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Microblogging site Twitter has been hacked by a group of protesters calling themselves the Iranian Cyber Army. The attack forced Twitter offline for more than an hour overnight, leaving Twitter users unable to log on to the service or send tweets.
Visitors to Twitter.com were automatically redirected to another web page, which displayed a green flag and English and Arabic writing.
"This site has been hacked by the Iranian Cyber Army," read the message. "The USA thinks they control and manage internet access, but they don't. We control and manage the internet with our power, so do not try to the incite Iranian people."
Twitter said that a DNS attack – where a web address is diverted to another site – was to blame for the outage.
"Twitter's DNS records were temporarily compromised tonight but have now been fixed," wrote Biz Stone, Twitter's co-founder, in a blog post. "As some noticed, Twitter.com was redirected for a while but API and platform applications were working. We will update with more information and details once we've investigated more fully."
Twitter was widely used by Iranian citizens protesting against what they believed to be an unfair election result earlier this year. The microblogging service even delayed a period of planned maintenance so that the site could stay online, giving protesters the ability to communicate with those outside Iran.
It is unlikely that any computers were infected or compromised after being redirected to the hacker's website, said Graham Cluley, a security expert with Sophos. He said that there was "no indication" that the page Twitter users were redirected to carried malicious code that could have infected computers.
"This attack appears to have had political motivations rather than been designed to steal confidential information from users," he wrote on his blog. "Of course, just because a message saying 'This site has been hacked by Iranian Cyber Army' has been posted on a webpage does not necessarily mean that hackers from Iran are responsible for the defacement.
"However, Twitter was widely used earlier this year by those wishing to share information about anti-government protests [in Iran], and rumours spread in July that planned maintenance on the site was delayed to allow Iranians to continue to share information from inside the country as citizen journalists commented on the controversial election result."
Twitter said that normal service had been restored.
Computer users are being warned to be on their guard against a "cold calling scam" that could leave their bank details available to criminals.
The magazine Which? Computing said it had heard from people around the country who had been called by scammers pretending to be from the computer software giant Microsoft or an internet service provider.
Some victims had their bank accounts emptied as a result of the con.
The ruse works by making people think that their computer has a virus. The "problem" is then fixed by a series of steps which ends with the scammers being allowed remote access to the computer.
To add insult to injury, people are also asked to provide their credit card details in order to pay a fee for the repair.
Which? Computing has reported the scam to the police central e-crime unit and Microsoft.
Jaclyn Clarabut, assistant editor of Which? Computing, said the magazine had received about 10 calls from around the country but it was aware that trading standards officers were also receiving some.
She thought there were only a handful of cases where people were defrauded.
"We wanted to draw attention to this before the situation gets any worse," she said
You can ignore that e-mail that looks like it comes from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control about creating a profile for an H1N1 vaccination program. It's a malware scam, according to security provider AppRiver.
The fake alert informs recipients that as part of a "State Vaccination H1N1 Program" they need to create a profile on the CDC Web site. The link in the e-mail goes to a fake CDC page where the visitor is assigned a temporary ID and a link to a vaccination profile that is actually an an executable file containing a copy of the Kryptik Trojan targeting Windows, according to an AppRiver blog post on Tuesday.
Once installed, "this Trojan will create a security-free gateway on your system and will proceed to download and install additional malware without your authorization," the post warns. "It also enables a remote hacker to take complete control of your computer. This malware can log your typed keystrokes and send confidential personal and financial data (including banking information, credit card numbers, and website passwords) to a remote hacker."
The body of a murdered 17-year-old girl has been found on a farm track - hours after she went to meet a man she first met on the internet.
Police officers made the grim discovery after a man who had been stopped for driving offences on the A177 in County Durham led them to the scene.
The 32-year-old led police to a field close to a roundabout near a Little Chef restaurant at the junction with the A689.
Durham Police said the teenage girl, who has not been formally identified, left her home in Darlington on Sunday night, telling her mother she was staying overnight with a friend.
It was only yesterday lunchtime when the mother, who had become increasingly concerned for her daughter's welfare, repeatedly rang her mobile phone to find out where she was and could not get a reply.
It was following the arrest of the man, who has links to the Stockton and Liverpool areas, that the grim discovery was made.
He had been arrested on the A177 by Cleveland Police on suspicion of road traffic offences.
