encrypt

Twitter took some heat earlier this month for resetting more passwords than necessary after detecting a security breach in its microblogging network, as CNET's Daniel Terdiman reported on the Internet & Media blog.

The more followers you have, the more potential damage may result from a compromised Twitter account. That's why it's big news when the Twitter feeds of media organizations such as Reuters and Fox News are breached by hackers who post false news stories.

CNET News Editor Steven Musil describes the two attacks on the Reuters Twitter account last August, and Fox News' infamous erroneous … Read more

StuffIt Expander is a file compression and expansion utility that can handle a number of different file archive formats. It's a free app available from the App Store and several other Web sites, and it installs quickly.

StuffIt Expander supports a number of file formats, including ZIP, ZIPX, 7ZX, RAR, and TAR. The StuffIt Expander interface is clean, allowing you to create archives by the usual drag-and-drop method or by menu actions. Clicking on an archive file can unpack that archive. You can add password protection to your ZIP files. There is a registration nag that appears with StuffIt … Read more

The damages award against illegal file-sharer Kywan Fisher will most likely send him to the poor house. Illinois federal court Judge John Lee ordered Fisher to fork out $1.5 million to adult entertainment company Flava Works this week, according to TorrentFreak.

Flava Works sued Fisher for sharing 10 movies he'd previously paid for via BitTorrent. The damages award amount was reached by fining Fisher $150,000 per movie. This is the largest damages award ever ordered in a BitTorrent case.

Flava Works caught Fisher sharing its movies by tracing the illegal copies he was accused of sharing back … Read more

MegaUpload founder Kim DotCom has proven to be unstoppable. After the U.S. government's major takedown of the cloud-storage service, which came with charges of racketeering, copyright infringement, money laundering, and more, DotCom has escaped extradition to the U.S. for now and was given a formal apology by New Zealand's prime minister.

Emboldened, DotCom has announced that he is building a new file-sharing site called Mega. According to Wired, this new site will work slightly different than MegaUpload but will still let users upload, store, and share data files. DotCom also intends to make it raid-proof.

"… Read more

WinZip continues to push off last year's momentum with version 17 to persuade users that it remains significant in today's world of computing.

Much of what's under the hood remains solid and hasn't aged. The latest entry builds upon the 64-bit ZIP engine from 2011 by adding additional OpenCL support for multicore CPUs like Ivy Bridge and AMD Fusion. But in version 17, WinZip's redesigned ribbon interface and workflow takes the spotlight.

WinZip has opted to simplify the way users manage their archives with a redesigned ribbon. The language is easier to understand and bears … Read more

A Web security protocol designed to protect Internet users from Internet hijackings due to unencrypted Web sites has won approval as a proposed standard.

A steering group for the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) gave its blessing to a draft of HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS), an opt-in security enhancement in which Web sites prompt browsers to always interact over a secure connection.

Web browsers complying with the policy will automatically switch insecure links to a secure version of the site, using "https," without the Web surfer having to remember to type that in the URL bar.

HSTS … Read more

To make sending multiple files by e-mail or other means easier, Apple includes a quick Finder contextual menu option to zip a selection of files and folders into an archive, which not only will ensure that the files stay together, but can also greatly reduce their size for the file transfer. While convenient, Apple does not provide a means to encrypt or secure the contents of the ZIP archive with a password; however, there is a way to do this if needed.

To place a file or folder into a ZIP file that is encrypted, you will need to use … Read more

Yesterday a new open-source project was posted on GitHub that contains the source code for a utility to scour a Mac system's memory and list the entire contents of a targeted keychain. While this utility may raise some concern and its approach potentially be used for malicious activities, its abilities do not arise from a vulnerability in OS X.

The utility is a small C program called keychaindump that, with administrative privileges, will scan the system's active memory for the wrapper and master keys to unlock a targeted keychain file; however, the utility will work only on keychains … Read more

Evernote is a very popular productivity app that can be used on multiple platforms and devices. You can access your notes from nearly anywhere, which makes it an ideal app for storing information you need handy, like passwords, credit card numbers, and other private data. Evernote can secure that data by encrypting it from the Windows or Mac desktop client, using 64-bit encryption (RC2). Here's how:

Encrypting selected text From your Windows or Mac Evernote client, select the text you want to encrypt, then right-click on the text in Windows or command-click in OS X. When the shortcut menu … Read more