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Submission + - Facebook uses scare tactics to mine more user data (sophos.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Facebook is being accused of using similar scaremongering tactics to those deployed by fake anti-virus scams and phishing attacks, under the pretext of actually making users' accounts better protected.

Messages tell Facebook users that their "Account protection status" is currently "very low", but ask users to hand over alternative email addresses, mobile phone numbers, etc.

Security firm Sophos says it has received a number of messages from concerned Facebook users who were worried that the alerts were bogus, and declares that the "suggestion that users' accounts currently have a protection status of "very low" is entirely misleading and stinks of scare tactics."

Submission + - Websites Don't Have to Remove Defamatory Comments (internetcases.com)

Submitted by DustyShadow
DustyShadow writes: In the case of Blockowicz v. Williams, The US Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals refused to force Ripoff Report to remove allegedly defamatory comments posted by a user. The Ripoff Report has a well-publicized no-takedown policy, even if the author wants to remove his/her post, so the Ripoff Report refused. The Blockowiczs then claimed that the Ripoff Report violated FRCP 65(d) because the Ripoff Report was "in active concert or participation" with the initial posters by refusing the injunction's removal order. The district court (and the Court of Appeals) disagreed with the Blockowiczs. Absent the "active concert or participation," the website was outside the court's control. Ripoff Report has released a statement concerning this case: "In keeping with our core mission of protecting speech to the fullest extent of the law, we decided that it was not just our right but also our duty to ask questions and dig deeper before we could comply with such an order. Other sites claim they support free speech, but when the going gets rough, they will usually protect their bottom line rather than the Constitutional rights and freedoms this country was founded upon. Unlike other sites, even when the speech involved is harsh or negative and even if our position sometimes generates negative press for us, we think that the First Amendment requires us to put our principles before our pocketbook and fight against censorship."
Transportation

Submission + - Boeing, Boeing ... Gone? 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "The Seattle Times reports that as Boeing prepares to announce yet another delay for the 787 Dreamliner — at least three months, possibly six or more — the crucial jet program is in even worse shape than it appears with problems go well beyond the latest setback, an in-flight electrical fire last month that has grounded the test planes. Meanwhile, on the production side, one veteran employee on the 787 said he's witnessing "the perfect storm of manufacturing hell." The global supply chain is at a standstill, and outside the Everett factory the rows of partly finished jets will take many months to complete. "The purpose of flight tests is to find out what you did wrong," says a senior engineer who expects the 787 will ultimately prove successful. "But the amount of stuff we are finding is horrible. We shouldn't be dealing with this many issues this late in the program." Jon Talton writes that Boeing has bet the company on the Dreamliner and now faces cost overruns of $12 billion or more. "The experience of doing the 787 on the cheap with a globalized supply chain should shake the foundations of "Welchism," the brutal management style, intimidating anti-employee bias and mania for quick results of retired General Electric chief executive Jack Welch," writes Talton. "Boeing is running out of time to ensure its "game changer" doesn't change the game permanently in favor of Airbus and new competitors.""
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft: mules, not phishing victims, lose money (microsoft.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Our examination of mules has interesting implications. First, it suggests that it is not the victims of phishing and keylogging that lose money but money mules. Second, mule recruitment is the major bottleneck in the fraud pipeline: without them stolen credentials are worth little. Third, this explains why credentials sell for small fractions of their face value; i.e. there is an insufficient supply of mules to drain the number of compromised accounts. Finally, it shows there is no shortage of compromised accounts. Thus a reduction in the rate of account compromise will not reduce fraud at all, at least until account compromise is at a level small enough that it becomes the bottleneck. The only effective way to reduce online fraud is by making mule recruitment even harder.
Security

Submission + - Former Employee Stole Ford Secrets worth $50m (threatpost.com)

