Profile
paulfroberts
Member since: August 2012
Bio:
I'm an experienced writer with a decade of work as a reporter and industry analyst covering IT security, cyber security and hacking. Prior to donning the reporter's cap, I spent close to a decade in the technology field, providing technical communications, product training and marketing and communications services to firms including Cisco Systems, Logica and SteelPoint Technologies (now part of Autonomy Corp. PLC).
More recently, I served as editor of the computer security blog Threatpost.com. My writing has appeared in The Boston Globe, Salon.com, Fortune Small Business, as well as ZDNet, Computerworld, InfoWorld, eWeek, CIO , CSO , ITworld as well as long format analysis for The 451 Group. I have provided expert commentary on cyber security and emerging threats for leading news outlets including NPR's Marketplace TechReport. Finally 'yes,' I was a guest on The Oprah Show — but it’s a long story.
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Activity
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A new spam run targeting fans of the cult show Breaking Bad proves that for spammers (and other business folk) we are the sum of the niche groups we align ourselves with.
1 week 6 days ago
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DIY electronics is entering a golden age with the help of powerful, cheap, programmable devices like the Arduino micro controller and Raspberry Pi mini computer. But the DIY potential of these new platforms isn't limited to consumer applications. Here's a look some security tools you can make yourself.
2 weeks 2 days ago
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Recent revelations about wide ranging and warrantless government surveillance don’t mean that email is dead – just that you can’t ever trust it again!
5 weeks 4 days ago
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Personal privacy is going to turn from a "right" to a "fight" in the next decade, as individuals take up (digital) arms against government- and private sector snooping on their personal lives.
7 weeks 5 days ago
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Don’t let all the light and heat over the NSA’s PRISM program fool you. The big story at this year’s annual Black Hat and DEFCON conferences was the myriad of ways that intelligent machines – from televisions to automobiles to medical devices – are creating new privacy and security risks.
8 weeks 6 days ago
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Long ago, we surrendered our privacy to the web. But research presented at this week’s Black Hat Briefings in Las Vegas suggests that structural problems in the way the web works means we may have also surrendered our security, as well.
10 weeks 1 day ago
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Carriers and mobile device makers are speeding headlong down the road to a future in which patches for mobile devices will be phased out and replaced with regular device upgrades. Expect to see some security road kill along the way.
11 weeks 5 days ago
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Three months after Google patched a widespread flaw in the Android operating system, the vast majority of Android users can’t use it.
12 weeks 4 days ago
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Three months after Google patched a widespread flaw in the Android operating system, the vast majority of Android users can’t use it.
12 weeks 4 days ago
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This week saw a much–anticipated update to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) designed to keep minors from being the targets of advertisers. You could be forgiven for wondering if anything has changed.
13 weeks 4 days ago
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Has Mr. Snowden, in his youthful naiveté, helped expose our own passivity, and complicity with a massive surrender of our Constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties? If it prompts much needed changes to privacy protections, then we all owe Mr. Snowden a debt of gratitude.
16 weeks 4 days ago
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Mobile phone makers were in agreement that the security and privacy of their customer was their top concern. But that was about all they could agree on
17 weeks 5 days ago
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The takedown of Liberty Reserve and the arrest of its founder, Arthur Budovsky, didn't eliminate a spam-spewing botnet or dismantle a shadowy cyber crime group. But its impact on the cyber crime world may be far more profound.
18 weeks 4 days ago
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A recent expose shines a light onto the strange world of "booter" or "stressor" web sites which offer DDoS-attacks-for-hire.
19 weeks 5 days ago
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Cyber espionage from China is at the top of the U.S.'s grievance list. But Pentagon brass and official Washington dithered for more than a decade while attacks mounted.
21 weeks 2 days ago
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AV companies have been at war with the bad guys for much of the last two decades. And guess what? The bad guys won. Now that the days of antivirus software being in the front line of defense against malware are over, what companies are ready to step in and take up arms against sophisticated attacks and malware? Here are five to keep your eye on.
22 weeks 2 days ago
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As chaos reigned in the hours after twin explosions at the finish line of the storied Boston Marathon, social media outlets became a lifeline between runners, spectators and the outside world.
24 weeks 5 days ago
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The IRS is scaring taxpayers silly this season with boasts about its Big Data prowess and 'robo audits.' But recent reports suggest the agency is struggling to keep its IT operations afloat.
25 weeks 3 days ago
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With the federal government proposing airplane style "black boxes" in every automobile, a crowd-funded project wants to design a lock that will allow car owners to secure their data from snooping and tampering.
26 weeks 6 days ago
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Microsoft's Windows operating system spent close to two decades as the 'problem child' of the IT world - ubiquitous, buggy and easy to hack. But this week brought more evidence that Google and its Android mobile operating system may be taking that mantle from the folks in Redmond, Washington.
27 weeks 3 days ago
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The U.S. military relies heavily on distributed, wireless networks to communicate in combat zones. Now DARPA is looking for ideas on how to keep enemies off these networks.
28 weeks 5 days ago
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paulfroberts wrote PC cleanup scammer calls Microsoft Malware Protection Center expert. Hilarity ensues. What's a bad day for a scammer selling bogus Windows PC clean up services? How about accidentally dialing a guy who works in Microsoft's Malware Protection Center!
29 weeks 6 days ago
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A security researcher claims to have found five, new vulnerabilities in Oracle's Java technology that could allow a malicious hacker to bypass safety features in the latest version of the Java technology.
30 weeks 6 days ago
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A steady drumbeat of news about sophisticated cyber attacks against our government and leading institutions has attendees at this year's RSA conference in a fever. And that may be bad for security.
31 weeks 5 days ago
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As if you didn't know it already: antivirus software isn't doing its job, even though it sucks up around 30% of IT security budgets. But where can companies turn next? Two firms think they have an answer.
31 weeks 6 days ago
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