Vodafone has been forced to issue a grovelling apology to its thousands of followers on Twitter after one of its customerservice staff broadcast an obscene message on the micro-blogging service. The message appeared on Vodafone's official Twitter account, which is used by the company to deal with customer complaints.
Google has turned to the National Security Agency for technical assistance to learn more about the computer network attackers who breached the company’s cybersecurity defenses last year, a person with direct knowledge of the agreement said. The collaboration between Google, the world’s largest search engine company, and the federal agency in charge of global electronic surveillance raises both civil liberties issues and new questions about how much Google knew about the electronic thefts it experienced when it stated last month that it might end its business operations in China.
The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a cybersecurity bill that calls for beefing up training, research, and coordination so the government can be better prepared to deal with cyberattacks. The Cyber Security Research and Development Act of 2009, which passed by a vote of 422 to 5, authorizes the National Institute of Standards and Technology to develop a cybersecurity education program that can help consumers, businesses, and government workers keep their computers secure.
In another blow to Google's plan to create a giant digital library and bookstore, the Justice Department said that a class-action settlement between the company and groups representing authors and publishers had significant legal problems, even after recent revisions. In a 31-page filing that could influence a federal judge's ruling on the settlement, the department said the new agreement was much improved from an earlier version but said the changes were not enough to placate concerns.
A leading Australian Internet service provider was cleared of copyright allegations when a federal judge ruled against Hollywood's lawsuit that iiNet was responsible for infringing BitTorrent data traveling its pipes. The Australian Federal Court decision siding with the country's third-largest ISP was a legal blow to worldwide efforts to make ISPs liable for the unlawful behavior of their customers.
The chief executive of book publisher Macmillan said his company is still in talks with online retailer Amazon.com Inc, despite the apparent settlement of a dispute over the price of electronic books. Amazon caved in to pressure from Macmillan, which wanted to charge $12.99 to $14.99 for most of its books sold at the bookstore of Amazon's Kindle electronic reader.
Tech-security companies are poised to become Wall Street darlings this year, thanks in part to Google's tiff with China. The Google-China affair has reinforced an already positive outlook for 2010 stock price performance of major security vendors, such as McAfee, Symantec and Check Point, says Daniel Ives, analyst at FBR Capital Markets.
Microsoft warned that a flaw in its Internet Explorer browser gives attackers access to files stored on a PC under certain conditions. "Our investigation so far has shown that if a user is using a version of Internet Explorer that is not running in Protected Mode an attacker may be able to access files with an already known filename and location," Microsoft said in a security advisory.
Lax security screening at Apple's App Store and a design flaw are putting iPhone users at risk of downloading malicious applications that could steal data and spy on them, a Swiss researcher warns. Apple's iPhone app review process is inadequate to stop malicious apps from getting distributed to millions of users, according to Nicolas Seriot, a software engineer and scientific collaborator at the Swiss University of Applied Sciences.
The House is expected to finish work on legislation that would authorize cybersecurity research and development funding and calls for the creation of cybersecurity standards. House lawmakers began work on the Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2009, adopting several amendments before putting off votes on four other amendments and on final passage.
Twitter has explained in greater detail the reason behind its decision to reset the passwords for some of its users after an external phishing attack. It turns out the problem, which Twitter first described as a "combination of multiple bad acts," was part of a scam that may have exposed Twitter users who also visit torrent sites requiring login credentials.
Acacia Research, a company that buys and licenses patents, says a federal court has raised the amount of damages it will get from Yahoo in a patent infringement ruling. The company said a federal court in Texas awarded it $12.4 million in a final judgment in the case, which is related to backgrounds called IMVironments in Yahoo's instant messaging service.
Twitter appeared to have been hit by a phishing attack that could be used to steal a user's sensitive log-in information, according to blogs and news reports. Twitter said it reset some users' passwords because of the attack.
The threat of a crippling attack on computer and telecommunications networks is growing, America's top intelligence official told lawmakers, as an increasingly sophisticated group of enemies has "severely threatened" the sometimes fragile systems undergirding the country's information systems. "Sensitive information is stolen daily from both government and private sector networks, undermining confidence in our information systems, and in the very information these systems were intended to convey," Dennis C. Blair said in his prepared remarks to a Senate committee.
During a question-and-answer session broadcast on YouTube, President Obama reiterated his support for network neutrality and promised to continue to push for a policy that would prohibit broadband providers from being able to prioritize Internet content.
Assistant Senate Majority Leader Dick Durbin (D-IL) said he plans to hold a hearing next month to examine U.S. companies' business practices in "Internet-restricting countries." Durbin's announcement comes shortly after Google Inc.'s decision to reevaluate its operations in China, after suffering a cyber-attack it said was aimed at exposing the identities of advocates for democratic reform there.
A vast majority of online banking customers use their login credentials to access other websites, sharply increasing risk of attack to their bank account, Internet security firm Trusteer said. Some 73 percent of Internet bank clients share online banking password with non-financial sites, and 47 percent re-use both, their online banking user name and password, British firm Trusteer said, citing a sample of more than 4 million users.
As more organizations allow employees to use social media like Facebook and Twitter at work, cybercrime attacks on these networks have exploded, according to a report released by IT security firm Sophos. Reports of malware and spam rose 70 percent on social networks in the last 12 months, the security survey reveals.
A district court judge in Illinois has ordered the owner of a Web-based company to stop selling term papers unless he can prove he has permission from the papers' authors. The order was based on an earlier ruling in which the provider was found liable of copyright infringement after co-authors of an undergraduate research paper saw their work posted on three of the company's websites and sued in 2006.
On issues as varied as privacy, copyright protection and the dominance of Google's Internet search engine, the company is clashing with lawmakers, regulators and consumer advocates in Europe. And the fights are escalating across Western Europe.
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