after it was announced that its CEO Michael Brown was stepping down, following poor financial results. Ajei Gopal was appointed as interim president and chief operating officer.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Symantec to acquire Blue Coat for $4.65 billion
Security company Symantec is to acquire Web security provider Blue Coat for US$4.65 billion in cash in a deal that will broaden the portfolio of security technologies the combined company can offer customers as they move to the cloud.The deal, which is expected to be closed by the third quarter, will also see Greg Clark, CEO of Blue Coat, taking over as CEO of Symantec and joining its board at the the closing of the transaction. Symantec, well-known for its anti-virus software, has been looking out for a new CEO since April after it was announced that its CEO Michael Brown was stepping down, following poor financial results. Ajei Gopal was appointed as interim president and chief operating officer.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Twitter locks some accounts after passwords exposed
Twitter said it had locked down and called for a password reset of some accounts after an unconfirmed claim of a leak of nearly 33 million usernames and passwords to the social network.The company said the information was not obtained from a hack of its servers, and speculated that the information may have been gathered from other recent breaches, malware on victim machines that are stealing passwords for all sites, or a combination of both.“In each of the recent password disclosures, we cross-checked the data with our records. As a result, a number of Twitter accounts were identified for extra protection. Accounts with direct password exposure were locked and require a password reset by the account owner,” Twitter’s Trust & Information Security Officer, Michael Coates said in a blog post on Friday. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Twitter locks some accounts after passwords exposed
Twitter said it had locked down and called for a password reset of some accounts after an unconfirmed claim of a leak of nearly 33 million usernames and passwords to the social network.The company said the information was not obtained from a hack of its servers, and speculated that the information may have been gathered from other recent breaches, malware on victim machines that are stealing passwords for all sites, or a combination of both.“In each of the recent password disclosures, we cross-checked the data with our records. As a result, a number of Twitter accounts were identified for extra protection. Accounts with direct password exposure were locked and require a password reset by the account owner,” Twitter’s Trust & Information Security Officer, Michael Coates said in a blog post on Friday. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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New Mozilla fund will pay for security audits of open-source code
A new Mozilla fund, called Secure Open Source, aims to provide security audits of open-source code, following the discovery of critical security bugs like Heartbleed and Shellshock in key pieces of the software.Mozilla has set up a US$500,000 initial fund that will be used for paying professional security firms to audit project code. The foundation will also work with the people maintaining the project to support and implement fixes and manage disclosures, while also paying for the verification of the remediation to ensure that identified bugs have been fixed.The initial fund will cover audits of some widely-used open source libraries and programs. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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New Mozilla fund will pay for security audits of open-source code
A new Mozilla fund, called Secure Open Source, aims to provide security audits of open-source code, following the discovery of critical security bugs like Heartbleed and Shellshock in key pieces of the software.Mozilla has set up a US$500,000 initial fund that will be used for paying professional security firms to audit project code. The foundation will also work with the people maintaining the project to support and implement fixes and manage disclosures, while also paying for the verification of the remediation to ensure that identified bugs have been fixed.The initial fund will cover audits of some widely-used open source libraries and programs. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Transfer by US of Internet oversight could face new hurdles
U.S. plans to transfer the oversight of key technical Internet functions to an international multi-stakeholder governance model have run into hurdles with two bills being introduced on Wednesday that would require the government to first take the approval of Congress for the transition.A bill proposed in the Senate by Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, called the Protecting Internet Freedom Act, would prohibit any transfer of Internet domain name system functions except if expressly allowed under a federal statute passed after the new legislation has been enacted.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Transfer by US of Internet oversight could face new hurdles
U.S. plans to transfer the oversight of key technical Internet functions to an international multi-stakeholder governance model have run into hurdles with two bills being introduced on Wednesday that would require the government to first take the approval of Congress for the transition.A bill proposed in the Senate by Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, called the Protecting Internet Freedom Act, would prohibit any transfer of Internet domain name system functions except if expressly allowed under a federal statute passed after the new legislation has been enacted.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Verizon to bid $3B for Yahoo’s core Internet business
Verizon Communications will be bidding about US$3 billion for the Internet assets of ailing Yahoo, according to a newspaper report.The communications company will try to beat other potential bidders such as private-equity firm TPG with a deal that would likely aim to combine Yahoo Web properties, with over 1 billion users a month, with Verizon’s growing business in online ads, the Wall Street Journal reported late Monday.The bidding is far from final and Yahoo is expected to hold at least one more cycle of bidding, WSJ said quoting people familiar with the matter. But the price offered by Verizon could be an indicator of which way the fight for the acquisition of the Internet company is going.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Google, Facebook, Yahoo, rights groups oppose FBI expansion of surveillance powers
Google, Facebook, Yahoo and industry and civil rights groups have opposed legislation that would extend the categories of Internet records that the U.S. government can collect without court approval through administrative orders known as National Security Letters.The companies and groups have pointed out in a letter to senators that the new provisions would expand the types of records, known as Electronic Communication Transactional Records (ECTRs), which the Federal Bureau of Investigation can obtain using the NSLs.The ECTRs would include a variety of online information, such as IP addresses, routing and transmission information, session data, a person's browsing history, email metadata, location information, and the exact date and time a person signs in or out of a particular online account.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Google, Facebook, Yahoo, rights groups oppose FBI expansion of surveillance powers
Google, Facebook, Yahoo and industry and civil rights groups have opposed legislation that would extend the categories of Internet records that the U.S. government can collect without court approval through administrative orders known as National Security Letters.The companies and groups have pointed out in a letter to senators that the new provisions would expand the types of records, known as Electronic Communication Transactional Records (ECTRs), which the Federal Bureau of Investigation can obtain using the NSLs.The ECTRs would include a variety of online information, such as IP addresses, routing and transmission information, session data, a person's browsing history, email metadata, location information, and the exact date and time a person signs in or out of a particular online account.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Server market slumps after seven quarters of growth
The worldwide server market saw a year-on-year revenue slump of 3.6 percent in the first quarter to US$12.4 billion, after a winning streak of seven quarters of growth, IDC said Wednesday.The slowdown in the market, which also witnessed shipments of servers drop by 3 percent year-on-year to 2.2 million units, is largely put down to an end in the enterprise refresh cycle and what is described as a “pause” in investments in hyperscale server deployments.Those investments are expected to be back in the second half of this year with a pick up in expenditure on servers for existing data centers and the roll out of new ones.The slowdown in the server market in the first quarter has not affected key players uniformly. Hewlett Packard Enterprise retained its top position, with revenue of $3.3 billion and a 26.7 percent share of market revenue, after a year on-year growth of 3.5 percent. Dell and IBM retained their number two and three spots respectively, but with year-on-year decline in revenue.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here