Security & Privacy

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

Flashback makers missed out on their payday, Symantec says

The high-profile Flashback Trojan that is estimated to have infected more than 600,000 Macs at its peak earlier this year would have earned its creators $14,000 in the course of three weeks.

The only hitch is that the money isn't going anywhere.

In a blog post today, security firm Symantec says the pay-per-click provider the malware makers were using spotted the activity as fraudulent.

"Many (pay-per-click) providers employ anti-fraud measures and affiliate-verification processes before paying. Fortunately, the attackers in this instance appear to have been unable to complete the necessary steps to be paid," the firm said. more

Facebook IPO doesn't mean the end of privacy

Despite the sometimes-rocky history between Facebook users and the social network's privacy policy, experts have not gone Cassandra on a post-Facebook IPO world.

"The biggest change in the IPO will be the consistent pressure on revenues," said Justin Brookman, director of consumer privacy at the Center for Democracy and Technology. His sentiment is echoed by other analysts at privacy organizations that have criticized Facebook in the past. How that focus on revenue will affect Facebook's approach to user privacy is less certain.

"Most of the changes in the recent policy update were semantic and clarification, which is good more

Microsoft readies NUads: They watch you watching them

SEATTLE--Microsoft is planning to launch an ambitious plan in the next month to revamp advertising: television that watches you watching it.

The goal of NUads is to convince people to stop using their DVR to skip or fast-forward through ads by using the Kinect sensor for Microsoft's Xbox 360 console and Windows PCs to make ads far more interactive. (Here's CNET's Kinect review.)

"During the Super Bowl, you're watching TV, some great ads pop up," Lyn Watts, a Microsoft manager, said during a presentation at the PII conference here this afternoon. "You say something like, 'Xbox more

Apple QuickTime update for Windows only; Macs already secure

Apple issued a QuickTime update today that addresses a number of security vulnerabilities in the media player and its Web plug-in. This update is only for Windows-based machines that have QuickTime installed, since Mac systems have had this update applied in recent security updates for OS X.

Apple's QuickTime media player and plug-in are used by about half of all Windows PCs and all of Apple's systems since OS X includes QuickTime as a core component of the OS. Because of its popularity, attackers may use vulnerabilities in it as a vector for compromising the system on which more

Avira update blocked Windows applications

Antivirus firm Avira said it has fixed a problem that led several of its products to mistakenly block legitimate Windows applications during an Avira software update.

"This issue has been resolved. Your Avira products should now be functioning normally," the German company said in a note on its Web site. "We deeply regret any difficulties this has caused you. Thank you for your patience and understanding."

Shortly after the company began releasing Service Pack 0 for Avira Version 2012 yesterday, customers began complaining about problems running Windows, Office and Works, as well as a host of third-party applications including Google more