What Twitter outage means for you
Posted: Thursday, August 6 2009 at 03:27 pm CT by Bob Sullivan
The best way to get the attention of a classroom full of rowdy kids is to turn the lights off. And the best way to get the attention of Internet users is to essentially do the same thing.
Thursday’s Twitter denial-of-service hack certainly grabbed everyone's attention. Nothing like a total shutdown to make people sit up and take notice. But relatively speaking, denialof-service attacks are harmless. Everyone's been through it - CNN, Yahoo, Microsoft. Heck, Facebook and LiveJournal were hit Thursday, too, by the social media bandwidth bandit. (Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal.)
But Twitter's been hit by far more serious security issues in the recent past.. Just last month, a hacker wormed his way through Twitter and into personal documents of a company executive. Earlier this year, a hacker managed to impersonate several high-profile public figures (including President Barack Obama and CNN's Rick Sanchez) by hijacking their Twitter accounts. Not to mention all the spam, viruses, and malicious links that are finding their way around the microblogging site these days.
Oops, we did it again. We invented a cool new technology, got millions of people hooked on it, seduced them into over-sharing information through a false sense of security, and created a wonderful playground for hackers. E-mail, Web browsers, online shopping, Facebook -- they've all gone through the same growing pains.
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Wikipedia, Google show Obama racial slur
Posted: Tuesday, February 17 2009 at 04:43 pm CT by Bob Sullivan
Web surfers who used Google.com to search for information on President Barack Obama on Tuesday afternoon were presented with a racial slur. The slur originated from Obama's Wikipedia entry, after a user had removed all content in Obama's entry and replaced it with three repeated words: a derogatory term for African-Americans.
Wikipedia.com's revision history records show that slur was only live for two minutes, with the Obama page edited to include the slur at 4:44 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time (just before midnight ET) and the original content restored at 4:46.
But the slur lived on in Google search results. Anyone who Googled “Obama,” “Barack Obama,” or “President Barack Obama” was presented with a link to the Wikipedia reference page showing the racial slur , sometimes as high as the second result. It was removed about 4 p.m. ET after msnbc.com made inquiries to Google.
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Facebook ID theft targets 'friends'
Posted: Friday, January 30 2009 at 07:00 am CT by Bob Sullivan
Bob Sullivan reports on the Facebook scam on MSNBC cable. Click for VIDEO
Bryan Rutberg's daughter was among the first to notice something odd about her dad's Facebook page.
At about 8 p.m. on Jan. 21, she ran into his bedroom and asked why he'd changed his status to: “BRYAN IS IN URGENT NEED OF HELP!!!"
Rutberg initially thought little of it, and lay down for an after-dinner nap. But an hour later, when his wife woke him to ask what was wrong, he took a second look and realized his Facebook account had been hacked. Within minutes, his cell phone was ringing non-stop, with concerned friends calling to offer help. Many had received an e-mail with the story that Rutberg had been robbed at gunpoint while traveling in the United Kingdom, and needed money to get home. One even sent $1,200 to a Western Union branch in London.
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Obama, CNN Twitter accounts hacked
Posted: Monday, January 5 2009 at 03:16 pm CT by Bob Sullivan
Social networking tool Twitter was hit by a major hacker attack on Monday, with several "high profile" accounts -- including that of President-elect Barack Obama -- taken over by computer criminals, the firm said.
The hackers then impersonated a series of famous users by sending out fake, sometimes embarrassing messages.
Among them was a Twitter message posted on CNN anchor Rick Sanchez's blog that said Sanchez "might not be coming into work today," because of drug use. The message was quickly removed.
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Tech: What will go wrong in 2009
Posted: Tuesday, December 30 2008 at 05:00 am CT by Bob Sullivan
At 12:30 a.m. on Dec. 2, hackers pulled off what might have been the perfect computer crime. You can expect a host of imitators during 2009.
Beginning early that morning and continuing for nine hours, customers who visited MyCheckFree.com to pay bills made an unexpected visit to computer servers in the Ukraine. The customers did nothing wrong; many followed a bookmark or even typed in the Web address manually, as security experts advise. And Checkfree didn't do anything wrong either. The company's computers weren't hacked.
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eBay users: holiday giveaway hacked
Posted: Tuesday, December 2 2008 at 10:32 am CT by Bob Sullivan
eBay.com users are complaining that a holiday contest offered by the auction Web site has been overrun by Scrooge-like computer hackers, and that eBay’s poor design for the contest is to blame.
As part of its "Holiday Doorbusters" promotion, eBay is giving away about 1,000 items -- everything from jet skis to iPods to a Corvette -- for $1. The first buyer to find and bid $1 on the specially-marked items wins. But users say the contest has been overrun by "cheaters" who are implementing automated scripts to game the contest, winning hundreds of auctions before the items are even available to the public.
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‘Forgot your password?’ may be weakest link
Posted: Tuesday, August 26 2008 at 05:00 am CT by Bob Sullivan
Almost everyone forgets a Web site password once in a while. When you do, you click on the familiar "Forgot your password?" link and, after entering your pet's name, identifying your high school mascot or answering some other seemingly obscure questions, you can get back into your account.
But there's a problem: A criminal can do that, too. With the help of social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, personal trivia is getting less obscure all the time. You’d be surprised how easily someone can uncover Fido's name or your alma mater with a little creative searching.
Some security researchers are beginning to sound the alarm about "password resetting" tools, suggesting they could be the weakest link in Web security.
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Did PIN thieves grab hacking's Holy Grail?
Posted: Tuesday, August 12 2008 at 05:00 am CT by Bob Sullivan
Could a hacker steal enough information from a store you’ve shopped at to print up fake debit cards in your name and withdraw cash from your checking account at an ATM? Even if you’ve never told a soul your PIN code?
In fact, said the Justice Department last week, it’s already happened, possibly to millions of people.
Buried in last week’s indictments of 11 alleged international computer hackers accused of stealing 40 million credit and debit account numbers from U.S. retailers was something far more unsettling: At at least one retail chain, the indictments accuse the group of swiping encrypted versions of debit card PINs, decrypting them, then using the information to print debit cards and get cash from ATMs.
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Are airline kiosks safe?
Posted: Tuesday, July 29 2008 at 05:00 am CT by Bob Sullivan
Airline travelers may want to think twice about swiping their credit cards at airport self-service check-in kiosks following the possible theft of credit card account numbers from the kiosks at Canada's largest airport in Toronto.
One Canadian airline, WestJet, already has suspended use of credit cards for check-in at the Toronto kiosks in the wake of the investigation by Visa and MasterCard, which was revealed last week. Fliers can still use the machines, but now must use other methods – by swiping frequent flier cards, entering confirmation codes or using their passports.
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