Category Archives: Security News
Antivirus test labs call out Chinese security company as cheat
Chinese antivirus firm Qihoo 360 Technology today was censured by three major testing organizations for cheating on the evaluations.
The three antivirus testing labs — AVComparatives, AVTEST and Virus Bulletin, of Austria, Germany and the U.K., respectively — stripped Qihoo of all awarded certifications and rankings for this year. They will also put in place controls to make sure that Qihoo or others cannot “game” the tests in the future.
Qihoo denied the charges, saying they were “without merit.”
CIA: Who is watching out for you?
For most people, the acronym CIA refers to the Central Intelligence Agency, that shadowy organisation that looks after US intelligence matters. It’s the same agency that conspiracy theorists accuse of being complicit in many of the country’s worst moments in history.
For technologists, CIA stands for something completely different — confidentiality, integrity and availability — three things that are crucial to the security of your business.
Let’s break this down. Confidentiality refers to the ability to hide information from unauthorised people. You can do this through cryptography or encryption.
Mozilla may offer new browser features only on secure websites
Mozilla is planning to gradually favor HTTPS (HTTP Secure) connections over non-secure HTTP connections by making some new features on its browser available only to secured sites.
The browser developer decided after a discussion on its community mailing list that it will set a date after which all new features will be available only to secure websites, wrote Firefox security lead Richard Barnes in a blog post. Mozilla also plans to gradually phase out access to browser features for non-secure websites, particularly features that could present risks to users’ security and privacy, he added.
Malware campaign inflated views of pro-Russia videos
A botnet designed for Web advertising fraud was also used to nudge up the number of views of some pro-Russian videos on the website DailyMotion, according to security vendor Trustwave.
An investigation into what appeared to be strictly ad fraud turned out to have a surprising political angle, wrote Rami Kogan of Trustwave’s SpiderLabs, in a blog post on Thursday.
Facebook change will give you control over data sharing with apps
Users are getting greater choice over what information is shared with websites and apps when they log in using their Facebook ID.
A new version of Facebook Login, which begins its wide roll out this week, will present users with a prompt to “Edit the info you provide.” Clicking that will let users grant or deny access to different types of information. The login now also highlights who will see content posted by the app in Facebook, for apps that request the ability to do so.
