Apple Does the Money Dance

Apple’s (Nasdaq: AAPL) initial mercantile entertain is customarily a large one. The approach a financial calendar works out, what it considers Q1 ends on Dec. 31, definition it covers a whole holiday period, as excellent as maybe a small back-to-school action.
But a numbers Apple posted about a many new Q1 were in an wholly opposite category than a common income bender it wakes adult from this time of year. One of a largest drivers for Apple’s income sight was a iPhone. It sole 37 million units over a final 3 months of 2011 — simply a record. The iPhone 4S arrived final fall, rather than during a common summer recover window, so a new product and a holidays worked together to expostulate adult sales. Even yet some buyers seemed miserable final year that Apple didn’t offer adult an iPhone 5, apparently 4S was excellent enough.



Getting down to numbers, Apple took in record-breaking income of US$46 billion. It also set a record in distinction during customarily over US$13 billion — that happened to be right around what a sum income was during a fourth entertain of 2010. That’s not a ideal comparison, given opposite buliding have opposite factors operative for and opposite them, yet it does underscore a kind of expansion a company’s been saying over a final year.

Don’t design a repeat of these total subsequent quarter. They competence not even repeat during this time subsequent year. Apple’s latest Q1 was a product of several factors wise together customarily right. That’s not to contend it’s all been a part — a trends for lots of Apple products are forked upward. It’ll still need room to grow into, and during a impulse that seems to be overseas. In fact, Apple even managed to make that 37 million iPhone sales figure yet bringing a 4S to mainland China. The new phone landed there after a entertain was finished.

RIM’s New Bottle

The Balzaridis epoch during Research In Motion (Nasdaq: RIMM) has come to an end — technically.

For years, Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie presided over a smartphone maker, both as coCEOs and cochairmen of a board. It was an peculiar arrangement that a dual insisted was useful for a company. But as RIM solemnly sank deeper into a mire, investors started to question increasingly pointy questions about either some kind of reshuffle was in order.

In a arise of use outages, product delays, baggy inscription sales and timorous value, a dual chiefs final month willingly cut their salaries to a dollar per year. But even that was apparently not enough. The dual were relieved of their offices entirely, both as arch executives and as chairmen.

They weren’t accurately dragged out of their offices bare and place into a Waterloo city block pillory. Nope, they’re still resolutely ensconced in RIM’s boardroom. Balsillie’s now a director, and Lazaridis is clamp chair and conduct of a new creation committee.

As for their replacements, Barbara Stymiest is now chair — not a large surprise; her name came adult a lot whenever anyone talked about replacing a conduct of a board. And Thorsten Heins will now offer as CEO.

This contingency have been a stately day for all those RIM investors who’d been harsh their teeth for months over a company’s leadership, right? It started out that way. On a Monday after a news hit, RIM’s shares quick climbed about 5 percent.

Then Heins started talking, and Wall Street’s comfortable buy immediately went cold.

Heins is a RIM insider. Previously he was COO of product and sales. A association doesn’t indispensably need to sinecure an alien as a new CEO in sequence to go in new thoughts and new appetite — yet Heins projected nothing of that, judging by investors’ reactions. In small, he gave a sense that he means to follow a same trail his predecessors have followed — a same one that’s caused RIM’s shareholders to remove millions over a years. No large shakeups, no surprises, not even any deceptive promises of going in any new directions. All summed up, “I don’t consider there is a extreme need for change needed.”

To some investors, a man looked like a ventriloquist manikin sitting on Balsillie’s and Lazaridis’ laps. Share cost deflated by over 8 percent for a day.

Initial utterances on a initial day of a pursuit aren’t contracting contracts, by any means. Maybe entrance out with this amiable tone-setter for his administration was Heins’ approach of underpromising and overdelivering. Remember that Meg Whitman voiced a identical “stay a course” opinion during her initial integrate of days during HP (NYSE: HPQ). But customarily a few weeks after she topsy-turvy her predecessor’s preference to empty PCs and afterwards gave webOS a new franchise on life.

But in reversing Apotheker’s decisions, Whitman unequivocally was staying a march for HP, in a larger picture. Heins’ conditions is different, and investors competence be disturbed that in his case, he unequivocally means to stay on a highway RIM’s been on for years. He’s been doing things RIM’s approach for half a decade, and with a former co-captains still deeply confirmed in a association and exerting their change from board-level positions, it competence be formidable for him to do anything yet follow their lead.

