As more of our day-to-day lives becomes web-connected, the number of passwords we need to keep track of increases at a dizzying rate. Remembering passwords can be difficult, but it's a necessary evil. Passwords are the first line of defense for keeping hackers and snoops from accessing your sensitive data. A lot of business computer…
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Congress Commits to Fighting Piracy
Recently, the United States Congress agreed to provide $30 million in new funding to put towards the battle against piracy. On Monday, authorities reported another victory on the piracy front- great success on a recent year-end piracy crackdown which is code-named Operation Holiday Hoax. These new pledged funds will target personnel and programs which were…
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Russia and U.S. Talk Internet Security
The United States has begun planning talks with Russia and a United Nations arms control committee to strengthen Internet security and limit military use of cyberspace. American and Russian officials have very different interpretations of the talks so far, but the simple fact that the United States is even participating represents a significant policy shift…
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Hackers Use Amazon’s Cloud
Security researchers for Amazon recently spotted the Zeus botnet running an unauthorized command and control center on the company's EC2 cloud computing infrastructure. This is the first known time that Amazon Web Services' cloud infrastructure has been used for this type of illegal activity, according to onw of the security researchers in question. The hackers…
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Danish Man Tests the Limits of Copyright Laws
In Denmark, it is completely legal to make copies of commercial videos for personal backup or other private purposes. However, it is illegal to break the DRM on any dvd, which completely prevent the copying of any DVD. They promised him a response, then didn't respond. So now he's reporting himself to the police. He…
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New Zealand Man Fined $16 Million for Spamming
In New Zealand, a man living in Queensland has been ordered to pay more that $16 million for running the world's largest illegal spam operation. Lance Atkinson, 26 years old from Christchurch, was living in Pelican Waters on the Sunshine Coast when the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) had the entirety of his assets frozen just last…
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July 4th Cyber Attack Continues
A surprisingly sophisticated computer attack that was first noticed July 4 has compromised the Web sites of several government agencies. Agncies specifically tasked with fighting cyber crime are included on this list. Over the holiday weekend, The Treasury Department, Secret Service, Federal Trade Commission and Transportation Department Web sites were all down for a time,…
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