While he was being held in custody at Middlesbrough police station he asked to speak to detectives.
He then agreed to go with them and led them to a field close to the Little Chef.
A body was found and the area was immediately cordoned off. A tent was erected over the scene and a police guard set up overnight.
Forensic experts and a Home Office pathologist are carrying out detailed examinations of the scene.
Detective Superintendent Andy Reddick, heading the investigation, said it is believed the man and the girl may have met via the internet.
Mr Reddick added: 'The man was driving a dark blue Ford Mondeo, registration number S148 JNK, and we are anxious to trace its movements from 7pm on Sunday evening until 5.40pm on Monday when he was arrested.
'That car is currently in a secure location and is due to undergo forensic examination today.'
Detectives said the man, who is said to be of no fixed abode, is being held at Darlington police station.
Mr Harker said: 'This is a very tragic case, it came about from a strange set of circumstances.
'A man was arrested for minor traffic offences who then told the police about the scene.
'There they have found the body of a 17-year-old girl from the Darlington area.'
Mr Harker said the case highlighted the dangers of meeting people on the internet.
He said: 'This is a very, very unusual event. My message in terms of meeting people from the internet is please do not do it unless you are absolutely certain it is safe.'
He urged parents to monitor their children's use of the internet. He added: 'Speak to them about it, speak to their friends, let them know the dangers of the internet.'
The girl's body was fully clothed when it was found, the officer said.
She will be formally identified after the post mortem, he said.
Forensic experts in white suits could be seen walking around a white tent erected in farmland about 300 yards across fields from the Little Chef services on the junction of the A689 and A177 near Sedgefield.
Mr Harker said a post mortem should reveal how she was killed and the investigation was at too earlier a stage to know a motive.
He believed the body could have been in the field for up to 24 hours.
Some of the UK's biggest banks appear to have poor online security measures, leaving their customers vulnerable to fraud, a consumer group has claimed.
Which? Computing said Abbey and Halifax had the weakest visible security measures for online users compared with their rivals.
But the banks who were criticised in the report claimed it was their hidden security measures that were key to keeping customers safe.
The group claimed Halifax had the least secure log-in procedures, with customers asked for three pieces of information to confirm their identity. But it said as each entry was typed in full, the information could easily be obtained by a criminal using keylogger, a virus that intercepts everything that is typed on a keyboard.
The use of keylogger software is thought to have contributed to online banking fraud more than doubling during 2008 to £52.5 million.
By contrast, Barclays and Lloyds TSB, which the group said had some of the best visible security measures in place, use drop-down menus for people to enter passwords, making it harder for the information to be captured.
Barclays also gives its customers a PINsentry device which generates a random password each time a customer logs on to their account.
Which? also criticised Abbey, Alliance & Leicester, HSBC and Halifax for not automatically logging customers out of their account if they went on to a different internet site. It said this could enable someone else to take over the session, particularly if the consumer was using a shared computer to access their account.
The group also found significant differences in how well money transfers appeared to be protected. Some banks asked for a password or other security details to be entered before a transfer could be actioned, but others, including Abbey, first direct, Halifax and HSBC, had no visible security controls in place.
Overall, the group said Barclays had the highest level of visible security measures for online users, followed by first direct, Lloyds TSB, Nationwide, NatWest and Royal Bank of Scotland. Alliance & Leicester and HSBC's security features were rated as average, while Abbey and Halifax's were deemed to be poor.
Some computer repair shops are illegally accessing personal data on customers' hard drives - and even trying to hack their bank accounts, a Sky News investigation has found.
In one case, passwords, log-in details and holiday photographs were all copied onto a portable memory stick by a technician.
In other shops, customers were charged for non-existent work and simple faults were misdiagnosed.
An investigator from Trading Standards said he was "shocked" by the findings.
The investigation was carried out using surveillance software loaded onto a brand-new laptop.
It operated without the user being aware that every event that took place on the computer was being logged.
All activity on the screen was captured in still images, and the identity of whoever was using the computer was recorded using the laptop's built-in camera.
Sky engineers then created a simple, easily diagnosable fault, by loosening the connection of the internal memory chip.
This prevented Windows being able to load. To get things working again, the chip would simply need to be pushed back into position.
The investigation targeted six different computer repair shops. All but one misdiagnosed or overcharged for the fault.
The most serious offender was Revival Computers in Hammersmith, West London.
