Information freedom for open source users.

I’m still reeling over Intel’s offer to buy McAfee at a 60 percent premium over its stock price.

Hewlett-Packard said on Tuesday it will buy Fortify Software, which makes tools to find software vulnerabilities and compliance software, for an undisclosed amount.

Fortify Software, a privately held company in San Mateo, Calif., specializes in software that looks for problems within code that could result in software vulnerabilities, which could then be exploited by an attacker, causing problems such as a data breach.

By now, you’ve probably heard that Terry Childs was sentenced to four years in prison, as a jury determined that he violated a California statute regarding denial-of-service attacks. Childs has already spent more than two years in jail at this point, so it’s likely that he will serve four to eight more months before being released, but there’s no guarantee of that.

A new study of 45 U.S. organizations found that cyber crime — including Web attacks, malicious code, and rogue insiders — costs each one of them $3.8 million per year, on average, and results in about one successful attack each week.

A U.S. Senate committee has approved a wide-ranging cyber security bill that some critics have suggested would give the U.S. president the authority to shut down parts of the Internet during a cyber attack.

I spend exactly zero time worrying that black helicopters will swoop down and impose a new world order. I don’t believe that the CIA killed JFK, and I don’t think the Air Force is hiding a UFO in the desert — which is to say, I generally don’t take conspiracy theories seriously.

The Privacy Commissioner of Canada has started an investigation into Google‘s collection of data from unsecured wireless networks, the office said in a statement on Tuesday.

Data protection authorities in France, Italy, and Germany are already investigating Google’s Street View service, after the company said last month that its camera cars mistakenly collected data from unencrypted Wi-Fi networks while compiling images of city streets for its Google Maps site.

It’s easy to take shots at Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and make snarky references to “Grandma’s browser.” But despite a shift from IE in the consumer market, when it comes to business, Microsoft’s browser is still the choice of three out of four users. And when businesses do drop nine-year-old IE6, they are deploying IE8 instead of glitzier competitors like Mozilla’s Firefox and Google’s Chrome.

Symantec will pay $1.28 billion to acquire VeriSign‘s authentication business.

The two companies confirmed the rumored acquisition Wednesday, saying it would give VeriSign the opportunity to focus on its more-profitable domain name business, while allowing Symantec to broaden its growing portfolio of enterprise security products.

Symantec will acquire encryption specialist PGP and endpoint security vendor GuardianEdge Technologies for $300 million and $70 million respectively, the company said on Thursday.

Both are privately held companies. Symantec said the deals are subject to regulatory approval but are expected to close by June.

“One of the main issues people have with cloud computing is security. Four in five online Americans (81 percent) agree that they are concerned about securing the service. Only one-quarter (25 percent) say they would trust this service for files with personal information, while three in five (62 percent) would not. Over half (58 perent) disagree with the concept that files stored online are safer than files stored locally on a hard drive and 57 percent of online Americans would not trust that their files are safe online.”

A hacker named Kirllos has a rare deal for anyone who wants to spam, steal, or scam on Facebook: an unprecedented number of user accounts offered at rock-bottom prices.

Researchers at VeriSign’s iDefense group recently spotted Kirllos selling Facebook user names and passwords in an underground hacker forum, but what really caught their attention was the volume of credentials he had for sale: 1.5 million accounts.

Few events have crystallized U.S. fears over a cyber catacystrophe, or brought on calls for a strategic response, more than the recent attacks against Google and more than 30 other tech firms.

The Digital Due Process coalition is pushing Congress to modernize privacy laws in the United States.

I thought Scott McNealy was over the top when he gave privacy a metaphorical middle finger in 1999, saying, “Get over it. You have zero privacy anyway.” Now I’m thinking the former CEO of Sun Microsystems was simply ahead of his time.

WASHINGTON — A top FBI official warned today that many cyber-adversaries of the U.S. have the ability to access virtually any computer system, posing a risk that’s so great it could “challenge our country’s very existence.”

A bill introduced in the U.S. Senate Tuesday would compel the White House to identify international cyber crime havens and establish plans for cleaning them up.

The International Cybercrime Reporting and Cooperation Act takes on a growing problem for banks and U.S. businesses: the ability for cyber criminals to operate with impunity across international borders. The bill is co-sponsored by Senators Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat from New York, and Orrin Hatch, a Republican from Utah.

Seattle is the most dangerous city in the U.S. when it comes to cyber crime, Symantec said today.

The Northwest sported two of the top 10, with Portland, Ore., ranked No. 10 in the list of the nation’s 50 largest metro areas. Rounding out the first five were Boston, Washington D.C., San Francisco, and Raleigh, N.C. Atlanta, Minneapolis, Denver, and Austin, Texas, completed the top 10.