sec

WPA wireless encryption cracked

Researchers have found a method of cracking a key encryption feature used in securing wireless systems that doesn't require trying a large number of possibilities. Details will be discussed at the sixth annual PacSec conference in Tokyo next week.

According to PCWorld, researchers Erik Tews and Martin Beck have found a way to crack the Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP) key, used by Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA). Moreover, they can do so in about 15 minutes. The crack apparently only works for data aimed at a Wi-Fi adapter; they have not cracked the encryption keys used to secure data … Read more

SEC plans XBRL standard to liberate financial data

WASHINGTON--Financial information about companies is sometimes difficult to uncover, and even more difficult to compare.

It's buried in footnotes to earnings reports and sometimes almost seems intentionally obfuscated. The Securities and Exchange Commission thinks it has the answer: a type of language for business data that could be to finance what HTML was to the Internet.

That was the plan, at least. There have been no fewer than 17 conferences so far to advance the Extensible Business Reporting Language, or XBRL, standard, and it still is not mandatory for U.S. companies. (The SEC started a voluntary XBRL filing program, … Read more

Who's to blame for spreading phony Jobs story?

"Unedited. Unfiltered. News."

That's the slogan CNN chose for its user-generated news site, iReport.com, a place designed to tap into the citizen journalism craze. At iReport, any member of the public is allowed to post stories, ostensibly as part of the cable network's news operation, simply by providing an e-mail address. CNN and citizen journalism are being criticized after someone used the site on Friday to spread the false report that Apple CEO Steve Jobs had suffered a serious heart attack.

The bogus story sparked a minor panic on Wall Street before Apple had a … Read more

Report: SEC looks into posting of old United story

Updated 4:50 p.m. PDT with Google comment.

Officials at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission are wondering if there was any improper conduct behind the online release last weekend of a 6-year-old news story that lead to a 75 percent drop in the stock of United Airlines on Monday, according to The Wall Street Journal (subscription required).

The SEC has opened a "preliminary inquiry" into the online distribution of a Chicago Tribune article from 2002 about United Airlines' bankruptcy filing, people familiar with the matter said.

The Tribune Co. said in a statement on Wednesday … Read more

Former Apple lawyer settles options case with SEC

Former Apple general counsel Nancy Heinen has settled with the SEC over charges that she improperly backdated stock options at the company.

The SEC filed a lawsuit against Heinen last year charging her with cherry-picking grant dates for stock option awards to Apple executives--including CEO Steve Jobs--and falsifying paperwork in order to cover up the selection of the favorable dates. Stock option backdating is legal if properly disclosed, but dozens of companies--including CNET Networks--in the earlier part of this decade failed to do so, and executives at other companies have gone to prison as a result.

Heinen will pay $2.… Read more

Google sours on $1 billion AOL investment

Google acknowledged late Thursday that it may have made a bad bet on AOL.

The search giant said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that its $1 billion investment for a 5 percent stake in Time Warner's Web unit "may be impaired" and that it may have to take a charge in the future:

Based on our review, we believe our investment in AOL may be impaired...We will continue to review this investment for impairment in the future. There can be no assurance that impairment charges will not be required in the future, … Read more

Researcher faults Apple iPhone on security updates

A leading Mac OS X researcher says Apple has not kept the iPhone operating system up to date with patches it has issued for the desktop.

The iPhone runs a stripped-down version of Mac OS 10.5 and automatically checks for security updates. The last update for the phone, 1.1.4, was issued in February.

That means iPhone users are still vulnerable to a flaw discovered by Charlie Miller in March.

During the CanSecWest conference, Miller found and used a buffer overflow in Safari in the Apple WebKit to win a $10,000 "Pwn to Own" contest. … Read more

Yahoo's SEC filing on its Google ad deal

Yahoo described many details of the Yahoo-Google search ad deal on Thursday, but some more are in a Friday regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Here's the full text of the filing, lightly edited for easier readability.

On June 12, 2008 (the "Effective Date"), Yahoo, a Delaware corporation ("Yahoo!"), and Google, a Delaware corporation ("Google"), entered into a Services Agreement (the "Services Agreement"), pursuant to which Google will provide Yahoo! with advertisements through Google's AdSense for Search service (the "AFS Services") and AdSense for Content service (… Read more

Eight ex-AOL Time Warner execs charged in civil fraud case

Securities and Exchange Commission regulators on Monday filed civil fraud charges against eight former AOL Time Warner executives over allegations they overstated the Internet company's advertising revenue in excess of $1 billion.

The lawsuits, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, allege John Michael Kelly, former CFO of AOL Time Warner; Steven E. Rindner, a former Business Affairs unit senior executive; Joseph A. Ripp, former CFO of the AOL division; and Mark Wovsaniker, former Accounting and Policy head, created a fraudulent scheme where AOL Time Warner funded its own advertising revenue by giving … Read more

SEC charges current, former Broadcom execs

The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged two current and two former key executives of chipmaker Broadcom with backdating stock options.

The SEC announced Wednesday it had filed a federal complaint against Chairman and Chief Technology Officer Henry Samueli and general counsel David Dull, as well as former Chief Executive Officer Henry Nicholas and former Chief Financial Officer William Ruehle. The chipmaker later announced that Samueli and Dull had taken leaves of absence from their positions until the matter is resolved.

Samueli, who co-founded the company, also resigned as chairman of the board. The board appointed director John Major to … Read more