Secur protects at work

Want to protect your ZIP archives with a password? While Windows doesn’t have a built-in option to do that, you can use free apps like 7-Zip and WinRAR to add password protection . We’ll show you how to use those apps. Make sure to note your password somewhere safe, like in a password manager , as you’ll need it each time you want to extract files from your password-protected ZIP. Table of Contents Password Protect a ZIP Using 7-Zip Encrypt a ZIP Archive Using WinRAR RELATED: How to Password Protect Files and Folders With Encryption Password Protect a ZIP Using 7-Zip 7-Zip is a free and open-source app that you can use to create and extract files from various archive formats, including ZIP. With this app, you choose the files to add to an archive, set the password, and let the app secure your archive’s contents. To start, download and install the free 7-Zip app on your Windows PC. Next, open a File Explorer window and locate the files … [Read more...] about How to Password Protect a ZIP File on Windows

In April of this year, the US District Court of Eastern Virginia decided that "liking" something on Facebook did not constitute free speech. Now, the five plaintiffs are taking their case to an appellate court, and this time, they have the support of the ACLU and Facebook behind them. The plaintiffs, all of whom worked in the Hampton, VA Sheriff’s Office, had originally sued for their First Amendment rights after three of the plaintiffs "liked" their boss’s political rival on Facebook and subsequently lost their jobs when he won the election and remained in office. The sheriff, B.J. Roberts, claimed that the terminations were due to cost-cutting measures, but the plaintiffs were able to prove that Roberts knew about the turncoat Facebook Likes in court. The district court still ruled that it "is the court’s conclusion that merely 'liking' a Facebook page is insufficient speech to merit constitutional protection," the ruling read. "In cases where courts have found that … [Read more...] about Facebook and the ACLU tell court a “Like” is protected speech

Iran appears to have recently published a Persian-language "Request for Information" (RFI) for an even-more filtered and monitored version of the Internet than what presently exists in the Islamic Republic. The RFI calls for "proper conditions for domestic experts in order to build a healthy Web and organize the current filtering situation," and lists a deadline of April 19, 2012. The document, which was discovered on Monday by a Washington, DC-based Internet surveillance researcher, was posted to the website of the Research Institute for ICT in Tehran. The institute describes itself in English as the "mother consultant to the Ministry of ICT." The document appears to be the latest step in what Iranian government officials have previously called the " halal Internet ." The government has not yet explained precisely what they mean, nor what its technical capabilities are, nor when it would launch. "Currently the matter of Internet cleanup is being done via filtering at the … [Read more...] about Security researcher unearths plans for Iran’s halal Internet

Sponsors of a key bipartisan antitrust bill have tried for months to secure a Senate vote and potentially pass “the first major bill on technology competition” to come before the Senate “since the dawn of the Internet.” Now, The Wall Street Journal reports , that bill will remain “in limbo” as Congress has failed to schedule a vote before its recess. This could signify that Big Tech companies will prevail— through intense lobbying and criticism —and prevent the bill from passing a Senate floor vote. In just one week this summer, one industry group reportedly spent $22 million in ads against the bill. The bill is controversial because it targets large companies like Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, and Apple. It stops them from self-preferencing business practices, like promoting their products above others or forcing smaller businesses to buy ad space to compete. Critics, like Google , say the law could threaten everything from the quality of online services to national … [Read more...] about Big Tech just got one step closer to squashing key US antitrust bill

Since Congress passed legislation in February ordering the Federal Aviation Administration to fast-track the approval of unmanned aerial vehicles—more colloquially known as drones—for use by law enforcement agencies, police and sheriff departments across the country have been scrambling to purchase the smaller, unarmed cousins of the Predator and Reaper drones which carry out daily sorties over Afghanistan, Yemen, and other theaters of operation. Alameda County in California has become one of the central battlegrounds over the introduction of drones to domestic police work. Earlier this year , Alameda County Sheriff Gregory Ahern raised the hackles of local civil libertarians (and there are quite a few of those in the county, which encompasses Berkeley and Oakland) by declaring his intention to purchase a drone to assist with “emergency response.” According to Ahern, Alameda Sheriff's personnel first tested a UAV in fall 2011 and gave a public demonstration of the machine's … [Read more...] about California law enforcement moves to buy drones, draws controversy

