security
FBI, grand jury now probing high school’s webcam spying (Updated)
The furor over the
Continue reading »Google works to clean up Buzz privacy mess after launch
Mere days after the high-profile launch of Google’s social media service Buzz , the company has made modifications to its functionality in hopes of appeasing privacy critics. Over the weekend, Google apologized on its blog for causing some of the initial concerns over Buzz and vowed to continue making improvements based on user feedback. The most significant of those are already in place, though the move highlights Google’s somewhat arrogant assumptions about what its users would be willing to share with the world right out of the gate.
Continue reading »Anonymous targets Australian government over porn filters
The Australian government found itself victim of a cyberattack on Wednesday morning as a protest against the government’s plan to begin filtering certain types of pornography from being accessed online The attack was carried out by the group Anonymous (yes, that Anonymous) as part of “Operation: Titstorm,” an effort to push back on Australia for including a plethora of perfectly legal content as part of its Internet filtering initiative. Two government sites were taken down temporarily, and officials have (unsurprisingly) condemned the attacks. The denial of service attacks began at 8am Australian Time Wednesday morning (5pm Eastern Time Tuesday night) and targeted the Australian government’s main website as well as the Parliament site .
Continue reading »TalkTalk Rises Awareness in WiFi Safety
Honoring the invitation from Channel 4 News to participate in a broadcast, security expert Matt Roburgh, member of the team behind Internet service provider TalkTalk, seized the opportunity to educate the public on WiFi safety and the threat posed by WiFi hacking. Roburgh directed the discussion towards the limitations of today’s network safety solutions and hackers’ ability to constantly reinvent their methods of tackling existing security measures. Admitting he had also been a victim of WiFi hacking, the expert explained that although protection of WiFi connections with passwords is highly recommendable, this measure alone might not always be enough to block hacking attempts.
Continue reading »No rules: Internet security a Hobbesian "state of nature"
Life in cyberspace can be nasty, brutish, and short. So says a new report (PDF) on international cybersecurity, which argues that the Internet is a Hobbesian “state of nature” where anything goes, where even government attacks maintain “plausible deniability,” and where 80 percent of industrial control software is hooked into an IP network. It’s also a world where the US is both a model and a bully.
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