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Google execs lack clarity in closed-door briefing of Congress
February 3, 2012
By Byron Acohido, USA TODAY, 3Feb2012, P1B
Google executives faced tough questions Thursday, in a meeting with members of Congress, about changes to the company’s privacy policy scheduled to go into effect March 1.
However, the search giant failed to assuage lawmakers’ privacy concerns stemming from the company’s controversial plans to step up the cross-referencing of data generated by consumers who use its popular online services, says Rep. …More
Hollywood’s takedown of Megaupload stokes SOPA anti-piracy fears
January 20, 2012
The government takedown of Megaupload, a popular file-sharing site, has stoked simmering fears that hard-line enforcement of copyright infringements could profoundly disrupt Internet commerce.
File sharing has become a major way corporations collaborate with employees and partners and interact with customers. It fuels the sharing of rich content across Internet-connected devices in the home and office and distributed to mobile devices and has emerged as a major component …More
‘Here-you-have’ and ‘David Leadbetter’ attacks show spammers’ inventiveness
September 12, 2010
Two distinctive email viruses demonstrate the unending inventiveness of criminal spammers.
The “Here-you-have” virus broke through and swamped email systems at dozens of large organizations late last week. During that same time frame, the “David Leadbetter” virus took careful aim at golf-playing executives and managers at specific corporations.
Spam accounts for an estimated 90% of all e-mail traffic, or roughly about 300 billion messages daily. Viral messages …More
Cybercriminals having easy time breaching corporate networks
July 28, 2010
LAS VEGAS — Verizon today issued its annual Data Breach Investigation Report, timed for the opening day of the giant Black Hat cybersecurity convention here in the Nevada dessert.
It’s not widely known that the telecom giant is home to a crack cybersecurity forensics team. Over the past half dozen or so years, Verizon’s cybersleuths have been retained by large organizations to probe more than 900 separate cases of …More
FBI investigates iPad-AT&T breach as blame game plays out
June 11, 2010
Security experts have begun parsing the blame for the iPad-AT&T security breach that exposed the email address of some high-profile users.
Meanwhile, the FBI has launched an official investigation of a caper in which the perpetrators — greyhat researchers calling themselves Goatse Security –Â freely claim responsibility for the attack.
“We believe what we did was ethical,” Goatse member Escher Auernheimer told PC World’s Greg Keizer in …More
Why it is all too easy to become a cybercriminal
February 19, 2010
The disclosure of Operation Aurora last month and the outing of the Kneber botnet gang’s stolen booty this week have much in common.
Both involved nothing-out-of-the-ordinary cyberattacks that quixotically rose above the din to grab international headlines.
The mainstream attention is welcomed. It helps to underscore how the Internet underground has advanced to the point where a plethora of powerful hacking tools and services is readily available to …More
American Bankers Association’s warning to small firms comes as a surprise
January 6, 2010
My editors were not the only ones surprised that the very conservative American Bankers Association has come out with a warning for small and mid-sized businesses cautioning them to only use a dedicated PC for online banking.
Jennifer Bayuk was also shocked. Bayuk is the former chief information security officer at Bear Stearns. She is well-known and well-respected as a security consultant, speaker and author on tech security …More
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