Microsoft’s discount Windows 7 upgrade for students has proven to be a tough assignment for some of those who signed up for the offer. The software maker is offering students the option of buying a downloadable upgrade version of Windows 7 for $29–a significant savings off the full boxed copy of the new operating system. [...]

On October 22, Microsoft will be releasing its new operating system, Windows 7. If you’ve shopped for a computer in the past weeks you might have noticed the shelves seem a bit empty. The reason for this (other than the decline of Desktop PC sales this year) is because manufacturers are waiting on the Windows [...]

IDG News Service – Cyber-crime just doesn’t pay like it used to. Security researchers say the cost of criminal services such as distributed denial of service, or DDoS, attacks has dropped in recent months. The reason? Market economics. “The barriers to entry in that marketplace are so low you have people basically flooding the market,” [...]

IDG News Service – Delta Air Lines is being sued for allegedly hacking the e-mail account of a passenger rights advocate supporting legislation that would allow access to food, water and toilets during long delays on the tarmac. Kathleen Hanni, executive director of Flyersrights.org, alleges Delta obtained sensitive e-mails and files and used the material [...]

Recent studies have shown the importance of Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is still widely underestimated by the general public when browsing the internet. While the study by Tyler Reguly, senior security engineer for nCircle, shows 83% of users check for SSL before entering their credit card information, only 41% do so when typing in passwords. [...]

Cyber Security Tip ST04-013 Protecting Your Privacy Before submitting your email address or other personal information online, you need to be sure that the privacy of that information will be protected. To protect your identity and prevent an attacker from easily accessing additional information about you, avoid providing certain personal information such as your birth [...]

Researchers have come up with host-based security software that blocks distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS) without swamping the memory and CPU of the host machines. The filtering, called identity-based privacy-protected access control (IPCAF), can also prevent session hijacking, dictionary attacks and man-in-the-middle attacks, say researchers at Auburn University in their paper, “Modeling and simulations for Identity-Based [...]

Several thousand Hotmail usernames and passwords were exposed on over the weekend via a phishing attack, Microsoft confirmed late on Monday. Microsoft said it would block access to the accounts that were exposed and work with customers to reclaim access to them. “Over the weekend Microsoft learned that several thousand Windows Live Hotmail customers’ credentials [...]

Apple on Thursday released a relatively minor update for Mac OS X Snow Leopard that fixes an issue users had with the operating system that downgraded them to an older version of Adobe Systems’ Flash Player. When Apple released Snow Leopard on August 28, it included an older version of Adobe’s Flash plug-in that was [...]

A 28-year-old Miami man who made millions breaking into computer networks and stealing credit card numbers pleaded guilty on Friday and agreed to forfeit more than $2.7 million in restitution, as well as a condo, jewelry, and a car.

Online scammers have created a phishing site masquerading as a U.S.-based bank that launches a live chat window where victims are tricked into revealing more information, researchers at the RSA FraudAction Research Team said on Wednesday.