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Showing posts with label e news. Show all posts
Showing posts with label e news. Show all posts

Monday 17 March 2014

Google Public DNS Server Traffic Hijacked

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The Internet is becoming a dangerous place day-by-day and especially for those innocent web users who rely on 3rd party services. The latest bad news is that the World's largest and most widely used Google's free public DNS (Domain name system) resolvers raised security red flags yesterday.
DNS is the master address list for the Internet, which translates IP addresses into human readable form and vice versa. According to Internet monitoring firm BGPmon, Google's DNS server 8.8.8.8/32 was hijacked yesterday for 22 minutes.

The Google's DNS server handles around 150 billion queries a day and during the 22 minutes of hijacking, millions of Internet users, including Financial institutions, Governments were redirected to BT’s (British multinational telecommunications services company) Latin America division in Venezuela and Brazil.Hackers exploited a well-known vulnerability in the so-called Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), which is used to exchange data between large service providers, and hijacking could allow the attackers to simply re-route the traffic to a router they controlled. 
BGP attack is the man-in-the-middle attack at large scale and harder to detect, as the traffic still reaches its legitimate destination and which was first demonstrated in 2008 by two security researchers - Tony Kapela and Alex Pilosov.

It's not the first time when Google Public DNS service has been hijacked. In 2010, DNS server traffic was hijacked and redirected to Romania and Austria.

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Wednesday 22 January 2014

Apple Wins Big Against Samsung In Court in South Corea

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apple win aganist sumsang
Samsung lost its bid on Thursday to ban sales of Apple's older iPhone and iPad models in South Korea. A court dismissed a lawsuit, filed in March 2012, claiming the U.S. firm had infringed on three  of Samsung's mobile patents.
The lawsuit was another part of Samsung's global courtroom war with Apple dating back to 2011 when the iPhone company first sued Samsung for copying the look and feel of its products.
"We are glad the Korean court joined others around the world in standing up for real innovation and rejecting Samsung's ridiculous claims," Apple Korea spokesman Steve Park said.
A judge at the Seoul Central District Court said that Apple products did not violate Samsung patents on the display of short messages and group messaging features. The court ruled against a sale ban on the products and subsequently threw out Samsung's claim for $95,100 (£58,000, AU$105,000) in damages.
Necessary measures
Samsung said it would carefully review the ruling before deciding on whether to launch an appeal. "We are disappointed with the court's decision …. Apple has continued to infringe our patented mobile technologies [so] we will continue to take the measures necessary to protect our intellectual property rights," Samsung said in a statement.
Similar rulings in the past have gone in Samsung's favour. In August last year the same South Korean court ordered Apple to pay $38,000 (£23,100, $AU42,000) in damages for infringing on wireless technology patents.
Thursday's court ruling comes after a German court in Mannheim dismissed Apple's claim that Samsung infringed on a utility patent. Apple and Samsung have gone to trial twice in the past two years in California, where juries awarded Apple $930 million (£567 million, AU$1 billion) in damages.


Here’s the complete ruling courtesy of FOSS Patents:


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Monday 13 January 2014

MIT University website defaced by Anonymous hackers in honor of Aaron Swartz

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Today is January 11, 2014 and the last year on the same day a 26-year-old, young hacker, Reddit cofounder and the digital Activist, Aaron H. Swartz committed suicide. He found dead in his Brooklyn, New York apartment, where he had hanged himself.
Swartz was indicted by a federal grand jury in July 2011, accused of hacking the MIT JSTOR database and stealing over four million documents with the intent to distribute them.

He could have prison for 50 years and $4 million in fines by the Court, but before that he committed suicide in fear. Swartz's father, Robert, later blamed the MIT and the judiciary system for his son's death.

On the first Anniversary of Aaron Swartz, today the Anonymous group of hackers defaced the sub-domain of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) website (http://cogen.mit.edu/) for about an hour as part of #OPLASTRESORT.

