"Do Not Track" capabilities have been controversial ever since they first appeared in Firefox 4 back in 2011, but earlier this year the battle became even more intense when Mozilla announced that it planned to begin blocking third-party cookies by default.

The Pwn2Own 2013 and Pwnium 3 hacking competitions may have both taken place in the same locale last week--specifically, the CanSecWest security conference in Vancouver, B.C.--but the differences in their outcomes could not have been more striking.

It was just a few weeks ago that Firefox got a fresh security boost on the eve of its eighth birthday, but this week Mozilla gave users of its popular browser a better way to protect their privacy as well.

Phishing attacks are an all-too-common threat on the Internet today, but among the top browsers Google's Chrome does the best job of preventing them.

Between Android and Firefox, this has been a big week for milestones in the world of free and open source software.

The past two years or so have brought a new breed of scary malware to the forefront of public attention, including the infamous Stuxnet worm that was discovered back in 2010.

There's already been a fair bit of controversy over Microsoft's decision to make the “Do Not Track” (DNT) setting turned on by default in Internet Explorer 10, and recently the brouhaha got even louder.

There never seems to be any shortage of Android malware reports circulating in the news, and today one came out that sounds alarming indeed.

It's no secret that Linux offers numerous compelling security advantages, including the infinitely useful ability to help fix Windows PCs when they get infected by malware.

It's no secret that the Web is full of malicious content, but Google on Tuesday published some statistics that reveal just how breathtaking the scale of that danger really is.

It's been known for some time that there are security issues associated with the increasing use of RFID tags in credit cards, but this past weekend afforded a fresh demonstration of just how easy it is for hackers to take advantage of them.

There's been a flurry of coverage of mobile malware over the past few days, including two separate reports declaring both 2011 and 2012 "the year of mobile malware".

It was shocking to learn yesterday that Kernel.org was hacked last month. News like that is routine in the world at large, but not in the home of the all-important heart of Linux.

The National Security Agency (NSA) recently published a report, "Best Practices for Keeping Your Home Network Secure" (PDF) in which it makes numerous recommendations designed to help home computer users avoid malware and other common problems.

One of the big advantages of using Linux is that its security tends to be so much better than that of the competing alternatives.