Digg | River -

Home » Technology » Security

10 ways you might be breaking the law with your computer (394 diggs) For many years, the Internet was the “final frontier,” operating largely unregulated — in part because of the jurisdictional nightmare involved in trying to enforce laws. That was then; this is now. Legislation that affects the use of Internet-connected computers is springing up everywhere at the local, state and federal levels.

LimeWire enlists AVG for user protection (240 diggs) Notorious as a malware ghetto, LimeWire takes its first steps to integrate authoritative threat protection by signing on AVG to provide premium users with download scanning and blocking.

EFF: New Smart Meters for Energy Use Put Privacy at Risk (354 diggs) The ebb and flow of gas and electricity into your home contains surprisingly detailed information about your daily life. Energy usage data, measured moment by moment, allows the reconstruction of a household's activities: when people wake up, when they come home, when they go on vacation, and maybe even when they take a hot bath...

Government No-Fly List Includes the Dead (331 diggs) You may be dying, figuratively, to get off the government's no-fly list, but death won't guarantee removal. The government's no-fly list includes the names of dead suspects, according to government officials who spoke with the Associated Press, to help catch people who may try to assume the suspect’s identity...

How does a parent handle cyberbullying? (256 diggs) What's a parent to do when their child is being bullied relentlessly by peers on Facebook? School administrators say they have no control over what happens outside of school.

Lifelock Dinged $12 Million for Deceptive Business Practices (617 diggs) The CEO of Lifelock, Todd Davis, became famous for advertising his Social Security number on television ads and banners painted on trucks promising his $10 monthly service would protect consumers from identity theft.

Energizer Duo battery charger hides a Trojan (1,099 diggs) The Energizer Duo USB battery charger has been hiding a backdoor Trojan in its software that affects computers using Windows. According to Symantec the Trojan has probably been there since 10th May 2007.

Why Google Scares Us: Say Bye Privacy, Say Hi Hungry Beast (828 diggs) Meet Google. The noun that became a verb. The world's favorite search engine, and the company whose motto is "Don't be evil"...Meet Google the beast, the hungry beast.

Pentagon-Backed Venture Aims for ‘Google Underground’ (327 diggs) he Department of Defense already has omnipresent eyes in the sky, underwater and, of course, on the ground. It’s only when you start going underground that the surveillance powers of the Pentagon begin to wane — at least until now.

Why Google keeps your data forever, tracks you with ads (469 diggs) In a conversation with Ars Technica, Google's top privacy people defend the company's data retention policies and the tracking practices of (Google-owned) Doubleclick.

Botnet Blueprint: Build Your Own ZeuS Botnet for $2,753.50 (355 diggs) Researchers dissected ZeuS botnet blueprint - a little knowledge and a few thousand dollars is all it takes to build a fully functional botnet. Cisco researchers told delegates at the 2010 RSA conference in San Francisco that a botnet running the infamous ZeuS malware could be built for $2,753.50.

Wave of Ransom Malware Hits Internet (412 diggs) Aged malware returns in a new wave of ransom-style online scams.

Despite New Policy, Pentagon Still Wary of the Tubes (207 diggs) The Pentagon last week issued a new open door policy on social media last week. So how did an Air Force network administrator find out about the change? Not through their chain of command, but by reading about it on Danger Room.

11 More U.S. Airports Get Body Scanners (380 diggs) Despite concerns of privacy and their effectiveness, 11 more airports are to get 150 full-body imaging machines beginning Monday at Boston’s Logan International Airport, and one at the O’Hare International Airport in Chicago. In all, 30 U.S. airports will employ the scanning devices...

Is chasing cybercrooks worth it? (197 diggs) Why it's not worth our time to go after these internet criminals.

Dr. Drew's Cyber-Spies Bust Alleged Stalker (237 diggs) Dr. Drew Pinsky hired a team of cyber security experts to monitor an alleged stalker -- and they're the ones who blew the whistle on the guy's whereabouts.

Spanish police smash huge botnet (288 diggs) The Spanish police arrest three criminals responsible for one of the world's biggest networks of infected computers.

U.S. Declassifies Part of Secret Cybersecurity Plan (417 diggs) The Obama administration declassified part of the government’s cybersecurity plan, publishing parts of it that discuss intrusion detection systems for federal computer networks and the government’s role in securing critical infrastructure. The declassified portion of the plan includes information on the deployment of Einstein 2 and Einstein 3...

Cyberwar Hype Intended to Destroy the Open Internet (747 diggs) The biggest threat to the open internet is not Chinese hackers or greedy anti-net neutrality ISPs, it's Michael McConnell, former director of national intelligence. McConnell is the nice-seeming guy who is willing and able to use fear-mongering to manipulate the federal bureaucracy for his own ends, And now he says we need to re-engineer the 'net.

Wiseguy Ticketmaster.com Scam Netted Hackers $25M (356 diggs) Four partners in Wiseguy Tickets and Seats were indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of reaping $25 million reselling premium tickets to concerts and sporting events by hacking into online vendor Ticketmaster.com. The four men resold 1.5 million tickets for events featuring Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi, and Hannah Montana.

Can Adobe Stop the Hate? (314 diggs) At this week's RSA security conference, Brad Arkin, director of product security and privacy at Adobe Systems, will spend a lot of time with Adobe customers, explaining what the company is doing to improve security. He sat down with CSOonline.com a couple days before the start of RSA to offer a preview of what he'll discuss.

New materials could lead to super crypto chips (245 diggs) Researchers at Florida State University have discovered crystals that could lead to super security chips as well as contribute to the discovery of materials that expand the capacity of electronic storage devices by 1,000 to 1 million times

School Administrator Boasts to PBS About His Laptop Spying (790 diggs) This is pretty amazing footage -- especially (as Scott notes) the absence of any questions about student privacy from the interviewer.

EFF Win: Military Monitored Planned Parenthood, Supremacists (394 diggs) The U.S. military monitored Planned Parenthood and a white supremacist group as part of the government's security preparations for the 2002 Olympics in Utah, according to new documents released by the Department of Defense. This and other intelligence activity disclosures appear in 800 pages of heavily redacted documents released to the EFF...

Cellphones, Privacy, and Data Leaks (Infographic) (354 diggs) How worried should you be about your cell phone service becoming a privacy issue? While data leaks were primarily a computer concern in the past, several large national cell phone service providers have experienced data breaches that exposed customers’ private information.