Defacement page was titled 'THE DAY WE FIGHT BACK'. The message posted on it, “Remember The Day We Fight Back, Remember. We Never Forget, We Never Surrender, Expect Us.”
At the time of writing, the domain was down. The attack on the website of MIT is a part of the tragic suicide of hacker Aaron Swartz to give him tribute.

It was the MIT's role in the federal prosecution against an activist, which ultimately led to him committing suicide, but the U.S Government has not learned anything and they are planning to make laws stricter against hackers. Recently, The Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman 'Patrick Leahy' reintroduced a revamped version of the "Personal Data Privacy and Security Act" for tough criminal penalties for hackers. The new bill suggests 20 years in prison, rather than 10 years (currently) and also recommending to give same penalties for the hackers who even attempt to hack the systems, but doesn't succeed.
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Wednesday 1 January 2014

Snapchat Got Hacked 4.6million Users Phone Numbers Leaked Online

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Snapchat Got Hacked 4.6million Users Phone numbers Leaked Online. First biggest hack starting with this New Year 2014. ZDnet has reported earlier that, "The Australian hackers announced its publication of Snapchat's API and the two exploits on the GibSec Twitter account on Christmas Eve ".
After this report hackers  use this trick and create a Video to access Snapchat hacks.

video



 Snapchat is a photo messaging application developed by Evan Spiegel and Robert Murphy, then Stanford University students. Using the app, users can take photos, record videos, add text and drawings, and send them to a controlled list of recipients. These sent photographs and videos are known as "Snaps".

When cyber security researcher submits website exploit report to companies, they didn't take it seriously. If Snapchat took action on these exploits before, then this was not happened.

As before True caller database was also hacked in July 2013. we hope other social network website will learn from these hacks and will more secure their servers.

Now SnapchatDB.info has been suspended after this leaked.

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Tuesday 17 December 2013

Facebook Launches “Donate” Button For Non-Profits That Also Collects Billing Info For Itself

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Facebook unveiled a “Donate Now” button today to make it much easier for non-profits to take contributions. A nice side effect for its business? The button will collect credit card numbers and other billing info for Facebook that could aid its ecommerce and gaming initiatives.
19 non-profit launch partners will start displaying the Donate Now button at the tops of their Facebook Pages and bottom of their News Feed posts. These include DonorsChoose.org (a personal favorite), Boys And Girls Club Of America, World Wildlife Fund, UNICEF, Red Cross, and Kiva. After some more testing, Facebook will open the feature to additional non-profits, who can sign up for access here.
Thanks to the Donate Now button, instead of forcing users off Facebook and away from their friends, these organizations can now accept donations in a pop-up window right on Facebook. Users can choose how much they want to give and either enter payment details or use ones already stored with Facebook. The pop-up could boost conversion rates and get more funds to needy projects.
The Donate Now button also gives people an easy way to share the call for donations with friends, helping philanthropy go viral. Facebook is not charging a fee to process credit card donations and is instead paying that fee itself so 100% of donations go to the non-profits.
Sadly, some people believe that corporations are all evil and there’s no way they could actually be staffed by decent human beings that want to help non-profits. But Facebook seems genuinely determined to help these causes, even if there’s no denying that the button could also aid its business. It’s a part of a trend of for-profit businesses launching philanthropy initiatives that could earn them money in the long run. Facebook backs Internet.org, an internet accessibility project for the developing world that could also get more people signed up for its social network. And just this morning, Comcast announced multi-million dollar backing for online education resource Khan Academy in hopes of attracting more low-income families to its reduced-price broadband service.
[Update: Perhaps Facebook should make it easier to delete your credit card info after donating. Right now you can go to your payment account settings and remove your credit cards. Adding a link there or delete button to the donate flow itself would make it easier...but would also make it tougher to donate to other non-profits in the future.]
Facebook is behind in the race to collect credit card numbers compared to app store owners like Apple and Google, and ecommerce juggernauts like Amazon. Not having payment details on file creates a barrier to people buying virtual goods in Facebook Games, or buying Facebook Gift cards for friends. The moral imperative to donate to a worthy cause could get users over the hump to keying in their credit card number or connecting another billing service like PayPal.
More payment info on file will also bolster Facebook’s latest ecommerce push: Autofill With Facebook. The system lets third-party mobile apps integrate a button in the checkout flow that lets users quickly pull in their billing and shipping info from Facebook without much typing.
Facebook doesn’t collect a fee or revenue share, but instead plans to use purchase data it peeks on through Autofill to prove the return on investment of its ads. If you click an ad to download JackThreads’ ecommerce app, use Autofill With Facebook to import your payment info that you previously entered through the Donate Now button, and make a purchase, Facebook can tell advertisers just how much money their marketing message earned them.
Again, these indirect boosts to Facebook’s business provided by Donate Now might not have been what drove Facebook to build the button, but they’re a convenient synergy. Connecting people to their friends and non-profits just so happens to make it easier to connect them to advertisers as well.



