‘Nitro’ Hackers Reportedly Attack Dozens Of Companies In Chemical, Defense Industries | Fox News

Hackers reportedly used an off-the-shelf virus created in China to compromise the computers of nearly 50 companies, including in the chemical and defense industries — an attack described as being in the same family as the notorious Stuxnet virus, if not as severe.

The goal of the attacks, reported Monday by security software company Symantec, “appears to be to collect intellectual property such as design documents, formulas, and manufacturing processes,” the report said.

Symantec dubbed the attack “Nitro” and said a total of 29 companies in the chemical industry were targeted, in addition to 19 in other sectors. Among the companies were some that develop materials used primarily in military vehicles.

The infected computers spanned the globe, from the United States to Denmark to Saudi Arabia and Japan.

via ‘Nitro’ Hackers Reportedly Attack Dozens Of Companies In Chemical, Defense Industries | Fox News.

No Friends In Ireland: Probe Begins Into Facebook Privacy Issues | Fox News

Privacy watchdogs began an on-site investigation Tuesday of Facebook’s regional office in Ireland, FoxNews.com has learned, following sensational accusations that the company is creating extensive “shadow profiles” of non-users.

The eye-popping assertion came in a complaint filed in August by Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner, which alleges that users are encouraged to hand over the personal data of others. That includes “sensitive data such as political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, sexual orientation and so forth” — and Facebook is storing it all up in its databases.

Despite the company’s firm denials, the Data Protection Office began hunting for evidence on Tuesday, Oct. 25, to back up those claims.

“The on-site element started on Tuesday,” Lisa McGann, a spokeswoman for the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner, told FoxNews.com. The search will take a number of days, she said, but she could not address questions about what specifically the commissioner hoped to find or had already discovered.

In such investigations, the office has the power to inspect the building, question employees, and take away copies of any files stored on local computers, according to the Commissioner’s audit guidelines. The agency will then pore over that data for the next few weeks.

“It is the intention of the commissioner that the investigation will be completed by the end of the year,” McGann told FoxNews.com. The organization conducts few such reports each year; according to the Data Protection Commissioner’s 2010 annual report, the office opened 231 formal complaints under the Privacy in Electronic Communications Regulations act — but only conducted 32 “comprehensive privacy audits.”

via No Friends In Ireland: Probe Begins Into Facebook Privacy Issues | Fox News.

Hotmail Reborn? Microsoft Overhauls World’s Most Popular Email Service | Fox News

Hotmail is getting hip again.

Microsoft on Monday pushed the reboot button on the world’s biggest email service, unveiling a series of new features intended to help the service’s approximately 350 million users better sort through the clutter in their in-boxes.

Five new features were unveiled at Windows Live event in San Francisco, including a new tool to deal with “graymail” — meaning newsletters and social networking updates that aren’t quite spam but aren’t quite legitimate emails either — a way to automatically clean up an in-box, improved flags to move key emails to the top of the mailbox, and more.

“75 percent of email identified as spam by our customers actually turns out to be unwanted graymail that they receive as a result of having signed up on a legitimate website,” explained Dick Craddock, program manager for the Hotmail service, in a Microsoft blog unveiling the new features.

To sort through those items, the company unveiled a new newsletter category that lets users flag such emails and read them at their leisure — or simply delete the darn things. A one-click unsubscribe feature makes it easy to stop getting an unwanted newsletter as well, something that should come as a relief to those suffering from inbox bloat.

The company also unveiled a scheduled cleanup feature to keep only the latest event email from a site, only the latest deals from Groupon, or only the newest newsletter — yet another way of keeping out the clutter.

via Hotmail Reborn? Microsoft Overhauls World’s Most Popular Email Service | Fox News.

Researchers Hack Voting Machine For $26 | Fox News

Campaigning for the 2012 presidential race has already begun, but what the candidates don’t know is that come election day, hackers could be the ones whose votes have the biggest impact.

Researchers from the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois have developed a hack that, for about $26 and an 8th-grade science education, can remotely manipulate the electronic voting machines used by millions of voters all across the U.S.

The researchers, Salon reported, performed their proof-of-concept hack on a Diebold Accuvote TS electronic voting machine, a type of touchscreen Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting system that is widely used for government elections.

(Diebold’s voting-machine business is now owned by the Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems, whose e-voting machines are used in about 22 states.)

In a video, Roger Johnston and Jon Warner from Argonne National Laboratory’s Vulnerability Assessment Team demonstrate three different ways an attacker could tamper with, and remotely take full control, of the e-voting machine simply by attaching what they call a piece of “alien electronics” into the machine’s circuit board.

via Researchers Hack Voting Machine For $26 | Fox News.

Researchers Hack Voting Machine For $26 | Fox News

Campaigning for the 2012 presidential race has already begun, but what the candidates don’t know is that come election day, hackers could be the ones whose votes have the biggest impact.

Researchers from the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois have developed a hack that, for about $26 and an 8th-grade science education, can remotely manipulate the electronic voting machines used by millions of voters all across the U.S.

The researchers, Salon reported, performed their proof-of-concept hack on a Diebold Accuvote TS electronic voting machine, a type of touchscreen Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting system that is widely used for government elections.

(Diebold’s voting-machine business is now owned by the Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems, whose e-voting machines are used in about 22 states.)

In a video, Roger Johnston and Jon Warner from Argonne National Laboratory’s Vulnerability Assessment Team demonstrate three different ways an attacker could tamper with, and remotely take full control, of the e-voting machine simply by attaching what they call a piece of “alien electronics” into the machine’s circuit board.

via Researchers Hack Voting Machine For $26 | Fox News.