Cynthia Harvey

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has acknowledged that hackers successfully breached its cyber-defenses and obtained a list of agency email addresses. A group calling itself Parastoo (a Farsi word for a bird and a common girl’s name in Iran) has claimed responsibility. InfoSecurity reported, “A new hacktivist collective calling itself Parastoo took responsibility for […]

Once month after the official release of its new operating system, Microsoft has announced that it has sold 40 million licenses for Windows 8. Those numbers are very close to the number of Windows 7 licenses sold one month after release. TechSpot’s Jose Vilches reported, “Microsoft has sold 40 million Windows 8 licenses after the […]

Nokia has announced that an arbitrator has ruled in its favor in a patent dispute with Nokia. As a result, it is requesting a ban on sales of RIM’s BlackBerry devices in the U.S., the U.K. and Canada. The BBC reported, “Nokia says an earlier ruling means RIM is not allowed to produce devices that […]

Swedish phone maker Ericsson has sued South Korea’s Samsung in the U.S. for infringing on its patents. For the past two years, the two firms have been attempting to negotiate a deal on patents that must be licensed on FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory) terms. CNNMoney’s Mark Thompson reported, “The Sweden-based company, which makes technology […]

Two different privacy watchdog groups–the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Center for Digital Democracy–are asking Facebook to reconsider proposed changes to its privacy policy. Last week, Facebook announced to users that it planned to do away with a user voting mechanism that is rarely used, that it wanted to change the mechanism for controlling […]

In an effort to rally Germans against ancillary copyright legislation, Google has launched a “Defend Your Net” campaign. The proposed law would require search engines to pay newspapers for posting links to their sites. Engadget’s Jamie Rigg reported, “On the campaign’s pages, the search giant voices its opinions on what such a decision would do: […]

Thanks to the release of the iPhone 5, iOS is now once again the most popular mobile operating system in the U.S. A report from research firm Kantar Worldpanel ComTech said that during the 12 weeks ending October 28, iOS had 48.1 percent of the U.S. smartphone market compared to 46.7 percent for Android. CNET’s […]

How well are Microsoft’s retail stores competing against Apple Stores? To find out Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster sent a team to stake out the two retail outlets which face each other at the Mall of America in Minneapolis. Their findings don’t bode well for Microsoft. Fortune’s Philip Elmer-DeWitt, the first to run the story, […]

Update: Later in the day, both Google and ICOA denied the story about the acquisition. The report began with a fraudulent press release. See this All Things D article for more details. Google has announced that it will purchase Warwick, Rhode Island-based ICOA for $400 million. ICOA sets up and maintains public Wi-Fi hotspots in […]

Security vendor Symantec is warning of a newly discovered piece of malware that is targeting corporate databases in the Middle East, specifically Iran. The worm, called “Narilam,” looks for particular words in Microsoft SQL databases and overwrites them. Symantec’s blog explained, “Just like many other worms that we have seen in the past, the threat […]