Articles by John P. Mello Jr

Twitter last week began warning some of its members that they might be the target of a state-sponsored attack on their accounts Coldhak posted to its Twitter account a copy of the warning it received....

As 2016 approaches, it's time to get the crystal ball out and predict next year's cybersecurity trends Here are some predictions from security pros TechNewsWorld interviewed....

FBI Director James Comey on Wednesday told members of a U.S. Senate committee that high-tech companies may need to adopt a new business model regarding encryption in order to get on the same page with law enforcement "Encryption is getting in the way of our ability to have court orders effective to gather information we need in our most important w...

Apple on Tuesday released a new version of iOS, and while it was largely a maintenance release of the mobile operating system, the upgrade included some treats for music and news enthusiasts The release, iOS 9.2, improved Apple Music, the company's streaming music service, in a number of ways....

Music lovers are receiving an early holiday gift from Apple: It has increased from 25,000 to 100,000 the maximum number of music tracks that can be uploaded to the personal libraries of Apple Music and iTunes Match users, MacRumors reported Sunday When Apple launched its streaming music service,Apple Music, in June, Eddy Cue, senior vice president ...

Apple will launch an iPhone with a 4-inch display and support for Apple Pay in early 2016, according to a research note from an analyst with a good track record of predicting Apple products The new iPhone model will have an A9 processor -- the same processor found in the latest iPhone models -- and a metal casing offered in several colors, analyst ...

The Wikimedia Foundation this week rolled out a service designed to improve the quality of Wikipedia articles The Objective Revision Evaluation Service uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to help Wikipedia editors identify damaging articles more quickly and assign quality scores to them more rapidly....

While visions of holiday shoppers dance in retailers' heads, those visions are also on the minds of online marauders Net predators are sticking to scams that have made them money throughout the year....

Apple intends to peel the 3.5-millimeter headphone jack from the next version of the iPhone, according to a Japanese blog post published last week. The jack will be dropped from the iPhone 7, according to a Google translation of the blog post, which was published at Macotakara. Labeled "Rumor," the post cited what it called a reliable source....

Bankrate.com on Monday released results of a survey showing that even though consumers may have more mobile payment options this holiday season, more than two-thirds of shoppers won't be using them That's because seven out of 10 Americans surveyed said they'll be using cash (39 percent) or a debit card (31 percent) for most of their holiday buys, a...

SentinelOne last week introduced an addition to its behavioral solution designed to address the problem of ransomware scrambling files on a computer Ransomware has been a scourge not only for consumers, but for the enterprise, too. The malicious software can be particularly nettlesome for enterprises because they have to protect so many endpoints -...

Dojo-Labs on Thursday introduced Dojo, a device that plugs into the router of a home network and acts as a watchdog to ensure that everything connected to the network is operating on its best behavior The device brings some of the advanced technologies used to protect corporate networks to the home. It can prevent attacks and detect intrusions by o...

TheFBI has denied allegations that it paidCarnegie Mellon University security researchers $1 million to crack a network designed to protect the anonymity of its users TheTor Project, which operates the network, last weekaccused the FBI of cutting the CMU deal....

Huawei Technologies last week unveiled lithium-ion batteries that recharge in minutes rather than hours The batteries, developed by Huawei's Watt Lab, recharge 10 times faster than their competitors and can reach 50 percent capacity in two to five minutes, the company said....

ISIS has rebuffed the declaration of cyberwar Anonymous issued on Sunday "The #Anonymous hackers threatened in new video release that they will carry out a major hack operation on the Islamic state (idiots)," reads a message posted Monday in a Telegram channel believed to be affiliated with ISIS hackers....

TheTor Project last week claimed theFBI paidCarnegie Mellon University $1 million to crack the anonymity of Tor users Tor's claim appears to have been triggered by areport last week in Motherboard that said the FBI's arrest of an alleged member of the Silk Road 2.0 drug ring was based on "information obtained by a 'university-based research institu...

ThePew Research Center on Tuesday released a report on permissions and mobile applications found in the Google Play store The number of permissions requested by a mobile app can be a deal breaker for six out of 10 smartphone users, Pew found....

Bitdefender on Monday released a free decryption tool designed to wrest data from the grip of a rare type of ransomware that's been plaguing Linux servers Details for performing the decryption are available on the company's website....

Here's the problem with most programs aimed at killing malicious software: They need someone to tell them something's malicious What if, however, the programs had the smarts to identify bad code on their own? That's what a company calledDeep Instinct says its security solution, launched last week, can do....

Although teens and tweens have more choices than ever when it comes to media activities, watching television and listening to music are their top preferences, according to a report Common Sense Media released this week Among tweens, ages 8 to 12, watching TV was the top media activity, with nearly 62 percent saying they did it every day. For teens,...