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Sunday 15 December 2013

DRDA to Recruit for 15 posts

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INDIA TODAY ONLINE  NEW DELHI, NOVEMBER 25, 2013
| UPDATED 15:13 IST
Notification has been issued by the Office of Additional Deputy Commissioner-cum-Chief Executive Officer, DRDA, Palwal, to invite applications for 15 job posts. The posts on offer will be for 6 months and that too on contractual basis. Candidates interested in applying for these posts need to send in their duly filled application forms latest by December 4, 2013.



Important Dates

Last date to submit application forms: 4 December 2013

Job Post Details

Total No. of Vacancies: 15

Recruitment Type: 6 months contractual type 

Age Limit
Candidates between the age group of 21-45 years can apply for these vacancies. Relaxation in the upper age limit can be considered in case of very deserving candidates. Retired officers/ officials can also apply for these opening if they are medically fit.
 
Job Post and Eligibility Criteria

Post Name: Satistical Assistant
No of vacancies: 1
Remuneration: As per D.C. Rate 
Qualification required: M.A. in Maths/ Economics/ Statistics/ Rural Development/ MBA. Preference will be given to those having one year experience in collection, compilation and analysis of statistical data. A candidate can even apply if he/she is a graduate with Maths/ Economics/ Rural Development/ Statistics with 3 years experience in collection, compilation of statistical data. A candidate should have studied Hindi upto Matric level.

Post Name: Technical Assistant
No of vacancies: 1
Remuneration: As per D.C. Rate
Qualification required: M.A. in Maths/ Economics/ Statistics/ Rural Development/ MBA and one year experience in collection, compilation and analysis of statistical data. A candidate can even apply if he/she is a graduate with Maths/ Economics/ Rural Development/ Statistics with 3 years experience in collection, compilation of statistical data. A candidate should have studied Hindi upto Matric level.

Post Name: Jr. Scale Stenographer
No of vacancies: 1
Remuneration: As per D.C. Rate
Qualification required: Graduate or its equivalent recognized by the Govt. with a speed of 100 wpm in English and 80 wpm in Hindi. The candidate should have a shorthand speed of 20 wpm and transcription speed of 15 wpm (8% mistakes allowed). In addition, the candidate should have studied Hindi till Matric level and should posses knowledge of computers and electronic typewriter (word processors)  

Post Name: Driver
No of vacancies: 1
Remuneration: As per D.C. Rate
Qualification required: Candidate should have a minimum 5 years of experience of driving along with a valid licence. The candidate will further be examined through a trade test by an appointed authority. 

Post Name: Chowkidar
No of vacancies: 1
Remuneration: As per D.C. Rate
Qualification required: The candidate should have cleared the Matric exam from a recognized university.

