Menu

Technology

Celebrities aren't the only targets of data thieves

Adam Levin is chairman of Identity Theft 911(Photo: Identity Theft 911)Story HighlightsAverage cybercriminal is after bragging rights, quick cashLaw enforcement facing several hurdlesSEATTLE – The disclosure of celebrities' personally identifiable information, or PII, is grabbing headlines this morning. But it's just another day in the teeming cyberunderground.Caches of names, addresses, Social Security numbers, date of births and payment card data have long been widely posted on the Internet. Hackers sometimes do it to brag or make a political point. But most often, stolen PII flows into forums and exchanges, and are posted for sale -- for simple criminal profit."In most cases, when data is improperly accessed, it is peddled through black market sites," says Adam Levin, chairman of Identity Theft 911. "Oftentimes it is sold and resold."The average cybercriminal is after quick cash, not military or industrial secrets, says Roel Schouwenberg, senior researcher, Kaspersky Lab."Celebrities are a special category as they garner so much attention, which can also mean the criminal just wants to expose them," says Schouwenberg. "Because they attract so much attention there's a much higher chance of a persistent law enforcement effort to catch the perpetrators."Hampering law enforcement is the fact that cybercrime typically occurs across multiple borders. "The issue is which law enforcement agency exercises jurisdiction and what their resources are," Levin says. "They can go after the website, but many of these websites are offshore and it is impossible to collaborate with the authorities which could do something about it."Rich celebrities can put their attorneys and private investigators on the job, cleaning up. The average person is wise to make himself or herself less of a target, says Troy Gill, Senior Security Analyst at message security firm AppRiver"First, practice using lengthy passwords that contain numbers, letters and special symbols. Also use two-factor authentication whenever available…
Read more...

Surf report: Speaker Trio, Ferrari headphones and more

The Speaker Trio starts at $299.99.(Photo: Alice Truong for USA TODAY)Story HighlightsSpeaker Trio comes with stackable cube speakersFerrari lends its name, iconic color to new headphonesBlack Diamond 3 is 'more eye candy than ear candy'The personal audio market gets a little more crowded every day, and we're constantly sifting through it. This week's highlights include modular speakers, racecar-inspired cans and more.A trio of modular speakersBy now, Bluetooth speakers are so mainstream that everyone and their mom has one. Heck, it's not even that unreasonable to own a few. But what good is a pair of Jamboxes when you can only listen to one at a time? (A gripping #firstworldproblem[1], I'm sure.)Bem solves this conundrum with its Speaker Trio[2] ($299.99), a triplet of modular cubes that allow you to listen to music across multiples rooms. Within a single room, you can attempt to emulate surround sound, minus the spliced audio. Measuring 6 inches across all dimensions, these aren't exactly puny in stature, and their audio is reflective of that. Perhaps the most intriguing feature is the ability to add more cubes — up to 99 in total — to the sound system. Starting up such a system would be a spectacle, as instructions require you to turn on the speakers before turning on the base, which also charges the cubes on contact, to connect via Bluetooth. But as soon as a speaker is on, it blasts a repeating tone that's uncomfortably loud, especially when playing in tandem with others just like it.Though the Speaker Trio uses Bluetooth, the individual cubes communicate over a 2.4 gHz signal. The benefit of this is that your one device can broadcast simultaneously to multiple speakers. The downside is that if you live in an area that's particularly congested with wireless signals, say, Union Square in…
Read more...

Windows 8, Android team in new Asus Transformer hybrid

The new Asus Transformer.(Photo: Asus)Story Highlights$1,299 Asus Transformer can run both operating systemsDocked in base station it functions as all-in-one touch-screen desktopLift the screen out of the dock to use it as an oversized tabletWindows 8 and Android make strange bedfellows, yet Microsoft's and Google's operating systems are shacking up inside the versatile new $1,299 Asus Transformer AiO P1801 PC/tablet hybrid.I've had a chance to check it out ahead of its April 12 sales date.Docked in its PC Station base station, the Transformer functions as a small all-in-one touch-screen desktop computer, complete with a wireless keyboard and mouse, 1-terabyte hard drive, built-in CD drive, 3-in-1 memory card reader, Bluetooth and full complement of connectivity options, including ethernet, HDMI, microphone input and four USB 3.0 ports.It has a quad-core Intel i5 processor, graphics from Nvidia and stereo speakers. You can tilt the screen to adjust the viewing angle. In other words, it's a perfectly suitable computer for casual gamers and for folks who turn to PCs to get work done or to be entertained. The whole thing weighs 9 pounds.But that's not the complete story. Lift the screen out of the PC Station and you find yourself holding an oversized (18.35 x 0.71 x 11.57-inch) tablet.It has its own Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core processor, 32 gigabytes of solid-state storage, microSD slot, plus separate volume controls and speakers. The tablet runs on a battery, of course, and also comes with its own dedicated power adapter.A foldable stand lets you prop the tablet at different angles, and a handle lets you easily tote it from room to room. But given its 5.3-pound weight, and enormous 18.4-inch tablet screen, this is not a portable slate along the lines of an iPad, much less any of the smaller Android tablet options on the market. I…
Read more...

