Simple CyberWar?
St. Petersburg consulate Web site hacked
According to Sophos and McAfee, two U.S. Department of State Web sites based in Russia could contain malware and should be avoided
By Robert McMillan, IDG News Service September 13, 2007
Security vendors are warning that two U.S. Department of State Web sites based in Russia could contain malware and should be avoided.
The most serious compromise was on the Web site for the U.S. Consulate General for St. Petersburg.
... A State Department spokeswoman said she was unaware of any breach.
... The St. Petersburg consulate site was probably not deliberately targeted [If true, the site is as well protected as the average 12-year-old's Bob] because it was one of about 400 sites infected by the criminals behind the hack, said Ron O'Brien, a senior security analyst with Sophos." The malware writer was looking for vulnerable sites and happened upon that site," he said.
... Separately, McAfee's SiteAdvisor software is now warning Web surfers not to visit the State Department's Moscow embassy Web site. According to a SiteAdvisor alert, this site has been associated with e-mail messages that contained computer viruses.
Y2K! Y2K!
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,2182767,00.asp
Microsoft Preps for Daylight-Saving Time Headaches
By Peter Galli September 13, 2007
Microsoft is taking steps to ease the transition back from daylight-saving time.
Microsoft is trying to ensure that when daylight-saving time ends and Americans turn the clock back in the first week of November, the experience is seamless.
... For those companies that do business in other parts of the world, the pain is not yet over. As much of the United States and Canada "fall back" in November, there are going to be changes happening in Jordan, Egypt and New Zealand that were not planned in the spring.
I've been suggesting guidelines for years – you don't suppose they'll say “Do no evil?”
Google proposes global privacy standard
By Elinor Mills Story last modified Thu Sep 13 18:46:41 PDT 2007
While Google is leading a charge to create a global privacy standard for how companies protect consumer data, the search giant is recommending that remedies focus on whether a person was actually harmed by having the information exposed.
Google's proposal is scheduled to be presented by Peter Fleischer, Google's global privacy counsel in a speech Friday in Strasbourg, France, at UNESCO's meeting on ethics and human rights. He briefed reporters on Thursday.
The proposal follows the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Privacy Framework, which has been endorsed by many of the APEC nations, including Australia and Hong Kong, but not all. China, for instance, does not endorse it, Fleischer said.
... The nine principles of the framework are: preventing harm; integrity of personal information; notice; security safeguards; collection limitations; access and correction; uses of personal information; accountability; and choice.
... However, a privacy advocate dismissed the move as a desperate attempt by Google to appear to be sensitive to privacy issues in the midst of government scrutiny of its proposed $3.1 billion acquisition of online ad firm DoubleClick.
... Google will take its message to the public through a virtual debate it plans to open on YouTube soon, and it will participate in meetings in Montreal on Sept. 24 with global privacy commissioners and in Washington, D.C. in October, Fleischer said.
Related? Good article anyway...
Web ad blocking may not be (entirely) legal
As Web browser add-ons that let people erase ads proliferate, legal experts to wonder when the first lawsuit will be filed.
By Anne Broache and Declan McCullagh Staff Writer, CNET News.com Published: September 14, 2007, 4:00 AM PDT
Advertising-supported companies have long turned to the courts to squelch products that let consumers block or skip ads: it happened in the famous lawsuit against the VCR in 1979 and again with ReplayTV in 2001.
... If ad-blockers become so common that they slice away at publishers' revenues, "I absolutely would expect to see litigation in this area," said John Palfrey, executive director of Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society.
Have they got a deal for you!
http://www.newsday.com/business/la-fi-lazarus12sep12,0,5087648.column?track=rss
Your loss of privacy is a package deal
David Lazarus Consumer Confidential September 12, 2007
The all-you-can-eat packages of voice, video and Internet services offered by phone and cable companies may be convenient, but they represent a potentially significant threat to people's privacy.
Take, for example, Time Warner Cable, which has about 2 million customers in Southern California. The company offers a voice-video-Net package called "All the Best" for $89.85 for the first 12 months.
But for anyone who has the wherewithal to read Time Warner's 3,000-word California privacy policy, you discover that not only does the company have the ability to know what you watch on TV and whom you call, but also that it can track your online activities, including sites you visit and stuff you buy.
... "All your eggs are in one communications basket," said Beth Givens, director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse in San Diego. "If a company wants to, it can learn a great deal about you -- and it probably wants to."
More often than not, it'll also want to turn a fast buck by selling at least a portion of that info to marketers.
... There are red flags to be found in each telecom provider's privacy policy. A close reading of Time Warner's policy reveals:
* Along with knowing juicy details of your calling and viewing habits -- those 900 numbers, say, or that subscription to the Playboy Channel -- the company keeps track of "Internet addresses you contact and the duration of your visits to such addresses."
* Time Warner not only compiles "information about how often and how long" you're online, but also "purchases that you have made" via the company's Road Runner portal, which provides access to thousands of goods.
* On top of that, the company may monitor "information you publish" via the Road Runner portal, which should send a chill through anyone who accesses his or her e-mail through Time Warner's servers.
That's not to say Time Warner or any other service provider is reading people's e-mail or invading users' privacy in any other way. The point is, they're explicitly saying they could.
