Articles by Richard Adhikari

Social media firms should team up with the United States government to work out appropriate responses to extremism on their sites, recommends a Brookings Institution report released last week. The Institution's J.M. Berger and Jonathon Morgan last year launched a study to define and describe the population of ISIS supporters on Twitter. Among othe...

Red Hat last week made Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Atomic Host generally available, following a four-month live beta test "The beta release was very successful," said Lars Herrmann, senior director of product strategy at Red Hat. Feedback from customers and partners "helped us refine several features and tools" for the GA version.

Microsoft on Thursday issued a security advisory acknowledging a vulnerability in all versions of Windows that could allow FREAK exploits. Windows systems previously were thought to be immune to FREAK attacks....

Almost 17,000 malware alerts surface every week, the Ponemon Institute recently found. Only 4 percent of alerts were investigated, and traditional antivirus products missed nearly 70 percent of malware in the first hour, researchers discovered in a recent Damballa study....

The United States Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has made great strides in carrying out its mission, which is to ensure consumers are fairly treated in the financial marketplace, Director Richard Cordray said Tuesday in delivering the bureau's semiannual report at a House Financial Services hearing The bureau's qualified mortgage rule put new...

China should change its tune on new rules for purchases from American high-tech companies if it wants to do business with the United States, President Obama recently warned in an exclusive interview with Reuters China reportedly is planning to ask U.S. high-tech firms to hand over their encryption keys and install security backdoors in their system...

Google this week confirmed that it's preparing to launch a mobile payments framework called "Android Pay." Google SVP of Product Sundar Pichai discussed the project at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain Android Pay will be an API layer of Android....

Twitter last week announced actions to further protect users of its network -- but it left them vague The company is rolling out unspecified improvements to its reporting process for content issues including impersonation, self-harm, and the sharing of private and confidential information, aka "doxing." ...

Samsung on Monday announced its much-anticipated Galaxy S6 line at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain In the S6, the strongly disliked plastic body of the Galaxy S5 is replaced with a combination of aluminum and Gorilla Glass. The Galaxy S6 and S6 edge both come in white, black and gold. Blue will be available only for the S6, while gree...

Ericsson last week filed patent claims against Apple both with the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas and the United States International Trade Commission "Our suits filed yesterday assert 41 different patents," Ericsson spokesperson Kathy Egan Wummer told the E-Commerce Times. "Of those, 14 are at issue in the ITC and t...

If you dislike your insurance company, you are not alone: Worldwide, less than 30 percent of consumers have positive experiences in dealing with their insurers, Capgemini has found Globally, satisfaction fell 3.7 percent from 32.6 percent in 2013 to 28.9 percent last year, according to Capgemini's World Insurance Report 2015....

Researchers at Google's DeepMind subsidiary in England have developed an artificial agent they call a "deep Q-network" that learned to play 49 classic Atari 2600 arcade games by just diving in The DQN algorithm performed at more than 75 percent of the level of a professional player in more than half the games, and came up with far-sighted strategie...

SIM card maker Gemalto, whose networks reportedly were breached by hackers from the United States National Security Agency and the UK's GCHQ, on Wednesday said the spies got nothing. The hackers stole cryptokeys for millions of SIM cards, according to The Intercept, which cited documents released by NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden....

After well over a year of bitter, often highly partisan debates, and despite dissension within its ranks and opposition from industry groups, the United States Federal Communications Commission is expected on Thursday to vote in favor of rules enforcing Net neutrality The commission wants to regulate ISPs like common carriers under Title II of the ...

Yahoo Chief Information Security Officer Alex Stamos on Monday confronted National Security Agency Director Adm. Mike Rogers over the United States government's plan to require built-in backdoors in hardware and software made by American companies. The exchange took place at the New America Foundation's cybersecurity conference in Washington Buildi...

Google on Monday announced a two-pronged thrust to beef up its efforts in the mobile wallet arena. It has struck agreements with Verizon Wireless, AT&T Mobility and T-Mobile to preinstall the Google Wallet app, including its tap-and-pay functionality, on Android phones the carriers will offer later this year in the United States....

The money is pouring into Pebble's Kickstarter campaign, launched Tuesday, for its new smartwatch, Pebble Time Within hours, upwards of 27,000 supporters had pledged more than US$5.6 million. The project's goal was to raise a mere $500,000....

Citizenfour, a film documenting interviews director Laura Poitras conducted with whistle-blower Edward Snowden, won the Oscar for best documentary Sunday. The talks took place as Snowden blew the lid off the United States National Security Agency's surveillance activities ...

The United States' National Security Agency and British spy agency GCHQ have hacked into the internal computer network of Gemalto, the world's largest maker of SIM cards, and stolen the cards' encryption keys, The Intercept reported last week. Information about the government hack attacks came from files leaked by whistle-blower Edward Snowden Gema...

Google is fighting a proposed amendment to Rule 41 of the United States Criminal Code that might allow authorities to hack into computers abroad The Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure, which advises the Judicial Conference of the United States, is considering the amendment.