Sean Michael Kerner

According to the report, the NSA has an effort code-named “Turbine” that seeks to infect users worldwide with malware in a bid to create a botnet that the NSA controls to exfiltrate information. Going a step further, The Intercept report alleges that the NSA “masqueraded as a fake Facebook server” as a way to get […]

Todd Redfoot, chief information security officer at GoDaddy, told eWEEK that he started to see an uptick in WordPress attacks in late February. The attacks leverage the XML-RPC (Remote Procedure Call) “pingback” functionality in WordPress to launch DDoS attacks. XML-RPC is legitimately used within WordPress as a mechanism for content owners to do a pingback […]

The new OwnCloud Enterprise 6 release officially debuted March 11 providing users with new security and integration options. Integration with enterprise directory systems that use Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) is also improved in the new OwnCloud Enterprise 6 release. “LDAP integration existed before, but OwnCloud 6 has a significantly improved configuration interface to make […]

The open-source Docker Linux container project is continuing its march toward broader deployment with the release lof Docker 0.9 on March 10 and the announcement of a Linux container certification effort from Red Hat. Docker leverages a container approach to virtualization, which is fundamentally different from the traditional hypervisor virtual machine model used by VMware’s […]

Mozilla quietly announced in a blog post March 7 that it is no longer putting full-time developers to work on the Persona Web-authentication system. In my opinion, that’s a real shame and a tragic failure for Mozilla and its efforts to help build a more open and secure Internet. I first wrote about Persona when […]

During the hourlong discussion, Snowden referred to mass surveillance techniques as unlawful and suggested that more targeted methods of surveillance can be lawful without the need for bulk Internet data collection. Snowden explained that end-to-end encryption makes mass surveillance difficult at the network level. “By doing end-to-end encryption, you force global passive adversaries to go […]

From the ‘Slithering Perfection’ files: The latest major milestone release of the open source Python programming language debuted this week, providing developers with incremental new features and capabilities. The new Python 3.4 release is the first big Python milestone since the Python 3.3 release debuted in October of 2012. Python 3.3 was defined by its […]

While much of the focus ever since the data breach was first disclosed has been to look at where Target may have failed, I think it’s critically important to remember here that Target is the victim. Someone, or some hacker group, stole from Target. Target did not steal from its own customers or willingly give […]

March 6, 2014, is a date that the Bitcoin community is not likely to forget anytime soon. On that date, an article ran in newly revived publication Newsweek that claimed to have outed the founder of Bitcoin, the mysterious figure known as Satoshi Nakamoto. Throughout the day on March 6, my Twitter feed was littered […]

The open-source Linux operating system is freely available to those who want to use it, but finding good sources of training for Linux has not always been as free. In a move to further enable more people to get Linux training, the Linux Foundation is now opening up its education efforts. The Linux Foundation is […]

Fast-growing cloud startup DigitalOcean today announced that it has raised $37.2 million in a Series A round of funding. The new funding round was led by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and included participation from CrunchFund and IA Ventures. DigitalOcean had previously raised a $3.2 million seed round of funding in July 2013. The new […]

Red Hat announced last week that Microsoft .NET applications can now run on its open-source OpenShift platform-as-a-service (PaaS) technology. Since its inception in 2011, Red Hat’s OpenShift has enabled open-source programming languages including Python, PHP and Ruby to run, but until today .NET was not a real option for users. The OpenShift support for .NET, […]