Post Name: Investigator
No of vacancies: 2
Remuneration: As per D.C. Rate
Qualification required: M.A. in Maths/ Economics/ Statistics/ Rural Development/ MBA and one year experience in collection, compilation and analysis of statistical data. A candidate can even apply if he/she is a graduate with Maths/ Economics/ Rural Development/ Statistics with 3 years experience in collection, compilation of statistical data. The candidate should have studied Hindi upto Matric level.

Post Name: Accounts Clerk
No. of Vacancies: 2
Remuneration: As per D.C. Rate
Qualifications required: The candidate should have cleared B.Com from any recognized university and should possess knowledge of computers. The candidate should have studied Hindi upto Matric level.

Post Name: Accountant
No. of Vacancies: 2
Remuneration: As per D.C. Rate
Qualifications required: The candidate should have cleared B.Com from any recognized university and should possess knowledge of computers. The candidate should have studied Hindi upto Matric level.


Post Name: Peon
No. of Vacancies: 2
Remuneration: As per D.C. Rate
Qualifications required:
 The candidate should have cleared the matric exam from a recognized university.

Selection Process

Candidates will be selected on the basis of their academic record, experience and their performance during their interview session.


How to apply

Candidates can apply for the above mentioned posts by sending in attested copies of all documents to the Additional Deputy Commissioner- Cum- Chief Executive Officer DRDA, Palwal.

The recruiting authority reserves the right to postpone or cancel the interview or to reject the selection of any candidate at any time without citing any reason. 

Click here to get more information of this job post 
Click here to get the Application Form 
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Tuesday 10 December 2013

