Google, Facebook, and PayPal team up to fight phishing
Tech heavyweights are coming together to stand behind DMARC, a new system announced today that could block phishing emails before they ever reach your inbox.
“We’ve been active in the leadership of the DMARC group for almost two years, and now that Gmail and several other large mail senders and providers — namely Facebook, LinkedIn, and PayPal — are actively using the DMARC specification, the road is paved for more members of the email ecosystem … Continue Reading
How I was hacked – a tale of hijack, XBox Live and FIFA trading cards
This week, my Xbox Live account was hacked. This is the story of what happened, my response to it, and the questions about security that it has raised.
The hijack
At twelve minutes past midnight on Tuesday night, just as I was finishing up some work, I received an email to say that I had purchased 6,000 Microsoft Points. My first thought was to laugh it off as spam, as I hadn’t bought any points … Continue Reading
Zaarly employee tries to poach Craigslist advertiser
Is it fair to comb through Craigslist ads looking for people to win over to your own online marketplace?
That’s what Zaarly, an online marketplace for people to post items they need, appears to be doing.
In an email thread obtained by VentureBeat, a Zaarly employee reached out to a Craigslist seller about a possible item for sale. Upon response from the seller, the inquirer responded with what appears to be a pretty canned email … Continue Reading
Google, what exactly is the China connection for the phishing scare?
When Google said yesterday that Jinan, China is the apparent origin of a worrying phishing attack against hundreds of people, including U.S government officials and Chinese human rights activists, it ignored at least two other attack sources referred by the expert who first called attention to that very attack.
The question is why Google homed in on Jinan (a city whose name is politically charged because it is a regional command center for China’s military, … Continue Reading
Sony hacked again, but this time not the PlayStation Network
Just after Sony suffered a long and embarrassing outage for its 77-million member PlayStation Network, a Sony site has been hacked again.
This time, hackers compromised a Sony website for users in Thailand. F-Secure, a web security company, found the live phishing site at the Sony Thailand address. That means hackers had broken into the site’s security and were redirecting users to a fake website where it could steal their credit card numbers.
While it’s … Continue Reading
Facebook adds new protection against dubious web links with WOT
Facebook users can now click links from other users with a little more trust. Facebook and crowdsourced website reputation service Web of Trust (WOT) begin collaboration today to give Facebook’s over 500 million users reliable protection against dubious web links.
Web of Trust is based in Helsinki, Finland. Its user community rates web pages on how trustworthy they are, so the service is able to warn users if they try to access a website with … Continue Reading
Cocoon promises a safe, spam-free, private way to browse the web
Imagine browsing the web without having to worry about viruses, spam, and spyware. Imagine you could log in to see your favorite web sites from any location, without being tracked.
That’s the experience Virtual World Computing promises with it’s new Cocoon browser plug-in.
The Cocoon plug-in works with Firefox and other browsers to effectively unplug your computer from the internet and route you instead through Cocoon’s servers. Those servers filter out the bad stuff and … Continue Reading
Epsilon data breach results in a huge loss of customer data
Epsilon, the world’s largest provider of permission-based email marketing, has suffered a huge data breach. That means hackers may have swiped customer data belonging to the world’s biggest brands.
Epsilon sends more than 40 billion emails a year on behalf of 2,500 brands. Security Week said the breach has affected a number of those brands, including grocery retailer Kroger, TiVo, Marriott Rewards, Ritz-Carlton Rewards, US Bank, JPMorgan Chase, Capital One, Citi, McKinsey & Company, New … Continue Reading
IBM: Biggest threat to the cloud could be security issues
The number of exploitable options in computer programs grew by 36 percent in 2010, largely a result of the increased prevalence of Web apps and looming cloud-computing security threats, according to IBM’s X-force security report released Thursday.
IBM researchers said the recent growth of cloud computing and remote desktop access will likely become a sore point for security issues, as hackers cracking into a master rig that controls several virtual desktops could theoretically access all … Continue Reading
Malware spreads to emerging countries as cyber threats multiply
The number of exploitable options in computer programs grew by 36 percent in 2010, largely a result of the increased prevalence of Web apps and looming cloud-computing security threats, according to IBM’s X-force security report released Thursday.
IBM researchers said the recent growth of cloud computing and remote desktop access will likely become a sore point for security issues, as hackers cracking into a master rig that controls several virtual desktops could theoretically access all … Continue Reading
