Advertising industry’s version of Do Not Track launches to derision
August 29, 2011
The online advertising industry’s version of a do-not-track mechanism officially launched today, 29Aug2011, and quickly drew derision from consumer and privacy advocates.
The Interactive Advertising Bureau has made it mandatory for its members — a who’s who of the online ad world, including Google, Microsoft and Facebook — to embrace a brand new code of conduct that requires use of a turquoise-colored triangle with a lowercase letter …More
Deeper scrutiny of deceptive, predatory Google AdWords ads called for
August 24, 2011
The non-profit advocacy group Consumer Watchdog is calling for federal regulators to take a closer look at home loan, credit repair and health products ads that rely on Google’s AdWords technology to saturate the Internet with dubious advertising claims.
That comes after the U.S. Department of Justice today hit Google with a $500 million sanction for enabling AdWords ads promoting illegally obtained pharmaceutical drugs.
By allowing Canadian pharmacies …More
Google hackers, bad and good, uncover sensitive data
August 23, 2011
Feinman
Google hacking, which has been on the rise this summer, is a bit of a misnomer. Also known as Google dorking, Google hacking refers to cybercriminals’ enterprising use of Google’s advanced search functions to find caches of valuable data ripe for the taking.
Some 43,000 faculty, staff, students and alumni of Yale University are the latest victims. Data thieves apparently found an unprotected File Transfer Protocol …More
Surge of SpyEye attacks begins, as free, cheap hacking toolkits circulate
August 21, 2011
By Byron Acohido, USA TODAY 22Aug2011, p1B
SEATTLE — The odds that a cybergang will stealthily turn your PC into a bot this summer and use it to carry out all manner of cyberattacks just notched notably higher.
That’s the upshot of a premier hacker’s toolkit, called SpyEye, recently being made accessible to cybercriminals of all stripes.
Security analysts anticipate a surge in SpyEye attacks the rest of this year.
“Every …More
Driveby downloads lurking on 8 million ecommerce web pages
August 12, 2011
By Byron Acohido, USA TODAY, 12 August2011, P1B
Some 8 million web pages, published mostly by smaller merchants and professional firms, have been hijacked this summer and set up to usurp control of the PCs of unsuspecting site visitors.
That’s the latest development in a new style of hacking sweeping across the Web, according to research by website security firm Armorize.
“The misuse of numerous small sites …More
DefCon Kids get guidance at Vegas hackers conference
August 8, 2011
Children 8 to 16 were welcomed for the first time ever at the DefCon hackers conference, held at the Rio hotel in Las Vegas this past weekend. It was part of a series of such confabs organized by Hackid.org. Federal agents spoke to participants of DefCon Kids — to persuade them that its cool to be a good guy hacker, who helps fight crime.. The kids got to …More
Printers, copiers, web cams & routers wide open to intrusion hacks
August 5, 2011
By Byron Acohido. USA TODAY, P1B, 5 Aug. 2011.
LAS VEGAS — Millions of copiers and printers in thousands of companies worldwide are ripe targets for cyberthieves in the hunt for sensitive business documents.
Researchers from Web security firm Zscaler ran a simple search and easily located 118,194 Hewlett-Packard printer-scanners, 9,431 Cannon photocopiers and 3,554 D-Link webcams equipped as Internet-connected Web servers.
Sutton