A respected Chinese dissident has warned that the capitulation of Western Internet companies to China's authorities is a more serious threat to free speech in the country than the government's own filtering efforts. One company in particular earned criticism for "just following orders."

A hack published Sunday can disable a fully patched Windows IP machines running Windows' Internet Connection Service (ICS), opening compromised PCs or local networks to a broader attack.

Siemens Communications is announcing software that it says will enable IT staffers to manage thousands of wireless LAN access points from a single console.

Lulled into a sense of security because of the rock-solid reputation of IBM's System i hardware, companies aren't doing enough to protect data on the systems, according to a report by The PowerTech Group.

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A piece of malware affecting Windows machines has a strange MO and an unclear mission. The mass-mailing worm, which travels under various names, periodically downloads entirely new versions of itself, confounding efforts to anticipate its next incarnation.

German railway Deutsche Bahn is testing a facial-recognition system that it hopes will help prevent terrorist attacks on trains.

All too familiar: A security problem first spotted in Internet Explorer 6 (and not entirely patched there) has reared its sneaky head in the latest version of Microsoft's browser, according to Secunia.

Overseas hackers used keylogging software to break into the accounts of ETrade and TD Ameritrade customers as part of a stock-trading scheme that led to at least $22 million in losses.

Short, late-breaking IT news items.

Letters: There are ways to ensure the accuracy and security of e-voting systems.

In the wake of government crackdowns on corporate malfeasance in recent years, many companies are turning to business process management tools to create processes that are transparent to users and ease and automate workflow.

Desktop support pilot fish needs to update the VPN software on a user’s laptop, so he visits her office to collect it. Sure, let me undock it, user says -- and forcefully rips it from the docking station.

The parent company of e-voting firm Sequoia is angrily denying rumors that the firm has links to the leftist government of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez.

A Singaporean interior design company, the first to be convicted and fined under the country's updated Copyright Act, has reached a settled with the Business Software Alliance.

Dignitaries from the computer security field commemorated the 30th anniversary of public key cryptography at a celebration Thursday in California, waxing historical about academic, governmental and commercial developments in security and pondering the future.

Wikipedia is considering a plan to purchase copyright content and make it available under public domain. Service founder Jimmy Wales said in an e-mail to the user community this month that he was "recently asked this question by someone who is potentially in a position to make this happen."

Thirteen malevolent spirits may haunt the halls and cubicles of your company, and if you're going to scare them into security compliance you may need to get a little bit spooky yourself.

The FBI is looking into a possible security breach at the Los Alamos National Laboratory that involves three USB thumb drives found by police in the trailer of a one-time subcontractor at the lab.

Windows lagged competing platforms in storage management features. The new Vista platform sports an improved file system, native support for hybrid disk drives, volume shrinking, enhanced I/O prioritization and drive encryption features.

How much for that legislator in the window? As the elections near, a new Web site offers "real-time voter correction" for the race of your choice.

Friday's deadline for U.S. agencies to begin issuing "Smart" I.D. cards should find about 80 percent of agencies in compliance. It helps that the directive didn't specify how many cards had to be in play.

A speaker at this week's InfoSecurity Conference in New York characterized the proliferation of technologies such as VoIP, botnets, and malware as presenting extreme challenges to the U.S. legal system.

While most risks come from outside, the ones inside the perimeter --purposeful or not -- can be hardest to defend against. Here's how to do it.

Companies need a multi-layered approach to security to fend off still-unknown zero-day exploits, analysts said. Instead, many firms have grown comfortable simply relying on patches for exploits they already know about.

The company may be the worldwide leader in the antivirus market, but the troops still need firing up now and then: Symantec CEO John Thompson singled out his company's European team during the firm's quarterly earnings call as having "lost their security swagger."

Despite the lack of a German law against spamming, Microsoft has successfully sued a man there charged with forging e-mail to make it appear as if it originated with the company's Hotmail service.

Microsoft has added another piece of software to the roster of those requiring installation of their Genuine Advantage antipiracy program. Starting Friday, the company will require validation of the popular Microsoft Office.

Of the two flaws reported since the release of Firefox 2.0 on Tuesday, the first was patched in an earlier version and the second couldn't be duplicated during testing, a top Mozilla engineer said today.

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Baffled users, clueless colleagues, maddening bosses ... they may not be fun to deal with, but it sure is entertaining to read about other IT pros' woes! These are the most popular tales of all -- Shark Tank sagas you've read the most this year.

John Bombard, a 32-year old Florida man, has been charged with with hacking into computer systems at two universities and then launching a DDoS attack on servers run by Akamai Technologies.

Don't expect Bruce Schneier to change just because ownership of his company has. BT Group has acquired Schneier's Counterpane Internet Security; the widely read commentator will stay on as CTO and keep his outspoken blog as well.

Although online identity fraud incidents get headlines, the bigger problem is off-line, according to analysts at Javelin Strategy & Research.

A "pump and dump" stock-trading scheme run by overseas hackers has cost two big-name online stock brokerages, TD Ameritrade Holding Corp. and E-Trade Financial Corp., $22 million in losses.

SanDisk claims that it's flash drive provides secure protection against online fraud because it uses dual-factor authentication.

A group of Net neutrality supporters have asked the FCC to require AT&T and BellSouth to refrain from discriminating against third-party Internet traffic in exchange for agency approval of the firms' proposed merger.

Customers whose data is exposed in a security breach involving a third-party vendor are less forgiving than when their data is lost by the company they do business with, according to a study of data breaches by the Ponemon Institute.

The U.S. Department of Defense and Transportation Security Administration have chosen ActivIdentity for smart-card issuing software.

The appliance from NeoScale comes in SCSI and Fibre Channel versions and can increase throughput to multiple tape drives as well as alleviate bottlenecks on slower drives.