Audio player loading… Open redirects, a classic weakness found in many of the world’s biggest web pages, are reportedly being used to steal login credentials (opens in new tab) for Microsoft 365 accounts. According to experts from security firm Inky, the method was used to send more than 6,800 phishing emails from Google Workspace, posing as Snapchat, in the last two and a half months. As for American Express, the team identified more than 2,000 phishing emails. Identity theft (opens in new tab) is one of the more popular cybercriminal activities, as the data can be successfully leveraged for other forms of fraud. AmEx moves fast, Snapchat lags Open redirects allow threat actors to use other people’s domains and websites as temporary landing pages, before sending the victims to the phishing page. That way, when the attacker sends a phishing email, the link in the email’s body might look legitimate, further encouraging people to click. "Since the … [Read more...] about Hackers are using this classic technique to hijack Microsoft 365 accounts

Since the leak of Justice Samuel Alito’s draft majority opinion in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case that eventually led to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, America has endured a “Summer of Rage.” The wave of demonstrations saw protesters going far beyond simply donning “Handmaid’s Tale” bonnets and gathering around the Supreme Court. There have been dozens of acts of violence, destruction, and harassment aimed at intimidating anti-abortion Christians and conservatives. In this series of articles, we identify key players, organizations, and locations in this radical movement. We will also explain elements of the interconnected system that provides organizational and/or financial support for this radical agenda. Read the other articles in this series: Summer of Rage, Part I : Militant Pro-Abortion Radicals Flourish in Madison, Wisconsin; Violence ‘Meme’d’ on Twitter Summer of Rage, Part II : Court Filings Reveal Threats, Intimidation Against … [Read more...] about Summer of Rage, Part V: PAC Launched by ‘Ruth Sent Us’ Organizers Failed to Disclose Finances, Mysteriously ‘Terminated’ by FEC

Audio player loading… A bug in the US Emergency Alert System (EAS), a tool used to deliver urgent alerts to the general public, could be abused by threat actors to send out fake alerts, possibly creating mass panic. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently confirmed these findings in an advisory and urged organizations using EAS to tighten up on their security measures, in order to prevent any abuse. As reported by The Register , the flaw was discovered by cybersecurity researcher Ken Pyle, who also managed to successfully exploit it. Apparently, a proof-of-concept is in the works and should be presented to the general public soon. Tightening up security In order to keep their endpoints (opens in new tab) secure, the DHS says, businesses need to update both their hardware and their software to the latest versions, apply security patches (opens in new tab) wherever possible, and set up a firewall as extra means of defense. Furthermore, they … [Read more...] about Serious bug in US Emergency Alert System could be abused to create mass panic

Let's look back at the week that was in Microsoft news. Here were the top stories: How one man designed the Windows 7 boot animation : Rolf Ebeling, a senior user experience lead for the User Experience Design and Research Team for Windows, is the man who designed the Windows 7 boot animation. Microsoft to switch internal focus to Windows 8 in July 2010 : Seven more job postings were posted last month that mention Windows 8. From them, we can glean a few small tidibits about Windows 7's successor. Silverlight-powered Bing Maps beta is beautiful, slow : Microsoft is offering a new version of Bing Maps, powered by Silverlight, that pushes mapping a step forward with a new Application Gallery, among other features. Pirates offer Windows 7 on USB sticks : The Chinese black market has started selling copies of Windows 7 on USB disk drives. Microsoft considered doing this at one point, but that idea never came to fruition. Microsoft asks Windows 7 testers for … [Read more...] about Week in Microsoft: Windows 7, Windows 8, Bing Maps

Some Michigan counties can’t immediately report Tuesday night’s election results due to a confusing mix of federal vote reporting guidance and AT&T’s decision to retire its 3G networks this past February. In a website alert , the Wayne County clerk’s office confirmed that 65 of Michigan’s 83 total counties “are no longer modeming unofficial election results.” Wayne County is where Detroit is located, and it’s the state’s biggest county by population, with about 1.8 million residents. It’s unclear how many are due to county officials that did not upgrade their own modems, or if this is due to U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) guidelines advising against using modems. In section 14.2-E, the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG) 2.0 established in February 2021 advised against connecting voting systems to the internet. The guidelines cited the risk of ransomware, the ability for attackers to view files within the system, or modify files within it that have to do … [Read more...] about AT&T’s 3G shutdown catches blame for a major election headache in Michigan