Michael Horowitz

In, I Was Hacked in Beijing, New York Times reporter Andrew Jacobs details the break-in of his Yahoo e-mail account while in China. As he described in a related story, Journalists’ E-Mails Hacked in China, his e-mail troubles were far from unique. He writes: “In what appeared to be a coordinated assault, the e-mail accounts of more […]

Many agree that Windows computers need to be protected with a strategy called defense in depth. This is not just for fighting off viruses. Clearly, network security and Internet Explorer also need defense in depth. When Internet Explorer was recently hacked in a public contest, Microsoft respondedthat “…defense in depth techniques aren’t designed to prevent […]

Way back when, Microsoft opted for convenience over security and Windows users have been sitting ducks ever since. I’m speaking of autorun/autoplay, a feature in Windows that lets programs run automatically when a CD or USB flash drive is inserted into a PC. For years now bad guys have been exploiting this to automatically infect […]

I’ve been focused on defensive computing for a long time. If I had to rank the most important aspect, the number one thing is to be skeptical. No software can protect the gullible. This article is about the next most important aspect of defensive computing: the ongoing process of applying bug fixes to software. Why […]

Do you make online financial transactions from a Windows computer? If so, you may want to re-visit that decision. It’s a given that almost all malicious software targets Windows. In my opinion, while it is possible to secure a Windows computer, the process is too hard, too time-consuming and/or technically over the head of most […]

There is no safe neighborhood anywhere on the Internet. Even honest reputable sites, such as The New York Times, can inadvertently serve up malware. If you don’t keep all the software on your computer patched with the latest bug fixes, you are constantly at risk – malware exploits known bugs to install itself. Now that […]

Two things happened recently that, taken together, point out just how dangerous the Internet is. Cyber security was all over the news as Defense Secretary Robert Gates approved the creation of a new department in the U.S. government, called U.S. Cyber Command, to handle the security of computer networks run by the Department of Defense. […]

Web browser cookies always struck me as a minor issue. Although anti-malware programs often flag them as something to be removed, this always struck me as a scare tactic. However, when Google started the rollout of a new cookie-based tracking system last month, it seemed time to take a new look at cookies with the […]

If you travel with a full-size laptop computer, no doubt your shoulders are aching for the relatively new category of sub-notebooks known as netbooks: small, cheap, light, under-powered laptops. The joys of netbooks: Our shoulders like the lightweight. Our wallets like the price. And under-powered is a relative term. But are they too small? Do […]

(Comment on this netbook review at the bottom of the page.) Also see: Top Netbooks: the Eight Best Netbooks Compared (April 2009) And: Netbook Smackdown: Compare the Six Top Netbooks Netbooks are a new category of laptop computer, defined mostly by their small size and cheap price. The category started only a year ago and […]