sec

Senators target Bitcoin currency, citing drug sales

Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer currency floating around the Web, is now being targeted by two prominent senators.

Democratic Senators Charles Schumer of New York and Joe Manchin of West Virginia have written a letter to both Attorney General Eric Holder and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) chief Michele Leonhart expressing their desire for the organizations to take down an online marketplace known as "Silk Road," which allows customers to buy illegal drugs, including cocaine, heroin, ecstasy, and marijuana.

The senators said this about Bitcoin in their letter to the government agencies:

The only method of payment for these illegal purchases … Read more

Attacks on Sony, others show it's open hacking season

There seems to be a groundswell of hacking activity recently. From the Epsilon breach that touched dozens of major U.S. companies and their millions of customers, and RSA replacing its customers' SecurID tokens after attacks on several defense contractors to Sony sites getting pummeled by hackers on a regular basis--all within the last few months.

What's going on?

"I truly don't think there's a higher instance of hacking right now. I think there's been a wave of media coverage," said Bruce Schneier, chief security technology officer of BT and one of the most … Read more

Hackers taunt Sony with more data leaks, hacks

The LulzSec hacker group today released what it describes as 54MB of source code from the Sony Computer Entertainment Developer Network as well as internal network maps of Sony BMG, while Sony Pictures Russia and Sony Music Brazil also were attacked.

"Konichiwa from LulzSec, Sony bastards!" the group wrote in a post on the Pirate Bay peer-to-peer sharing site. The message continues:

"We\'ve recently bought a copy of this great new game called \"Hackers vs Sony\", but we\'re unable to play it online due to PSN being obliterated. So we decided to play … Read more

Exclusive: CEO says hackers tried to extort data, money

Karim Hijazi knew his nightmare was just beginning when he saw that a mysterious e-mail had arrived in his inbox at 3 a.m. on May 26 that included his e-mail password and the subject line "Let us talk."

That would mark the beginning of a weeklong saga of e-mail exchanges and Internet Relay Chat (IRC) discussions in which Hijazi says a group of hackers told him they wouldn't publicly divulge information they had gotten from snooping on his accounts if he revealed sensitive security information acquired by the botnet-tracking firm, Unveillance, that he launched last year. … Read more

Hackers target Sony, Nintendo and FBI partner Web site

Hackers went on a rampage late today, targeting Sony Europe, Nintendo, and the FBI-affiliate InfraGard Atlanta in a series of intrusions and security compromises that appears to have exposed passwords of some Sony and federal government employees.

The moves follow reports of hacks hours earlier that involved Acer Europe, Iran, NATO, and the United Arab Emirates.

Sony, whose business units globally have suffered what amounts to about a dozen different computer intrusions already over the past two months, was again targeted. Someone identified as Lebanese hacker Idahc, who targeted Sony Ericsson last week, appeared to have compromised the e-commerce site … Read more

Feds: IBM bribed South Korea, China officials

IBM has agreed to pay a settlement of $10 million to settle civil charges that it had an ongoing practice of trading bribes for computer equipment contracts, according to court documents filed today.

The Wall Street Journal first reported that the SEC is suing the company over cash bribes that it says IBM paid between 1998 and 2003 to South Korean government officials, and between 2004 and 2009 to Chinese government officials.

IBM did not admit to wrongdoing, but did say it has higher ethical standards for its employees and had taken "appropriate remedial action," according to the … Read more

IE8, Safari, iPhone, BlackBerry exploited in Pwn2Own contest

Researchers competing for $15,000 awards were able to successfully attack Internet Explorer 8 on Windows 7, Safari on Mac OS X, the iPhone 4, and the BlackBerry Torch 9800 in an annual hacker contest at the CanSecWest security conference this week.

For a variety of reasons, no efforts were made to attack Chrome, Firefox, Android or Windows Phone 7, the organizer of the Pwn2Own contest told CNET today.

One team of experts that had an exploit prepared to try against Windows 7 had to withdraw because of travel issues, according to Aaron Portnoy, manager of security research for HP … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 1375: Happy Holidays, rights-holders! Thanks for ruining everything! (podcast)

On today's show, our cogent analysis of the FCC's Net neutrality regulation adoption (actually, I mean that), with surprisingly little argument. Also, the PlayStation phone and the Nintendo 3DS are planning to spoil our CES parade by announcing their cool gadgets after the big show. And Apple proves that it is Wiki-weak. Plus, our holiday thank you cards go out to those Scrooge-like rights-holders who keep shows off Google TV, Hulu Plus and Netflix off cable-supplied TiVo DVRs, and Google Maps off our Verizon phones. Seriously. Thanks for that. Xoxo. --Molly

Report: SEC looks into Hurd's ousting from HP

The scandal surrounding Mark Hurd's departure from the world's largest technology company in August has officially drawn attention from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

According to a report in The Wall Street Journal today, the SEC is examining allegations that Hewlett-Packard's former chairman and chief executive passed valuable information about his company's pending acquisition of Electronic Data Systems (EDS) several months before the deal was made public in 2008.

But the inquiry into Hurd's actions is broader than that. The SEC is also looking into several things he reportedly did prior to being … Read more

SEC: Big trade caused market plunge in May

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) released a joint report Friday that detailed the cause of the "flash crash" on May 6 that triggered the Dow Jones Industrial Average to plummet almost 1,000 points in the course of a half hour. The culprit, the report found, was a single $4.1 billion trade carried out by a computer-based sell order.

"This report identifies what happened and reaffirms the importance of a number of the actions we have taken since that day. We now must consider what other investor-focused … Read more