Microsoft, NYC to monitor crime data in real-time
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg announces the Domain Awareness System, which was developed with Microsoft.
/ NYPD(CNET) Microsoft and the New York Police Department have jointly developed a data aggregation and analysis system that allows officers to tap into live video camera feeds, 911 calls, mapped crime statistics and license plate readers to fight crime.
Based on Microsoft technologies, the Domain Awareness System will be available to law enforcement and intelligence agencies around the world, with the city of New York receiving 30 percent of the revenues, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly announced Wednesday.
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Facebook connects users to free antivirus software
CBS/AP
The Malware Checkpoint for Facebook sends people either to sign up for Microsoft Security Essentials or McAfee Scan and Repair. Mac users are referred to an Apple Security Updates site.
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ACLU app lets users secretly tape the police
The ACLU's Police Tape app lets users discreetly record audio and video and provides helpful legal information about their rights when interacting with police.
/ ACLU-New Jersey(CNET) The American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey has released an Android app designed to be used by people who want to secretly record police activity without running the risk that the mobile device will be seized.
Called Police Tape, the free app allows the user to record video and audio discreetly. For one thing, the app disappears from a phone's screen when the recording begins. For another, it can send a copy of the recording to the ACLU-New Jersey for backup storage and analysis of potential civil liberties violations.
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Thousands of Twitter passwords exposed
CBS/Twitter
Full coverage of Twitter at Tech Talk
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Facebook changes "privacy policy" to "data use"
Facebook
(CNET) Privacy advocates in the U.S. and the European Union are on edge over changes Facebook is enacting in its language governing its terms of service.
Full coverage of Facebook at Tech Talk
Their upset comes as Facebook is proposing modifications to its Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (PDF) that, at least on the surface, seem fairly minor and don't indicate any radical shift in thinking or practice in terms of privacy.
Continue »Murdoch tabloid hacked by LulzSec
A screen grab of a fake news story posted on The Sun tabloid's website.
/ ZDNetThis story originally appeared on CNET.
The LulzSec hacker group has turned its sights on Rupert Murdoch's U.K. newspaper The Sun, hacking the site to direct visitors to a fake article claiming the media mogul had died.
The group announced on Twitter that "The Sun's homepage now redirects to the Murdoch death story on the recently-owned New Times website. Can you spell success, gentlemen?"
The New Times site was inaccessible this afternoon, but screenshots captured before it was taken off line show a headline that says "Media Moguls Body Discovered" and a story that said he had taken a large quantity of palladium, a metal that resembles platinum.
Continue »Hackers shut down Al Qaeda Net communications
istockphoto.com
This post originally appeared on CNET.com. It was written by Elinor Mills. Find the original report here.
Hackers have temporarily shut down Al Qaeda's online distribution of videos and statements, NBC News reported today.
"Al-Qaeda's online communications have been temporarily crippled, and it does not have a single trusted distribution channel available on the Internet," Evan Kohlmann, of Flashpoint Global Partners, told NBC. Flashpoint monitors the extremist organization's communications.
The attack happened within the past few days and was "well coordinated and involved the use of an unusual cocktail of relatively sophisticated techniques," he said, adding that it could be several days before the network is up and running again.
No one has claimed credit for the attack, but Kohlmann said it could be government-sponsored.
Earlier this month, British newspapers reported that the UK government hacked an English-language Al Qaeda site and replaced bomb making instructions with cupcake recipes.
SETI taps smartphones in hunt for E.T.
Are we are alone in the universe or is there intelligent life beyond the Earth?
/ Getty ImagesMOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Move over, Twitter. Drop dead, Angry Birds. There's a new mobile app that does more than let people play around on their smartphones--it allows them to join the quest for signs of intelligent life in the universe.
Hackers Hit Market for Carbon Trading
AP
In a digital heist reminiscent of a John le Carré novel, more than $9 million worth of greenhouse-gas emissions permits were stolen from the Czech Republic electricity and carbon trading registry this week and transferred to accounts in other countries, at the same time as the Prague-based registry office was evacuated due to a bomb threat.
That electronic theft, the latest in a series of security breaches affecting the market for carbon emissions, led the European Commission to suspend transactions in national European Union registries on Wednesday for a week.
New Facebook Scam Exploits User Vanity
Don't fall for these false promises.
/ SophosLet's put this matter to rest right now. Any Facebook app that offers to reveal who is viewing your profile is a scam. Period.
Sophos has a blog post about a rogue app that was spread on Facebook recently with messages like "OMG ... I can't believe this actually works! Now you really can see who viewed your profile!"
It's bogus. I've asked a Facebook spokesman about this before and he told me that apps on the site do not have the ability to track who is viewing profiles.
Come Cyber Monday, Beware the Malware
It's the Monday after Thanksgiving and you're sitting at your work computer suffering from food coma. Too bloated to get any real work done, you decide to do something that doesn't occupy too much of the brain--online Christmas shopping.
