Datamation Staff

Reuters: Google’s chief legal officer, David Drummond, has posted a blog which accuses rivals like Microsoft, Apple and Oracle of waging a “a hostile, organized campaign against Android” through “bogus patents.” The post comes on the heels of Microsoft and Apple’s joint purchase of thousands of Nortel patents. Drummond says the purpose of the purchase […]

NYTimes: The White House is announcing Thursday that Steven VanRoekel, a former Microsoft executive and current managing director of the Federal Communications Commission, will succeed Vivek Kundra as the CIO for the federal government. VanRoekel says he plans to continue with the efficiency improvement efforts began by Kundra. “We’re trying to make sure that the […]

NetworkWorld: Dell security researcher Joe Stewart says that the hackers who stole RSA SecureID tokens last spring had ties to China. According to Stewart, the individuals involved used two pieces of malware based on HTran, a common hacker tool that was developed in China. In addition, he has discovered that the malware was directing data […]

NetworkWorld: What terms do IT hiring managers look for when searching through resumes? Dice.com has released of list of five up-and-coming terms that hiring managers are searching for more often. They include iRise, COTS (commercial off-the-shelf software), Crystal SDK, PeopleSoft Security and NetApp. The online job board also released a list of the most popular […]

InformationWeek: According to the Ponemon Institute’s Second Annual Cost of Cybercrime Study, the cost of recovering from a cyberattack has increased 56 percent this year. There are about 72 successful cyberattacks per week, and it takes the average enterprise 18 days to deal with those attacks. The daily cost of those attacks now averages $23,000, […]

MSNBC: A new report from smartphone security vendor Lookout says that 30 percent of Android and iPhone users are likely to encounter malware this year. Android threats are growing particularly quickly, with users two and a half times more likely to see malware today than they were six months ago. According to the report, “attackers […]

Vanity Fair: Security vendor McAfee has released a new report which details a major cyber-espionage campaign dubbed “Operation Shady RAT.” According to the report, over the last five years, hackers have infiltrated (and are continuing to infiltrate) networks belonging to 70 different public and private organizations, including government agencies in the United States, Taiwan, South […]

USAToday: BlackBerry maker RIM has announced that later this month it will release five new smartphones that all run the BlackBerry 7 operating system. The company has developed two new handsets for its Bold line and three new handsets for the Torch product family. Two of the phones will incorporate near field communications (NFC) technology, […]

Computer Weekly: Security vendor Sophos says that it identifies an average of 150,000 new strains of malware every day, or roughly one every thirty seconds. According to the company’s Mid-Year 2011 Security Threat Report, malware attacks have increased about 60 percent year-over-year. The report singles out search engine poisoning and social media threats as some […]

Digital Trends: According to NetApplications, 49.8 percent of all PC owners were running Windows XP in July. That’s the first time since NetApplications began tracking such data that fewer than half of all users were on Windows XP. Usage of Microsoft’s decade-old operating system has fallen off by 12 percent in the last year, with […]

Mashable: OS X users who have upgraded to Lion and mobile developers running iOS 5 can now access the beta version of Apple’s iCloud. Similar to MobileMe, the cloud-based syncing service provides access to Web-based version of Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Find my iPhone and iWork. Apple has also revealed the pricing for iCloud. Up to […]

The Register: Security researchers at CA say they have discovered an Android Trojan that actually records phone calls that can later be uploaded to a remote server. While previous pieces of malware had the ability to log calls, the ability to record calls is new. The researchers say that the Trojan cannot spread on its […]