Shortly after identifying the real fault, an engineer called our undercover reporter to say the computer needed a new motherboard, which would cost £130.
Tests carried out by our internal Sky engineer after the diagnosis revealed there was nothing wrong with it.
The surveillance software then recorded one technician browsing through the files on the hard-drive, including private documents and intimate holiday photos, including some of our researcher in her bikini.
As he snooped through the files, he is seen smiling and showing the pictures to another colleague.
Later on in the same shop, a second technician loads up the machine and also looks through the photos, which are inside a folder clearly marked 'private'.
He then plugs his own portable memory stick into the laptop and copies files, including passwords and photos, into a folder labelled "mamma jammas".
Inside one of the documents copied to the memory stick was a text file containing passwords for Facebook, Hotmail, eBay and a NatWest bank account.
Once the technician had discovered this information, he opened a web browser on the laptop and attempted to log into the back account for around five minutes.
The only reason he was unsuccessful was because the details were fake.
When confronted over the findings, staff at Laptop Revival said they did not want to respond to Sky News on camera.
However in a telephone conversation, they denied all knowledge of the alleged abuses.
When shown the findings, Richard Webb, an e-commerce investigator for Trading Standards said: "I'm really quite shocked, both in the range of potential problems this has revealed - people overcharging, mis-describing the faults - but also people attempting to steal personal details.
"It's a big abuse of trust. If you were expert in computers you wouldn't have to hand in your machine to be repaired. They know that.
"They know you won't be able to tell what they've done afterwards, they know you're putting your trust in them and unfortunately, as we're seeing, there are too many people willing to abuse that trust.
"What you've shown is that there is a much wider problem in the industry than we knew about.
"It suggests we need to look at the area again and we do need to test it like you have done, but with a view of taking criminal enforcement action if these problems are found and evidenced."
Thanks to a new service, you may not have to ask or answer that question. Glympse, which launched on Monday, joins Loopt and Google Latitude as the newest location-based service that uses cell phones’ GPS capability to tell people where you are.
Glympse, which is free, has taken a different approach. Unlike Loopt, which requires the sender and recipient to sign up for service and download an application, Glympse requires almost no effort on the part of the person who is following you. All they have to do is click on a Web link on a computer or a Web- enabled phone to see where you are on a map.
To transmit your location, you need to download an application to your phone and use the application to send a “Glympse,” which authorizes that person to follow you for a specific amount of time and send them the link they need to see you on a map.
Another way it differs from both Loopt and Google Latitude is that Glympse can automatically time out after tracking someone for four hours. The person being followed can also choose a shorter monitoring window, like 30 minutes.
To its credit, Loopt is also permission-based and sends reminders that you may be sharing your real-time information. Google’s Latitude service, which also requires you to give permission to be followed, only displays your approximate location — within about a half mile — but doesn’t show precisely where you are.
With Glympse, you might not know the person’s exact address, but you’ll probably be within a hundred feet.
The coolest thing about Glympse is when you are following someone on the move. You can pinpoint them on the map, see their speed, and see when and where they stop.
I used it to follow Glympse co-founder Bryan Trussle as he rode in a car from my house to San Jose. I saw him get on and off the freeway and pull into a parking lot. At one point I caught his car’s driver exceeding the speed limit by a few miles an hour.
As he compared his actual location to what I saw on my PC, we found there only a slight lag between the two — a difference of 10 seconds on average.
While I realize that some will consider this technology a little creepy, there are practical uses for it.
Some police departments, delivery services and businesses spend a lot of money on equipment to do what Glympse could do for free.
For one thing, it can reassure parents and family members that their loved ones are safe.
I remember how nervous I was when my 16-year-old daughter would use the car or ride in other kids’ cars. We’d insist that she call us when she arrived and made her tell us where she planned to go. If she had a Glympse-equipped cell phone, we could have checked in on her from time to time — and we would have known if she was speeding too.
And rather than calling people to let them know you’re arriving in 15 minutes, they can track you online or on a Web-enabled phone.
The Glympse’s public beta currently works only on the T-Mobile G1, which uses Google’s Android operating system. The company is working on versions for the iPhone, Windows Mobile and BlackBerry.
Video-sharing website YouTube has removed hundreds of pornographic videos which were uploaded in what is believed to be a planned attack.
