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In this piece, I aim to provide a range of simple but effective options for encrypting a small number of files. In particular, these options are salient for use cases like tax filing, where users are sending sensitive documents to recipients with an unknown degree of technical proficiency. Fond as I...

Average computer users would be forgiven for not having any idea what PGP is. There is so much going on below the surface of the modern computing experience that even critically important security tools like PGP are tucked away. To be sure, there are specialized circles that make regular explicit us...

Canonical has released the Ubuntu 18.04 LTS platform for desktop, server, cloud and Internet of Things use. Its debut followed a two-year development phase that led to innovations in cloud solutions for enterprises, as well as smoother integrations with private and public cloud services, and new too...

Google last week released its E2EMail encryption code to open source as a way of pushing development of the technology. "Google has been criticized over the amount of time and seeming lack of progress it has made in E2EMail encryption, so open sourcing the code could help the project proceed more qu...

Robolinux Mate Raptor v8.1 is a stunningly gorgeous and well-tuned operating system that soars with unmatched functionality. This release of the Robolinux distro line runs the newest iteration of the Gnome 2 fork desktop Mate. It is fast and slick. The integration of Mate as a modern desktop envir...

The Linux Foundation's recently published security checklist may draw more attention to best practices for protecting Linux workstations, even if IT pros do not embrace all of its recommendations. Konstantin Ryabitsev, the foundation's director of collaborative IT services, developed the list for th...

Chromixium is a new Linux distro that goes one big step further than the few existing distros catering to the Chrome OS. It one-ups Google's semi-proprietary Chrome OS locked into the popular Chromebook hardware. Chromixium sole developer Rich Jack's innovative version 1.0, released last month, is a...

The volunteers who developed Tails, the open source operating system used by whistleblower Edward Snowden, this week released v1.0. This is the 36th stable release of the OS since the first public version, then called "Amnesia," was released in June 2009. Various security and bug fixes have been i...

The Tibetan government, law firms in Thailand and human rights groups in Sudan are all using a relatively new encrypted communications tool -- one that fits easily, if not cheaply, onto your smartphone. Silent Circle is an encrypted voice, video, text and file-transfer protocol that's available in a...

GoAnywhere OpenPGP Studio is an easy-to-use, cross-platform desktop tool by Linoma Software that protects files using the OpenPGP encryption standard. Why opt for this relative newcomer instead of other, more mature open standards-based encryption solutions? If for no other reason, OpenPGP Studio is...

Open source security products do not generally carry the same following as their business suite and operating system brethren. However, the same reasons for supporting open source products in general also apply to open source security applications. Open source security applications are free, or at l...

Mozilla on Tuesday released the latest version of its popular Firefox open-source Web browser and its e-mail client. The release marks the second time in eight days the company has issued fixes. Firefox 1.0.6 is a stability update that restores API compatibility for extensions and Web applications t...

A developer of security software for Linux had some harsh words yesterday for what he sees as a lax attitude toward security in the operating system's community. "Linux is being presented by commercial vendors as a professional, enterprise-ready product," Brad Spengler, of grsecurity, said. "When it...

At this week's Crypto 2004 conference in California, several papers were presented that demonstrated vulnerabilities in algorithms that are often used to create digital signatures. Although the results are preliminary, many in the security community are concerned about what such weaknesses might mea...