Why Wall Street isn't ready for Bitcoin

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By Aaron Sankin on 

As the price of Bitcoin has shot into the stratosphere, there’s been a growing chorus talking about the virtual currency not only as means of exchange but as a vehicle for investment.
Just consider the following: A single Bitcoin purchased for $65 six months ago is now worth around a $1,000, and a Malta-based Bitcoin hedge fund has posted returns of nearly 5,000 percent this year (making it the single best performing hedge fund in the world).
What is surprising, however, is that for all the chatter about Bitcoin’s investment potential, a group of major players has been notably absent from the conversation: large, established Wall Street firms.
The biggest organizations in the financial world have been conspicuously silent when it comes to Bitcoin, almost entirely staying out a staying out of a sector that’s been a huge moneymaking opportunity for those lucky enough to get in early.
We reached out to several of the largest Wall Street investment banks to inquire about their Bitcoin holdings. Most declined comment or didn’t respond. A Citigroup spokesperson said the company hasn’t made any investments in Bitcoin.
There are a number of factors why Wall Street’s institutional investors are reticent to invest in the cryptocurrency, but one oft-stated reason—volatility—likely isn’t one of them.
The price of Bitcoin is certainly skittish. During one 24-hour period last week it fluctuated in value over a range of 370 points. ‟[But] that volatility isn’t what’s scaring off major investors,” said Garrick Hileman, an economic historian at the London School of Economics, who noted that savvy operators with deep pockets often generate their largest returns when markets experience wild fluctuations.
Given the decentralized nature of the currency, when the money in them disappears, there’s not much people can do about it.
‟I write about it every day,” sighed Daniel Cawrey, editor of the Bitcoin news blog Coindesk, ‟exchanges getting hacked, people losing their money.”
Fears about a sudden inability to sell bitcoins if exchanges shut down are largely secondary to the main issue preventing companies like Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse from jumping into the Bitcoin game: government regulation—or rather, the lack of it.
While government officials in the United States, at least at the federal level, have appeared sympathetic to Bitcoin, but there’s a lingering fear this relatively permissive attitude could change at any moment.
The lack of regulatory clarity’s also pushing banks away from doing business with companies who deal in Bitcoin.
Silicon Valley Bank, which announced a partnership with the Bitcoin business incubator Coinlab early this year, has since put the brakes on working with Bitcoin firms. ‟Until regulatory guidance is clear on banking and payment processing for virtual currency companies, we are not adding more relationships in this sector to our client portfolio,” wrote a Silicon Valley Bank spokesperson to the Daily Dot.
Bitcoin’s market cap—that is, the combined value of every Bitcoin currently in existence—is only about $12 billion. In terms of Wall Street’s biggest banks, that’s pocket change. It’s about the same dollar figure added to Apple’s market cap following a single tweet by famed activist investor Carl Icahn. It’s not really enough to justify navigating the still choppy waters of emerging Bitcoin regulation and risk the reputational risk of getting slammed by the Securities and Exchange Commission for doing deals in it that would otherwise be completely unremarkable.
“If you’re a professional investor or an financial institution, it can be difficult to invest in Bitcoin,” explained David Kintisky, general manager of the Bitcoin Investment Trust. ‟There’s no stock symbol, so you first you have to figure out how to buy it, then you have to figure out how to hold it, and explain it to your compliance guys how it all works, and then find a way to report it on your taxes.”
‟The lack of major players allows for smaller startups, like Coinbase and Bitpay, to come in and be instantly competitive,” said Cawrey. ‟If Citibank or Bank of America was handling Bitcoin transactions, these companies wouldn’t exist because banks could do it themselves with the benefit of their massive infrastructure.”
Kintisky’s Bitcoin Investment Trust is operated by the New York-based Second Market, which is primarily known for trading in pre-IPO shares of companies and functions by simply buying a whole heap of bitcoins and riding the price up and down. The fund currently holds about $70 million in assets, and Kintisky asserts that it’s the de facto player in the U.S. Bitcoin investment market.
Kintisky notes that the main investors in his fund are Silicon Valley/Silicon Alley tech entrepreneurs attracted to the novel technological aspect of Bitcoin, folks from family offices or wealth management firms (read: really rich people), and Wall Street employees making investments on their own behalf.
It’s this third category that’s most interesting because it demonstrates that, while Bitcoin may still be too risky for Wall Street firms themselves, the opportunity isn’t lost on people who follow markets for a living. “We see that there are people who work at these big firms that are very interested in Bitcoin,” Kintisky confirmed.
This interest in Bitcoin runs the spectrum from junior traders all the way up to some of the most powerful people on the industry. In October, Michael Novogratz, chief investment officer of the $58 billion Fortress Investment Group hedge fund, praised the virtual currency, saying that he has ‟a nice little Bitcoin position.”
Novogratz added that, while Fortress had looked into investing in Bitcoin in an official capacity, the firm stopped short of actually adding Bitcoin to its portfolio.
The Wedbush report argues that Bitcoin has the potential to be worth up to 100 times its current value, comparing it to a ‟biotech [company] that had a molecule that may cure the common cold.”
Bank of America, on the other hand, was more cautious, writing that the recent drastic increase in prices put Bitcoin ‟at risk of running ahead of its fundamentals,” which is a polite way of saying “bubble.”
However, both reports insisted that, contrary to the charges of critics like former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, Bitcoin’s ‟intrinsic value” comes as a result of its usefulness as a medium of exchange—an alternative to electronic payment formats like Visa, Mastercard, or eBay.
Gil Luria, the author of the Wedbush report, explained that once institutional investors understand the source of Bitcoin’s intrinsic value they’ll likely feel more comfortable using it as an investment vehicle. Confusion and trepidation of regulation is hindering Bitcoin investment right now, but ‟the regulatory path for how Bitcoin moves out of the grey and black markets and into a regulatory environment where institutional investors feel comfortable is pretty clear,” he said.
In the days since he published his report on Bitcoin, Luria has been flooded with calls from institutional investors interested in learning more about what it would take for their firms to begin investing in Bitcoin.
“The reaction I’ve gotten to the report has been tremendous,” he said. “It’s all I’ve been talking about all week.
“To see all of this excitement coming from so many different areas, from so many different people, leads me to believe that this is something real, that this isn’t tulips.”
Illustration by Jason Reed