The material was uploaded under names of famous teenage celebrities such as Hannah Montana and Jonas Brothers.
Many started with footage of children's videos before groups of adults performing graphic sex acts appeared on screen.
YouTube owner Google said it was aware and addressing the problem.
Disturbing videos
The BBC was made aware that scores of sexually explicit and inappropriate material was uploaded.
In one video titled Jonas Brother Live On Stage, a user posted a comment saying: "I'm 12 years old and what is this?"
Under other uploaded videos, online users posted comments such as: "Take the tags off, you'll get us caught." Another said: "Your gonna kill us all!"
As the disturbing videos were being uploaded, many viewers added them to their favourites and rated them highly.
One user believed to have uploaded some of the pornographic material videos is Flonty, whose profile states that he is 21 and from Germany.
He told the BBC: "I did it because YouTube keeps deleting music. It was part of a 4Chan raid."
4Chan is a bulletin board focusing on Japanese manga and anime but some of its more extreme sections have been described on online messageboards as "sick" and "horrifying stuff".
"Anything and everything can, and usually does, happen here. We have our very own unique culture, and there is no group quite like us anywhere out there".
Community guidelines
When asked if he was concerned that children can freely watch such inappropriate material on YouTube, Flonty replied: "Children will find inappropriate material around the internet anyway.
"This kind of raid showed how easy it is to upload porn to a website that millions of people browse on a daily basis".
Google spokesman Scott Rubin told BBC News: "We are aware of the slew of pornographic videos that were uploaded.
"We are addressing them as we would any video that violates our community guidelines.
"In addition, any account we discover that has been set up specifically to attack YouTube will be disabled."
Please read the article below, or go directly to the descriptions of the viruses themselves, which have all been given very nice names.
For Elk Cloner and Klez click here
For Conficker and Explore Zip click here
For Storm and Melissa click here
For Nimda and MyDoom click here
And Finally, for Sasser and I Love You Viruses, click here
Unless you've been living in a cave for the last week, you will have witnessed the wholesale hysteria being launched over the recent Swine Flu outbreak.
All this panic over a simple strain of flu got us thinking about some of the more virulent computer pandemics that have hit in recent years. While a computer virus pales in seriousness to a human outbreak, malware attacks can still take a huge toll on businesses throughout the world.
The viruses below may not have been the most widespread or effective, although many of them were. Instead they are the ones that stick in the mind as being particularly notable. There are been so many over the years, and viruses will always be a part of computing now, but these may bring back memories, not all of them pleasant.
Honourable mention: Creeper
Iain Thomson: Creeper was possibly the very first computer virus, although this is contested. It was invented back in 1971 by Bob Thomas, using the Tenex operating system, and used the precursor of the internet, ARPANET, to spread between DEC PDP 10 systems
To delete the Creeper program another piece of code, Reaper, was created to hunt it down and destroy it. The first anti-virus virus, Reaper was an excellent idea and one that worked well.
Some don't consider it a virus because it lacked many of the features of modern viruses, but I'm counting it anyway because it was an example of the harmlessness of the early age of computers. Creeper did nothing more than display the message 'I'm the creeper, catch me if you can!' No payload, no theft, it was an example of a simpler age.
Shaun Nichols: In computer years, 1971 was nearly prehistoric. No Apple, no Microsoft and the internet was still a wild, far-off concept. Still, in this era where computer programming was a highly-specialised skill, we saw many firsts.
Perhaps a sign of the early times, Creeper's creator not only released the virus itself, but a cleaning program called Reaper that removed the Creeper code.
Honourable mention: Brain
Iain Thomson: Brain was the first virus written for Microsoft's DOS operating system, back in 1986. It was originally developed to stop the copying of a medical software program developed by two Pakistani brothers, Basit and Amjad Farooq Alvi.
Brain spread by floppy disc and copied itself into the boot sector of the media. It displayed the names of the creators, and suggested the infected recipients got in contact to get disinfected.
It spread quickly and the two brothers were inundated with calls from people around the world demanding that their machines were disinfected. Such was the volume of calls that the two eventually had their phone lines cut off.
Shaun Nichols: Remember how much heat Sony took when it used a rootkit as part of its copy-protection software? Well, it turns out Sony wasn't the first group to make that mistake.
Back in 1986, a pair of developers from Pakistan tried to stop piracy of their biomedical software by including a small snippet of code to track and report possible piracy. That code was soon removed and redistributed as a virus.
