Security & Privacy

Security company Kaspersky Labs has intercepted a new variant of the Tibet malware for OS X, which is being distributed to specific Uyghur activist groups as part of a seemingly politically motivated APT (advanced persistent threat) attack.

The malware is being distributed in e-mails to certain Uyghur Mac users, and is contained within a ZIP file called "matiriyal.zip." If this file is opened it will reveal an image file and a text file that is a disguised OS X application that if run will install the malware. Once installed, the malware will connect to a command-and-control server based in more

Last year a U.S. military drone doing reconnaissance in Iran disappeared. Iranian government officials there said they had steered the device off course by interfering with its GPS signals.

Such an attack, called GPS spoofing, had previously been considered theoretical. A research team at the University of Texas at Austin has demonstrated that the GPS signals of an unmanned aerial vehicle can be commandeered remotely. This demonstration highlights security concerns with plans to allow thousands of military and civilian drones in U.S. airspace by 2015.

"I think this demonstration should certainly raise some eyebrows and serve as a more

Stratfor has agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit filed against the global intelligence firm after hackers affiliated with Anonymous stole subscriber data from its computers last year, Reuters reported today.

The settlement -- which calls for Stratfor to offer subscribers one month of free access to its service, a digital version of a book, and credit-monitoring service, in addition to paying attorney fees -- is expected to cost the company about $1.75 million, according to the settlement given preliminary approval by Judge Denis Hurley in U.S. federal court in New York.

Stratfor does not admit any "wrongdoing, fault, more

A group of hackers has posted to the Web today data that appears to include Comcast employee names, ages and salaries, as well as e-mails and passwords associated with AT&T VoIP service accounts.

Proclaiming the kickoff of "#WikiBoatWednesday...when all the members from @TheWikiBoat fight corruption, leak data, and bring down websites," the hackers released the data in two different posts to the Pastebin Web site. Several of the Twitter handles used by the group, including @AnonymousWiki, referenced the Anonymous online activist group, but the connection to the larger, decentralized collective is unclear.

"The first part is (Comcast) Employee more

Encryption hasn't made it to mainstream consumers because it isn't always easy to use and because the person at the other end needs to be using it too. A new free iOS app called Wickr solves at least the first of those issues.

Wickr, which is available on the iTunes store beginning today, offers military-grade encryption for protecting text, photo, audio, and video messages.

All messages you send disappear within six days, unless you want them to self-destruct earlier than that. You can also set individual messages to autodestruct within a set period of time after the recipient more

Popular Web sites are far more aggressive in their consumer-tracking practices than most people suspect, according to the first report of UC Berkeley Law School's Web Privacy Census, and consumers are trapped in an escalating privacy crisis with limited control over their personal information.

The main goal of the census is to "define and quantify vectors for tracking consumers on the Internet," in essence to create a critically needed evaluation component to measure the ever-changing and often-evasive methods companies use to track visitors.

Not surprisingly, the quarterly report released yesterday saw that all of the top 100 sites use more

Google has awarded several folks serious cash for finding security holes in its Chrome browser.

A researcher identified as "miaubiz" earned the lion's share of the cash Google doled out, securing $7,000 for finding a host of High priority security flaws. The remaining $4,500 was spread around to other users. The majority of flaws netted users $1,000 each.

"We'd also like to thank Arthur Gerkis, Atte Kettunen of OUSPG and miaubiz for working with us during the development cycle and preventing security regressions from ever reaching the stable channel," Google wrote yesterday in a blog more

Facebook exists to help you unburden yourself from your most onerous thoughts -- and to burden the whole world with them.

Sometimes, though, the unburdening is ill-judged. Sometimes you wish that you could take back your words and swallow them whole.

Yes, Facebook announced recently that you can edit your posts. But one wonders whether your conscience will be quicker than the social consciousness of a new site called We Know What You're Doing.

For this site insistently displays all of humanity's Facebook foibles in one easily indigestible place.

Yes, there are categories like "Who wants to get more

So, Orbitz has spilled the beans, well some of them, and says it in essence up-sells to people based on which browser they use.

The site told The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) that it discovered that Mac users tend to pay as much as 30 percent more for hotel rooms. (Well, they are paying a premium for the computer too so it's not that surprising, although $20 to $30 more is significant.) Leveraging that information, Orbitz decided to experiment with displaying pricier hotels in search results to Mac users than to Windows users. Before you get too miffed, more