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News Analysis: Social networks can be scary places that cause many companies to debate whether to continue supporting social network access for employees at the office. But keeping a company safe from potential security issues isn’t as hard as it might appear. Here are 10 ways to make social network access safer.
– A new phishing attack has hit Twitter, causing some users to unwittingly expose sensitive data to malicious hackers. It’s causing some people to question how they use social networks. And it might be forcing many companies to second guess their support for such services.
The threat of outbreaks c…
Notorious hacker Albert Gonzalez agrees to plead guilty to having a role in the theft of data from millions of credit and debit cards. Gonzalez, who has been tied by authorities to a cyber-crimewave that hit companies from Heartland Payment Systems to Hannaford Bros., now faces up to 25 years in prison.
– Reputed hacker Albert
Gonzalez, the
Miami man tied by investigators
to several major data breaches, has agreed to plead guilty to a
variety of charges, according to reports.
Under the plea agreement,
Gonzalez, 28, will face a maximum of 25 years in prison. According to
authorities, he is…
Gary McKinnon, the British hacker accused of breaking into U.S. military computers, lost his latest attempt at avoiding extradition to the United States. McKinnon is accused of hacking computers at the Pentagon, NASA and the U.S. Army and Navy in 2001 and 2002.
– A British hackers latest attempt to block extradition to the
United Stateshas failed.
The British High Court ruled today that the case of Gary McKinnon, who stands accused of hacking NASA and other
U.S.federal agencies, should go forward. It is the latest twist in a case
that has stretch…
UK hacker Gary McKinnon has lost his High Court bid to avoid extradition to the US. What is your reaction?
What do a clock powered by decaying prawns, an experiment with a physicist’s bladder, some light bulb conkers and a fetish version of Pong have in common
The answer is the mad professor who invented them or, as James Larsson would rather be known, "a hardware hacking clown".
Silliness is at the heart of what he does.
"I began five years ago with a prawn sandwich clock and it has got a whole lot sillier since then," he said.
With sensors and an old computer plugged into a Marks and Spencer prawn sandwich, Mr Larsson was able to use its decomposition to track the passing of time.
"It was pretty uneven," he admitted. You wouldn’t want to catch a train using it."
Mr Larsson used to invent more serious things, from artificial intelligence projects to computer graphics devices.
But, in his own words it "went horrendously belly-up" so he decided to "shun commercial inventing".
He saw the light, as it were, when he heard of Dorkbot, an organisation of geeks and hobbyists dedicated to playing around with electricity purely for the fun of it.
Desperately dangerous
"I’m a geek, born and bred. As a kid I would take the back off the TV. When I heard about Dorkbot it felt like it was what I’d been waiting for all my life," he said.
Dorkbot’s mission statement is "doing strange things with electricity" and they don’t get much stranger than Mr Larsson’s projects, which include a 30,000 volt version of the classic fairground game where a player has to pass a hook carefully over a circuit to avoid touching it.
In Mr Larsson’s version the traditional buzzer is replaced with a huge blue spark.
"I always thought the original steady hand game was rather boring so I decided to give it a makeover. It allows you to do some interesting electrical things such as set fire to things or melt them," he said.
In another nod to old-fashioned games, Mr Larsson has come up with incandescent conkers, which also provides a way to recycle old-style light bulbs which are in the process of being phased out in favour of low-energy alternatives.
In Mr Larsson’s version of conkers, two light bulbs are connected electrically with small microphones on each to pick up the sound of impact.
"If they are part-worn some filaments are going to be stronger than others and with 1100 volts being passed through them there is going to be an almighty flash," he said.
"It is surprisingly satisfying to play but desperately dangerous. As well as the risk of being hit with hot broken glass, there is the danger of electrocution," he said.
VCR catfood
While some of the other hobbyists on the Dorkbot circuit derive pleasure from showing off their hi-tech inventions, Mr Larsson is happier with a more low-tech approach.
"If one wanted to imagine what is going on inside a graphics chip it would be mind-bogglingly complex and you can’t really visualise it. With a current there is a spark which is visible and obvious," he said.
Perhaps one of his most practical inventions is a VCR cat feeder. As a fan of the old-fashioned video recorder Mr Larsson was determined to find a way to breathe new life into them.
Taking out the motor and attaching it to a meat grinder that dispenses fresh cat food might not be the most obvious way to go about it but in many ways it isn’t far removed from the original use.
The timer, instead of recording your favourite TV show, is used to feed your cat "at the time you set", explained Mr Larsson
His latest project is also inspired by cats.
Mr Larsson described his Schrodinger’s bladder experiment as a "scatological version" of the famous thought experiment, which uses a cat in a box with poison to illustrate one of the problems of quantum physics.
In this case, the experiment will consist of "a wooden box containing a Geiger counter, a pump containing yellow liquid and whatever radioactive substance I can get my hands on."
The original experiment attempted to show how nothing is real until it is measured, but Mr Larsson’s version will have a more jokey endgame.
"In my case Mr Schrodinger has different bladder issues depending on the decay of a a radioactive particle," he said.
He expects it to produce some degree of merriment at the Christmas meeting of Dorkbot, held monthly at Limehouse town hall.
Meanwhile he has a day job, as the designer of water control systems for municipal fountains, to maintain.
It is unlikely he will try to combine his two interests any time soon but it is clear where his real devotion lies.
