Friday 09/11/09

Twitter Tweaks Terms Of Service, “Your Tweets Belong To You”
Twitter co-founder Biz Stone just posted news on an update on changes to Twitter’s Terms of Service, “leaving the door open” for advertising opportunities, clearing the air on ownership of Tweets, and updating guidelines around Twitter’s API. Stone also mentioned that the new Terms of Service address spam and abusive behavior on Twitter.

The privacy clause about Tweets is big, considering this was a significant issue for Facebook. Twitter has deflected talk of advertising on on the platform in the past, but it seems pretty clear that they’re looking into it now as a real source of income as they strive for revenues. Stone addressed the issue of Twitter’s revenue recently, which is a complex issue.

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New Version of McAfee FileInsight
Thursday September 10, 2009 at 6:52 am CST

Today we released the new version 2.1 of McAfee FileInsight. You can download your free copy from the Avert Tools site. FileInsight is a handy integrated tool environment for web site and file analysis. Hex editing, syntax highlighting, and it comes with several built-in decoders, built-in calculator, a disassembler, JavaScript scripting support, a Python-based plugin system and many more.

Let’s go through some stages of an exemplary malware attack to highlight some of its analysis features – but don’t try this stunt at home, unless you know what you’re doing; a safe, isolated lab environment is absolutely mandatory for any such research work.

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Chinese Pharmacy Spam and Our Monthly Spam Report
Thursday September 10, 2009 at 4:58 am CST

The recent onslaught of “Chinese pharmacy” spam and the DDoS attacks that took down Twitter, Facebook, and others have caused a frenzy of speculation about the Chinese government’s involvement in spam generation and acts of cyberterrorism. McAfee’s September 2009 Spam Report debunks these rumors and gets to the root of the cause.

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Disney Sued For Selling The Pixar Lamp... And The Lawsuit Makes Sense

We usually focus on trademark lawsuits that make no sense at all... but effective trademark law exists to prevent confusion among consumers (i.e., it's really more of a consumer protection law, rather than an "intellectual property" law) and thus there are plenty of reasonable trademark infringement lawsuits out there. This appears to be one of them. Lamp maker Luxo is apparently suing Disney for selling real versions of Pixar's iconic computer animated lamp.

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A Look At The RIAA's Copyright Propaganda For Schools

It's back to school time, and our friends over at the RIAA have a blog post up excitedly talking up its special "curriculum" for teachers. But, of course, that "curriculum" is laughably biased and at times outright wrong. And it makes me wonder: why would any educational institution accept a one-sided curriculum written by the industry that's clearly designed to promote that industry's own business? Do schools use science curricula provided by Exxon or Monsanto? As for the actual content included in the curriculum (which, by the way, the RIAA links to incorrectly twice), it's almost a joke. Check out the RIAA propaganda. Fair use doesn't exist -- at all. Reading through the main document, I find not a single mention of it. But what does exist is all sorts of bogeymen about how evil file sharing is, how it exposes your hard drive to viruses and reveals your tax return info.

Oh, but the best part, is that the RIAA is pushing for a new totally made up term called "songlifting" which is the central theme of every single lesson. Sounds like "shoplifting," right? That's the idea -- though the RIAA cleverly tries to pretend that it didn't make up the word. In fact, it presents it as if it's a common term. Of course, the curriculum doesn't happen to mention the Supreme Court's Dowling decision, where the court specifically talked about how very different infringement is from "stealing." Of course, the RIAA also mentions the Grokster ruling -- but is misleading there as well, claiming that the law is clear that parents could be found liable for their kids sharing unauthorized files.

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Got That New iPod Nano? You Might Risk Arrest In Massachusetts

You may have heard that the new iPod Nano that was just released happens to include a voice recorder among other new features. But if you get one, you might want to be careful how you use it -- especially in certain states, such as Massachusetts. Slashdot points us to a story about a guy who was arrested in a dispute-gone-wrong with a car repair shop, but the really odd part is that beyond disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, the guy was charged with both "unlawful wiretapping and possessing a device for wiretapping." Wiretapping? In a dispute involving a mechanic? Apparently the guy had a simple Olympus digital voice recorder in his pocket, which was on during his argument with the repair shop. And Massachusetts is one of twelve states with a law that forbids taping conversations without the approval of everyone involved.

