Articles by John P. Mello Jr.

Willie Sutton once said that he robbed banks because that's where the money was. If Sutton were living today, he might have made the career move to hacker That would allow him to do what he liked to do best -- steal money -- on a global scale, which is what a ring of bank robbing hackers have been doing. Eight of the alleged cybercrooks were arrest...

The Obama administration appears to be sending a message to privacy advocates that it's taking their issue seriously by creating a new position devoted to it -- and choosing a high-profile tech lawyer to occupy it The White House reportedly is tagging Nicole Wong, Twitter's legal director for products, for a top privacy post -- either as a chief pr...

There are 3.7 billion IP addresses on the Internet, and HD Moore has pinged every one of them Moore is chief security officer at Rapid7, a cyberthreat and risk management company. In February, he decided as a hobby project to conduct a census of all the devices connected to the Internet, using a nest of computers in a spare room in his home. What h...

Authentication requirements for some travelers looking for shared accommodations around the world will be getting a little tougher Airbnb -- which allows people to list, discover and book unique accommodations through a sharing model -- announced Tuesday that it will be asking for more personal information from U.S. consumers who want to use its se...

Cybercriminals have begun focusing their malicious endeavors on the sinew of the Internet to reap greater rewards For months now, Net bandits have targeted key infrastructure elements -- from the domain-naming service to certificate-issuing authorities to hosting services -- in order to spread cash-producing malware....

It's no secret that security experts don't have a lot of love for social media. Information freely available at social media sites makes it easier for net marauders to fashion targeted attacks on organizations However, social media may be undermining data security in a more profound way....

American Airlines created a nightmare for its customers for at least two hours Tuesday. Its electronic reservation system wentdown in the middle of the afternoon, forcing the carrier to hold allflights until after 4:30 p.m. ET. The incident may have exposed a rift between AA and Sabre, the company managing its computerized reservations system, which used to be part of the airline...

A lot of noise has been made about the consequences of data breaches for companies, but a recent survey of some of the largest U.S. businesses may have wrapped those noisemakers in a muffler Of the 27 largest companies reporting cyberattacks in their most recent filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, none said they sustained any ...

Google has revamped its Google Play Android app with designs on making it easier to use and better for discovering content. The search giant is also thinning its app catalog by removing what it considers to be low quality offerings. In what has become the rage in digital design circles, text will take a back seat to images at the new Google Play....

China has a reputation as a center for international hacking, so why would a U.S. security company want to set up shop there? Before hackers launch their international escapades, they typically cut their teeth in their local markets, explained Rakesh Loonkar, president of Trusteer, which announced last week that it was opening an office in China....

Nothing steams consumers like robocalls, which is why the Federal Trade Commission launched a contest last year calling for ideas to tackle the nuisance. The winners of that challenge were announced Tuesday Each of two winners will receive $25,000 to bring their robocall solutions to market....

One of the largest denial of service attacks in the history of the Internet didn't take rocket science to execute The offensive was conducted over several days last week after the anti-spam group Spamhaus placed a Dutch hosting service, located in a former NATO bunker, on a blacklist reserved for spammers....

Microsoft is once again being challenged in Europe over alleged anti-competitive practices A group representing Linux developers in Spain has filed a complaint with the European Commission charging that Microsoft's desktop operating system, Windows 8, supports technology that makes it difficult for users to place other operating systems on their co...

Cybersecurity news had a distinctive international flavor last week In South Korea, a cyberattack from unknown sources disrupted portions of the nation's banking and broadcast industries....

Two federal agencies are reportedly probing the relationship between Microsoft and business partners in China, Italy and Romania that allegedly bribed foreign officials to land software contracts Lawyers at the U.S. Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission are investigating accusations made by a whistleblower who formerly worked fo...

Just when we thought the spam scourge was over, it appears it's making a comeback After four straight quarters of decline, spam volumes on the Internet rose 92 percent in February, according to security firm Eleven Research Team....

Computer printers aren't typically linked with the word "subversive," but that's the mission of a new site for 3D printer files Defcad was announced Tuesday at the South by Southwest Interactive conference. It is designed to give 3D printer enthusiasts access to files that allow them to create objects with their printers -- even if those objects ar...

Phishing and spear phishing have long been thought to be mutually exclusive hacking tricks, but cybercrooks have found a way to combine the two in a technique called longline phishing "The technique allows you to hit a lot of people very quickly and largely go undetected," Dave Jevans, founder and CTO of Marble Security and founder of the Anti-Phis...

After taking it on the chin for its alleged attacks on U.S. media outlets -- and for its army reportedly backing hackers engaged in cyberespionage around the world -- China returned fire The government claimed its defense and military ministries' websites are being bombarded with 144,000 hacking attacks a month from the U.S. However, China didn't t...

Still smarting from a recent attack on its systems, Facebook started its week with a discovery by researchers at Bitdefender that an infected add-on at the Chrome Web Store was planting malware on its members' computers. The malware, among other things, was padding the Like counts on dummy Facebook pages Once the pages, which are often completely d...