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Storage. It's not a sexy topic. But everyone uses it in some way or another. You have iPhones, you have computers. Everyone knows how important a person's data is. But it doesn't just "disappear." Or does it? New research suggests that newer solid-state hard drives, which are faster and offer better performance, are vulnerable to an inherent flaw -- they lose data when they're left dormant in storage for periods of time where the temperature isn't properly regulated. The worrying factor is that the period of time can be weeks, months, but even in some circumstances -- just a few...

In the mid-1990s, Marc Goodman, then an investigator in the Los Angeles Police Department, tried to convince his boss of the need for a computer crime unit. The reaction? Utter bafflement. “This captain said to me, ‘Computer crime, what is that? Like if you take the monitor and hit somebody in the head and kill them?’” It is a telling anecdote. While law enforcement agencies have become in­creasingly sophisticated technologically, criminals have the edge, according to Mr Goodman. That was something he observed when investigating drugs and vice in LA. “In those days the only people that had pagers in...

When I do a normal launch of adobe illustrator It freezes. when I do the optional launch....I get no toolbar etc etc. Im stumped and haven't been able to get anywhere on the adobe forums help! Thank you

A Colorado man who has been “fighting with his computer for the last several months” unloaded a volley of shots into his Dell tormentor, resulting in the death of the computer and his arrest for discharging a firearm, cops report. When asked about the shooting, Hinch told TSG, “I just had it,” adding that he tired of the balky computer’s “blue screen of death.” Hinch said that he whacked the computer with a 9mm Hi-Point pistol recently purchased from a Craigslist seller. The gun was seized by police, who left the computer behind. The late Dell XPS 410 model, seen...

Adobe Systems has released a patch for 22 vulnerabilities in Flash Player, one of which is reportedly under attack by an exploit that exists in the wild. The most critical vulnerability, CVE-2015-3043, could lead to code execution. Adobe's Flash Player security updates are available for Macintosh, Windows and Linux."Adobe is aware of a report that an exploit for CVE-2015-3043 exists in the wild, and recommends users update their product installations," said Adobe. If you reached this page because you're unsure if a popup alert from Adobe is real, take a look at our helpful guide for best practices how to safely install and...

Software security group Kaspesky labs in collaboration with the Dutch police has released a tool which helps to decrypt files locked by Ransomware. Kaspersky Labs has released a decryption tool for files encrypted with CoinVault ransomware. The tool was developed by the Kaspersky lab after the The National High Tech Crime Unit (NHTCU) of the Dutch police handed over the information obtained from a database of CoinVault command-and-control server containing the decryption keys.

Typically, today’s budget PCs come with 4GB of RAM. A mid-range configuration may offer double that, and high-end gaming systems and workstations go as high as 16GB or more. There’s no doubt which way the wind’s blowing, either: Windows 8 supports up to 128GB of physical memory (assuming you’re running the 64-bit edition), while Windows 8 Pro can go up to 512GB. Does anyone really need this much RAM? Memory isn’t as expensive as it used to be, but there’s obviously no point paying for gigabytes of RAM from which you’ll receive no material gain. Does more equal faster? Many...

Version 4.0.0 of Mono, the FOSS implementation of the .NET Framework, has been released. This is the first release of Mono that replaces various components of Mono with code that was released by Microsoft under the MIT license. Microsoft itself is working towards .NET Core: a redistributable and re-imagined version of .NET, which has two code drops: CoreFX and CoreCLR. Mono at this point continues to provide an API that tracks the .NET desktop/server version. This means that most of the Mono code that has been integrated from Microsoft comes from the ReferenceSource code drop. ...

Is Malwarebytes and Malwarebytes Anti-Exploits two separate programs? If so, is it advised to have both programs on my computer? I am currently using Malwarebytes Anti-malware on my Windows 8.1 system.

It’s a commonly held belief among software developers that avoiding disk access in favor of doing as much work as possible in-memory will results in shorter runtimes. The growth of big data has made time saving techniques such as performing operations in-memory more attractive than ever for programmers. New research, though, challenges the notion that in-memory operations are always faster than disk-access approaches and reinforces the need for developers to better understand system-level software. These findings were recently presented by researchers from the University of Calgary and the University of British Columbia in a paper titled When In-Memory Computing is...

SSL/TLS encryption once again is being haunted by an outdated and weak feature long past its prime:  a newly discovered attack exploits a weakness in the older, less secure RC4 encryption algorithm option in SSL/TLS that's still supported in many browsers and servers. Itsik Mantin, director of security research with Imperva, at Black Hat Asia in Singapore today will detail how an attacker could sniff credentials and other information during an SSL session in an attack he named the "Bar Mitzvah Attack" after 13-year-old weaknesses in the algorithm it abuses. The attack is a glaring reminder that the RC4 algorithm,...

