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Adobe is working on revoking a certificate and enlisting the help of security vendors: Criminals have broken into an Adobe server and provided two pieces of malware with a digital certificate that attest to them being legitimate code. As a result of the breach, the company will revoke the certificate next Thursday and will update legitimate Adobe software that has been signed by the same certificate since July 10. Adobe says that its legitimate software signed by the certificate is not at risk and that the hijacked certificate does not pose a general security threat.

I've been writing about how to secure the Internet for almost a decade, including in this InfoWorld position paper (PDF), which gives most of the details. My proposal is this: A new Internet channel must be created to establish pervasive authentication and improved services for identifying the bad guys. That might seem like a tall order in today's ultramalicious online world, but it can all be readily done using existing protocols and integrate with all legacy systems. In the past, many readers have recoiled from the notion of pervasive authentication. An Internet where everyone knows who everyone else is a contentious idea. But those concerns can be addressed by having anonymous and pseudo-anonymous identities, and channels that don't mind those types of identities with less trust assurance. In all modesty, I think the best part of my solution is a new centralized service that serves as a sort of "DNS for security." Like DNS, the new security service would ...

As it previously said it would do, Samsung Electronics filed a motion in a U.S. federal court on Monday to add Apple's latest smartphone, the iPhone 5, to its patent lawsuit. Also on Monday, a judge lifted a sales ban on the company's Galaxy Tab 10.1. Samsung's motion, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, seeks to add the iPhone 5 to its second lawsuit filed against Apple on April 18, the company said in a statement. "Apple continues to take aggressive legal measures that will limit market competition. Under these circumstances, we have little choice but to take the steps necessary to protect our innovations and intellectual property rights," Samsung said in a statement. The same court dissolved a preliminary injunction banning sales of Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1. In her ruling, U.S. District Judge Lucy H. Koh found that the basis for the injunction no longer exists since a jury found in August that Samsung did not viola...

The flaws with Apple Maps and previously with Apple’s voice recognition software, Siri, reveal some deep flaws with Tim Cook’s work as CEO. You might think that Tim Cook is doing a spectacular job. After all, since taking over as CEO on August 24, 2011, Apple stock has risen 74%, and its revenues and profits have soared 66% and 85% in the last year. But since the Apple Maps fiasco, Apple has lost $30 billion in stock market value, reports The Guardian. At the core of this loss in value may well be the gap between the technical reality of a new product and the way that product is sold to the public. Plenty of technologies are imperfect when they are first sold to the public. It appears as though Apple Maps had so many flaws — I pointed out its six most epic fails – that Apple could be rotting from the stem down. How so? Either Cook was not aware of the problems with Apple Maps — in which case he is showing that he does not care about the quality of the products that Apple makes. Or ...

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer last night gave birth to a baby boy, her husband Zach Bogue announced in a tweet. He did not mention his new son’s name or provide any other information, other than to say that both mother and child “are doing great.” Mayer, 37, previously has said she would take off just a few weeks of maternity leave. No word yet on whether Mayer’s son has any ideas on how to turn around her mother’s company.