Fortified rice, fuel cells among Tech Award winners
Al Gore receives humanitarian honor at Tech Museum event that provides prizes to projects in the areas of environment, health, biosciences economic development, equality, and education.

Cisco launches iPhone security app
Cisco Systems' new App Store entry, featuring customized alerts and threat information delivered to the handheld device, targets security professionals.

Town to photograph every car that enters and leaves
The California town of Tiburon votes to set up permanent cameras to record the license plate of every car on its roads. Is this one more step toward a surveillance state?

Unboxing the free PDC laptop (photos)
CNET has a look as one developer at the Microsoft PDC gathering in Los Angeles unboxes an Acer laptop, which were given to most attendees.

New Firefox 3.6 beta aims to cut crashes
The third beta imposes a new restriction on how third-party software can interact with it. And a feature called Resource Package could speed up Firefox 3.7.

Facebook adopts new privacy policy
The social-networking site hopes that policy revision will make the policy more accessible and easier to understand.

T-Mobile UK says workers sold customer data
British consumer privacy commissioner says he will prosecute over sale of customer data by T-Mobile UK employees.

Shining the light on Robolamps (photos)
Croatian artist Robert Matysiak has created cute and quirky "Robolamps" made from plumbling supplies and colored lightbulbs.

FAQ: Recognizing phishing e-mails
Phishing attacks have spiked this year, recent reports show. Here's a primer on what phishing is and how to avoid it.

Report: Countries prepping for cyberwar
U.S., Israel, Russia, China, and France are gearing up for cyberoffensives, according to a new McAfee report.

Antitrust concerns linger in Google Books deal
Opponents of Google Books settlement say the search giant will still have exclusive rights to digitize orphaned out-of-print works.

VeriSign expects major security update by 2011
New protocol will guarantee the origin and integrity of Domain Name System data for .com and .net, company says.

Hackers create tools for disaster relief
At the first-ever Random Hacks of Kindness event, developers work on technology tools that emergency relief workers can use in disasters.

Microsoft patching zero-day Windows 7 SMB hole
Company warns customers that exploit code for the Server Message Block hole is available and suggests a workaround until a patch is ready.

RSA reveals details behind re-shipping scam
Desperate during the downturn, people are taking "jobs" as re-shippers, not realizing they're helping criminals move goods purchased with stolen credit cards, RSA says.

Expert says Adobe Flash policy is risky
Adobe Flash Player allows arbitrary content to access applications without permission, says researcher at Foreground Security.

Apple updates Safari for security
A security update from Apple fixes multiple security holes in Safari, but a lack of transparency makes it hard to judge how severe the threats are.

Microsoft probing Windows 7 zero-day hole
One day after Patch Tuesday, researcher warns of unpatched security hole in Windows 7 and Server 2008.

Security considerations for virtual environments
Virtual environments have as many security risks as their physical counterparts. Users need to take security into consideration throughout their design process.

Eastern Europeans charged in payment processor hack
Grand jury indicts defendants accused of hacking into RBS WorldPay network and running "one of the most sophisticated computer hacking rings in the world."

A child porn-planting virus: Threat or bad defense?
There is some concern that malware can plant illegal child porn on innocent people's computers, but experts say that, while possible, it's not very likely.

Microsoft patches critical hole in Windows kernel
November's Patch Tuesday features fixes for holes in Windows, Excel, and Word, and a critical one affecting the Windows kernel that could be used in drive-by download attacks on Web surfers.

Panda's Cloud Antivirus leaves beta behind
First introduced in beta back in April, Panda Cloud Antivirus graduates to a stable, public release and signifies a major security vendor taking aim at the freeware competition--instead of the other way around.

Apple plugs holes for domain spoofing, other attacks
Security update for Mac OS X addresses 43 specific issues, including holes that could allow an attacker to take over the computer.

Microsoft launches Forefront Protection 2010
Software giant launches antimalware for new version of e-mail and communications server.