Several iPhone users say their phones have been hijacked by extortionists who’ve managed to ‘hack’ the Find My iPhone security tool. The victims have discovered that the tool — which is meant to be used by phone owners if their handset is lost or stolen — has been activated and their phone locked. They’ve then […]
Microsoft has changed its mind and decided it will issue a fix for a serious Internet Explorer bug for Windows XP users, despite officially ending support for the system last month. It was the first real test of Microsoft’s resolve to abandon XP, though it seemed inevitable it would face such a dilemma. At first […]
Boeing is to produce a smartphone that (from a software perspective at least) self-destructs if somebody tries to tamper with it. The Boeing Black is aimed at government contractors, the military and security agencies. Its existence had been rumoured for a couple of years, but it’s now been publicly confirmed thanks to a regulatory filing […]
Google has bought a company that specializes in using sound as a security authentication method. It could make two-step verification a quicker process. Israel-based SlickLogin uses a signal of soundwaves created uniquely for each individual verification. The sound is too quiet for the human ear to own and the user needs to place a smartphone […]
Determined hackers who fail to crack a password will simply try again until they succeed. But an ongoing security project aims to tackle that by not letting the hacker know they’ve failed. The idea is simple: instead of simply informing the unsuccessful hacker that they’ve been denied access, the system will give the hacker what […]
The tech media is once again reporting on a list of the world’s “worst” passwords. And once again, the list has some serious inherent limitations. This particular list comes from SplashData, which not so coincidentally develops password management software. It’s put together a list of the 25 worst passwords, the criteria being how frequently they […]
The makers of a smartphone launching next month claim it offers complete security from snooping on all forms of communication. But full details of the Blackphone and how it maintains privacy haven’t yet been published. The Blackphone is a joint project of Geeksphone, a Spanish smartphone manufacturer, and Silent Circle, a US firm which already […]
Nearly one in three visits to a website is from a computer up to no good according to a newly-published study. The figures come from Incapsula, a website security firm. It gathered statistics from 90 days’ worth of visits to 20,000 sites belonging to its clients, with the relevant traffic including visits from every country […]