Don’t upgrade hacked Apple TVs to 3.0, CrunchGear advises
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Tech website CrunchGear has advised owners of Apple TVs that run unofficial ATV plugins to refrain from upgrading their devices to firmware 3.0, saying that the "insignificant" update cripples hacked units.
Malicious hacker pleads guilty to $10m hacking case
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Ehud Tenenbaum, the Israeli born hacker who was caught in Canada after stealing $1.5 million from Canadian banks, has plead guilty to US charges claiming the notorious hacker stole nearly $10 million from a credit card processor, and two U.S. banks, according to Wired.
Tenenbaum faces a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison.
Twitter blackout: Relax.
Yes, everyone, Twitter is still intermittent, on the web side anyway, and with a Russian botnet unleashing a DDoS on the service, it won't be the last time that we see Twitter attacked. So why did Twitter go down, but other victims of the attacks stay up? We ask Tom Merritt of CNET, and Stuart Miles of Pocket-Lint.
Tom reminds us that Twitter is still a young company compared to Facebook, and especially when compared to Google. Those two larger, more experienced companies have set up systems to better deal with malicious bad-doers who'd wish them ill will. Stuart thinks we're going to have to start realizing that what happens in real life can happen online too. Cities get crowded, so sometimes when someone is commuting to work, they get stuck in traffic. The same thing can happen online, except without the cars and smog.
What's your take? Did you learn anything from the great Twit-out of 2009? Sound off in the comments.
Guests:
Twitter, Facebook attacks targeted Georgian blogger: Report
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CNET's security reporter, Elinor Mills, says the DDoS attacks plaguing Facebook, Twitter and LiveJournal actually were targeting one Georgian blogger going by the name of Cyxymu, and that the overall service disruption was collateral damage.
Internet heavyweights appear to have coinciding downtimes
Oddly, two of the internet's most prominent social sites, Twitter and Facebook, are both experiencing outages. Twitter's outage is sitewide, and Facebook's seems limited to its login server (ie if you're logged in, you'll stay logged in.)
We'll try to figure out what's going on, and pass along info as we get it.
UPDATE: As we sorta expected, Twitter is suffering a DDoS attack, and we can't help but speculate Facebook is under a similar attack.
Student arrested for allegedly hacking consoles
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27 year-old Matthew Crippen has been arrested for allegedly hacking gaming consoles to play illegal game copies thereby breaking the DMCA. According to the DMCA is it illegal to break copy protection schemes of digital media but the law can have much further reaching implications. Crippen was being investigated by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement branch of the Department of Homeland Security.
Computer security czar steps down
Melissa Hathaway, head of the Obama administration's efforts on computer security, is stepping down from her post, citing undisclosed personal reasons. Hathaway was originally appointed by President Bush, and as the WSJ notes, she didn't have too many political friends in her corner.
President Obama previously outlined a plan to make computer security a top priority back in May, but hasn't yet been able to fill a cabinet-level position.
Attacks on US Government sites not necessarily the work of North Korea
Over the weekend, we heard reports that some US Government and South Korean sites were under attack from some sort of botnet. Apparently, according to the AP, a South Korean newspaper blamed North Korea which spread throughout the world as a confirmed fact, but today a security researcher told Computerworld there's no evidence that Kim Jong Il, nor his sons nor any North Koreans were responsible for the attack.
Facebook hit with new phishing scam
The All Facebook blog is reporting that Facebook is being hit with a new phishing scam that steals the login credentials of users and then changes their password so that users can't get back into the social network. Â Once hijacked, an account will send one of several phishing links to friends in an attempt to take control of more accounts.
Cisco hacker finally indicted
Phillip Pettersson has been indicted for his successful 2004 break-in to Cisco's internal network. His goal was to steal trade secrets, which had been guarded by "Reasonable security measures" — until the then teenager got into them.