Topics by happygeek

Want to buy a Dell machine loaded with Linux? Shame, as it appears that Dell Europe would really rather you bought a Windows-powered one, despite having a website devoted entirely to selling Dell Ubuntu laptops. And, oh boy, does it use some strange arguments to dissuade you from becoming a …

[URL="http://www.ibm.com"]IBM[/URL] researchers have [URL="http://www.zurich.ibm.com/news/07/asme.html"]unveiled[/URL] prototype 3D visualisation software that will enable doctors to interact with their medical data in pretty much the same way they interact with their patients. The technology, known as the Anatomic and Symbolic Mapper Engine (ASME), uses an avatar representation of the human body which the …

Hands up if you remember Opera Software, you know the Norway-based developer of alternative web browser clients. In the days before Firefox, Opera was the client most likely to shake up Microsoft and for a while seemed to be doing pretty well in that regard. Then Firefox came along and …

So you've lost access to your data through hardware failure or accidental erasure. What do you do? Like most cyber-warriors you naturally turn to the Internet, be that via a Google search or YouTube video, for help. That's a big mistake says [Kroll Ontrack](https://www.krollontrack.co.uk/blog/), a data recovery specialist, as self-inflicted …

According to research from data recovery specialists Kroll Ontrack, some three quarters of those workers that had lost data on a broken device didn't attempt to ensure that information was irretrievable before disposing of the hardware.  It doesn't matter whether the hardware itself is a PC or laptop, …

Google's seemingly always changing indexing algorithm continues to hit site rankings as the search giant continues to drive a new generation of SEO relying upon original and relevant content generation and sharing above all else. Now a panel of SEO experts in the UK has warned that companies need to …

Last week a group of six 'm-commerce' experts took part in a round robin discussion in Manchester, England to determine the best ways forward for developers interested in creating a serious mobile web presence yet wanting to make money through the medium of mobile advertising at the same time. Anyone …

Guardian newspaper columnist [Dawn Foster](https://twitter.com/DawnHFoster) posted images on Twitter this weekend showing how she was able to login to the official Conservative party conference app as Boris Johnson, until recently the UK Foreign Secretary. Not only was there no password required to login to the app, all that was required …

I've been writing about various security risks in the health sector for many years now. Usually my articles cover patient privacy, data protection and health provider network insecurity issues. Occasionally, they spill over into darker territory where the cyber risk morphs into a very real one as far as the …

I take security and privacy issues seriously, but sometimes I despair when news stories such as that regarding Samsung TVs eavesdropping on private conversation explode across the media as happened last week. The reason for my despondency has less to do with the data privacy debate and more to do …

It has long since been argued that continued exposure to something over a length of time will reduce the shock value of whatever it happens to be, from violence in movies to swearing in public. Now according to a [URL="http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2007-12-12-porn-study_N.htm"]report[/URL] researchers at the Brigham Young University have suggested that the …

The second annual Imperva Hacker Intelligence Initiative report, this one entitled [Monitoring Hacker Forums](http://www.imperva.com/docs/HII_Monitoring_Hacker_Forums_2012.pdf), is out and reveals that the threat surfaces being discussed by the hacker community are very different from those that businesses are spending money on defending against attack.  The Imperva research analysed the content …

According to the [Australian Federal Police](http://www.afp.gov.au/), it would appear that at least half a million credit cards 'down under' have been compromised and funds in excess of AUS $25 million (US $26 million) stolen. Although precise details are still coming in, it would seem likely that nothing more complicated than …

Following the recent ransomware attacks that leveraged the WannaCrypt0r malware and NSA-developed EternalBlue vulnerability exploit, there was [plenty of advice](https://happygeek.com/?p=812) that backup, backup, backup was the best mitigation. Data backups are, of course, an important part of any business continuity strategy. However, what happens when your backups are also encrypted …

Radiohead are a band which does not need to prove anything to anyone. Their seminal album 'OK Computer' is consistently voted one of the greatest recordings of all time, be it the critics or mere mortal music fans putting the crosses in the boxes. Which is perhaps why the latest …