"When you are out in your shed and the whole history of physics is there for you, there is a lot of personal satisfaction," he said.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
One study found that the security of lost-password personal questions on web-based mail appears much weaker than passwords themselves.
With persistent reports about hacker attacks, compromised privacy and phishing scams, social networks can be scary places. But that doesn’t mean the corporate world should run. IT managers can establish policies that protect corporate network and data security without shutting out social networks altogether. Here are some of the issues IT managers should keep in mind when dealing with social networks.
– Social networking is an important part of the lives of most Web
surfers. After people get home from work, they go to their computers,
see what their friends are up to on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter and
go about their lives.
There’s just one problem: those social networks are being hit ha…
How to meld the Web 2.0 world into your corporate world without taking excessive risk.
– Here’s the background. A hacker apparently was able to access the Google account of a Twitter employee.
Twitter uses Google Docs as a method to create and share information.
The hacker apparently got at the docs and sent them to TechCrunch,
which
decided to publish much of the information. The e…
By Maggie Shiels
Technology reporter, BBC News, Silicon Valley
The microblogging service Twitter is taking legal advice after hundreds of documents were hacked into and published by a number of blogs.
TechCrunch has made public some of the 310 bits of material it was sent.
It posted information about Twitter’s financial projections and products.
"We are in touch with our legal counsel about what this theft means for Twitter, the hacker and anyone who accepts…or publishes these stolen documents, " said Twitter’s Biz Stone.
In a blog posting he wrote that "About a month ago, an administrative employee here at Twitter was targeted and her personal email account was hacked.
"From the personal account, we believe the hacker was able to gain information which allowed access to this employee’s Google Apps account which contained Docs, Calendars and other Google Apps Twitter relies on for sharing notes, spreadsheets, ideas, financial details and more within the company."
Mr Stone, Twitter’s co-founder, went on to stress that "the attack had nothing to do with any vulnerability in Google Apps".
He said this was more to do with "Twitter being in enough of a spotlight that folks who work here can be a target".
In his blog post, Mr Stone underlined the need for increased online security within the company and for staff to ensure their passwords are robust.
It is believed a French hacker who goes by the moniker "Hacker Croll" illegally accessed the files online by guessing staff members’ passwords.
"News value"
A number of technology blogs were offered the documents for publication in what is now being dubbed "Twittergate" in some online forums.
TechCrunch, one of the most respected blogs in Silicon Valley, has set off a firestorm of criticism and debate over its decision to post some of the material.
It started things off with what it called a "softball" and published details about a reality TV show involving Twitter. Details of such a programme were made public in May.
That was followed by documents relating to an internal Twitter financial forecast that the company said is no longer accurate.
"There is clearly an ethical line here that we don’t want to cross, and the vast majority of these documents aren’t going to be published, at least by us.
"But a few of the documents have so much news value that we think it’s appropriate to publish them," wrote TechCrunch Editor and founder Michael Arrington
Mr Arrington noted the site received a deluge of comments on the issue and said "many users say this is "stolen" information and therefore shouldn’t be published. We disagree.
"We publish confidential information almost every day on TechCrunch. This is stuff that is also "stolen," usually leaked by an employee or someone else close to the company."
The TechCrunch founder cited examples of stories it has covered in the past that involved information it had acquired and also those covered by newspapers like the Wall Street Journal that had done a similar thing.
Mr Arrington said that he has also consulted lawyers about the laws that cover trade secrets and the receipt of stolen goods.
"Embarrassing"
Many in the technology industry said this latest episode points to the potent reminder of how much information is stored in the cloud and the vulnerability or otherwise of that data.
The hacker has claimed to have wanted to teach people to be more careful and in a message to the French blog Korben, wrote that his attack could make internet users "conscious that no one is protected on the net."
"The security breach exploited "an easy-to-guess password and recovery question, which is one of the simplest ways to make a username and password combination really insecure," said Phil Wainewright of ZDNet.com
"Unfortunately, users won’t wise up until the cloud providers force them to."
In a study last year the security firm Sophos found that 40% of internet users use the same password for every website they access.
The affair has put Google on the defensive because the information was stored in Google Apps, an online package of productivity software that includes email, spreadsheets and calendars.
The company issued a blog post. While it highlighted the need for strong security, it said it could not discuss individual uses or customers.
Twitter’s Mr Stone tried to play down the importance of the information being touted around the web.
"Obviously, these docs are not polished or ready for prime time and they’re certainly not revealing some big, secret plan for taking over the world.
"This is "akin to having your underwear drawer rifled: Embarrassing, but no one’s really going to be surprised about what’s in there." That is an apt apology," Mr Stone said.
At the social media blog Mashable, Adam Ostrow agreed.
"It’s another embarrassing moment in Twitter’s torrid growth, but nothing that’s likely to bring the house down."</p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Internal company information from Twitter obtained when a hacker hit the private e-mail accounts of employees has been leaked out on to the Internet. The information ranges from the mundane – employee meal preferences – to Twitter’s financial projections.
– A hacker has gotten a hold
of Twitter company information after hacking into the personal e-mail account
of an employee.
The hacker, who goes by
the nickname quot;Hacker Croll, quot; sent hundreds of company documents to
TechCrunch and a
French blog called Korben. The documents range from …
