For many online shoppers, shipping has become a pivotal issue, and one of the worst things an etailer can do is allow a shipment to be late. On-time arrival is such a high expectation that many shoppers find late delivery worse than other notoriously disagreeable things, a recent survey of online shoppers suggests. Here are some of the things a significant number of respondents preferred to getting a package late: a root canal; spending the weekend with in-laws; and telling their kids Santa is a myth. Also, consumers want shipping to be free. [More...]

The United States on Tuesday accused North Korea of responsibility for a global ransomware attack that locked down more than 300,000 computers in 150 countries earlier this year. The U.S. now has enough evidence to support its assertion that Pyongyang was behind the WannaCry attack in May, Homeland Security Advisor Tom Bossert told reporters at a White House press briefing. If the United States has new evidence linking North Korea to WannaCry, however, it hasn't released any of it to the public, which could pose problems. [More...]

A new Apache Struts campaign that researchers named "Zealot" has come to light in recent weeks. Zealot loads Windows or Linux-based machines by installing a miner for Monero, which has become one of the hottest cryptocurrencies used in recent malware attacks. Zealot uses NSA-linked EternalBlue and EternalSynergy exploits, according to F5 Labs, which discovered the campaign. It targets unsuspecting computer users with a multistaged attack that exploits servers vulnerable to the Jakarta Multipart Parser attack and the DotNetNuke vulnerability. [More...]

There was a lot in customer relationship management to like in 2017. The industry racked up north of $35 billion and the cloud reigned supreme. However, future growth presents a challenge. We're going to need to look beyond selling generic seats to grow the CRM market from here. It's a whole new ball game now that Oracle has credible cloud CRM. It's been building up for a while, but this year saw the first important financial results. Oracle is a serious contender, and other vendors will need to bring their A-games. [More...]