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Be careful where you click this holiday.
/ AP / CBSThere's more at stake here than the cost of shipping and handling, though. First off, you're boss probably doesn't want you to be surfing Amazon when you have spreadsheets to complete. Secondly, you could be opening up the corporate network to malicious hackers during what is known to be a particularly risky period.
Scammers are ready for unsuspecting online shoppers to be hunting for holiday bargains that hit on what has become known as Cyber Monday (given that more than 40 percent of you will be buying holiday gifts online, according to this survey). There will no doubt be malware hiding on retail sites, fake sites created just for distributing viruses and Trojans, and e-mails with malware-laden attachmenContinue »
What's That Android App Doing With My Data?
Researchers from Intel Labs, Duke University, and Pennsylvania State University have created a tool that analyzes how Android apps handle the data they access on smartphones. Results from experiments on 30 apps might surprise some people.
The researchers pruned a list of popular Android apps in the main categories down to those that had access to potentially sensitive information, such as location and device identification, and then randomly selected 30 apps to experiment on.
They then created a proof-of-concept tool call TaintDroid that analyzes in real-time what potentially sensitive information is collected, including GPS data, phone number, contacts, IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity) number that identifies the device, and the SIM card serial number.
Don't Get Fooled: Fake LinkedIn E-Mails Carry Trojan
This is what the fake LinkedIn e-mails looked like.
/ Cisco SystemsCriminals are using bogus LinkedIn invite e-mails to trick people into clicking on links that lead to the Zeus data-stealing Trojan, a researcher warned today. The malware targets Windows users.
Researchers saw tens of billions of messages related to the attack yesterday, Henry Stern, a senior security researcher at Cisco Systems, told CNET. "There have been some bursts today, but nothing like yesterday," he said. "The botnet responsible for this is still in operation and it's just doing something else right now."
While this attack appears to be abating, people should be wary of any new campaigns that use similar methods.
"This attack is particularly interesting because of its size," Stern said. "It's one of the largest viral campaigns we've seen, and one of the largest that mimics a social network."
In this attack, the e-mails looked like legitimate LinkedIn invites with a Web link for confirming a contact. However, the link doesn't lead to LinkedIn; it redirects to a Web page and displays a message saying "Please waiting .... 4 seconds" before then redirecting to Google.
Computer users are likely to shrug it off, but behind the scenes nasty things have happened. The page users are redirected to has malicious JavaScript hidden in an iFrame that detects what browser is being used and what applications are running and figures out if there is a vulnerability it can exploit to drop the Zeus malware onto the system, Stern said.
For example, Stern used a test system running an older version of Adobe Reader that has a vulnerability. The attack detected that and used an exploit for that Reader hole and installed Zeus on the machine.
Once Zeus is on the machine it can steal data by copying bank passwords and other information a user types into a Web form. It then sends the data off to a remote server.
Computer users can protect against attacks by not clicking on links in e-mails and instead typing "www.linkedin.com," for instance, into a browser. Firefox users can install the NoScript plug-in to block JavaScript.
In addition to keeping antivirus and other security software up to date, computer users should also "make sure all Web browser-related software, especially Adobe Reader, Flash, and Java, have the latest security updates," Stern said.
It can be difficult to know if a computer has been infected. "The software hides itself within another process on your PC," he said. Infected machines will begin sending communication requests to a command-and-control server based in Russia, with a host name ending in ".ru," so computers running personal firewalls can check the outbound logs for that, he added.
This is the message that appears when the e-mail link is clicked on. The page then redirects to Google.
/ Cisco SystemsIntel: Leaked Copy Protection Code is Genuine
Intel has confirmed that code posted to the Internet earlier this week is the master key that is part of an Intel-created standard used to make sure only authorized devices are playing copyright-protected movies.
"We can use it to generate valid device keys that do interoperate with the (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection) protocol," Intel spokesman Tom Waldrop told CNET today.
HDCP is used in set-top boxes, DVD and Blu-ray disc players, and other devices to encrypt the content, audio, or video, and verify that the devices have HDCP licenses and thus won't play pirated content.
The code appeared mysteriously on the Pastebin.com site on Monday with the headline "IS THE LEAKED HDCP MASTER KEY REAL?"
`Here You Have' Virus Spreading Through the Internet
The come-on for the "Here you have" virus is that you'll get to see documents or free sex movies, but what you really get is an infected PC.
/ SophosThe US-CERT warned Friday of a new mass-mailing worm that contains a link to what looks like a PDF file but instead is a malicious screensaver file that will interfere with security software on Windows-based computers and spread the message to everyone in the e-mail address book.
Subject lines of the variants include "Here you have" or "Just for you," and "This is the Free Dowload (sic) Sex Movies, you can find it Here," according to McAfee Avert Labs.
The worm can also spread through remote machines, mapped network drives, and removable media via the Autorun feature, said McAfee, which detects the virus as W32/VBMania@MM.
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