See What You’re Missing

Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) caused some low and dim amazement among opposition amicable networks a few weeks ago with a recover of Search Plus Your World. It’s this new underline for Google’s categorical hunt engine that throws in a few links from Google+ any time we run a search. If you’re a Google+ user, your hunt will give we a normal formula you’d design to see from a ubiquitous Web hunt along with a trace of Google+ links — your friends’ posts, your photos, info about some luminary you’ve never met who happens to have a Google+ page, so forth.

So it blends amicable hunt with normal search. You competence find that lots of fun, or annoying, or really unnoticeable. Whatever — we can spin it off if we don’t like it. But sites like Facebook and Twitter find Search Plus Your World unequivocally troubling, since they consider it gives Google+ astray favoured treatment. You get hosed down with a million chunks of info from your Google+ life, yet not so most from a worlds of Twitter or Facebook. Google has a info from those other networks; it’s customarily not putting it on a tip shelf with a possess stuff.

In greeting to this, a garland of Facebook, MySpace and Twitter engineers got together and baked adult a new bookmarklet. And they opted not to reason behind when they came adult with a name — they’re job it “Don’t Be Evil.”

Don’t Be Evil aims to make Search Plus Your World a small some-more egalitarian. When a bookmarklet’s commissioned and activated, we still get a ton of amicable links, yet instead of bearing Google+ amicable results, now a hunt will lift adult amicable formula from other networks also and give them tip chain when it’s appropriate. The developers contend that a bookmarklet is unprejudiced and draws a info from Google’s possess listings.

Google’s Search Plus Your World competence not have been such an emanate if it was singular customarily to a hunt bar we see on Google+. Twitter’s hunt bar customarily searches tweets, Facebook hunt is singular to Facebook stuff, and nobody’d caring if Google+ hunt customarily got Google+ results. But a Search Plus Your World duty affects straight-up Google searches, and Google most owns Internet search. Some Google users haven’t worried to set adult a Google+ profile. But it customarily so happens that starting customarily now, that won’t be an choice for anyone environment adult a mint Gmail account. Now membership is mandatory for new users.

Tearing Down Walls

By a way, Google’s also consolidating all a information in a comprehension operations in sequence to accumulate all it knows about you. Oh, yet don’t worry, it’s all a improved to offer you, my dear.

Google had around 70 opposite remoteness policies covering a several products and services, yet recently it simplified things by consolidating about 60 of those into a single, overarching policy. About 10 special cases had to be left alone for several authorised reasons.

But it also tore down some of a walls that used to compartmentalize a information any use stores. Whenever a logged-on chairman uses a Google product, use function is saved by that sold service, evidently so Google can place adult some-more applicable ads. Now, though, Google has altered a policies so that a services can share information about users. Instead of 10 opposite dossiers for 10 opposite services, there’s now a single, omnibus coupler on what we do on Google and when.

Google stressed that this information is all going to stay in-house. They won’t sell it or share it with outsiders unless there’s a justice sequence involved. It’s things Google knew about we already, customarily now, ALL of Google’s going to know about it, not customarily that one applicable service. Google will advantage from this by being means to exaggerate improved ad placement, of course, and users who trust Google with their information competence consider it’s kind of cold when Google Maps unexpected knows where all of your Google Contacts live, for instance.

But a news finished remoteness advocates’ heads spin. There was already a certain volume of passion between Google and those who consider Web users’ remoteness rights are being abused in a name of advertising. It’s one thing when many opposite companies know pieces and pieces of information about a several business they share, yet what unequivocally draws their courtesy is when companies connect that info and are unexpected means to pull a startlingly accurate combination blueprint of any user. And when one of a largest companies on a Web decides to connect within a possess system, that’s DEFCON 2 for remoteness hounds.

Finally, there’s also been critique that these new terms of use aren’t opt in. They also aren’t opt out, or opt anything. They’re a approach things shall be in Googlandia henceforth.

OK, if we unequivocally hatred it, we can opt out — by opting out of Google entirely.

Who’s On Fifth?

Each of a amendments in a U.S. Constitution seems to kind of have a possess personality.

First Amendment: Very bold, noble, righteous.

Second Amendment’s all about that gun business — don’t make that man mad.

Third is kind of ancient-fashioned. Quartering soldiers in citizens’ homes isn’t unequivocally an emanate that comes adult unequivocally mostly nowadays. Still, conclude we Third, I’m blissful you’re around.

