A Dutch company that issues digital certificates used to authenticate websites said late Tuesday that several dozen other websites in addition to Google have been affected by a security breach.

The company, DigiNotar, issues SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) and EVSSL (Extended Validation) certificates, which are validated by Web browsers to ensure people are not visiting a fake website that is trying to appear legitimate.

DigiNotar is what’s called a Certificate Authority (CA), an entity that sells digital certificates to legitimate website owners. But DigiNotar issued a digital certificate for the google.com domain, a mistake that could allow a skilled attacker to intercept someone’s e-mail.
Read more »

Hackers have obtained a digital certificate good for any Google website from a Dutch certificate provider, a security researcher said today.

Criminals could use the certificate to conduct “man-in-the-middle” attacks targeting users of Gmail, Google’s search engine or any other service operated by the Mountain View, Calif. company.

“This is a wildcard for any of the Google domains,” said Roel Schouwenberg, senior malware researcher with Kaspersky Lab, in an email interview Monday.

“[Attackers] could poison DNS, present their site with the fake cert and bingo, they have the user’s credentials,” said Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Security.
Read more »

With a new CEO finally at the helm, AMD can begin to move forward in what has become an Intel world.

The chip maker announced on Thursday that its board of directors has appointed Rory P. Read, the former president and chief operating officer of Lenovo, as the president and CEO of AMD.

Read, who took the reins on Thursday, has also been appointed to AMD’s board of directors.

The company took about seven months to find a new chief executive, and analysts say finally filling that post will give stability and new direction to AMD, which has been trailing rival Intel in the semiconductor industry.
Read more »

As soon as the news hit late Wednesday that Steve Jobs was resigning as Apple’s CEO, social networks heated up with traffic.

Jobs announced that he is stepping down, and then Tim Cook, Apple’s chief operating officer, was chosen to replace him. That was all it took to light up sites like Facebook, Twitter and Google+ with people posting good wishes for Jobs and venting their concerns about what will happen to Apple without Jobs at the helm.

For a while last night, #stevejobs and #CEO of Apple were trending topics on Twitter.
Read more »

Apple’s board of directors announced today that Steve Jobs has resigned as the company’s CEO. Tim Cook has been named CEO and Jobs has taken a position as chairman of the board.

According to a BusinessWire release, Jobs submitted his resignation letter (posted below) to Apple’s board of directors today, with the recommendation that Tim Cook (who is currently serving as acting CEO) be named to that position permanently.

Apple is so intimately associated with its founder Jobs it is nearly impossible to imagine the company without him. Apple is a product of his vision, his leadership and his unerring ability to roll out amazing products that just work. Job’s pet projects are like a litany of all that’s best about Apple: Macintosh, iMac, OS X, iPod, iPhone, and iPad.
Read more »

Google is keenly aware that many people are eager to set up profiles in Google+, the company’s new social network, but the site will remain in a limited trial while the company works feverishly toward a broader rollout that can accommodate a larger number and wider variety of users.

So said Bradley Horowitz, the Google+ vice president of product, during a webcast interview on Tuesday with Tim O’Reilly, CEO of O’Reilly Media.

In addition to regular people, there are a number of specialty user groups that are anxious to try out Google+, like application developers, Google Apps customers, corporate marketers and even minors, but the site isn’t yet ready for them, he said.
Read more »

AMD has updated its C-and E-series Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) lineup for notebooks, netbooks, all-in-one systems and desktop PCs.

An AMD rep told TG Daily the new APUs boast optimized HD graphics and 12 hours of “resting” battery life on a single charge.

The newest APUs also support DDR3 1333 for enhanced memory bandwidth, faster performance and streamlined video playback.
Read more »