News - Security

Hacktivists claim takedown of Chicago police Web site

Hacktivists from the online group Anonymous claim to have taken down the Chicago Police Department's Web site in the wake of violent clashes between the police and protesters.

Members of AntiS3curityOPS, which claims to be affiliated with Anonymous, posted a video on YouTube taking credit for a hacking that allegedly brought down the page and accusing Chicago police of brutality during clashes Saturday night with protesters, who were demonstrating against the NATO summit discussing the ongoing war in Afghanistan.

"We are actively engaged in actions against the Chicago Police Department, and encourage anyone to take up the cause and more

FBI 'looking at' law making Web sites wiretap-ready, director says

FBI Director Robert Mueller confirmed that the bureau has renewed its push for a new Internet wiretapping law, which CNET reported two weeks ago.

In an appearance this week on Capitol Hill, Mueller downplayed privacy concerns, saying the FBI's wiretap proposals -- social-networking Web sites and providers of VoIP, instant messaging, and Web e-mail are the primary targets -- would still require a court to be involved.

We want to "be able to obtain those communications," Mueller said on Wednesday. "What we're looking at is some form of legislation that will assure that when we get the appropriate more

Facebook sued for $15 billion over alleged privacy infractions

As Facebook prepares to start trading on the Nasdaq, a class-action lawsuit has been brought against it.

Law firm Stewarts Law US announced today that it has combined 21 privacy lawsuits against the social network into a single, class-action suit, charging the world's largest social network with violating user privacy by allegedly tracking their Web usage.

Stewarts Law is asking for $15 billion -- a sum it arrived at by calling on the U.S. Wiretap Act, which "provides statutory damages of the greater of $100 per violation per day, up to $10,000, per Facebook user," the law more

Caught snooping: U.K. government staffers

Don't worry about hackers illegally accessing government systems. It turns out government workers and civil servants who are trusted with private citizen data are more likely to access your data illegally.

The U.K. government is hemorrhaging data -- private and confidential citizen data -- from medical records to social security details, and even criminal records, according to figures obtained through Freedom of Information requests.

Just shy of 1,000 civil servants working at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) were disciplined for accessing personal social security records. The Department for Health (DoH), which operates the U.K.'more

Socialcam closes hole that enabled accidental sharing

Popular video-sharing app Socialcam has made changes that are designed to prevent inadvertent sharing of videos, a privacy advocate says.

Socialcam representatives did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment, but Jules Polonetsky, director of The Future of Privacy Forum, told CNET that the app maker informed him that they were making some changes to address concerns he had brought up to them.

"Two weeks ago I saw a rabbi in my network share a bikini-type video" using Socialcam, Polonetsky said. "Facebook posts are full of friends clicking to view these videos" that were no doubt mistakenly shared.

The "social more

Pirate Bay, WikiLeaks fight off crippling attacks

Someone is angry at whistle-blower site WikiLeaks and Swedish BitTorrent file-sharing site Pirate Bay. Both sites have been battling distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks this week, but it's not clear who is behind the attacks and why they are being targeted. The sites appear to be up now.

Pirate Bay and WikiLeaks have been the cause celebre of hackers affiliated with groups like Anonymous, so much so that their opponents -- including government agencies and movie industry trade groups -- have found themselves to be targets of DDoS attacks in the past.

Yesterday, WikiLeaks tweeted that it "has been under more

U.S. cybersecurity chief Howard Schmidt retiring

Howard Schmidt, who was named cybersecurity coordinator and special assistant to President Obama in late 2009, is retiring from public service, The White House said today.

"It has been a tremendous honor for me to have served in this role and to have worked with such dedicated and professional colleagues both in the government and private sector," Schmidt said in a statement. "We have made real progress in our efforts to better deal with the risks in cyberspace so, around the world, we can all realize the full benefits that cyberspace brings us."

Schmidt filled a spot that has been more

Twitter announces support for Do Not Track

Twitter is the latest Web giant to support Do Not Track.

Ed Felten, chief technology officer at the Federal Trade Commission, announced today at an Internet Week privacy panel that Twitter will now stop tracking user data from those who opt-out. According to The New York Times, which was first to report on the news, Twitter's tracking will be nixed with help from Firefox's Do Not Track feature.

Twitter confirmed Felten's statement in a tweet today, saying that the company "now supports Do Not Track." Twitter also commended the FTC for its "leadership on Do Not Track."more

Friday debut of SF bar-cams stirs sour reception

When San Francisco watering hole The Boardroom signed up last year to capture video at the bar and stream it live to the Web, manager Casey Gray liked the idea as a way to promote new business and remotely check in on what was going on.

So much for the best laid assumptions.

"At the time we didn't have any security cameras here, so it provided a service to me. I could hop on the phone and see what the bar was doing," Gray said in a phone interview from The Boardroom, which straddles the city's North Beach more

Euclid downplays privacy concerns about Wi-Fi tracking

SEATTLE--A new company that plans to track millions of retail shoppers through a unique ID emitted by their smartphones says it wants to be privacy-friendly.

Will Smith, co-founder and chief executive of Euclid Elements, showed up at the PII privacy conference here today to say that identifying repeat visitors by these unique IDs -- the so-called MAC addresses broadcast when Wi-Fi is turned on -- shouldn't be an issue.

"We put a sensor in the store," Smith said. "It passively detects smartphones that come near the store."

Euclid, which is based in Palo Alto, Calif. and launched last November more