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Monday 9 December 2013

FBI Can Spy Through Your Webcam - And Much More

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The FBI has developed advanced surveillance techniques that give it the power to covertly activate Web cams to spy on unsuspecting computer owners.
Tech savvy G-men can remotely turn on cameras that transmit real-time images to investigators — without triggering the light that shows the camera is in use, according to The Washington Post.
The FBI can also burrow into a suspect’s computer and download files, photographs and stored e-mails.
The new snooping capabilities came to light during an investigation of a mysterious man named “Mo’’ – who threatened to blow up a building filled with innocent people unless authorities free Colorado movie-theater shooting suspect James Holmes.
He also threatened to bomb a jail, a hotel, three colleges and two airports.
No bombs were found at the targets he mentioned.
He first contacted federal authorities in July 2012. It’s not clear how long Mo and the FBI were in touch.
The paper said he sometimes used an untraceable e-mail, other times an encrypted phone.
Mo even sent the FBI pictures of himself fashionably decked out in an Iranian military uniform.
The FBI, frustrated in its attempts to track him down, used special software that would install itself in Mo’s computer when he opened his e-mail.
It was designed specifically to help agents track his location and his movements.
But the software never worked as designed, the paper said, and Mo remains at large.
The feds had gotten permission to install the software from a Denver judge.
The agency tried to use it on at least one other probe, but a Houston judge described the method as “extremely intrusive’’ and probably unconstitutional — and shot it down.
The FBI has had the capability to sneak into computers’ Web cams for several years, a former employee of the agency told the Washington Post.
It was not clear how many times it tried to do it, but the paper’s source said the FBI has used its tool mainly in terrorism and the “most serious’’ investigations.
The technology is highly controversial.
“We have transitioned into a world where law enforcement is hacking into people’s computers and we have never had public debate,” Christopher Soghoian of the American Civil Liberties Union complained to the paper.


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Sunday 8 December 2013

Attention: The NSA is Tracking Online Porn Viewers to Discredit

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Sitting on the wire, the NSA has the ability to track and make a record of every website you visit.  Today, the Huffington Post revealed that the NSA is using this incredible power to track who visits online porn websites, and to use this information to discredit those it deems dangerous. Their porn habits would then be "exploited to undermine a target's credibility, reputation and authority."   
The story was illustrated with six individuals, none of whom are designated terrorists themselves. Instead, they are deemed "radicalizers," people—two of which the NSA itself characterized as a "well-known media celebrity" and a "respected academic"—whose speeches and postings allegedly incite hatred or promote offensive jihad. 
The report raises the specter of abusing online viewing records to discredit other political opponents of the US government. The NSA document was reviewed not just by the NSA and counter-terrorism officials, but by entities like the Department of Commerce and the US Trade Representative. The USTR negotiates treaties (like the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership), and one could certainly imagine that the leverage from this program could be useful in pushing for the US position. In fact, EFF and three dozen civil society groups have already asked the NSA to explain if they are spying on those advocating for the public interest in US trade policy.
Ed Snowden's latest revelation may leave SEC officials quaking as the NSA "has been gathering records of online sexual activity and evidence of visits to pornographic websites as part of a proposed plan to harm the reputations of those whom the agency believes are radicalizing others through incendiary speeches." Of course, as we have seen, this 'information' would never be used by the government for non-radical-terrorist suppressing reasons, as the ACLU notes, is is "an unwelcome reminder of what it means to give an intelligence agency unfettered access to individuals' most sensitive information using tactics associated with the secret police services of authoritarian governments."
Via Snowden...
The National Security Agency has been gathering records of online sexual activity and evidence of visits to pornographic websites as part of a proposed plan to harm the reputations of those whom the agency believes are radicalizing others through incendiary speeches, according to a top-secret NSA document.

The document, provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, identifies six targets, all Muslims, as “exemplars” of how “personal vulnerabilities” can be learned through electronic surveillance, and then exploited to undermine a target’s credibility, reputation and authority.

