Adam Pash — IT professional Andrew McAfee explains how a privacy hole in iTunes allows anyone to hunt around in your iTunes library; all a potential spy would need is your email address. It's an outside-case thing that may not seem like that big of a deal, especially since it requires a somewhat tedious hunt-and-peck process, but, as he points out:
Rapid advances in communications are eroding police departments' abilities to conduct wiretaps, and Congress needs to take steps to ensure that new telephone, computer and wireless systems are designed to allow lawful police access, FBI and police officials told Congress Thursday.
But other witnesses cautioned that any such move could stifle innovation, place U.S. technology companies at a competitive disadvantage and unintentionally create systems vulnerable to hackers, criminals and terrorists.
Online criminals could launch a wave of highly targeted phishing attacks by matching usernames across the internet, researchers have found.
French security academics developed a system that cross-referenced publicly-available data from several major websites to build up detailed profiles of real people. The team harvested almost 10 million usernames from Google, eBay and MySpace.
The recent publication of the second batch of corporate e-mails exchanged between HBGary and HBGary Federal executives and various contacts in US intelligence, military and law enforcement organizations is a godsend to individuals that aim to launch social engineering attacks against those people, says expert Chris Hadnagy.
Aaron Barr, CEO of security company HBGary Federal, spent the month of January trying to uncover the real identifies of the hacker collective Anonymous—only to end with his company website knocked offline, his e-mails stolen, 1TB of backups deleted, and his personal iPad wiped when Anonymous found out.
A considerable number of Facebook and Google users worry about privacy and malware when using the social networking site and search engine, according to a survey from Gallup Poll and USA Today.
Almost 70% of Facebook users and 52% of Google users in the U.S. said they are "somewhat" or "very" concerned about privacy when using Facebook.com and Google's search engine, USA Today reported on Wednesday. Getting infected with malware worries 65% of Facebook users and 54% of Google users, the survey found.
Irish job website RecruitIreland.com is currently offline after being hit by hackers who breached their systems, and stole the names and email addresses of 400,000 users.
A statement elsewhere on the website says that the authorities have been informed, and that some users have received spam emails claiming to offer a job. Although in reality the spams are attempting to recruit innocent people as money mules to move funds on behalf of fraudsters.
Three people associated with the website WikiLeaks are asking a federal judge not to force the social networking site Twitter to turn over data about whom they communicate with online.
In court documents unsealed Tuesday, the three challenged a court order forcing Twitter to tell the government the names of those they talk to privately and who follow their posts. Attorneys argued that violated their freedom of speech.
Facebook is threatening to take legal action against the creators of an online "dating" site that features 250,000 profiles of men and women whose photos and personal details were scraped off the social networking giant's site and used without their permission.
The site, called Lovely Faces, was ostensibly set up as part of an attempt to demonstrate to the world how easy it is to misuse data that is publicly posted on sites such as Facebook. It allows users to search for men and women using their real names, or by categories such as "easy going", "sly" and "smug."
A new wave of online crime is on the way – and all that's required is your username. Hackers may soon be able to identify which screen names belong to one person just by analysing the characters that make up the name.
This would allow criminals to send out better-targeted spamming and phishing attacks. For instance, cross-referencing eBay usernames with Google email accounts could allow accurately targeted phishing attacks, using freely available data about a user's eBay purchasing habits.
