Some folk have asked me for more details about the DigiNotar breach after my brief appearance on Al Jazeera this morning. So here are the notes I prepared for the segment. Links at the bottom. Background web security certificates are digital IDs issued by companies entrusted with making sure they are given to the right … Read more
The DigiNotar breach (“Operation Black Tulip”) is certainly likely to be a watershed in Internet security, and possibly in how we perceive cyberwar. But one lesser point may get lost: how vulnerable we are with a single username password to access all Google accounts. Not only does that single account gain potential access to email … Read more
There’s quite a commotion online about a program called g-archiver that promises to back up your Gmail account, but in the process apparently harvests all users’ Gmail usernames and passwords, and mails them to a separate Gmail account. This is indeed scary, although it’s possible that the person behind it wasn’t collecting the passwords for … Read more
In this week’s Loose Wire Service column (which runs in print publications, more here), I write about those unsung heroes of productivity: programs that store globs of text for you so you don’t have to keep typing the same thing. Last time I talked about how the keyboard is often a quicker way to launch … Read more
Banks always talk about being global, and thinking local, and all that tosh. And it is tosh. Really. My bank just called me, for example, to congratulate me for linking my bank accounts in different parts of the world so I can see them from one website. Great idea, weird it hasn’t been possible until … Read more