... No less troubling, you have to wade more than halfway into Time Warner's privacy policy before you're finally informed that the company also reserves the right "to disclose personally identifiable information to others, such as advertisers and direct mail or telemarketers, for non-cable purposes."
... Near the very bottom of Time Warner's privacy policy, the company discloses that it maintains personally identifiable info about people "as long as you are a subscriber and up to 15 additional years." This, it says, is for tax and accounting purposes. [Huh? Bob]
This should be as obvious as the sun rising in the west...
http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/14/0028239&from=rss
Paper Trails Don't Ensure Accurate E-Voting Totals
Posted by CowboyNeal on Friday September 14, @05:25AM from the keeping-them-honest dept. Security Politics IT
An anonymous reader writes "In an new report from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation they say that paper trails increase costs and can actually reduce the chances a voters' choices are accurately counted. Congress is considering a 'Voter Confidence and Increased Accountability Act of 2007,' which would mandate 'voter-verified' paper audit trails."
Attention SEC!
http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2007/09/14/042.html
Watchdog Seeks Right to Wiretap
By Tai Adelaja Staff Writer Friday, September 14, 2007. Issue 3743. Page 5.
A senior official in the government's financial markets watchdog has called for investigators to be allowed to wiretap phones in an effort to crack down on illegal insider trading, but analysts said the measure would lack teeth due to weak legislation.
Bembya Khulkhachiyev, deputy head of the Federal Service for Financial Markets, said Wednesday that the service was planning to legalize wiretapping but was "not seeking [to take on] criminal investigative functions," Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported.
Khulkhachiyev said that even though the service reported about 800 cases of illegal insider trading to the Interior Ministry per year, they never led to criminal charges being filed.
... Under Russian law, insider trading is illegal if information is passed to a third party who then profits from it. But a loophole in the legislation means that someone who personally profits from privileged information from his own organization may not be acting illegally if that organization does not expressly forbid the practice.
... Alfa Bank strategist Erik DePoy said cases of illegal insider trading were not frequent enough to scare away investors.
Is this surprising?
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/13/2311202&from=rss
Online Video Popularity Still Climbing
Posted by CowboyNeal on Thursday September 13, @10:54PM from the better-and-better dept. The Internet Media Entertainment
Ant writes "Macworld reports that people in the U.S. have steadily increased the amount of time they spend watching videos online, as Google's YouTube remains by far their preferred video site, according to a study. In July, almost 75 percent of U.S. Internet users watched videos online, up from 71.4 percent in March, according to comScore Networks. The monthly time spent watching videos went up to an average of 181 minutes per viewer in July from 145 minutes per viewer in March, according to comScore. In July, the average user watched 68 clips, up from 55 clips in March. Overall, almost 134 million U.S. Internet users watched a little over 9 billion video clips in July, up from 126.6 million people and a little over 7 billion clips in March."
Tools & Techniques
http://www.techzonez.com/comments.php?shownews=22116
Belarc Advisor 7.2t (7.2.20.7)
Posted by Reverend on 13 Sep 2007 - 20:42 GMT
The Belarc Advisor builds a detailed profile of your installed software and hardware, missing Microsoft hotfixes, anti-virus status, CIS (Center for Internet Security) benchmarks, and displays the results in your Web browser. All of your PC profile information is kept private on your PC and is not sent to any web server.
Download: Belarc Advisor 7.2t View: Belarc Homepage
When tools fail, you need to rely on technique... Or maybe an X-prize for encryption?
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/13/1720251&from=rss
Time Running Out for Public Key Encryption
Posted by Zonk on Thursday September 13, @02:04PM from the interesting-times-are-upon-us dept. Security Encryption Supercomputing Science
holy_calamity writes "Two research teams have independently made quantum computers that run the prime-number-factorising Shor's algorithm — a significant step towards breaking public key cryptography. Most of the article is sadly behind a pay-wall, but a blog post at the New Scientist site nicely explains how the algorithm works. From the blurb: 'The advent of quantum computers that can run a routine called Shor's algorithm could have profound consequences. It means the most dangerous threat posed by quantum computing - the ability to break the codes that protect our banking, business and e-commerce data - is now a step nearer reality. Adding to the worry is the fact that this feat has been performed by not one but two research groups, independently of each other. One team is led by Andrew White at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, and the other by Chao-Yang Lu of the University of Science and Technology of China, in Hefei.'"
Why not? (The bit about comments from non-students is interesting...)
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/Y/YOUTUBE_CLASS?SITE=VALYD&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
SoCal College Offers YouTube Class
Sep 14, 6:53 AM EDT
CLAREMONT, Calif. (AP) -- Here's a dream-come-true for Web addicts: college credit for watching YouTube.
Pitzer College this fall began offering what may be the first course about the video-sharing site. About 35 students meet in a classroom but work mostly online, where they view YouTube content and post their comments.
... Alexandra Juhasz, a media studies professor at the liberal arts college, said she was "underwhelmed" by the content on YouTube but set up the course, "Learning from YouTube," to explore the role of the popular site.
Class members control most of the class content and YouTube watchers from around the world are encouraged to comment, Juhasz said.
... YouTube is "a phenomenon that should be studied," student Darren Grose said. "You can learn a lot about American culture and just Internet culture in general."
On the Net:
YouTube class: http://www.youtube.com/group/learningfromyoutube
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