Fourth is defiant, generally when it’s time to pass by confidence during a airport.

And a Fifth Amendment is a still small man who always makes we consider he’s adult to no excellent. Really, there are unequivocally legitimate reasons to conclude a Fifth Amendment even if we haven’t finished anything incorrect. But No. 5 is still a favorite among people who unequivocally do have something to censor — or during slightest that’s how it’s customarily described in a movies.

But it seems a Fifth Amendment won’t strengthen we from information stored on an encrypted disk. That’s a statute of Federal District Court Judge Robert Blackburn. He’s presiding in a box in that suspect Romona Fricosu is indicted of participating in a debt scam. Authorities seized a tough expostulate from her possession, and it’s believed that expostulate contains justification that will inculpate Fricosu. When prosecutors demanded that she decrypt a expostulate for them, she beg a Fifth. No dice, pronounced a decider — decrypt a expostulate or you’re in contempt.

This is a initial time this sold emanate has landed precisely in front of a judge, according to Fricosu’s attorney, Philip L. Dubois. There have been identical cases in a past, yet to a best of his knowledge, this is a initial time a supervision has a drive, doesn’t know what’s on it, has a aver to hunt it, and contingency rest on a invulnerability to decrypt it.

Practically speaking, a tough expostulate with luscious secrets on it is a small opposite than a protected full of files. Police can get into a protected yet a defendant’s team-work — all they need is a few energy tools. But a well-encrypted tough expostulate could take even a absolute mechanism a excellent understanding of time to decode, so even perplexing to do so isn’t customarily unsentimental for a standard prosecutor on a box of an purported debt scammer. For all unsentimental purposes, that expostulate is sealed unless a suspect gives adult a goods.

But what was a basement for a judge’s choice? Legal experts we spoke to pronounced a Fifth Amendment generally pertains to utterances — acts of testimony, things we contend out shrill that could inculpate you. Demanding that someone yield a key, or even privately enter that pivotal on a mechanism in a courtroom, is a opposite matter — during slightest according to a decider in this case.

Fricosu’s profession pronounced an interest is in a works.

FBI will Monitor Social Media using Crawl Application

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking for a better way to spy on Facebook and Twitter users. The Bureau is asking companies to build software that can effectively scan social media online for significant words, phrases and behavior so that agents can respond.A paper posted on the FBI website asks for companies to build programs that will map sentiment and wrongdoing.

“The application must be infinitely flexible and have the ability to adapt quickly to changing threats to maintain the strategic and tactical advantage,” the Request for Information said, “The purpose of this effort is to meet the outlined objectives…for the enhancement [of] FBI SOIC’s overall situation awareness and improved strategic decision making.”The tool would be used in “reconnaisance and surveillance missions, National Special Security Events (NSS) planning, NSSE operations, SOIC operations, counter intelligence, terrorism, and more.

Although the police, including in Britain, already use Facebook routinely to ascertain the whereabouts of criminals, automatically filtering out irrelevant information remains challenging. The new FBI application will be able to automatically highlight the most relevant information. The FBI is seeking responses by 10 February.

thehackernews.com/

Another Malware from Android Market infect Millions of Users

Malware might have infected more than 5 million Android mobile devices via deliberately corrupted apps sold in the Android Marketplace, according to security firm Symantec. They reckoned Android.Counterclank, a slight variant of Android.Tonclank.

Symantec explains that the malicious code appears in a package called “apperhand”, and a service under the same name can been seen running on the infected device when it’s executed. According to Symantec, the Trojan has been identified in 13 different apps in the Android Marketplace.

 

Symantec’s Security Response Team Director, Kevin Haley said:“They don’t appear to be real publishers. There aren’t rebundled apps, as we’ve seen so many times before.” Symantec also noted that this slimy piece of malware has the highest distribution of any malware identified so far this year and may actually be the largest malware infection seen by Android users in the operating systems short life.

The malware is actually a Trojan that attacks Android smartphones. Upon installation, it collects a wide scope of data, including the handset maker and bookmark copies. Moreover, it modifies the home page of the browser. As a result, hackers have earned some money from the malware by pushing some unwanted advertisements on the compromised Android devices.One of the reasons why the malware has affected such a huge number of Android users is because they do not bother reading privacy agreements. They simply approve these apps, without even reading information on them.

