Articles by John P. Mello Jr

On behalf of Sony Pictures Entertainment, high-powered attorney David Boies sent a letter to a number of news outlets Sunday demanding that the organizations refrain from publishing stories based on material hackers recently stole from the company and that they destroy any of the pilfered data in their possession The letter to the news organization...

Microsoft last week began to accept bitcoins as payment for digital content purchases Bitcoins can be credited to a Microsoft account by anyone in the United States at the currency's market value -- currently around US$352 per bitcoin -- and used to buy content at the Windows Store or stores that carry Xbox games, music and video. ...

Since the hacker group calling itself "Guardians of Peace" announced its attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment late last month, things have gone downhill for the company After confidential documents were leaked to the Internet over several days, a denouement of sorts was reached last week, when a security company examining the stolen data discovere...

Two password manager makers on Tuesday announced new features that allow their users to minimize the hassle of resetting passwords One of the first things online users are advised to do after a data breach -- and there have been more than few of those lately -- is to change their passwords. Few users act on that advice, though, because creating uni...

Still reeling from a cyberintrusion that exposed massive amounts of personnel data from its entertainment division on the Internet, Sony was attacked again over the weekend. This time, hackers disrupted the company's PlayStation Network However, unlike the foray against Sony Pictures Entertainment, which is still under investigation, the company qu...

Apple for two years surreptitiously removed from iPods any music not purchased at its iTunes store, prosecutors charged Wednesday in federal court The accusations surfaced in the U. S. District Court for the Northern California, during the trial of a 10-year-old class-action lawsuit claiming Apple violated federal and state laws starting in 2006, w...

Twitter on Tuesday announced a revamp of its system for reporting abuse on its service "In our continuing effort to make your Twitter experience safer, we're enhancing our in-product harassment reporting and making improvements to 'block' [followers]," said Shreyas Doshi, Twitter's director of product management....

Cyberspies will flourish and hackers will target Apple devices more often in 2015 Until now, Russia, China and the United States have dominated the cyberespionage scene, but their success will start to attract new players to the practice....

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday heard arguments in Elonis v. United States, also known as "the Facebook threat case." At the center of the case are a number of threats posted in the form of rap lyrics to a Facebook page created by Anthony Elonis. The targets of the threats were his estranged wife and an FBI agent....

A sophisticated malware program called "Regin" has been used in systematic spying campaigns against a range of international targets since at least 2008, Symantec reported on Sunday Regin is a backdoor-type Trojan with a structure that displays a degree of technical competence rarely seen in malware, according to Symantec....

Has software glut got you down? Do you reuse passwords because creating unique ones for all your online accounts would cause a memory overload? If your answer to those questions is yes, you may be interested in a bit of jewelry called the "Everykey," by a startup with the same name ...

Apple has removed the word "free" from download buttons in its iOS and OS X app stores, replacing it with "get." European regulators recommended the action to Apple and Google earlier this year....

IBM on Tuesday introduced Verse, its entry into the reinventing email derby. Verse, which will be available in both an enterprise and freemium edition, integrates the many ways people communicate with each other every day -- email, meetings, calendars, file sharing, instant messaging, social media, video chats and more -- into a single collaboration environment...

The U.S. Postal Service and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration last week confirmed that their computer systems were targeted in months-long cyberattacks that appear to have originated in China The attack on USPS compromised information of an estimated 800,000 employees. Data at risk includes names, date of birth, Social Security number...

Facebook is preparing to plunge into the office collaboration and communication space with something it's calling "Facebook At Work," the Financial Times reported Monday The new offering will be similar to the consumer version of Facebook, but it will allow workers to chat with each other, connect with their professional contacts, and collaborate o...

Apple has formed a dedicated sales team to pitch Apple products to CIOs, and it is working closely with app developers who have a corporate presence to sell into the enterprise, according to a Reuters report published Monday Apple's increased interest in the enterprise could be part of a long-term strategy to offset declining sales in the tablet ma...

GT Advanced Technologies, in a document made public last Friday, alleged that it "incurred losses ... due to Apple's inordinate control over GTAT's liquidity, operations (including control over product specifications), and decision making." The U.S. Bankruptcy Court of New Hampshire unsealed the document, after GTAT initiated bankruptcy proceedings...

As thoughtful as mobile phone makers are when they design their products, there are always punters who want something that isn't there and are willing to hack a device to get it In the Android world such a hack is called "rooting" a phone; in the iOS world, it's called "jailbreaking." Regardless of what it's called, it can turn a phone into a can ...

Palo Alto Networks on Wednesday reported that more than 400 apps infected with a malicious program it calls "WireLurker" have been downloaded 356,104 times by Chinese Mac owners from Maiyadi, an online app store unaffiliated with Apple The malware does no harm to the Macs it infects but when the computer connects via USB to an iOS device -- an iPho...

Russian cyberspies -- unlike their Chinese counterparts -- have a reputation for stealth, so it's unusual when two digital espionage operations linked to the Kremlin come to light in a week FireEye early last week released a report detailing how hackers working for the Russian government have been using sophisticated techniques over a seven-year pe...