Datamation Staff

The New York Times: A team of European and American researchers have discovered that RSA encryption, the method most websites use to secure transactions, has a fatal flaw. The problem lies with the algorithms used to create the public keys. A very small fraction of the time, the prime numbers used to generate those keys […]

Reuters: U.S. and European regulators have given Google the OK to purchase Motorola Mobility–and its extensive patent library–for $12.5 billion. However, the officials warned that they would be watching to make sure Google makes good on its promise to license the Motorola patents fairly. The Justice Department noted, “The division determined that the acquisition of […]

Ars Technica: In its Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update, Cisco made a startling prediction. “By the end of 2012, the number of mobile-connected devices will exceed the number of people on Earth, and by 2016 there will be 1.4 mobile devices per capita,” wrote the company. Included in the “mobile devices” category are phones, […]

The New York Times: Officials in the Chinese cities of Xuzhou and Shijiazhuang have halted sales of Apple’s iPad and have seized some inventories of the tablets from retailers. The move come as a trademark dispute between Apple and Proview Technologies escalates. Apple bought the trademark rights for the iPad name from a Proview subsidiary […]

Wall Street Journal: An internal investigation at Nortel Networks revealed that hackers likely based in China enjoyed access to the company’s networks for a decade. In 2000, the hackers stole passwords belonging to seven top executives, including the CEO, and used their access to downloaded technical papers, research-and-development reports, business plans, employee emails and other […]

eWeek: A new report from online job board Dice.com finds that demand is high for IT pros with Linux skills. Among companies surveyed, 81 percent said that hiring Linux talent is one of their top priorities for the year, but 85 percent reported that they had a hard time finding people to fill their available […]

PCMag: Apple has asked the Fair Labor Association (FLA) to conduct audits of working conditions at its suppliers’ final assembly factories. This morning, FLA officials began the inspection process at one of the Foxconn facilities in China which has recently been the catalyst for much criticism leveled at Apple. “We believe that workers everywhere have […]

MercuryNews: At Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., work is progressing on more than $120 million worth of construction projects. Most notably, the company is building a “Google Experience Center,” where it will showcase its products and services in a 120,000-square-foot private museum. The Experience Center will not be open to the public; instead, up […]

The Times of India: Hackers allegedly affiliated with the Chinese group Evil Shadow Team defaced Microsoft’s Indian storefront on Sunday night and stole passwords and user ids for customers who had used the site. Apparently, Microsoft made the egregious mistake of storing the login data without encryption on its servers. Customers who have used the […]

Computerworld: For the third time in a row, Mozilla has issued a security patch for Firefox immediately after updating the open source browser. One week after releasing Firefox 10, the company sent out Firefox 10.0.1, which patches a “critical” vulnerability that “may be potentially exploitable.” The patch applies both to consumer versions of Firefox and […]

The Register: In the latest salvo in its ongoing patent war against Samsung, Apple has filed a lawsuit in California and is seeking a U.S. ban on the Galaxy Nexus smartphone while the case progresses. Apple claims that the Samsung phone violates four Apple patents and generally copies the iPhone. According to Apple’s filing, “Absent […]

Cnet: According to new data from comScore, Google increased its share of the search market to 66.2 percent in January, up from 65.9 percent in December. Those gains came at Yahoo’s expense; the struggling Internet company fell from 14.5 percent to 14.1 percent market share. Yahoo’s piece of the market has been steadily falling for […]