Symantec stated it had notified Google of the apps hiding malicious code. However, many of the infected entries were still available on the Android Market as of Friday afternoon. For removal of the malware, Symantec is advising smartphone users to uninstall the infected applications and run a mobile antivirus program. It’s time Google started taking security much more seriously.

 

 

thehackernews.com

Universal Music Portugal database dumped by Hackers

Another Latest Tip come in my Inbox today about the leak of Database of Universal Music Portugal's website. Hacker did not mention his name,or Codename, But he enumerate the Database and Extract it by Hacking the Site.

100's of Tables from Database and Users Data has been leaked via a pastebin File. It includes the Usernames, Passwords and Emails ID's of Users of Site.

Immediate after the Hack, The Universal Group taken down the site for maintenance.

thehackernews.com

ACTA Protests: Less DDOSing and More Ranting

After news got out that the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) was signed by 22 European Union member countries, plans to protest intensified, but for now, distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks were replaced with more diplomatic approaches.

Before the agreement was signed Anonymous hackers started launching DDOS attacks in Poland against government sites as a form of protest. But just before the voting on the treaty began in Tokyo, after consultations with non-government organizations, the hacktivist realized that this approach may not have been the best and stopped.


Of course, since Anonymous is a loose-knit collective, some of its members did take down the official website of the European Parliament for a few hours, while others, as part of OpDownWithACTA, are currently DDOSing the website of Copyright Alliance, an organization that fights for the rights of copyright holders.

The attacks can’t be compared to the ones launched against the FBI, DOJ, RIAA, MPAA when the hackers were protesting against the Megaupload closure and SOPA, Copyright Alliance’s site being only intermittently down.

Currently 387 Internet users are online on the IRC channel dedicated to the ACTA protest, far fewer than the ones involved in the anti-SOPA movements.

In the real world, more interesting protests are taking place. Forbes reported that members of the Polish Parliament showed their support for the anti-ACTA protest, initiated by Anonymous by wearing Guy Fawkes masks.

Pirate Parties from all over Europe released statements, condemning the new agreement, calling on citizens to raise awareness by protesting against it.

In Brussels, street protests are planned for this afternoon, other major cities preparing to do the same in the upcoming period.

Now, even Anonymous official channels call people for live protests, admitting that in this case DDOS attacks may not be the best answer.

While the ones that support ACTA claim that it will not censor, or shut down websites, and it will not restrict freedom on the Internet, its sole purpose being to protect the rights of artists, others say that the agreement will do just that, most fearing that it’s even more dangerous than SOPA.

news.softpedia.com

Sykipot Servers Located in Beijing, Symantec Says

he malicious Sykipot campaign that’s designed to target various industries in search for corporate secrets has been persistent in the past few months, and Symantec researchers have kept themselves busy trying to find out more information on the operation and the Trojan itself.

Their latest investigations reveal that each campaign is identified by a unique code made up of letters and a date that’s hard-coded into the Sykipot Trojan. These markers allow the cybercriminals to correlate attacks on different industries and organizations.


The clues that were discovered, led experts to determine that the command and control (C&C) server is located in Beijing, China, and it’s run by the country’s largest ISP. On one occasion, the attackers used a server that contained hundreds of malicious files, located in the Zhejiang province.

Most of the files used in attacks are PDF’s that later drop the Trojan, but other tools such as gsecdump were also utilized after a successful compromise.

Some clever detection evasion techniques were also identified. On a computer they investigated, Symantec found some tools that were used to create malicious PDF files, but also ones whose Chinese names indicated that they were specially designed to evade detection.

Furthermore, the researchers found some new domains associated with Sykipot attackers, most of them being purposed to be part of the Trojan's infrastructure.

“The Sykipot attackers have a long running history of attacks against multiple industries. Based on these insights, the attackers are familiar with the Chinese language and are using computer resources in China,” Symantec’s report reveals.

“They are clearly a group of attackers who are constantly modifying their creation to utilize new vulnerabilities and to evade security products and we expect that they will continue their attacks in the future.”

All this information should be useful for network administrators as they can use it to monitor for attacks.

news.softpedia.com

Security Vulnerabilities Fixed in FAA.Gov and Oracle Solutions

Researchers from the Vulnerability Laboratory have found that two other important public websites are vulnerable to remote attacks. This time, the sites belonging to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Oracle Solutions were identified as containing security flaws.

