Endpoint Security

Two Kaspersky Labs top execs publicly and explicitly slammed Apple for poor security in recent weeks as Apple customers go through the pain of growing into malware targets and Kaspersky makes a big push to round up new customers for its cloud security service. Apple users, maybe.

A chimp named Santino made news three years ago for gathering rocks in the morning to throw at humans in the afternoon. Now he's hiding the rocks and his own anger until it's time to whip out the rocks and have at the enemy, which dumb animals are not supposed to be able to do.

A technically savvy gang of East Europeans that has been extorting money from Europeans using 'Police Trojan' ransomware for two years is also responsible for the rush of ransomware in the U.S., after Americanizing its social engineering pitch, according to TrendMicro.

Anonymous is disavowing knowledge of a YouTube video warning the collective will leak proof that aliens visit Earth, which is funny, but is just one of a growing list of trolling incidents that hold Anonymous up to ridicule.

Sound advice against the use of bad passwords has been around for decades. Yet I still find people electing to use passwords like pa55w0rd and login123 as if they'd never heard about password cracking programs. Even technical professionals -- programmers, help desk techs and systems administrators -- sometimes assign really weak passwords to their own and other important accounts. It's become painfully obvious to me that telling people to use good passwords isn't enough. We need to clearly define what a good password is -- and never imply that short or predictable passwords are ever OK.

In three months, Amazon's Kindle Fire went from zero to 54 percent share of the Android tablet market. Its cost and power have changed the choice from iPad vs. everything, to iPad, Kindle Fire, or long justifications of why another choice isn't an obviously bad one

Ten or 12 years ago Microsoft got its act together on security, churning out fixes quickly, taking aim at new malware and probing its own products for exploitable flaws. The founder of Kaspersky Labs warns Apple it must do the same or lose its market in a plague of malware.

Risk analyses list malware, espionage and user negligence among top threats; Anonymous and other hacktivists are usually farther down the top 10. So why do the alarm bells start ringing about semi-anarchistic protest-hackers as votes on unpopular cybersecurity bills approach?

Not every MIT hack is brilliant. Some are the kind of prank any group of bright students could pull off. Not this time. Friday night a group of uber-geek MIT hackers turned the campus' Green Building into a game of Tetris that could be played using a console installed at ground level (with a sign reading DO NOT play TETRIS on the Green Building). Brilliant.

Security and anti-virus companies have disagreed all along on how many Macs are infected with the Flashback malware. Dr. Web, which discovered it, claims 650,000; Symantec says 140,000.

Instagram, once the not-very-exclusive artistic vision of the hipster iPhone photographer community, lost most of its shine when it was ported to Android, then sold to Facebook. Fake downloads with Russian malware put it out to pasture for good.

Eight men have been arrested on charges they ran a network called the Farmer's Market that provided an order-and-fulfillment service for the international sale of LSD, ketamine and other serious drugs, while hiding everyone's identities using the free, friendly TOR proxy network.