It's one thing to infect your PC or mobile device when you accidentally or foolishly click on a malicious link. But what happens when the smartphone you just bought arrives with malware already installed? eSecurity Planet digs into the latest frontier for malware purveyors: the devices themselves. According to researchers at Panda Security, a staff member's new Vodafone HTC smartphone running the Android operating system was infested with a variety of malware right out the of the gate-- including the Mariposa botnet and Confiker virus. Once...

Tech stocks marked the tenth anniversary of the bursting of the dot-com bubble with a rally, led higher by chip stocks. 10 years after touching an all-time intraday high of 5132.52, the Nasdaq added a little less than 1 percent to 2358.95, still 54 percent below its peak. Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) has more than doubled in the last decade, while eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY) shares have been flat and Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) has lost three-quarters of its value. Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO), Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) also remain well below...

In the latest example of what's become a disturbing trend, members of the Arkansas National Guard this week are receiving notices alerting them to the fact that their names and Social Security numbers were compromised after an external hard drive was somehow misplaced. Some 35,000-plus guardsmen serving since 1991 will be checking their credit reports in the next few weeks after the unencrypted device couldn't be found following an exhaustive search last month, National Guard officials said. eSecurity Planet takes a closer look at this late...

Google expects Chinese officials have said they were working with Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) to resolve the dispute. Google shocked business and political circles when it declared on January 12 it would stop censoring Chinese search results, and said it was considering pulling out of the country. Google said in January it had detected a cyber attack originating from China on its corporate infrastructure that resulted in the theft of its intellectual property. Google said more than 20 other companies had been infiltrated, and cited the attack, as...

It seems clear enough that netbooks are here to stay. AMD has decided it's time to make a chip designed specifically for the thin and light devices, which it plans to bring to market next year. Hardware Central has the story about AMD's plans for the netbook market, and hears from the company about how it's tweaking its marketing strategy. Advanced Micro Devices plans to release a processor in its "Fusion" line that will be positioned for the netbook market, putting it in competition with the Intel Atom, and, to a lesser degree, the ARM pro...

Traditional relational databases aren't going away anytime soon, but proponents of a new approach gathered in Boston this week for the NoSQL Live conference. DatabaseJournal has the report on this new open source approach that's already been embraced by some of the biggest players on the Web, including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. For most of the Web era, Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMS) based on SQL have dominated the database landscape. But over the course of the last year, a new approach has begun to take hold known as N...

Bing may be the center of Microsoft's attention these days but it has not abandoned MSN. In fact, it's had a major redesign for several months if you knew where to look. Now that redesign is available for the general Internet population to use. Datamation has all the details. After previewing it for the past four months, Microsoft is finally beginning to deploy this week what it terms the "most significant redesign [that the] MSN.com homepage has seen in over a decade." Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) began showing off the new MSN homepage...

CA's legacy has been in mainframe systems management, and it's sticking with the times and changing technology with its embrace of cloud computing services, particularly in the area of could management. In its latest acquisition, CA has nabbed an enterprise cloud management software company, Nimsoft. eCRM Guide has the details. CA on Wednesday announced that it will acquire Nimsoft, a privately held developer of IT performance and availability monitoring software, for $350 million in cash. Redwood City, Calif.-based Nimsoft's Unified Monit...

Has the cloud crossed the chasm? IDC chief analyst Frank Gens certainly thinks so. One year ago, he said the cloud was poised to shed its buzzword status and move into the mainstream of IT adoption. Now, he says that mission has been accomplished. Speaking at the IDC Direction conference, Gens argued that cloud computing will be the dominant model of IT for years to come, asking his audience, who will be the Microsoft of the cloud? Datamation has the story. SANTA CLARA, Calif. – At last year's IDC Directions show, Frank Gens, senior vi...

Thanks to a better-than-expected server market, Intel and AMD are both on track to beat their estimates when they report their first-quarter earnings, according to an analyst with Broadpoint AmTech. Both firms have rolled out new chips targeting the high-end server market, which positions them well to benefit from an uptick in sales. Server Watch has the story about the improved forecast for Intel and AMD, and what the full-year forecast looks like for the companies. Stating it believes server sales are being underestimated by Wall Str...

What's old is new again at the FCC, it seems. The commission has tipped its hand that the forthcoming national broadband plan will suggest the idea of allocating a swath of spectrum for a free or low-cost wireless broadband network to spur adoption of high-speed service. Of course, that sounds very similar to a proposal that's been before the commission for several years, inviting the possibility that the clash between the idea's backer, M2Z, and T-Mobile, which worries about spectrum interference, could again reemerge. Enterprise Networkin...

Big changes are afoot at social networking and link-voting site Digg. After building its formidable following on the MySQL database, it's changing gears and embracing an open source non-relational database that was first created by fellow social networking site Facebook. Digg has been busy testing Cassandra in various aspects of its operations since September 2009. Most of Digg's functionality has been re-implemented from MySQL to now use Cassandra as its primary data store. The company opted for Cassandra over other NoSQL databases includi...

IBM has historically been viewed as a safe buy for IT purchasers and some of that goodwill appears to have rubbed off on its data protection reputation. eSecurity Planet digs into the latest survey results from security research Ponemon Institute showing that Big Blue is the most trusted technology company when it comes to protecting consumer privacy. The sentiment was decidedly different for social networking site Facebook, which fell out of the Top 20 in this most recent survey. The study also found that only 41 percent of consumers feel ...

Computerworld - New York State has embarked on a plan to shift a number of jobs filled by IT contractors and consultants to the state payroll as part of an effort to save millions of dollars.

As many as 500 new state IT jobs may be created under a new in-sourcing program that was recently approved by the legislature and backed by Gov. David Patterson.

This law creates "term appointments" for state IT workers, which strip away some hiring and firing rules that apply to permanent workers. The maximum tenure for "term appointments" is fi...