Ucha Gobejishvili, also known as longrifle0x, is the one that found a couple of cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities in the Oracle Solutions website.


One persistent and one non-persistent weakness have been identified. If exploited they could allow a remote attacker with user interaction or with a local low-privileged account to hijack customer, moderator, or administrator sessions.

This could then be utilized for phishing and client/application-side content request manipulation.

The vendor was notified on the issue on December 28, 2011, and it responded two days later. A patch was issued on January 17, Vulnerability Labs publicly disclosing the problems that existed, eleven days later.

The bug found in the Partner Search Listing module was estimated as a medium risk.

With FAA the situation was a bit different. They were notified by the security experts on three occasions: February 2, March 23 and July 19, 2011.

Sometime between those dates and January 28, 2012, the vendor responded and resolved the authentication bypass issue that affected their official site.

The vulnerability was detected in AFS Evaluation Application System’s login form, which allowed a remote attacker to bypass the application without requiring authorization credentials.

If exploited successfully, the bug could have been utilized to overtake the site’s database management system and the academy’s website by using SQL injection.

This was considered a critical severity flaw and it’s a good thing that FAA addressed it, even if it took them some time.

A lot of websites were found to be vulnerable in the past few days. Ucha Gobejishvili revealed some XSS problems in sites such as Google, Ferrari, MTV, and a group of hackers called TeamHav0k found the same types of flaws in some major US government sites.

news.softpedia.com

Kelihos botnet suspect denies Microsoft accusations

The man accused by Microsoft of being behind a huge botnet attack has insisted he is "absolutely not guilty".

Microsoft said Russian citizen Andrey Sabelnikov "wrote and/or participated in creating" the Kelihos software which infected thousands of machines.
However, Mr Sabelnikov contacted the BBC to say he was "surprised and shocked" at the accusation, adding: "I will prove my innocence."
Microsoft said it stood by the accusation it made earlier this month.
"As this is a case pending in court, we cannot comment further except to say that we look forward to seeing Mr Sabelnikov in court so we can continue this discussion," said Richard Boscovich, senior attorney for Microsoft's Digital Crime Unit.
Microsoft named Mr Sabelnikov, who is a former employee of antivirus company Agnitum, in court papers filed in the US.

The software giant claimed their own investigations uncovered proof that Mr Sabelnikov "used the malware to control, operate, maintain and grow the Kelihos botnet".
'Grievous crime' In a blog post, Mr Sabelnikov said the allegations were unfounded.
"I was very surprised and shocked to read in the press that I was being accused of a grievous crime in connection with the Kelihos botnet," he wrote.

"I am absolutely not guilty, have never been involved in handling botnets or any other similar programmes and what is more have never made any profit from such activity. I want to highlight that I have no connection either to the activity of Kelihos or to the distribution of spam.

"Unfortunately, the avalanche of publications in the press, referencing inaccurate and distorted information, has inadvertently inflicted a great deal of psychological damage on the companies for whom I have worked or am working, and also adversely affected their business reputation."
Botnets like Kelihos are created by the spread of malicious software, often via infected emails or web browser vulnerabilities.
Each "bot", as they are known, is a hijacked computer which can be used by hackers for any number of illegal activities.
The Kelihos botnet was used for sending out spam and spreading malware until it was "neutralised" in September 2011.
At its peak, it was said to have been in control of 41,000 infected machines and able to send over 3.8 billion spam emails in a day.

bbc.co.uk

Students busted for hacking computers, changing grades

Three high school juniors have been arrested after they devised a sophisticated hacking scheme to up their grades and make money selling quiz answers to their classmates.
The students are accused of breaking into the janitor’s office of California's Palos Verdes High School and making a copy of the master key, giving them access to all the classrooms. They then attached keylogging hardware to the computers of four teachers, and harvested the passwords needed to access the central files of the school network.

They then used that access to change their grades slightly, nudging them up by increments so that all three got As. At the time they were caught, keyloggers were found on three other teachers’ systems, indicating the group was expanding its efforts.

