Israel said the online publication of thousands of its citizens' credit card details by a hacker who says he is based in Saudi Arabia was comparable to terrorism, and promised to hit back. The data theft, which appeared to focus on commercial websites, was one of the worst Israel has said it has faced.
Iran is mounting new clampdowns on Internet expression, including rules that will impose layers of surveillance in the country's popular Internet cafes, as Tehran's political establishment comes under increasing strains from economic turmoil and threats of more international sanctions. In the most sweeping move, Iran issued regulations giving Internet cafes 15 days to install security cameras, start collecting detailed personal information on customers and document users' online footprints.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center, a public interest group, has asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate possible privacy violations in the new Facebook Timeline feature. “Facebook is changing the privacy settings of its users in a way that gives the company far greater ability to disclose their personal information than in the past,” the group wrote.
Hackers have posted a file online that they claim is a confidential glimpse into Symantec’s Norton Antivirus program and have threatened to release source code for the security giant’s flagship antivirus product. The hacker group, which calls itself the Lords of Dharmaraja, posted a file on Pastebin that it said described the confidential workings of Symantec’s Norton Antivirus threat-detection product.
A pervasive worm has expanded its reach to now steal login and password details for Facebook users, warned security vendor Seculert, which found a server holding 45,000 login credentials. The worm, called Ramnit, infects Windows executables, Microsoft Office and HTML files, according to a profile published by Microsoft.
The makers of an action figure with an uncanny resemblance to the late Apple founder Steve Jobs are reportedly being 'threatened with legal action' by the computing giant. The 12-inch figurine, which comes complete with Jobs's trademark blue jeans, sneakers and black turtleneck sweater, was created by Chinese company In Icons and was set for release in February.
Elan Microelectronics Corp, a Taiwanese touch design company, said that Apple Inc will pay $5 million as part of a settlement in a patent infringement case. The statement said the two companies would also exchange authorizations to use each other's patents.
Quanta Computer Inc., the world’s largest contract maker of notebook computers, sued Advanced Micro Devices Inc. for breach of contract, alleging the chipmaker sold defective products. AMD and its ATI Technologies Inc. unit sold chips that didn’t meet heat tolerances and were unfit for particular purposes, Taoyuan, Taiwan-based Quanta claimed in a federal court filing in San Jose, California.
Social media continues to pose problems for courts across the country, as a Florida man was kicked off a civil trial jury after trying to friend a defendant on Facebook. The juror, Jacob Jock, was in a jury pool for a personal injury lawsuit involving a traffic accident, and said he decided to look up people in the case to see if he knew them.
State media accused the social networking site Twitter of helping spread a rumor that former Cuban leader Fidel Castro had died, and criticized anti-Castro expatriates it dubbed "necrophiliac counterrevolutionaries" for jumping on the story. An article on the state-run Cubadebate Web site accused Twitter of allowing an account holder with the sign-on "Naroh" to start the rumor from an Italian server, possibly after it was taken over by a "robot."
Six U.S. lawmakers have asked the State Department to investigate whether Chinese telecommunications-equipment maker Huawei Technologies Co. has violated U.S. sanctions on Iran by supplying it with sensitive communications technology that has been used for censorship. The lawmakers called on the department to "expeditiously investigate" whether Huawei violated U.S. sanctions passed by Congress in 2010 by providing technology to government-controlled telecoms that "has been used to restrict the speech of the Iranian people and the free flow of unbiased information in Iran."
Google has acquired more IBM patents, adding more than 200 to approximately 2,000 patents it had previously bought from IBM. The move, first reported by the blog SEO by the Sea, was confirmed by a Google spokesman who didn't immediately comment on why the company is interested in these particular patents and on how they may benefit Google products and its customers.
Hackers have announced work on a ground station scheme that would make amateur satellites more viable, as part of an aerospace scheme that ultimately aims for the moon. The Hackerspace Global Grid (HGG) project hopes to make it possible for amateurs to more accurately track the home-brewed satellites.
A group of Saudi hackers dubbed Group-XP claimed to have posted the personal information of nearly half a million Israelis online, though credit card companies said the number of compromised records is actually much lower. The hackers said they broke into one of Israel's top sports Web sites, One.co.il, and redirected visitors to a site where they could download a file containing the personal information of 400,000 Israelis.
British police have found evidence that private investigators working for newspapers hacked into the email account of former Prime Minister Gordon Brown while he was finance minister, The Independent newspaper reported. Hundreds of other people may have also had their emails intercepted, perhaps as many as were caught up in the phone hacking scandal at News International's now defunct News of the World tabloid, the paper said.
A phishing attack aimed at new Mac users was launched the week after Christmas looking to obtain the credit card information of people signing up for a new Apple ID. The well-timed attack tries to redirect users signing up for an Apple ID to a phishing site designed to look like the Apple sign-in page asking users to update their account information.
A small Maryland company that develops accessories for Amazon.com's Kindle e-readers has sued the Seattle Internet giant, accusing it of patent infringement, unfair competition, business interference and false advertising. M-Edge Accessories, of Odenton, Md., says Amazon threatened to "delist" its products and make them harder to find online to extort $6.5 million in extra commissions and fees.
Research In Motion, still smarting over having to change the name of its yet-to-come operating system, faces a similar trademark challenge to its popular instant-messaging service BlackBerry Messenger. The service, which allows BlackBerry users to send each other text and multimedia files and see when they are delivered and read, is widely known and even promoted by RIM via the shorthand BBM.
Following criticism from customers for its support of the Stop Online Piracy Act, domain registrar Go Daddy said that it's no longer backing the legislation. "Fighting online piracy is of the utmost importance, which is why Go Daddy has been working to help craft revisions to this legislation -- but we can clearly do better," said Go Daddy CEO Warren Adelman in a statement.
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