The NSA document, dated Oct. 3, 2012, repeatedly refers to the power of charges of hypocrisy to undermine such a messenger.”
Full ACLU Statement:
The NSA considered discrediting six people by revealing surveillance evidence of their online sexual activity, visits to pornography websites, and other personal information, according to a report today in The Huffington Post. The article cited documents leaked by former NSA contactor Edward Snowden. The targets of the NSA’s plan were all Muslims whom the NSA characterized as “radicals” but who were not believed to be involved in terrorism. The documents say one of the targets was a “U.S. person,” a term describing American citizens and legal permanent residents, but all of the targets were reportedly outside the United States.

American Civil Liberties Union Deputy Legal Director Jameel Jaffer had this reaction:

“This report is an unwelcome reminder of what it means to give an intelligence agency unfettered access to individuals' most sensitive information. One ordinarily associates these kinds of tactics with the secret police services of authoritarian governments. That these tactics have been adopted by the world’s leading democracy – and the world’s most powerful intelligence agency – is truly chilling.”

The administration keeps on attempting to justify the NSA spying by claiming there is oversight from the other branches of government. But, as Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg noted in the Why Care About NSA Spying video, spying makes a mockery of that separation. How can that oversight be meaningful if the NSA's huge storehouse of information contains the private viewing habits of every senator, representative, and judge? When the only protection against abuse is internal policies, there is no serious oversight. Congress needs to take action now to rein in the spying.


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Saturday 7 December 2013

2 million Facebook, Google, Twitter passwords stolen

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Times of India |1 day ago |Posted By: landmarkvacanc ymanagemen
Security experts have uncovered a trove of some 2 million stolen passwords   to websites including Facebook, Google, Twitter and Yahoo from internet users across the globe. 

Researchers with Trustwave's SpiderLabs said they discovered the credentials while investigating a server in the Netherlands that cybercriminals use to control a massive network of compromised computers known as the "Pony botnet." 

The company said that it has reported its findings to the largest of more than 90,000 websites and internet service providers whose customers' credentials it had found on the server. 

The data includes more than 3,26,000 Facebook accounts, some 60,000 Google accounts, more than 59,000 Yahoo accounts and nearly 22,000 Twitter accounts, according to SpiderLabs. Victims' were from the United States, Germany, Singapore and Thailand, among other countries. 

Representatives for Facebook and Twitter said the companies have reset the passwords of affected users. A Google spokeswoman declined comment. Yahoo representatives could not be reached. 

SpiderLabs said it has contacted authorities in the Netherlands and asked them to take down thePony botnet server. 

An analysis posted on the SpiderLabs blog showed that the most-common password in the set was "123456," which was used in nearly 16,000 accounts. Other commonly used credentials included "password," "admin," "123" and "1." 

Graham Cluley, an independent security expert, said it is extremely common for people to use such simple passwords and also re-use them on multiple accounts, even though they are extremely easy to crack. 

"People are using very dumb passwords. They are totally useless," he said.

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Sunday 1 December 2013

Fast and Furious Actor Paul Walker Dead at 40

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Paul Walker, an actor best known for his role as a fast-driving cop opposite bad-guy-gone-good Vin Diesel in the Fast and Furious movie series died on Saturday in a car crash in Santa Clarita, California, according to multiple sources. Walker was 40 years old.
News of the fatal crash spread first online after celebrity news site TMZ broke the story. Initially, most other news outlets and Twitter accounts picked it up as a report.
It was another hour before TMZ and then ABC News got confirmation from the actor's representatives.
TMZ's web site was inundated with traffic and, for a brief period of time, actually went down. When it returned, it appeared with this sentence added to the original story: "A rep for the actor confirms Paul died today in the crash after leaving a charity event."
According to the AP, Walker was a passenger in a friend's Porsche, which crashed into a light pole and tree before bursting into flames. Dramatic images of the wreckage soon spread on Twitter.

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