"They were pretty smart," Palos Verdes Estates police Sgt. Steve Barber told the Daily Breeze. "They knew exactly what to do with the computers. The scores wouldn't go up a whole lot, but enough to change their grade. They didn't want to make it real apparent something was going on."
The three didn’t just confine themselves to computer hacking. They're also accused of using the master key to pilfer around 20 tests before they were given – they then worked out the answers and sold them to other students. This scam only came to light when another student heard of the offer and snitched to the school principal.
"They were very bright kids," said Principal Nick Stephany. "They were in AP and honors classes. Am I shocked? Yeah. Definitely by the extent of it. None of these kids had any real trouble before."
Two students have been expelled over the incident, and others are to be disciplined for receiving stolen goods. The school has also upgraded its security and has advised teachers to change their passwords.

theregister.co.uk

Facebook sues alleged clickjacking spammer sparking row

Facebook is suing a marketing firm, accusing it of "spreading spam through misleading and deceptive tactics".

Adscend Media is alleged to have carried out "clickjacking".

The practice involves placing posts on the social network which include code that causes the links to appear on the users' homepages as a "liked" item without their permission. The links are designed to take users to other sites.

Adscend Media said it "vehemently denied" the "false claims".Accusations

Facebook likened its security efforts to an "arms race" and said that it was committed to pursuing "bad actors".

"Facebook's security professionals have made tremendous strides against this particular form of attack and we are intent on eradicating it completely," said Craig Clark, the firm's lead litigation counsel.

"We will continue to use all tools at our disposal to ensure that scammers do not profit from misusing Facebook's services."

Washington State also filed a related lawsuit. Its lawyers said that they believed that this was the first time any state had gone to court to combat spam on the social network.

"We don't 'like' schemes that illegally trick Facebook users into giving up personal information or paying for unwanted subscription services through spam," said the state's attorney general, Rob McKenna.

Mr McKenna's office said that Adscend Media had earned as much $1.2m (£766,000) a month from the practice.Strong denial

However, the accused firm released a statement on Friday eveningwhich said: "At no time did we engage in the activity alleged in the complaints.

"Adscend Media strictly complies with its legal obligations under federal and state law. We are undertaking an investigation to determine whether any of Adscend Media's affiliates engaged in the activity alleged by the Attorney General's office and Facebook.

"If they did, we are fully certain that the activity was conducted without the company's knowledge."

The firm's lawyer went on to accuse the Washington State authorities of being "irresponsible".

"We find it deeply troubling that the Attorney General's office made a public spectacle of these serious allegations without first questioning the company as part of its investigatory process and, even more inexplicably, without notifying the company that the complaint was being filed," said Mark Rosenberg.

He added that Adscend Media was now prepared to pursue a defamation action against those "responsible for tarnishing the reputation of the company".Invisible buttons

Facebook has posted an article about the case in which it explained that it believed the "scam" had worked by exploiting a vulnerability in people's internet browsers that allowed its 'Like' button to be hidden.

"Once the 'Like' button is made invisible, scammers can overlay pictures and other content, to trick the user to click on the invisible 'Like' button," it said.

"First, Facebook users are encouraged to click the 'Like' button on the scammers' Facebook Pages, which then alerts their friends to the existence of the page. Then they are told that they cannot access the content unless they complete an online survey or advertising offer."

It said one case had involved a link promising to show a man who had taken a picture of his face every day over eight years.

Facebook said that the content often had not existed, and users had been directed to third-party sites. It alleged that "the scammers receive money for each misdirected user".Stock sale

Facebook said that less than 4% of the content shared on its site was currently spam.

The internet security firm, Sophos, acknowledged that the network was trying to combat the problem, but suggested further steps should be taken.

"Facebook tried to introduce anti-clickjacking technology to fight the problem, but it was never entirely satisfactory," said the Sophos's senior technology consultant Graham Cluley.

"What would have been good would have been if Facebook had introduced a 'confirmation' dialog every time a user 'likes' a page on a third-party website. That way, the clickjackers would have been able to trick you into clicking like but you would still have had to confirm that you really wanted to share the message with your online friends.

"In the run-up to IPO [initial public offering], we're sure to see Facebook doing more to present itself as company that is fighting security threats like this."

This is the second time this month that Facebook has accused a group of illegal activity on its site. Last week it named several Russia-based suspects who it said were responsible for a malware attack known as the "Koobface worm".

Multiple reports suggest that the network may float its stock within the next four months. Bloomberg says the firm may sell a minority stake for $10bn, valuing the firm at 10 times the price.

Stratfor Worked with Authorities Against ‘Occupy’, Anonymous Leaks Show

An activist organization called Deep Green Resistance (DGR) is accusing both Stratfor and Texas law enforcement representatives of violating their constitutional rights by spying on their movement and infiltrating the Occupy protest to gather information.

