Stories by Tony Bradley

  • Report: Phishing scams increasingly using mobile apps to bait victims

    When it comes down to it, spam and phishing scams rely primarily on exploiting trust. If the attacker can find a way to make the message appear to be from a known source, the odds that a user will take the bait are much higher. This has led to malware infections that access your contacts and send out infected emails on your behalf to everyone you know, and those same basic techniques have been adapted for instant messaging, social networks, and even SMS text messaging. According to a new report from Kaspersky Lab, Mobile apps are the new frontier.

  • Microsoft takes fight to Google's home turf with Office Online Apps

    Microsoft has adopted a new strategy for its Office productivity tools. Rather than holding Office hostage on Windows devices in an effort to attract customers, it will try and make the suite the default productivity choice no matter what platform or device people are using--including Chrome OS and Chromebooks.

  • Reverse Heartbleed puts your PC and devices at risk of OpenSSL attack

    The Internet has been abuzz for the last week or so in response to the Heartbleed vulnerability in OpenSSL. While almost all of the attention has centered on patching Web servers and advising users to change their passwords, security researchers have discovered that individual client PCs and devices are also at risk thanks to "Reverse Heartbleed."

  • Is open source to blame for the Heartbleed bug?

    By now you've likely heard about the Heartbleed bug, a critical vulnerability that exposes potentially millions of passwords to attack and undermines the very security of the Internet. Because the flaw exists in OpenSSL--which is an open source implementation of SSL encryption--many will question whether the nature of open source development is in some way at fault. I touched based with security experts to get their thoughts.

  • Office for iPad vs. iWork: The battle for tablet productivity

    Once Office for iPad was announced, I couldn't wait to stage a bare-knuckled battle with iWork, the productivity suite that's held down the fort on iPad for four years. I pitted Apple's Pages, Numbers, and Keynote against Microsoft's Word, Excel, and PowerPoint apps, respectively, to determine which better provided all the tools one would need in at typical work environment.

  • Office for iPad establishes the tablet as a true PC

    Microsoft's announcement that it's bringing Office to the iPad is a game changer. Naysayers have belittled the tablet as a toy or a content consumption gadget since it launched. The argument has always been shaky, but with the world's most popular productivity suite now available for the iPad, you can no longer deny that the tablet is, in fact, just an evolution of the personal computer.

  • Report: Average of 82,000 new malware threats per day in 2013

    Malware has been around for more than 40 years, but according to a report from Panda Security 20 percent of all of the malware that's ever existed was created in 2013. That's the equivalent of 30 million new malware threats in one year, or about 82,000 per day.

  • Report: Half of all exploits target Java

    Once upon a time, Microsoft was the favorite target of malware developers. As Microsoft improved the defenses in its software, though, cybercrooks moved on to easier pickings. Adobe was a prime target for a while, but Adobe followed Microsoft's lead and made its software more secure as well. According to data from the 2014 IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Quarterly Report, the favorite target is now Java.

  • Report finds iOS apps riskier than Android apps

    How many apps do you have on your smartphone or tablet right now? Well, take that number, and multiply it by 0.9. That's about how many of your apps are a potential security concern according to a new study from Appthority.

  • Time machines: take charge of your life with these time trackers

    If you've ever felt fried at the end of your work day yet couldn't account for how you got to that state, you're not alone. One task blurs into another leaving no record of how you spent your time. That's where a time tracker can help. Whether you just want to track your professional tasks to assess your productivity or you actually bill clients by the hour, these tools can help you reclaim lost time and develop more efficient work habits.

  • The top 5 security threats to watch for in 2014

    The year's barely started, and we've already had enough data breaches at major retailers to make a barter economy seem like a good idea. Unfortunately there are yet more security threats to look forward to in 2014. Here are the biggest ones we anticipate.

  • Box overhauls iOS apps and offers 50GB of free storage for life

    Box rolled out new and improved apps for iPhone and iPad on Wednesday. Users probably have enough incentive to download the newest Box apps just to take advantage of the latest features, but Box also sweetened the pot by offering 50GB of free cloud storage for life for users who download the new apps during the next 30 days.