Submitted by chicksdaddy
chicksdaddy writes: Threatpost writes that a ten year veteran of U.S. automaker Ford pleaded guilty in federal court on November 17 to charges that he stole company secrets, including design documents, valued at between $50 million and $100 million and sharing them with his new employer: the Chinese division of a U.S. rival of Ford's. Xiang Dong ("Mike") Yu admitted to copying some 4,000 Ford Documents to a external hard drive, including design specifications for key components of Ford automobiles, after surreptitiously taking a job with a China-based competitor in 2006. Yu, who took a job for Beijing Automotive Company in 2008, was arrested during a stopover in Chicago in October, 2009. The FBI seized his Beijing Automotive-issued laptop at the time. An analysis found 41 stolen Ford specification documents on the hard drive. He faces five to six years in prison and a $150,000 fine, according to a statement by Barbara McQuade, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft (probably) didn't just buy Unix (itworld.com)

Submitted by jfruhlinger
jfruhlinger writes: Word came down this morning that, when Attachmate bought Novell, certain intellectual property rights were sold to a Microsoft-led consortium as part of the deal. Since Unix is the most valuable piece of IP Novell owns, there was a certain amount of panic that suddenly Redmond is in charge of this foundational technology for Linux and a number of other open source projects. But, while MS is being cagey, Brian Proffitt doubts that Unix was part of the IP package that was sold — and believes that Linux would be safe even if it were.

Submission + - Google Killed my Business

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Hello,
My name is Cris Mitchell and i'm the publisher of an educational website for Photographers called ProPhotoResource.com, We currently have over 12k photographer members across the globe.

This weekend it was brought to our attention that the google bots had detected some javascript on our site that had been exploited by a hacker and was said to contain malicious software, at which point Google took a broadstroke action to temporarily blacklist our site, circumventing our homepage with a with a REPORTED ATTACK PAGE GRAPHIC. In our haste to bring the site back into the good graces of the mighty google, we removed every bit of supposedly malicious code and patched the software that was causing the problem. Google search results for ProPhotoResource.com also claim the same thing. We were only notified by Google after they took such actions.

As mentioned above, ProPhotoResource.com was scrubbed and cleaned of any offending code within minutes of the notification and we have now been waiting over two days for a review of the site to restore our name and get us back online.

While some might feel that Google are doing internet citizens a service, in actuality they are killing small businesses just like mine in the process. We have spent over 5 years building good will on the internet which has now been completely obliterated by a simple 'fully automated' process, with no throat to choke when the process breaks.

What is most infuriating with this matter is that it only took Google seconds to disrupt my site, but who know's how long to restore it. There are no published reinstatement times listed on their site that we could find. Some folks report the process taking up to 4 weeks to complete the review. Judge, jury and executioner will be played by a 'fully automated' script. No SLA, no license agreement, and nobody to call to explain the situation.

While some members and Twitter followers of @CrisMitchell claim that google has not taken us OFFLINE because you can still reach the site by choosing to ignore the warning or by using another browser such as Internet Explorer, this is only partially true because ignoring the warning breaks the CSS and all the links in the site. Our records also indicate only 16% of our visitors are using the Internet Explorer browser. To us this is the equivalent of standing on the street corner and saying "Kiss me it's just a Cold Sore" It's just not gonna happen.

While we completely understand the severity of the situation at the same time there are no published contact numbers on the google website of who to contact to expedite this matter,in the mean time we are losing existing and potentially new members to our site.

Over the weekend we have received an outpouring of support and sympathy from other small business owners who have gone through the same issue, many who did not have the resources to recover and had to shut down their websites.

If you feel this is a newsworthy story, I welcome the opportunity to speak with you further about our situation.

In the interim, I thank your for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,
Cris Mitchell
Publisher
ProPhotoResource.com

Submission + - Feds bust GM hybrid car tech theft to China scheme (networkworld.com)

Submitted by coondoggie
coondoggie writes: An FBI investigation has lead a Michigan couple to be charged with stealing hybrid car information from GM to use in a Chinese auto outfit. A federal indictment charged Yu Qin, aka Yu Chin, 49, and his wife, Shanshan Du, aka Shannon Du, 51, of Troy, Michigan with conspiracy to possess trade secrets without authorization, unauthorized possession of trade secrets, and wire fraud. One of the individuals was also charged with obstruction of justice, said Barbara McQuade, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan in a statement. GM estimates that the value of the stolen documents is over $40 million.
Security

Submission + - "horrendous flaw" found in popular forum software (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by katarn
katarn writes: A simple hack to vBulletin software allows even unskilled people easy access the main administrator username and password. Internet Brands, owner of vBulletin software, has released a fix, but many sites remain vulnerable. Many notable firms use vBulletin software, and this bug could be used to compromise the email addresses and other personal information of thousands of people.

