Wednesday, January 30, 2013

N.Y. Times: China hacked us for past four months

N.Y. Times: China hacked us for past four months

The New York Times says Chinese hackers repeatedly penetrated its computer networks over the past four months, stealing reporters' passwords and hunting for files on an investigation into the wealth amassed by the family of one of China's leaders.

In a report released late Wednesday, the Times said security experts hired to plug the breach tracked the attacks to China, in some cases computers identified with the Chinese military.

The newspaper reports that, "After surreptitiously tracking the intruders to study their movements and help erect better defenses to block them, The Times and computer security experts have expelled the attackers and kept them from breaking back in."

The attacks coincided with a Times investigation into how the family and relatives of Premier Wen Jiabao built a fortune worth more than $2 billion. The report says no Times customer data was compromised but that the passwords for all employees were stolen.

The newspaper adds, "The hackers tried to cloak the source of the attacks on The Times by first penetrating computers at United States universities and routing the attacks through them, said computer security experts at Mandiant, the company hired by The Times. This matches the subterfuge used in many other attacks that Mandiant has tracked to China."

Security experts say China carries out a widespread cyber-spying operation to steal secrets and intimidate critics.

Sunday, January 27, 2013

Singapore Hunts for New Zuckerberg With Stanford-Style Dorm

Singapore Hunts for New Zuckerberg With Stanford-Style Dorm

As National University of Singapore students drifted to the college bar for Wednesday’s “Ladies Night,” Ishan Agrawal sat in his dorm’s common room, working out how to harness the Internet to fight corruption in India.
Agrawal, 22, is one of 90 hand-picked students at N-House, a residential block modeled after the dorms of California’s Stanford University that housed Google Inc.’s Larry Page and Yahoo! Inc. co-founder Jerry Yang. Their Wednesday evenings brainstorming new ideas or pitching to potential investors are part of a S$16 billion ($13.1 billion) effort by Singapore’s government to build a tropical Silicon Valley.

Saturday, January 12, 2013

US Department of Homeland Security Calls On Computer Users To Disable Java

US Department of Homeland Security Calls On Computer Users To Disable Java

"Concerns about the susceptibility of the Java programming language to cyberattacks culminated Thursday night, with a warning posted on the Department of Homeland Security’s Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-Cert)calling on the public to temporarily disable Java on their personal computers.
The call came in response to the discovery of a new vulernability that lets an attacker execute code on a PC running Java. The vulnerability is reportedly already being used in “exploit kits” which are pre-packaged, for-sale tool kits that can be used to commit online crimes such as stealing someone’s identity."

Co-Founder of Reddit, Aaron Swartz commits suicide

Co-Founder of Reddit, Aaron Swartz commits suicide

"Swartz was indicted in July 2011 by a federal grand jury for allegedly mass downloading documents from the JSTOR online journal archive with the intent to distribute them. He subsequently moved to Brooklyn, New York, where he then worked for Avaaz Foundation, a nonprofit “global web movement to bring people-powered politics to decision-making everywhere.” Swartz appeared in court on Sept. 24, 2012 and pleaded not guilty.
The accomplished Swartz co-authored the now widely-used RSS 1.0 specification at age 14, was one of the three co-owners of the popular social news site Reddit, and completed a fellowship at Harvard’s Ethics Center Lab on Institutional Corruption. In 2010, he founded DemandProgress.org, a “campaign against the Internet censorship bills SOPA/PIPA.”"

Friday, January 11, 2013

Couchsurfing Taliban Story #fascinating

Beats Audio CEO Urged Jobs to Create Subscription Music in 2002

Beats Audio CEO Urged Jobs to Create Subscription Music in 2002

 
"CEO Jimmy Iovine sheds light on the early influences that former Apple CEO Steve Jobs considered when iTunes was still in its infancy. According to the interview, Mr. Iovine strongly urged Mr. Jobs to create a subscription music service over 10 years ago, but the Apple CEO was hesitant.
Mr. Iovine became determined to launch a music subscription service in the early 2000s after witnessing the music industry’s inability to adapt to the online digital music revolution. He took his concerns to the heads of several tech companies but wasn’t able to convince them of the strategy’s importance. Only late Apple CEO Steve Jobs “smelled it the most,” Mr. Iovine told AllThingsD.
Despite the forward-thinking mentality that Mr. Jobs was known for, even he was not initially sold on the idea of an online subscription service, according to Mr. Iovine"