attack

Facebook stopped a phishing attack on Thursday, its second day in a row of dealing with a worm on the site that lures people to a fake Facebook page and prompts them to log in.

Unsuspecting Facebook users get a message from a friend urging them to "check this out" and including a link to a Web page that appears to be a Facebook log-in page, but it is a fake site that steals their information when they type in their username and password. The worm also sends a copy of the message to the infected Facebook member'… Read more

Hosting company GoGrid suffered a distributed denial-of-service attack Monday afternoon that affected approximately half of its thousands of customers, co-founder David Hecht said on Tuesday.

The DDoS attack hit Monday afternoon, slowing customers' Web sites, creating latency issues, and making clients' Web sites inaccessible, Hecht said.

Although GoGrid was able to stabilize the situation by late Monday afternoon, getting most of its customers' sites back online, the company faced a decision whether to stay on course with a scheduled maintenance later that night or reschedule for another date.

The maintenance, which required GoGrid to take its portal down and troubleshoot … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--If you wanted to see tesla coils rocking out, Dorkbot was the place to be Saturday evening at the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference here.

The local art collective Arc Attack had its singing tesla coils turned up loud and it put on several demonstrations of its machines at this celebration of "people doing strange things with electricity."

The highlight of the group's show was either a rendition of the "Dr. Who" theme or perhaps the Imperial march music from "Star Wars" (see video below--and give it a few seconds to get … Read more

It's happened to just about everyone who has bought an iPhone application at the iTunes Store: At some point the application you paid $7.99 for goes on sale for $1.99--sometimes it's even free the next day. I've had this happen to me many times, but only because it's part of the job to get applications when they're hot off the presses. Fortunately, as part of the job, I don't have to (personally) pay for the applications I review. Most people aren't so lucky.

Fortunately, an application made for bargain hunters that … Read more

Updated 4:30 p.m. PST with latest Microsoft comment.

Some Xbox Live players are finding that winning has its drawbacks.

Microsoft said it is investigating reports that people are using malicious software to disrupt Xbox Live players' Internet connections in malicious attacks.

"In our continued effort to help provide a safer and more secure experience for our community of more than 17 million members, we are investigating reports of a malicious Web site that attempts to lure Xbox LIVE members into providing personal information," Microsoft said in a statement on Friday.

"Phishing is an unfortunate and … Read more

From Fox and Friends, Clayton Morris joins us again today to talk about how to survive a shark attack by punching the killer fish, while Wilson tells you not to go in the water when you're on your monthly cycle. (Hint: piranhas are vampire lesbians.) Anyway, Wilson G. Tang here--your other favorite Asian podcaster--taking over for a Mr. Justin Yu for all your regularly scheduled blog posts. I can only hope to be half as funny as J. Yu, but I will certainly try.

In the meantime, we wax poetic about Facebook's changes in its terms of service. … Read more

I scout several Web sites every week for new iPhone applications to try to find what I think are the most useful (or the most fun) for everyone who reads this column. A couple of weeks ago, I featured a budgeting application that I thought had some nice features, but a user quickly pointed me in the direction of something much better.

Mint.com (Free) is an excellent money management tool that automatically syncs up with your accounts to help you follow a budget on your iPhone. The interface is well designed, letting you quickly navigate several accounts, track spending, … Read more

It was revealed this week that the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and John McCain were hacked over the summer. Now, a report has surfaced that the White House has suffered multiple attacks in recent months as well.

According to a story by the Financial Times on Friday, U.S. officials have confirmed that the White House e-mail archives were attacked several times in recent months. The report says the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force, a new unit established in 2007 to tackle cybersecurity, detected the attacks on the White House, and also traced the attacks back to servers … Read more

Updated Jan 27 2009 with a comment from the Turkish Government. See below

When criminals turn to disk encryption to hide the evidence of their crimes, law enforcement investigations can hit a brick wall. Where digital forensics software has failed to recover encryption passwords, one tried and true technique remains: violence. It is is this more aggressive form of good cop bad cop behavior which the Turkish government is alleged to have turned to, in order to learn the cryptographic keys of one of primary ringleaders in the TJ Maxx credit card theft investigation.

The 2005 theft of tens of … Read more