If you are like many online consumers, you probably assume that some of the positive product reviews posted by consumers on sites like Amazon.com are actually posted by agents of the manufacturer. But did you know that it is illegal for a business to post positive reviews of its own products anonymously? The practice is [...]
A recent hack of RockYou.com made 32 million user passwords available to the public. A security firm analyzed the passwords and found that for the most part, they are easy to guess. About a third of the passwords are less than 6 characters, and half use common words that could be easily hacked using a [...]
This week Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke on the importance of freedom of expression and the free flow of information on the Internet. The speech coincidentally follows last week’s announcement by Google that it and 30 other companies and organizations were hacked by what it claims must have been the Chinese government. Google threatened [...]
Google shocked the world this week by announcing that it would rather shut down its China operations than comply with China’s censorship laws. The announcement was applauded by human rights organizations around the world, with bouquets of flowers being laid across Google’s sign at the entrance to its large Beijing headquarters. Meanwhile Google investors are [...]
For three days, beginning July 4th, major South Korean and US government Web sites were put out of commission by distributed denial of service attacks. Dozens of top South Korean government and commercial Web sites, and US Web sites including the Federal Trade Commission, the Secret Service, the Transportation Department, and The Washington Post, were [...]
The three founders of The Pirate Bay, the most popular bit torrent file-sharing site on the Internet, have been found guilty of violating copyright law by a Swedish court. The founders and their financial backer have been sentenced to a year in prison and fined $3.6 million in damages which will go to the leading [...]
US national security officials have reported that foreign cyberspies have penetrated the systems that control the U.S. electric grid putting the entire US infrastructure at risk. Software was discovered on the servers that control the flow of US electricity which could be launched remotely to bring down the countries electric grid. Taking down the countries [...]
Internet technologies have become key tools for extremist groups and terrorists looking to advance their cause. A recent U.S. Army intelligence report warned of terrorists using social networking tools like Twitter to communicate anonymously with cell members, and to detonate roadside bombs. A security report released this week pointed out that extremist groups in Southeast [...]
Ken’s Tech News Bookmarks
