The CEOs of Google and Oracle met for 6 hours Friday but failed to settle their lawsuit

The CEOs of Oracle and Google met for six hours on Friday but failed to reach a deal to end their massive copyright lawsuit over Google's use of Java in Android."After an earlier run at settling this case failed, the court observed that some cases just need to be tried. This case apparently needs to be tried twice," Magistrate Judge Paul Singh Grewal, who mediated the talks, noted on the court's docket.Oracle accuses Google of illegally copying a key part of the Java platform into its Android operating system, making billions in profit for Google and, according to Oracle, crushing Java’s chance of success in smartphones, tablets and other products.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Chrome extensions will soon have to tell you what data they collect

Google is about to make it harder for Chrome extensions to collect your browsing data without letting you know about it, according to a new policy announced Friday.Starting in mid-July, developers releasing Chrome extensions will have to comply with a new User Data Policy that governs how they collect, transmit and store private information. Extensions will have to encrypt personal and sensitive information, and developers will have to disclose their privacy policies to users.Developers will also have to post a "prominent disclosure" when collecting sensitive data that isn't related to a prominent feature. That's important, because extensions have tremendous power to track users' browsing habits and then use that for nefarious purposes.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Chrome extensions will soon have to tell you what data they collect

Google is about to make it harder for Chrome extensions to collect your browsing data without letting you know about it, according to a new policy announced Friday.Starting in mid-July, developers releasing Chrome extensions will have to comply with a new User Data Policy that governs how they collect, transmit and store private information. Extensions will have to encrypt personal and sensitive information, and developers will have to disclose their privacy policies to users.Developers will also have to post a "prominent disclosure" when collecting sensitive data that isn't related to a prominent feature. That's important, because extensions have tremendous power to track users' browsing habits and then use that for nefarious purposes.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Schools put on high alert for JBoss ransomware exploit

More than 2,000 machines at schools and other organizations have been infected with a backdoor in unpatched versions of JBoss that could be used at any moment to install ransomware such as Samsam. That's according to Cisco's Talos threat-intelligence organization, which on Friday announced that roughly 3.2 million machines worldwide are at risk. Many of those already infected run Follett's Destiny library-management software, which is used by K-12 schools worldwide.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Schools put on high alert for JBoss ransomware exploit

More than 2,000 machines at schools and other organizations have been infected with a backdoor in unpatched versions of JBoss that could be used at any moment to install ransomware such as Samsam. That's according to Cisco's Talos threat-intelligence organization, which on Friday announced that roughly 3.2 million machines worldwide are at risk. Many of those already infected run Follett's Destiny library-management software, which is used by K-12 schools worldwide.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

That man who ‘deleted his entire company’ with a line of code? It was a hoax

The owner of a Web hosting company who claimed to have erased his entire business from the Internet with a single script command appears to have made the whole thing up.Marco Marsala of Italy posted a cry for help on the popular Server Fault forum earlier this week, claiming he’d accidentally erased all the data on his servers including backups.“I run a small hosting provider with more or less 1,535 customers and I use Ansible to automate some operations to be run on all servers,” Marsala wrote. “Last night I accidentally ran, on all servers, a Bash script with a rm -rf {foo}/{bar} with those variables undefined due to a bug in the code above this line.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Thanks, Obama: TV will never be the same, and consumers will love it

It’s fitting that President Obama launched a new initiative to open up TV set-top boxes to competition 20 years after the Telecommunications Act of 1996 because consumers are in for as radical a makeover of television today as they experienced with the transformation of telephone communications back then. This isn’t Kansas anymore!In the next few years, consumers’ expectations for TV will be radically different, and in a decade, today’s TV will look as antiquated as cordless phones and answering machines look today.Opening up the set-top box means much more than market competition to lower the price and break the stranglehold that cable companies have over equipment leases that tie consumers to their TV. It means set-top boxes can include other features, such as Google Cast (renamed from Chromecast) AppleTV, Amazon Prime or Roku.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

A new approach to detecting compromised credentials in real-time  

This column is available in a weekly newsletter called IT Best Practices.  Click here to subscribe.   Last year the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) issued a statement to notify financial institutions about the growing trend of cyber attacks designed to steal online credentials. While this is certainly a big issue for banks and credit unions, concern about stolen credentials extends far beyond the financial services industry. Basically any organization with valuable data is at risk of an attack initiated with seemingly legitimate credentials.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

