November 2011
12 posts
Twitter Must Provide Data on 3 Users, Judge Rules →
A federal judge on Thursday ruled that Twitter, the popular microblogging platform, must reveal information about three of its account holders who are under investigation for their possible links to the WikiLeaks whistle-blower site.
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Notes on the #Occupy Media Teams →
So far, Occupy has thrived as a prototype rather than a program: an open-source laboratory for activism. What follows is a collection of research notes on how #Occupy collectives have evolved media teams, with a special focus on the original group in Zuccotti Park, NYC. Apologies to the authors pilfered here, but no repentance…after all, this is for Science.
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Is Anthrax Trying To Become The New Metallica?... →
ny more records the band used to sell in the past. And he keeps building up steam until it’s a full on rant, complete with falsely claiming it’s “theft” (over and over and over again) and comparing it to drunk driving… including claiming that if you’re caught downloading unauthorized music, you should lose your internet access completely:
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There is no cyber war the same way there is no... →
One of the staff at my school (King’s College, London) recently published a paper that used Clausewitzian definitions of war to declaim that there has been no cyberwar, cyberwar is not happening now, and cyberwar is unlikely to occur in the future. Of course it is easy to prove a point if you control the definitions and I will stipulate that the idea of two nations engaging in purely network and...
Study: Many Facebook users are careless →
After conducting an experiment, a team of researchers at the University of British Columbia in Canada has concluded that a fifth of all Facebook users are careless when accepting friend requests and automatically disclose their private information in the process. The researchers used 102 virtual Facebook profiles to harvest gigabytes worth of user data. To collect the data, they used...
EFF Data Shows Four CAs Compromised Since June →
The EFF, through the use of its SSL Observatory, has taken a look at the data from certificate revocation lists for SSL certificates in recent months, and found that there were four separate CAs compromised in the last four months. The data that the EFF looked at was a summary of the reasons that specific certificates were revoked by CAs, as reported by the CAs themselves in CRLs. When a...
Are You on the Pwnedlist? →
2011 has been called the year of the data breach, with hacker groups publishing huge troves of stolen data online almost daily. Now a new site called pwnedlist.com lets users check to see if their email address or username and associated information may have been compromised. Pwnedlist.com is the creation of Alen Puzic and Jasiel Spelman, two security researchers from DVLabs, a division of...
Thousands Petition Obama to Block E-Parasites Act →
Net users angry at the introduction of the Stop Online Piracy Act, also known as the “E-Parasites Act,” are attempting to force the White House to oppose the bill, which would boost the government’s authority to disrupt and shutter alleged trademark- and copyright-infringing websites. And by the early results, it looks like they might at least force the administration to respond. The petitioners...
Duqu Installer Contains Windows Kernel Zero Day →
A newly discovered installer for the Duqu malware includes an exploit for a previously unknown vulnerability in the Windows kernel that allows remote code execution. Microsoft is working on a fix for the kernel vulnerability right now. The exact location and nature of the flaw isn’t clear right now.
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'Nitro' hackers use stock malware to steal... →
Attackers used an off-the-shelf Trojan horse to sniff out secrets from nearly 50 companies, many of them in the chemical and defense industries, Symantec researchers said today. The attack campaign — which Symantec tagged as “Nitro” — started no later than last July and continued until mid-September, targeting an unknown number of companies and infecting at least 48 firms...
Facebook Letting Users Designate 'Guardian Angel'... →
Social networking giant Facebook said on Thursday that it is testing a feature that will allow users to designate certain friends as ‘guardian angels’ entrusted with helping the user to recover a locked or hijacked account. The company, which has already experimented with forms of “social authentication,” such as using photos of Facebook friends to help users prove they...
Anonymous vs. Zetas Amid Mexico's Cartel Violence →
The online activist collective Anonymous posted a message on the Internet on Oct. 31 saying it would continue its campaign against Mexican criminal cartels and their government supporters despite the risks. The message urged inexperienced activists, who might not be practicing proper online security measures, to abstain from participating. It also urged individuals associated with Anonymous in...