Submission + - Fibers that can hear and sing (kurzweilai.net)

Submitted by apsec112
apsec112 writes: Fibers that can detect and produce sound have been developed by scientists at MIT’s Research Lab of Electronics. The heart of the new acoustic fibers is a plastic commonly used in microphones. The asymmetry of the molecules is what makes the plastic “piezoelectric,” meaning that it changes shape when an electric field is applied to it. The same mechanism that allows piezoelectric devices to translate electricity into motion can work in reverse, generating electricity. Applications could include wearable microphones, biological sensors, and large-area sonar imaging systems with much higher resolutions.
Censorship

Submission + - China censor software team verging on collapse (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by katarn
katarn writes: Apparently domestic and international pressure, security vulnerabilities, and a 2.2Bn lawsuit over alleged stolen code have taken their toll on China's Green Dam software censorship program. Green Dam is a separate program from the "Great Firewall of China", which remains firmly in place. According to Green Dam program partners, funding for the project has not been renewed. The project development team has been shut down and the installation and aftercare team is facing closure. Unsurprisingly there has been no official comment from official Chinese authorities.
Media

Submission + - Court Rules Against Resale on Copyright Works (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: Ars has some very interesting developments from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in regards to "first sale" doctrine. It appears that in order to resell a copyrighted item — even an item with a logo — you should have to track down the original distributor of said item to be given consent to resell it. Of course, the EFF and other cried outrage and stepped in to change this sort of outlandish thinking but if it remains it could be the end of used books, games, music, movies, etc.
Security

Submission + - Cisco warns attendees that its database was hacked (networkworld.com)

Submitted by Julie188
Julie188 writes: Thousands of people got a nasty e-mail this morning from Cisco. The company was warning people that its attendee registration database for its Cisco Live 2010 event was hacked. Cisco Live 2010 is the company's annual user conference, held last week in Las Vegas with an estimated 18,000 in attendance. If it's not embarrassing enough for a company that sells security gear to get hacked, the e-mail also went out to people who didn't register and didn't attend the event. That raises questions about exactly what database was pried open and how bad the damage is. Cisco's e-mail said the hole was quickly closed and only business-card type information was exposed.
United States

Submission + - Grove Says Startups Aren't Answer to Job Creation

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Andy Grove, co-founder and former CEO of Intel, writes in Bloomberg that the idea that high tech startups are the key to job creation in the United States is mistaken and explains why the great Silicon Valley innovation machine hasn’t been creating many jobs lately. According to Grove startups are a wonderful thing, but as much as Americans love the idea of two guys in the garage inventing something that changes the world, startups cannot by themselves increase tech employment. "Equally important is what comes after that mythical moment of creation in the garage, as technology goes from prototype to mass production," writes Grove. "This is the phase where companies scale up. They work out design details, figure out how to make things affordably, build factories, and hire people by the thousands. Scaling is hard work but necessary to make innovation matter." Grove says that the US has forgotten that scaling was crucial to its economic future and that abandoning “commodity” manufacturing like tv sets, lithium-ion batteries, and memory chips to foreign manufacturers have locked the US out of tomorrow’s emerging industries. The solution says Grove is to levy an extra tax on the products of offshored labor and develop a system of financial incentives including a "Scaling Bank" that would make funds available to companies that will scale their American operations. "Such a system would be a daily reminder that while pursuing our company goals, all of us in business have a responsibility to maintain the industrial base on which we depend and the society whose adaptability — and stability — we may have taken for granted. ""

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