Digg | River -

Home » Technology » Security

"Piracy" sounds too sexy, say rightsholders (231 diggs) The term "pirates," meant to convey evil and mayhem, instead conjures up visions of a swashbuckling Johnny Depp, says an actors' group. Rupert Murdoch's son has an idea for a less-sexy word: thieves. Hasn't he seen "Ocean's 11"?

EFF: FTC to Internet Companies: Start Using SSL! (305 diggs) The Federal Trade Commission has officially put companies on-notice. In a speech before an FTC roundtable yesterday, outgoing FTC Commissioner Pamela Jones Harbour called on Web services services like Yahoo!, Facebook and Hotmail to start using HTTPS/SSL encryption.

Canadian Movie Pirate ‘maVen’ Sent To Jail (358 diggs) Geremi Adam, a member of the movie release group ‘maVen’ has been sentenced to two and a half months in prison. The 27 year-old Montreal resident, who was referred to the Canadian police by the FBI, pleaded guilty to distributing two major motion pictures.

Hacker Disables Over 100 Cars Remotely (1,325 diggs) More than 100 drivers in Austin, Texas found their cars disabled or the horns honking out of control earlier this month, after an intruder ran amok in a web-based vehicle immobilization system normally used to get the attention of consumers delinquent in their auto payments.

Web sites that can take a punch (253 diggs) The recent, well-publicized cyberattack on Google was just the latest skirmish in a long war. And like most long wars, this one features an arms race, as hackers seek out new security holes, and web site administrators try to close them.

SEC: Hacker Manipulated Stock Prices (519 diggs) United States regulators are moving to freeze the assets and trading accounts of a Russian accused of hacking into personal online portfolios and manipulating the price of dozens of stocks listed on the Nasdaq Stock Market and New York Stock Exchange...

Secret Document Calls Wikileaks ‘Threat’ to U.S. Army (891 diggs) Wikileaks presents a “threat to the U.S. Army” and publishes “potentially actionable information” for targeting military personnel, according to a classified intelligence report posted Monday on the whistleblowing site.

FBI details most difficult Internet scams (216 diggs) According to the FBI and the IC3 Web site, the popular scam trends for 2009 included hitman scams, astrological reading frauds, economic scams, job site scams, and fake pop-up ads for antivirus software.

Net clash for web police projects (241 diggs) A row is brewing over separate projects to use the web to bring people closer to their local police forces.

An invitation to crime: How a friendly click can compromise (288 diggs) 'Hey Alice, look at the pics I took of us last weekend at the picnic. Bob'. That Facebook message, sent last fall between co-workers at a large U.S. financial firm, rang true enough. Alice had, in fact, attended a picnic with Bob, who mentioned the outing on his Facebook profile page.

When malware strikes via bad ads on good sites (480 diggs) Who is responsible for malware in ads, Web site owners or ad networks and delivery firms? Matt Drudge and Michael Arrington found themselves this week in an unpleasant position when visitors to their respective Drudge Report and TechCrunch sites were targeted by malware that appeared to have come from ads...

Feds: TSA Worker Tried to Sabotage Terror Database (455 diggs) A former Transportation Security Administration contractor is being charged in Colorado for allegedly injecting malicious code into a government network used for screening airport security workers and others. The malicious code, a logic bomb installed last October, was designed to cause damage and disrupt data on servers on an undisclosed date...

Super Stealth Plane Breaks Through Cost Barrier (322 diggs) The Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing today on the future of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, and things are not looking pretty for the next-generation stealth aircraft. It now appears likely the Air Force will have to declare the program has soared past a key cost-containment barrier, in addition to being over 2 years behind schedule.

10 ways you might be breaking the law with your computer (584 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 (298 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 (402 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 (354 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? (264 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 (634 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 (1,140 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 (869 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’ (332 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 (486 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 (359 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 (417 diggs) Aged malware returns in a new wave of ransom-style online scams.