It's all too easy to think that spam is an old problem, and one that has largely been dealt with. Certainly, many people will tell you that they see very little evidence of spam in their mailboxes. This, however, has less to do with the demise of the spammer and …

The UK's National Crime Agency (NCA) has said that it has dealt a "major blow to dark web markets." In a [statement](http://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/news/news-listings/483-international-law-enforcement-deals-major-blow-to-dark-web-markets) issued on the 7th November the NCA says that a coordinated operation between law enforcement agencies in Europe and the US has "targeted market places for illegal commodities …

Although it took eBay itself an absolute age to disclose that a serious breach had taken place, and then [completely screwed up the process of ensuring users change their passwords](http://www.daniweb.com/hardware-and-software/microsoft-windows/viruses-spyware-and-other-nasties/news/479152/more-ebay-security-stupidity-exposed), this should come as no real surprise. Happygeeks' Law states: the larger the corporate, the longer it takes to admit …

The news that JPMorgan Chase & Co, which is the largest of the US banks with a reach that extends to half of all American households, has been breached will surprise nobody. At least not in the sense that this is old news, with a disclosure of the event happening …

My van was built 15 years ago by Mazda in Japan as a multi-purpose 'people carrier' vehicle with the unlikely name of a Bongo. It has survived the years well, and I have now converted it into a camper van. Another 15 year old that travelled across the globe has …

[ATTACH=RIGHT]22199[/ATTACH]Ever wondered just how many domain names there are on the Internet? DaniWeb has, and can reveal the answer as being an almost astonishing 215 million worldwide. According to global Internet infrastructure provider and domain registrar Verisign, more than five million domain names were added to the total during the …

Adobe Flash users have been under attack from cybercriminals again, this time courtesy of [a zero day exploit kit by the name of Angler](http://malware.dontneedcoffee.com/2015/01/unpatched-vulnerability-0day-in-flash.html). The exploit kit has been readily available on the dark market, and hits vulnerabilities to be found in Flash Players up to 15.0.0.223, as well as …

News has broken this weekend that the personal data, including bank account details, of some 2.4 million customers of the Carphone Warehouse may have been compromised following a breach that the mobile phone retail giant is calling "a sophisticated cyber-attack." The company also warns that encrypted credit card data of …

Sanjib Mitra is a man who likes to be responsible and do the right thing. A year ago he discovered, quite by accident, that a little bit of URL tweaking could reveal personal data about people other than himself within a website database. He was completing a complicated application form …

As [news breaks](http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/06/12/office-of-personnel-management-hack-china/71146452/) that a second breach at the federal Office of Personnel Management may have seen another set of data, potentially more valuable than that accessed during [the first](http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/06/why-the-biggest-government-hack-ever-got-past-opm-dhs-and-nsa/), Philip Lieberman, President of privileged identity management specialists [Lieberman Software](http://www.liebsoft.com/), has been talking about what went wrong. Here's what he …

Action video camera vendor GoPro has announced that it is riding into the Tour de France with a promotional [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X63m5r5jJlg) to celebrate being named the official camera of the world's largest annual sporting event with a worldwide television audience of some 4 billion people, but not before the BBC [reported](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-32934083) …

A couple of decades ago, in another life, I wrote a little script which would capture keystrokes and then store that data within the 'white space' of an image file. It was pretty crude, but it was also twenty years ago and to be honest nobody was really looking for …

Earlier this month, security outfit FireEye’s 'FireEye as a Service' researchers out in Singapore [discovered and reported](https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat-research/2015/06/operation-clandestine-wolf-adobe-flash-zero-day.html) on a phishing campaign that was found to be exploiting a zero-day in Adobe Flash Player vulnerability (CVE-2015-3113). That campaign has been well and truly active for a while now, with attacking emails …

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has released the latest version of its 'Who Has Your Back?' [report](https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-government-data-requests-2015) and accompanying infographic, and it makes for interesting reading. Once you appreciate that what the EFF is talking about here is how good, measured as a response to a handful of yes or …