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Rip Empson is a writer and rabble-rouser at TechCrunch. He covers startups, music, social, mobile, health, and education. You can reach him at rip[at]techcrunch[dot]com ? Learn More Several weeks ago, reports started to trickle out that a number of Dropbox users were under attack from spam. Since then, Dropbox has been investigating those attacks (with some help from a third-party) and today gave the first update on the progress, saying that some accounts were indeed accessed by hackers, but that it is now adding two-factor authentication and other security features to prevent further problems. For some background: On July 17th, a number of Dropbox users begun noticing an increase in the level spam attacking their accounts. As Sarah reported at the time, the red flag appeared when users begun reporting that the email accounts receiving spam were in fact only tied to their Dropbox accounts, which indicated that the address leak had come from Dropbox itself. Many of those reports came...

Everyone knows they have unique fingerprints, but what about a unique footprint? Research has shown everyone has a personalized way of walking — pressure of step, length of stride — and a new lab is working to turn those individual foot features into a security measure. The lab is developing biometric shoe insoles to monitor the characteristics of a person’s feet. Sensors will record the patterns and a computer will compare the measurements to a person’s master file. If it’s a match, it will grant the person access to secured areas and the insoles will turn off. If not, it sounds an alarm. “Within the third step, it knows it’s you, and it goes back to sleep,” Todd Gray, the company’s president, said to The Washington Post . “If I put on yours, it would know almost instantly that I’m not you.” Gray says his inspiration for the revolutionary security gear came from seeing his daughter in maternity ward decorated with baby feet. SEE ALSO: Department of Homeland Security Testing Molecular...