Ben Gurion University reported Monday that researcher Mordechai Guri, assisted by Matan Munitz and guided by Prof. Yuval Elovici, uncovered a way to breach air-gapped systems—that's quite something considering that air-gapped systems, said the Daily Mail, are among the most secure computers on the planet, used in high security settings such as classified military networks, payment networks processing credit and debit card transactions for retailers, and industrial control systems for critical infrastructure. The research initiative was given the name BitWhisper, part of research on the topic of air-gap security at the Cyber Security Research Center at Ben-Gurion University. Dudu Mimran,...

Remember the most talked about story of 2014? It was Microsoft loves Linux. It looks like Microsoft’s love for Linux is more like Mark Wahlberg’s love for Reese Witherspoon as we saw in the movie Fear.If reports are to be trusted Microsoft’s survival mechanism may kick in again, with the new release of Windows. The legacy software maker may resort to ‘secure boot’ to block alternative operating systems on Windows PCs.At Microsoft’s hardware conference WinHEC, new slides were shown which could mean bad news for Linux users. Machines shipping with Windows 10 may see OEMs enforcing Secure Boot without an option...

Last week I had a very wierd computer glitch. It screwed up my text fonts, desktop icons and other stuff. At any rate I have gotten things mostly back under control, except for one thing. Java scripts refuse to run in Firefox. I have updated Firefox, I have update Java, I have gone through everywhere I can think of to enable Java script, but it still will not run. Does anyone have any suggestians on how to fix this or what the problem might be? It has me flummoxed. Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

No browsers are safe as proved yesterday at Pwn2Own, but crashing one of them with just one line of special code is slightly different. A developer has discovered a hack in Google Chrome which can crash the Chrome tab on a Mac PC. The code is a 13 character special string which appears to be written in Assyrian script *break* Matt C has reported the bug to Google, who have marked the report as duplicate. This means that Google are aware of the problem and are reportedly working on it.

Ask security experts what to do when hit with ransomware – the sophisticated malware that infects a device or network, uses military-grade encryption to restrict access, and demands payment for the decryption key – and you'll typically get the same answer: "never pay the ransom." But for many, that's simply not an option. For example, last November an employee in the Sheriff's Department in Dickinson County, Tenn., accidentally clicked on a malicious ad and exposed the office network to the infamous CryptoWall ransomware. Detective Jeff McCliss told local News Channel 5 that CryptoWall had encrypted "every sort of document you...

Ethereum, the brainchild of wunderkind software developer Vitalik Buterin, who was just 19 when he came up with the idea, is the most buzzed-about project right now in the cryptocurrency community. It has attracted an all-star team of computer scientists and raised $18.4 million in a crowdfunding campaign—the third most successful of all time. And now, according to the official Ethereum blog, it's on the verge of being rolled out to the public. Ethereum's developers use a rolling ticker tape of bold tag lines to describe what they're creating, including a “Social Operating System for Planet Earth,” and “the Upcoming...

My computer shuts down completely upon watching certain video. For example, the earlier posted Tom Cotton speech. When I clicked onto it, I was able to watch essentially the introduction, then, BLANK. The thing just shuts off. FR, or stuff like my library account, or the weather forecasts, etc, are fine. But the minute I switch to a video format, or try to watch a CD...blank. It suddenly shuts down completely. Is it my system, or is there a fix that I'm unaware of? I know there are many knowledgeable herein. Thank you all in advance.

The end is finally in sight for Microsoft’s long-fraught Internet Explorer. At the Microsoft Convergence conference yesterday in Atlanta, Georgia, Chris Capossela, Microsoft’s head of marketing, said that the new flagship browser for Windows, which was announced in January and is codenamed Project Spartan, will not be associated with the Internet Explorer brand. While Internet Explorer will still exist on Windows 10 for compatibility purposes, it will take a back seat to the new browser.

A judicial advisory panel Monday quietly approved a rule change that will broaden the FBI's hacking authority despite fears raised by Google that the amended language represents a "monumental" constitutional concern. The Judicial Conference Advisory Committee on Criminal Rules voted 11-1 to modify an arcane federal rule to allow judges more flexibility in how they approve search warrants for electronic data, according to a Justice Department spokesman. Known as Rule 41, the existing provision generally allows judges to approve search warrants only for material within the geographic bounds of their judicial district. But the rule change, as requested by the...