While the massive quantity of information leaked by Anonymous after they breached the systems of intelligence company Stratfor was considered a teaser by many, further analysis of the documents and emails made by DGR led them to believe that “from at least” October or November 2011 Stratfor collaborated with Texas law enforcement to infiltrate and spy on activist movements.


Emails found throughout the documents published by the hacktivists hint that Stratfor officers received information from the Texas Department of Public Safety regarding Occupy Austin and DGR.

“Law enforcement sharing information about local activism with private intelligence firms should be a huge scandal,” said Rachel Meeropol, staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights.

“Privately funded surveillance and infiltration of activist groups is especially chilling, as time and again we see such corporations operate as if they are above the law and accountable to no one.”

The emails apparently prove that a Stratfor agent went under cover with the purpose of gathering intel on the Occupy movement.

DGR representative aren’t upset only because the spies managed to gather information on their meetings, books and relations with other activists, but also because Stratfor’s reports are full of inaccurate facts and “hasty generalizations,” even to the point where the activists are accused of indoctrination and being inspired by Nazism.

The data obtained by Anonymous as a result of the hacking operation against Stratfor caused a lot of waves, reports saying that important public figures may have been exposed. Now, after things were beginning to cool off, it seems that the 200 gigabytes of information may still contain details that until now have been left unnoticed.

news.softpedia.com

Zscaler Releases Zulu, Free URL Risk Analyzer

Zscaler, the leading security solutions provider, released a great free tool that allows even more inexperienced users assess the risks that may hide behind an apparently harmless URL.

The project, called Zulu, its name being inspired by the ancient Zulu warriors represented by a citizens army, is a completely free service launched with the purpose of allowing users to experiment with new, more advanced, detection techniques.


The user interface was designed to be simple, but at the same to provide sufficient information for even the more security savvy customers.

All the user needs to do is input the URL he wants to scan and press a button. After that, the company’s advanced detection engines work to establish the overall ranking, Benign, Suspicious or Malicious.

For more advanced users, the application offers the possibility to set some advanced options, such as User Agent or Referrer, in case malware that is triggered only with certain input variables is encountered.

The results may be simple to read, but they also contain some details of elements that compose the overall score, for users who know what to look for.

So how does Zulu work?

First, the page content is scanned for traces of potentially malicious code, using the proprietary Zscaler algorithms, heuristic tests and public sources. Then, the URL itself is tested against known malicious patterns and public black and white lists.

Finally, the host’s reputation is verified based on its IP address, geographical location and Anonymous System Number (ASN), along with suspicious behaviors it may display.

“With Zulu, we sought to combine our own proprietary scanning techniques, with the great open source intel that is available, to provide a broad view of the overall risk posed by virtually any web resource,” said Michael Sutton, vice president of security research at Zscaler.

“We also look not just at a specific aspect of the resource, but instead, separately focus on determining risk for the content, URL and host separately, which is then combined into an overall risk score.”

news.softpedia.com

Compromised Social Welfare Site Altered to Serve Malware

 

Researchers from Microsoft’s Malware Protection Center came across a social welfare website that was hacked and modified to serve visitors a piece of malware each time they think they download a useful document.

The site in question is from Romania and it shows up among the first results in search engines when Internet users look for “asistenta sociala,” a term that translates to “social welfare.”

The hackers that compromised the site replaced all the documents that people download with malicious executable files, but the most worrying fact is that the .exe files are cleverly set up to have Microsoft Office icons, making them less suspicious.

Furthermore, once the executable is run, it drops the real document, making everything look even more legitimate. Along with the genuine document, a file called open_file.bat is also placed in the Temporary Files folder, this element being responsible for the rest of the malicious actions.

Judging by the actions performed by the Trojan, identified as Trojan:BAT/Delosc.A, this attack is designed to target Romanian institutions that use certain software applications, including Indaco and Aplxpert, two very popular applications in local organizations.

Its purpose is to look for certain strings in file names, mainly related to invoices and other keywords specific to these programs, and then delete all the files that match the criteria, resulting in the loss of highly valuable information.

These sorts of malicious operations can be used in any country in corporate espionage and sabotage campaigns, which is why users, especially those handling sensitive information, are advised to double check the files they download, even from trusted sites.

Also, antivirus applications are a great way to prevent any unfortunate incidents, since security solutions providers usually do a decent job in keeping up with the latest threats.

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