Politicians' web browsing history targeted after privacy vote

Two GoFundMe campaigns have raised more than US$290,000 in an effort to buy the web browsing histories of U.S. politicians after Congress voted to allow broadband providers to sell customers’ personal information without their permission. It’s unclear if those efforts will succeed, however. Even though Congress scrapped the FCC’s ISP privacy rules last week, the Telecommunications Act still…

New Hortonworks release focuses on SQL and EDW

At the Dataworks Summit/Hadoop Summit in Munich today Hortonworks unveiled the latest version of its Apache Hadoop distribution, with features that focus on boosting the performance of SQL interactive queries and optimizing existing enterprise data warehouse (EDW) investments. “It’s all about performance, flexibility and choice,” says Scott Gnau, CTO of Hortonworks. “We’ve made some significant…

Notorious iOS spyware has an Android sibling

Security researchers have uncovered the Android version of an iOS spyware known as Pegasus in a case that shows how targeted electronic surveillance can be. Called Chrysaor, the Android variant can steal data from messaging apps, snoop over a phone’s camera or microphone, and even erase itself. On Monday, Google and security firm Lookout disclosed…