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Class Says AT&T Profits From Phone Thefts
By TRACEY DALZELL WALSH
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (CN) - AT&T refuses to disable or track down stolen cell phones and allows the thieves to re-register them in a new name, a class action claims in Federal Court. The class claims AT&T aids and abets the conversion of stolen phones, profits again by making victims buy replacements, and profits again when the thieves pay fees for service after reregistering the phones.

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Firefox updated for security flaws
Chuck Miller September 10, 2009
The Firefox browser has been updated for four security flaws, three of which were rated as "critical."

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Hot or not: ActiveX vulnerabilities
Amol Sawarte, manager, Vulnerabilities Research Lab, Qualys September 11, 2009
ActiveX vulnerabilities have posed a security challenge for some time, and they're likely to be a challenge for quite some time to come.

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Adobe, Oracle delay quarterly patches
Adobe, which was scheduled to release the latest installment of its quarterly patches on Tuesday, instead has held off until Oct. 13. The company was set back a month after it released an out-of-cycle patch on July 31 for "critical" vulnerabilities in Reader and Acrobat. Meanwhile, Oracle announced last week that it was delaying the release of its next round of quarterly fixes from Oct. 13 to Oct. 20 to accommodate attendees of the Oracle OpenWorld conference, which runs from Oct. 11 to 15. — DK

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Net Hoax Convinces Germany of Fake U.S. Suicide Bombing Attempt

FRANKFURT — All of Germany was bamboozled Thursday by a bizarre scheme that tricked the country’s main wire service into reporting an attempted suicide bombing in a California town — an attack supposedly perpetrated by a non-existent rap group called the “Berlin Boys.”

The work of German filmmakers peddling a satirical movie called Short Cut to Hollywood, the elaborate hoax involved at least two faked websites, a faked Wikipedia entry and California phone numbers for “public safety” officials that actually being answered by hoaxsters in Germany using Skype.

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Attorneys Can See Classified Info in Coffee Table Spy Suit
By Kim Zetter
September 11, 2009

A federal judge in Washington has ordered the government to grant security clearances to lawyers on both sides of a lawsuit claiming illegal spying against a DEA agent, in a ruling that challenges the government’s long-held claim that the executive branch alone has the authority to determine who can access classified material.

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T-Mobile: 21 Mbps In 2010As carrier launches the first Motorola Android phone09:03AM Friday Sep 11 2009 by Karl Bode
Earlier this week we noted how T-Mobile's quickly playing catch up with 3G network coverage after a late start. The carrier this week also announced Motorola's first Android Phone (The Cliq) during which, T-Mobile's Chief Technology Officer Cole Brodman detailed further 3G rollout plans for 2009 and 2010. By the end of 2009, T-Mobile is not only planning to match ATT's 7.2mbps HSDPA rollout with its own, but intends on overtaking ATT with a 21mbps HSDPA rollout beginning in 2010. It's not clear when T-Mobile plans to officially make the jump to LTE, which AT&T says they'll start deploying in 2011. Combined with news that T-Mobile's European parent company Deutsche Telekom is planning on massive investments in the U.S., it appears that T-Mobile's suiting up for battle.

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Microsoft patches gaping worm holes
Ryan Naraine: Microsoft today released a peck of patches to cover at least seven documented worm holes in the Windows operating system.

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Cloud ready? Most pros work from 3 or more PCs
Jason Hiner: IT workers are often some of cloud computing's biggest detractors, mostly because of their skepticism of the security and privacy implications of the cloud.

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Researchers slam fickle iPhone anti-fraud feature
The iPhone's newest defense -- aimed at preventing users from reaching phishing sites -- is...

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Hacker Hits RBS WorldPay Systems Database
Sep 11,2009
Romanian hacker says he discovered a SQL injection flaw on a WorldPay application, but RBS says no merchant or cardholder data was compromised

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DuPont Alleges Second Insider Breach In Two Years
Sep 09,2009
Chemical giant claims former employee was headed to China with company secrets

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Oops, There Goes Another DLP Vendor
In the latest sign of data-loss prevention (DLP) market consolidation, Trustwave announced it has acquired Vericept for an undisclosed amount.

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Spanish security firm detects 'swine flu' computer virus AFP – Fri Sep 11, 12:34 pm ET
AFP/File
MADRID (AFP) - Cyber criminals are taking advantage of swine flu fears with e-mails promising news on the illness which then infect computers with a virus, a Spanish computer security firm warned Friday.

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