Unplugged: Got social? To succeed, companies better

Vail Resort has been a pioneer in integrating social media into its corporate marketing mix.(Photo: PR NEWSWIRE) USA TODAY columnist Mark Veverka.(Photo: Martin E. Klimek, USA TODAY)Story HighlightsSocial media makes a company or business more visible and transparentSocial media lets companies establish direct relationships with customersFacebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others are reinventing the resharing of infoSOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. — Got social? If your company or business doesn't have a social-media strategy, it better get one. Pronto. Social media is more than Harlem Shakes going viral, but the flash mob video of the moment certainly illustrates the power of the Web as an important marketing channel that can't be ignored. "Going viral is now a part of marketing speak," says Dean Eckles, Facebook's director of data science. Eckles, who has multiple degrees from Stanford University, including a Ph.D., posits that social media exploits an aspect of behavioral science dubbed "peer effects" — how the behavior of a person's peers can have an impact on the people he or she hangs around with. In other words, if a person quits eating doughnuts and goes on a diet, it sometimes can compel his or her friends to follow suit. Of course, peer effects aren't just a byproduct of the Internet, but social media can exploit their power as in its advertising, marketing and selling channels. The re-sharing of information on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and myriad other social-media platforms can and will profoundly affect how we buy and sell stuff, Eckles told attendees at a social media conference in South Lake Tahoe, Calif., last week. One of the hosts of the confab was Broomfield, Colo.-based Vail Resorts, which has been a pioneer in integrating social media into its corporate marketing mix. "From day one, we knew social media was going to be…
Read more...

Climate change dates back to dawn of first farmers

Wheat, one of humanity's staple crops for millennia.(Photo: USDA / Scott Bauer)Story HighlightsArchaeological records suggest early farmers deforested more land worldwide than expectedThe changes likely added more greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere, warming things upThe findings shift the human-dominated "Anthropocene" era to an earlier timeChopping down trees with flint axes, planting peas and shearing sheep — those all sound like the prosaic duties of the earliest farmers.But those same Stone Age sodbusters were likely changing our planet's climate, researchers are now suggesting, long before the greenhouse gas emissions of the industrial era. And that means the "Anthropocene" era, the time of humans making a mark on the planet more striking than natural forces, extends not just to the beginning of the industrial era but to the dawn of agriculture.How could that be? Mostly because early farmers weren't so good at what they did some 7,000 years ago, suggests environmental scientist Bill Ruddiman of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. "How early farmers cleared forests is very different than today. They used a lot more land, and they cleared a lot more forest per farmer," Ruddiman says. In an Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences analysis, Ruddiman finds that archaeology shows climate scientists have underestimated just how many trees early farmers needed to cut down to feed their families. Early farmers didn't plant prairies that needed plows or fertilize the same fields every year. They cut down forests fed by rainfall, moving on to the next one in slash-and-burn fashion every few years after a plot's fertility faded. "All that added up to a lot more forest clearance than climate scientists suspected thousands of years ago," Ruddiman says, with concurrent atmospheric upticks in two important greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide and methane, long before the first fossil-fuel fires.[1]Greenhouse gasses retain heat,…
Read more...

Security tools reveal cyberintruders' trickery

Disclosures by big companies provide visibility into the latest cyber attacks.(Photo: Alejandro Gonzalez, USA TODAY)Story HighlightsDeep penetration of corporate networks continues unabatedRash of breach disclosures highlight growing public awarenessGood guys are gaining, sharing proactive intelligenceSEATTLE — There is a silver lining to the rash of revelations about cyberintruders cracking into the networks of marquee U.S. corporations. Microsoft this week admitted to a major network breach, following in the footsteps of Apple, Facebook, Twitter, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the Federal Reserve, all of which have made similar disclosures in February.However, the mea culpas also show that with persistent network breaches continuing to escalate, some large organizations have begun proactively gathering intelligence about what the bad guys are up to. They are doing this by stepping up the use of cutting-edge tech security systems.And by moving to advance public knowledge about the stealthy tactics of cyberintruders, companies under attack could be taking a crucial step toward gaining an advantage on the attackers, say security analysts and law enforcement officials. "The one thing these disclosures have done is provide significant visibility into the latest attacks," says Lawrence Pingree, cybersecurity industry analyst at market researcher Gartner. "Without that, you're blind."Data thieves, cyberspies and hacktivists, to be sure, continue to probe company networks as intensively as ever. An estimated 60% of companies globally reported a network security breach in the past year, including 34% that identified more than one penetration, according to a survey of 4,447 tech professionals in nine nations, conducted by Ponemon Institute and sponsored by Juniper Networks. Those survey results were released on Monday at the giant RSA cybersecurity conference in San Francisco, where much of the buzz this week has been about the value of openness."Just a short time ago, companies and third-party service providers were…
Read more...
Subscribe to this RSS feed