Safety Security & Privacy

2013 is the year of the Twitter hack. Having @BurgerKing hacked to promote McDonald’s food may be harmless and fun, but a recent hack showed just how dangerous the trend can be. Last week, the Associated Press’s Twitter account was hacked to send out a tweet that said President Obama was injured in an explosion Continue Reading →

Spanish police have arrested a Dutchman suspected of being behind one of the biggest ever web attacks. The 35 year-old-man was detained in Barcelona following a request from the Dutch public prosecutor. The attack bombarded the websites of anti-junk mail outfit Spamhaus with huge amounts of data in an attempt to knock them offline. It Continue Reading →

Another high-profile hack has hit the internet: this time, daily deal website LivingSocial is the victim. In an internal email, CEO Tim O’Shaughnessy says that the cyber-attack gave hackers access to its users’ names, email addresses, birthdates, and encrypted passwords. The passwords were thankfully both hashed and salted, so unlike some other large hacks targeting Continue Reading →

Twitter is reportedly working on a two-factor authentication system. Wired writes that the company is currently testing the new security solution internally before rolling it out to the public. Following a number of high-profile hacks, including that of Wired editor Mat Honan, several companies have shifted to two-factor authentication, including Apple, Microsoft, and others. Today’s Continue Reading →

The biggest news to hit the tech world on Tuesday was a non-event: the Associated Press’s Twitter account was hacked and sent out the following tweet: The AP said that the tweet came after hackers “made repeated attempts to steal the passwords of AP journalists,” which was (clearly) ultimately successful. The response to the tweet Continue Reading →

Microsoft has launched a new campaign to increase awareness around online privacy issues. The company has long been active in the space, working with a range of players across the industry to educate consumers about Internet privacy, but its new campaign is focused on promoting choice and demonstrating how its products can help. “We don’t Continue Reading →

Google has been fined €145,000 (around $189,000) for what a regulator called “one of the biggest data protection rules violations known.” The fine comes after it was proved Google’s Street View cars illegally collected data from open Wi-Fi networks between 2008 – 2010. German prosecutors dropped criminal proceedings against the search giant last fall after Continue Reading →

A new patent published by the USPTO (via PhoneArena) indicates that Amazon is looking into a way to limit the amount of data exchanged when two parties engage in a mobile payment transaction. The patent describes a way to sub in unique identifiers for information like name and email address that would otherwise be used Continue Reading →

Microsoft announced that it has launched two-step authentication for its Microsoft accounts. This optional feature, which will roll out to all Microsoft accounts over the next few days, works pretty much exactly like the two-factor authentication schemes you are probably already familiar with. Besides your usual password, you will also need a second piece of Continue Reading →

Anyone developing malicious software for mobile devices has set his or her sights almost exclusively on Android at this point. Mobile security vendor NQ has found that Android devices infected with malware grew from 10.8 million in 2011 to 32.8 million in 2012, meaning that the total number of infected devices tripled year-over-year. NQ also Continue Reading →