Surveillance Through Your Home Appliances

By JR Raphael Contributing Writer, [GAS] All right, surveillance junkies, I’ve got a new one for you: a just-developed device that can turn your air conditioning system into a sophisticated home monitoring tool. Shwetak Patel of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta came up with the protocol, featured in New Scientist today. The tool […]

Cell Phone Security: Using your Phone to Monitor your Home

————– By JR Raphael Contributing Writer, [GAS] This week, we’re talking cell phone secrets — easy-to-use services that can help you unlock the hidden powers of your phone. I started by showing you a bunch of ways to get more for your money with cool services like Braincast and Cellfire. But today, we’re taking on […]


The Truth Behind File Trading Traps

By JR Raphael Contributing Writer, [GAS] Ever wonder how the record industry catches all those people trading music? Today, we’re getting some insight. The Record Industry Association of America (RIAA) says it uses the same exact tools familiar to file sharers to track them down. Specifically, RIAA officials told the Chronicle of Higher Education it […]

NSA Cyber-WarGames Showcases NSA Takedown Potential

By PatB Contributing Writer, [GAS] The NSA just finished a series of cyber-warfare gaming with itself as the attackers.  The defenders?  The military academies, including the Naval Academy in Annapolis, the Air Force Academy in Colorado, and the US Military Academy in West Point.  For the second year in a row, the Army came in first […]

From Spam to Scams: 30 Years of Online Annoyances

By JR Raphael Contributing Writer, [GAS] Break out the bubbly: Spam is celebrating its 30th anniversary this weekend. And my oh my, three decades later, how the annoyances of the internet have changed. Where it all started The message considered the first unsolicited mass e-mail went out to unsuspecting inboxes on May 3, 1978. A […]

F-Secure’s Internet Security 2009 Beta

Anti-virus products from large corporations are becoming so bloated.  With features like backup solutions, password managers, anti-phishing, anti-spam, and application scanning firewalls, products that were intended to protect your system only tends to bog down it down.  Even as a security professional, I would prefer to not run an Anti-Virus product that is all-encompassing like […]