security

Two years after Trend Micro's big consumer suite overhaul, Titanium continues to improve. This year, there's a big change to which features are available in the different suites to make the suite structure easier to understand.

All "basic" security features have been moved to the entry-level Trend Micro Titanium Antivirus Plus ($39.95 for one computer), while multiple computer and multiple device support, as well as some extra features, are available only in the significantly more expensive Trend Micro Titanium Internet Security ($79.95), Trend Micro Titanium Maximum Security ($89.95), and Trend Micro Titanium Premium … Read more

Windows 8 and RT are set to receive their second lineup of bug fixes when next week's Patch Tuesday rolls around.

The patches are also aimed at the other current versions of Windows, including XP, Vista, and Windows 7, as well as Server 2003 and 2008.

Five of the patches are rated critical, while two are deemed important. The critical ones are designed to shore up holes in the OS that could allow an attacker to infect a PC with malicious code.

Assuming Windows Update is set to automatic, critical patches are automatically installed, while those considered important can … Read more

Congrats to Jonathan P. of Lawton, Okla., for winning an Element Case Sector 5 for the iPhone and a Joule II for the iPad in last week's giveaway. Now, some good news and some bad news. First, the bad: It's getting to be that time of year when online holiday-related scams proliferate faster than big-box deals. The good? This week's giveaway is here to help.

We're giving away a copy of Symantec's new Norton 360 Multi-Device security suite. A couple of months back, CNET highly recommended Norton 360. The Multi-Device version of the software simultaneously … Read more

The U.S. has teamed up with nearly 50 countries around the world in an effort to curb child sexual abuse on the Internet.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and European Union Commissioner for Home Affairs Cecilia Malmstrom today announced a new initiative called the Global Alliance Against Child Sexual Abuse Online. A host of European Union countries have joined the effort. South Korea, Vietnam, Turkey, and Nigeria are among the many non-EU countries that will participate in the alliance.

The alliance will make it easier for the participating countries to work together to identify instances of child sexual … Read more

If ad blocking is the hacksaw of Internet-protecting add-ons, DoNotTrackMe is a finely honed katana, slicing out tracking behaviors embedded in sites without destroying the modern Web.

The latest version makes some helpful changes both on the surface and how it protects you. Formerly known as Do Not Track Plus, the add-on's redesign makes it significantly easier to use. DNTMe's new crosshairs icon sits next to your location bar, and is easier to find than the previous one. It still shows you the number of trackers that it's blocked on the site that you're visiting, but … Read more

Twitter users who post tweets to their feeds via SMS could be vulnerable to a security flaw, according to a security consultant.

Jonathan Rudenberg yesterday posted to his blog an SMS vulnerability he discovered in Twitter that allows anyone who has knowledge of someone's mobile number to post tweets to that person's feed.

In order for the vulnerability to be exploited, victims must have SMS tweeting authorized on their accounts. From there, the would-be poster needs only to spoof their actual mobile number through an SMS gateway -- something Rudenberg says can be done very easily -- and … Read more

The U.S. and U.K. have been warned by Swiss spy agency NDB that some of the information they had shared related to counter-terrorism has been stolen, according to a new report.

Last summer, a disgruntled NDB IT technician who believed he wasn't being taken seriously over the way in which data systems should be handled, allegedly downloaded terabytes of counter-terrorism information shared among the NDB, the CIA, and the U.K.'s MI6, and had eyes on selling it off to "foreign officials and commercial buyers," Reuters is reporting today, citing European national security sources.… Read more

Updated Monday, December 3, 2012, at 11:45 a.m. PDT with comment from Microsoft.

Updated Friday, November 30, 2012, at 1:00 p.m. PDT with comment from AV-Test.org.

In a month of uneven Windows 8 news and reviews, Microsoft is taking another hit. This time, its freeware Security Essentials finds itself in the crosshairs.

Independent German security suite evaluators AV-Test.org publish bimonthly tests that rate the effectiveness of the biggest Windows security suites out there, and the recently published results showed that MSE failed to earn certification on the most recent test. MSE was the only … Read more

Owners of certain Samsung printers may find their devices a target for hackers.

Samsung printers and some Dell printers made by Samsung have a hardcoded account that someone could use to control and access information on the devices, according to US-CERT (United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team).

As described by the security team, these printers contain a hardcoded SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) string that has full read/write access and stays active even if the network protocol is disabled by the user.

"A remote, unauthenticated attacker could access an affected device with administrative privileges," US-CERT said. "… Read more