A new approach to detecting compromised credentials in real-time  

This column is available in a weekly newsletter called IT Best Practices.  Click here to subscribe.   Last year the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) issued a statement to notify financial institutions about the growing trend of cyber attacks designed to steal online credentials. While this is certainly a big issue for banks and credit unions, concern about stolen credentials extends far beyond the financial services industry. Basically any organization with valuable data is at risk of an attack initiated with seemingly legitimate credentials.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: Cryptography isn’t easy

Cryptography is harder than it looks, primarily because it looks like math. Both algorithms and protocols can be precisely defined and analyzed. This isn’t easy, and there’s a lot of insecure crypto out there, but we cryptographers have gotten pretty good at getting this part right. However, math has no agency; it can’t actually secure anything. For cryptography to work, it needs to be written in software, embedded in a larger software system, managed by an operating system, run on hardware, connected to a network, and configured and operated by users. Each of these steps brings with it difficulties and vulnerabilities. -via Schneier on Security

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MIT’s new bug finder uncovers flaws in Web apps in 64 seconds

Finding bugs in Web applications is an ongoing challenge, but a new tool from MIT exploits some of the idiosyncrasies in the Ruby on Rails programming framework to quickly uncover new ones.In tests on 50 popular Web applications written using Ruby on Rails, the system found 23 previously undiagnosed security flaws, and it took no more than 64 seconds to analyze any given program.Ruby on Rails is distinguished from other frameworks because it defines even its most basic operations in libraries. MIT's researchers took advantage of that fact by rewriting those libraries so that the operations defined in them describe their own behavior in a logical language.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

MIT’s new bug finder uncovers flaws in Web apps in 64 seconds

Finding bugs in Web applications is an ongoing challenge, but a new tool from MIT exploits some of the idiosyncrasies in the Ruby on Rails programming framework to quickly uncover new ones.In tests on 50 popular Web applications written using Ruby on Rails, the system found 23 previously undiagnosed security flaws, and it took no more than 64 seconds to analyze any given program.Ruby on Rails is distinguished from other frameworks because it defines even its most basic operations in libraries. MIT's researchers took advantage of that fact by rewriting those libraries so that the operations defined in them describe their own behavior in a logical language.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Mitel’s acquisition of Polycom has game-changing potential in UC market

After months of speculation, Mitel finally pulled the trigger on acquiring Polycom for $1.96 billion.Competing in the unified communications (UC) market means having to butt heads with not just one, but two 800-pound gorillas named Cisco and Microsoft. The combined “MiPolycom” will be a much bigger, stronger, $2.5 billion revenue company—much more capable of competing with the big boys.Mitel’s acquisition of Polycom is a bit of an unusual situation. Polycom is bigger than Mitel in both revenue and market cap, but Mitel was able to secure a $1.05 billion loan from Bank of America and Merrill Lynch to complete the deal. Under the terms of the agreement, Polycom will continue to run as a separate business unit under Mitel and will retain its brand. Rich McBee, Mitel’s CEO, will be the CEO of the combined organization, which will be headquartered in Ottawa, Canada.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Enterprise tablet wars: Galaxy TabPro S vs. Surface Pro 4

It was no surprise when Samsung unveiled its first tablet hybrid, the Galaxy TabPro S. However, the surprise came when Samsung announced it opted to equip the device with Windows 10 instead of Android. It was a smart move by Samsung, firmly placing the Galaxy TabPro S alongside the Microsoft Surface Pro 4. The Surface 4 is the most popular Windows 10 hybrid today, but that could change with Samsung's latest flagship device. But which device is the better enterprise option when you pit them head-to-head? Microsoft Microsoft’s Surface Pro 4 is the kind of device leading the trend toward detachable tablets, also called 2-in-1s. Many Windows 10 detachables are expected to be launched in 2016.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

House passes bill to limit FCC authority on net neutrality

The U.S. House of Representatives has approved a bill that would prohibit the Federal Communications Commission from regulating broadband pricing under its net neutrality rules.The No Rate Regulation of Broadband Internet Access Act would limit the FCC's authority over prices after the agency reclassified broadband as a regulated telecom service when it passed net neutrality rules in February 2015. The bill passed 241-173 Friday, with only five Democrats voting for it.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

House passes bill to limit FCC authority on net neutrality

The U.S. House of Representatives has approved a bill that would prohibit the Federal Communications Commission from regulating broadband pricing under its net neutrality rules.The No Rate Regulation of Broadband Internet Access Act would limit the FCC's authority over prices after the agency reclassified broadband as a regulated telecom service when it passed net neutrality rules in February 2015. The bill passed 241-173 Friday, with only five Democrats voting for it.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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