Australia charges man claiming to be LulzSec leader
Australia has charged a 24-year-old man who allegedly defaced a government website earlier this month and claims to be the leader of LulzSec, a rogue inactive hacking group.
The man, from Point Clare about 50 miles north of Sydney, was charged with two counts of unauthorized modification of data and one count of unauthorized access. He could face up to 12 years in prison if convicted, according to the Australian Federal Police (AFP). Read more...
AP Twitter hack prompts fresh look at cyber security needs
Getting hacked on Twitter is fast becoming a rite of passage for big corporations, but Tuesday's attack on the Associated Press could be a tipping point and shows that social networks must do more to keep their users safe, security experts said.
Wider use of two-factor authentication, which can involve an access code being sent to a user on a second device such as a smartphone, is one possible solution. Such a mechanism could be introduced selectively, some experts said, for high profile accounts such as celebrities and large corporations. Read more...
Largest bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox, ‘throttles’ trading to tame price swings
The largest bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox, is in a continuing battle with miscreants trying to manipulate the price of the virtual currency.
Early Monday, Mt. Gox wrote on its Facebook page that it was once again struggling with a very large distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attack. The exchange said earlier this month it has been hit by attacks upwards of 80Gbps, which it believed were intended to swing bitcoin's price.
The virtual currency can be bought on exchanges around the world. But Mt. Gox's market tends to set the price of bitcoin since it is has the highest volume of trades and users. Confidence in the bitcoin market is somewhat dependant on Mt. Gox's ability to keep its exchange running smoothly. Read more...
Amazon: We’re expanding into TWO HUNDRED countries
Amazon's Android software store will soon be available across 200 countries - many of which don't have official access to Amazon's Android hardware - as the bookstore continues its quest for world domination.
While Google limits itself to selling apps across 134 countries (and even the UN only boasts 193 members) Amazon will be hawking its Android catalogue across 200 countries - despite selling its Kindle Fire (Android) hardware in only a fraction of them. So residents of Australia, Canada, India and Brazil will be able to download the bookseller's wares, along with those based in the Vatican City, and in fact just about everywhere else, assuming they've a credit card with which to pay. Read more...
Facebook: We’ll show you our PUE, now you show us yours
The data center industry has come a long way from the days when organizations closely guarded their efficiency secrets. Facebook is now the poster child for green-data center openness: Not only has the company shared details about its data center equipment and designs through its Open Compute Project, it is now providing the public with a near-real-time view of its data centers' energy efficiency via online dashboards. Beyond that, Facebook is offering the code to let other companies create dashboards of their own to make public their data centers' ongoing efficiency metrics. Read more...
Google outages blamed on sign-in system
A malfunctioning log-in system affected millions of people's ability to access a variety of Google applications on Wednesday, including Gmail and Drive.
The problem, which lasted for about three hours on Wednesday morning, occurred when the main user authentication system for Google applications was misconfigured.
The improper configuration, introduced on Tuesday, caused log-in requests to be funneled to a small number of servers, which in turn ran out of capacity, and the overload caused them to malfunction. Read more...
Cloud fight keeps Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Rackspace clamoring for enterprise customers
Amazon Web Services is attempting to distance itself from other cloud providers by enhancing its services to incorporate the differentiating features of its competitors.
But as Amazon sets its sights more keenly on the enterprise market, recent moves by Microsoft, Google, and Rackspace to improve their IaaS (infrastructure as a service) cloud offerings are creating an increasingly competitive cloud market, experts say.
"There's a war going on in the IaaS market," says Paul Burns, an analyst at Neovise, a boutique research firm focusing on the cloud. Last week in New York, Amazon hosted one of 13 Summits it plans to hold across the world in the coming weeks, touting the success of its platform and trotting out examples of enterprise customers using its services. And it provided the backdrop for Amazon to discuss the recent advancements of its services. Read more...
Firefox Mobile OS will launch in five countries this summer
Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs noted during the All Things D conference on Monday that Firefox OS will launch in five countries starting this summer. The mobile operating system, designed for budget handsets, will show up first in Brazil, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Venezuela, the outgoing CEO said.
During the chat, Kovacs said the whole mission with Firefox OS is to stimulate the economy. He referenced Mozilla’s entrance into the browser market as a time when the number of people, websites and experiences on the web exploded. Read more...
Mobile a top priority for Yahoo in 2013, Mayer says
Yahoo wants to accelerate its development of mobile products geared toward delivery of personalized content, CEO Marissa Mayer said Tuesday, as the company works to stay relevant in a world where smartphones and tablets are becoming dominant.
How Yahoo will accomplish that goal is not immediately clear -- it has yet to announce any specific mobile apps or services it has in the pipeline -- but it was an objective oft-repeated during the company's first-quarter earnings call.
But if the "how" is not clear, the "why" is more evident. Mobile is top of mind for all Internet firms, Google and Facebook included, and mobile will be crucial to Yahoo's efforts to increase user engagement and expand advertising revenue. Read more...
Reg Office 365 Live Chat: What’s in it for you?
Microsoft Office is the planet’s most ubiquitous productivity suite and Word and Excel still set the standard on personal productivity apps.
The way the software suite is embedded in each office's day-to-day business means that with each new update, Microsoft finds itself struggling to convince people to upgrade. After all, the enterprise in general is known for its tendency to cling to what it's used to.
This time, there’s a new challenge - and it’s not Google Docs: it's the web. Microsoft released Office 2013 with an updated Office 365, a package of webbified Office apps such as Word and Excel combined with Microsoft hosted versions of Exchange, Lync and SharePoint once found in the old Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS). Read more...
Hands up who wants 3D finger-controlled fridges? That’s the spirit
The companies betting that we'll want to manipulate everything electronic around us with a wave of a hand are already laying claim to various types of body movement.
The technology to detect gestures is included in laptops and televisions shipping right now, but like the touchscreen phone world, it is riddled with patent applications.
Just as no one except Apple can make a phone with a "slide to unlock" feature, no one except PointGrab can make a TV that mutes when a finger is placed on one's lips. No one except EyeSight can recognise a gesture without taking the background into account, at least until the lawyers get to work. Read more...
Chinese iOS pirate Kuaiyong launches web app store
A Chinese group which has made it its mission to take a bite out of Apple’s iTunes revenue share is at it again, launching a full web version of its iOS app store jam-packed with pirated content.
Chinese language app Kuayiong was originally launched at the tail end of last year to fill the gap left by the equally dodgy jailbreak app Installous.
Its mission: to allow local fanbois to download and install pirated apps on their iDevices without jailbreaking them in a quick, easy and secure manner – which was bad news for both Apple and community of iOS developers. Read more...