TechBlog

Computer World: Security software vendor Symantec said Wednesday that Enrique Salem, its president and chief executive officer, had stepped down with immediate affect, after the company reported that its revenue for the quarter ended June 29 grew 1% year-over-year to $1.7 billion. Symantec said its board of directors has appointed Steve Bennett, the current chairman of the board, to also hold the posts of president and chief executive officer. ...

TechChurch wrote: “Computer pornography has given new meaning to the words ‘home invasion,’” Romney said at a 2007 Values Voter summit, “If I am President, I will work to make sure that every computer sold into the home has an easy to engage pornography filter so that every parent can protect their child from unwanted filth.” Federal obscenity laws used to prosecute porn moguls, such as Hustler’s Larry Flynt_, have largely been limited to child pornography since the rise of the Internet, but there’s an open debate as to whether they could be reactivated. ...

FoxNews: International hacking group Anonymous took at least 10 Australian government websites offline briefly Tuesday in a series of escalating attacks over proposed changes to privacy laws. The Australian arm of the group has warned it will continue the attacks on “.gov.au” sites until plans to force ISPs to store user data and make it further available to security services are shelved. The attacks started after Prime Minister Julia Gillard answered policy questions via webcam in an online Google+ Hangout session on Saturday but the sites targeted so far are all run by the Queensland State Government. ...

h-Online: A file with 11 million password hashes belonging to users of the online games platform Gamigo has been circulated on the internet. According to an analysis by ZDNet, 8.2 million different email addresses are also part of the 478MB file. Around 3 million of these belong to users from the US, 2.4 million are German addresses and 1.3 million are supposed to originate in France. The list also includes corporate email addresses from companies such as IBM, Siemens, Deutsche Bank and the German insurance company Allianz. ...

Time Techland wrote: When I learned this morning, via Twitter, that the small company behind Mac/iOS e-mail app Sparrow was being bought by Google, I almost didn’t need to read the startup’s announcement to know the upshot. Google and Facebook buy itty-bitty web companies all the time. And the acquired businesses typically convey what’s happening in an eerily consistent five-step ritual: Announcement of thrilling acquisition Reiteration of startup’s wildly ambitious founding notion Explanation that either Google or Facebook is the best place to change the world Acknowledgement (or sometimes non-acknowledgement) that the startup’s product is being discontinued or is going into limbo Expression of heartfelt gratitude to various supporters, usually including the consumers who are losing their something they liked So it seems to be going with Sparrow: Its five-person team will be working on Gmail henceforth; the existing Sparrow apps aren’t being discontinued, but they apparently won’t get any updates, either. ...

h-online: The TeamViewer developers have released updates for a potential security vulnerability discovered in the remote access tool. The company recommends that users install the security updates immediately. Versions 5 to 7 of the Windows, Mac OS X and Linux editions of TeamViewer Full and TeamViewer QuickSupport are affected. The flaw does not appear to have been discovered in TeamViewer Host. The company has not offered any details of the vulnerability, but updated editions of the software can be obtained from the TeamViewer Download page. The new version can simply be installed over the previous installation. ...

h-online: Mozilla has implemented changes to Firefox 14 that address concerns raised by privacy-conscious users over the “new tab” feature in Firefox 13. The Firefox developers have changed the browser’s behavior so that sensitive information should no longer leak via screenshots of web sites. When opening a new tab, Firefox 13 shows users a grid of screenshots of their most visited pages. After this feature was introduced, several users complained to Mozilla and pointed out that the feature also takes screenshots of sensitive web sites such as login pages for online banking sites. ...

Eric Jackson in Forbes Wrote: There are so many intriguing aspects of Marissa Mayer‘s hiring at Yahoo! (YHOO). However, what intrigues me the most is the what the future strategic direction of Yahoo! will be under her watch and what this means for the company’s future relationships with Google (GOOG) and Facebook(FB) (not to mention Microsoft(MSFT)). Presumably, Marissa already has the start of a strategic vision. And she said as much in a leaked memo yesterday: ...

Independent: If you’re a fan of fake Rolex watches and cheap Viagra look away now. A huge spam botnet responsible for an estimated 18 billion messages a day has been taken out by security researchers. The four year old botnet – known as Grum – is believed to have been responsible for around 18% of the world’s spam emails. A botnet is a cluster of infected computers used by cybercriminals to send a variety of spam emails – often offering cheap Viagra, fake watches or unusual dating solutions. ...

The Smoking Gun: Christina Aguilera contends that the recent hacking of her e-mail account had stripped her of a “feeling of security” that now “can never be given back,” according to a victim’s impact statement submitted to a U.S. District Court judge in Los Angeles. The singer’s statement was prepared in advance of the sentencing of Christopher Chaney, the Florida felon/online stalker who has pleaded guilty to illegally accessing the e-mail accounts of more than 50 victims (many of them Hollywood figures). ...