This was back in 1986, so the 'FAIL' meme had yet to be put into use, but if it had, Brain Computer Services would have no doubt more than earned the tag.
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For every way that the web has improved our lives, it has also made things more complicated, frustrating and dangerous.
One can't uninvent technological breakthroughs, nor should one. Fire has been tremendously useful to humanity over the millennia, but tell that to the the victims of an arsonist. Cars have freed us from the tyranny of distance (and saved certain regions from terminal inbreeding) but still kill hundreds of thousands each year.
So having gone over the best that the web has brought, let's now take a look at some of the worst things from the web.
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There's nothing we like better at lovemoney.com than naming and shaming the banks which sneakily try to swindle you out of your hard-earned cash.
Here are four particularly fiendish tricks to watch out for - and how to avoid the financial stinkers that play them.
CREDIT CARD CREEPS!
Have you ever wondered why so many credit card providers allow you to pay 0% interest on balance transfers?
If you reckon it's out of the goodness of their ever-so-fantastic plastic hearts, then you're dead wrong. To make a profit out of you on the sly, cards offering 0% interest rates have often got a nasty trick up their signature strips. It's called negative payment hierarchy - and it forces you to pay off your cheap, interest-free debts first, allowing your expensive, interest-bearing debts to fester and increase.
Goodies: Nationwide and Saga cards operate a positive payment hierarchy, so their cards are safe to use for both purchases and balance transfers. Alternatively, this Halifax card and this Bank of Scotland card offer the same period for 0% balance transfers and purchases, effectively freeing you from the negative payment hierarchy trap.
Baddies: Every other credit card provider! So if you want to get a 0% card from any of these credit card creeps, make sure you get one 0% card for balance transfers and a different 0% card for purchases.
MORTGAGE MONSTERS
Once upon a time, in a far-flung era when no one had ever heard of a toxic asset or a sub-prime loan, banks were all privately-owned, bank runs were unimaginable and most mortgage lenders dutifully observed a certain unwritten rule about their Standard Variable Rates (SVRs).
This stated that a drop in the base rate would soon be followed by a similar-sized drop in a lender's SVR.
Sure, sometimes a couple of lenders were a bit naughty and took more than a month to pass on a cut or sometimes they didn't pass it on in full. But among the top 10 lenders, few allowed their SVR to drift more than 2.5% above the base rate.
Then came the biggest credit crunch ever to munch on a homeowner's lunch. Result? A record-low base rate of 1% - and the SVRs ranging from 3% to more than 5%.
Goodies: Lloyds TSB has passed on in full every single rate cut since October - the only lender to do so. Its SVR is currently the lowest at 3%, an honour it shares with lovemoney.com favourite Nationwide.
Baddies: Among big mortgage market players, the worst offenders are Barclays (formerly Woolwich) and Alliance & Leicester, both currently offering SVRs at 4.99%. Barclays has only been passing on every other rate cut, while A&L has failed to pass on the full base rate cut five out of six times. And to add insult to injury, while they've been raking it in from borrowers, these lenders have cut their rates for savers! Shame on them!
Smaller lenders are behaving equally badly. One reader wrote in to ask me to give a public roasting to Yorkshire Building Society, which also charges 4.99% on its SVR, and another wrote in to complain about Chelsea Building Society, which is charging a whopping 5.79% SVR! Nasty.
SAVINGS SNEAKS
You should always try to keep three months' salary in an instant access savings account, to act as a 'cash cushion'. This is so to soften the blow of any emergencies which may suddenly land on your head, out of nowhere, in the middle of an otherwise remarkably routine Tuesday.
You might think saving up this money is the hardest part. But once you've won this battle, you must go on a quest for a true instant access account.
This is a lot more difficult than it sounds. Many accounts claim to offer instant access - but if you try to withdraw your money when you need it, you may get a nasty shock. Often, the overall rate will be reduced or you'll pay a penalty of a month's interest.
So check the small print. A true instant access savings provider always allows penalty-free withdrawals whenever you want access to your cash.
Goodies: There are absolutely no restrictions or penalties for withdrawals with the current market-leader, the Egg Savings Account, which pays 3.35% AER, and an ING Savings Account, which pays marginally less, at 3% AER.
