The Last Watchdog

on Internet security by Byron Acohido

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Google to Congress: deleting profiling data ‘not always practicable’

February 2, 2012 | 1 Comment

Rep. Mary Bono Mack, R-Calif., says there wasn’t enough time to set up a full public hearing on the controversial user agreement changes Google announced last week. Those changes take effect March 1 and will enable the search giant to step up the cross-referencing of profiling data collected from users of its popular online services. Google says it is not collecting any data from users of Google …more

Zappos hack shows risk of using e-mail as your account username

January 16, 2012 | Comment on this post

If you’ve ever shopped at Zappos now would be a good time to take stock of the e-mail address and password you use most often to shop and bank online.

The popular online shoe retailer, a division of Amazon, disclosed on Sunday that hackers cracked its customer database to steal records for some 24 million customers.

The data thieves did not get any payment card numbers, because that data was …more

Stratfor hack demonstrates new strain of censorship

January 11, 2012 | 3 Comments

Hacking technology has become so accessible, and social network-based rabble rousing so prevalent, that hacktivists espousing confused motives can lash out indiscriminately — and cause crushing damage.

That’s the upshot of the Christmas Eve Stratfor.com escapade widely attributed to members of the Anonymous hacking collective. The online global affairs publication relaunched its website today, three weeks after hacktivists posted sensitive data for 50,000 Stratfor subscribers, then shut …more

2011: Year of the hacktivists

January 10, 2012 | Comment on this post

Stratfor.com remains inoperative nearly three weeks after a Christmas Eve hacktivist break-in.  To add insult to injury, a prankster has begun sending bogus e-mail messages to the online publication’s subscribers asking them to rate the company’s response to the breach, according to Sophos’ analyst Chet Wiesniewski.

The attack on Strategic Forecasting — which supplies its subscribers with independent analysis on global affairs — capped an unprecedented year for …more

Facebook fails to provide clear answers on Web tracking

January 9, 2012 | Comment on this post

Reps. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Joe Barton, R-Tex., on Monday lashed out at Facebook for failing to clearly explain how — and why — the social networking giant systematically compiles tracking data on its 800 million members, and millions more non-members, as LastWatchdog disclosed in this page-one cover story.

Markey and Barton were left unsatisfied by this six-page explanation they recently received from Erin …more

Free anti-tracking services catch on with privacy-minded consumers

December 29, 2011 | Comment on this post

By Byron Acohido, USA TODAY, 30Dec2011, P1B

Upon reading recent news stories about how Facebook tracks almost everywhere he goes on the Internet, Jim Kress grew outraged.

The business process consultant from Northville, Mich., subsequently learned Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Adobe and many other companies also exhaustively track his online activities. “I was very unnerved to discover the extent of all the other tracking that was done by nearly …more

Why botnets have become invincible

December 29, 2011 | Comment on this post

When I first wrote about “Zombie networks” in this 2004 cover story, hackers were in the early stages of developing the most efficient ways to systematically infect Internet-connected Windows PCs and convert them into obedient bots — at scale. The big driver back then was to assemble botnets to spread spam.

Today botnets have become the engine that drives all forms of cyber attacks. It’s simple enough …more

RSA’s Coviello: companies face new reality of persistent threats

December 22, 2011 | Comment on this post

It’s been a breathtaking year for mega databreaches. Security token giant RSA last March disclosed an embarrassing hack in which its crown jewel SecurID tags technology was pilfered.

And tech security journalist Brian Krebs in October shed light on a list (presented to Congress) of 760 organizations that were similarly hacked, including a who’s who of the Fortune 100.

That’s just one subset set of …more

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