Baddies: Alliance & Leicester is notorious for offering savings accounts where you lose 30 days' interest if you make a withdrawal - although its Online Saver Issue 4 (which also pays 3% AER) is a welcome exception to this rule. So Sainsburys garners the biggest Savings Snake award, currently advertising 3% AER on its internet saver - but check the small print. The rate drops to 1.25% if you make a withdrawal.
CURRENT ACCOUNT CHEATERS
When you stick your money in a bank, the bank attempts to make money out of you by lending your money out to other people or investing it.
Of course, as we know from all the recent troubles banks have had, some of them are not very good at this. But that's by the bye.
The fact is, your bank is using your money to try to make money for itself - so I think it's absolutely outrageous that the interest rate on many current accounts is a great big gaping ZERO.
Goodies: Alliance & Leicester is the current account market leader, paying 6% on its Premier Direct current account, while Abbey is following close behind, paying 5.5% on its 'in credit' account. However, both these rates only apply to balances up to £2,500 - after that, the rate drops dramatically (to 0.1% and 1% respectively).
Baddies: Halifax, Bank of Scotland, Bank of Ireland, Intelligent Finance, Lloyds TSB (on its classic account), and Natwest (on it current account plus) all pay just 0.1%. Even worse, some of the biggest banks - Barclays, First Direct, Nationwide and the Co-op - all pay nothing at all! Yes, I mean zero per cent!
However, you may feel the Co-op's ethical policy makes up for this lack of interest, as does the mutual ethos associated with building society Nationwide. Similarly, many lovemoney.com readers have told us that the good customer service First Direct provides is worth sacrificing interest for - and it does offer you £100 to switch in the first place. So the number one big baddie award in this category goes to Barclays, which you may recall also won a Mortgage Monster award. Boo hiss!
Good luck avoiding these stinkers and keeping your cash exactly where it should be - in your own two hands!
By Donna Werbner
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Profits made by peddlers of child sex abuse images are being targeted by a pan-European alliance.
The European Financial Coalition brings together payment firms, law enforcement agencies and child protection groups to disrupt commerce in the images.
By tracking cash made by sites selling abuse images, investigators hope to stop the trade and find abusers.
Backers include Mastercard, Visa, Paypal and UK's Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP).
Funded by the European Commission, the coalition is intended to serve as a "stark warning" to those involved in the sale and distribution of child sex images.
"It is a reality that the rapid growth of the internet has opened up a market for images of child abuse," said EC vice president Jacques Barrot in a statement.
"The European Financial Coalition (EFC) will help identify and protect victims of this horrific crime by following the money trail that takes the police to the offender," he said.
By bringing together technology firms, payment providers and law enforcement agencies the EFC hopes to do a better job of finding out how money paid for images flows across electronic payment systems.
Advisory members to the EFC include the NGO Missing Children Europe, Allen and Overy, and ICMEC - the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children.
Jim Gamble, head of the UK's CEOP, said hard work by police and anti-child sex abuse groups was slowly pushing organised crime out of the trade in images.
The EFC, he said, would help tackle those who persist in profiting from images of child abuse by running subscription services and newsgroups.
"These are organised by networked paedophiles and driven by a deviant sexual interest in children, rather than by organised crime enterprises for profit," he said.
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A survey by an anti-bullying charity has discovered that one in three youngsters could have been the victim of cyberbullying.
A poll of 2,000 11 to 18-year-olds by BeatBullying discovered an alarming growth in the use of technology like social networking sites and SMS messaging.
Girls are four times more likely to be on the receiving end of cyberbullying than boys.
CyberMentor
The research was released to boost the profile of BeatBullying's CyberMentors campaign, which has been backed by Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
"CyberMentors is an exciting new initiative to help keep Britain's children and young people safe online," said the PM.
"The internet provides children and young people with a world of entertainment, opportunity and knowledge, a world that is quite literally at their fingertips, just the click of a mouse away.
"Just as we wouldn't let them go unsupervised in playgrounds or in youth clubs, so we must put in place the measures that we need to keep our children and young people safe online.
"Cyberbullying is the most common problem experienced by young people on the internet, so I am delighted that BeatBullying is taking a lead in training more than 3,000 CyberMentors to take its successful peer mentoring programme into schools and to establish it online."
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Facebook has been hit by a malware attack for the second time in one week, after it was noted that a rogue application has been sending notifications containing malicious links to the members of the social networking website.
However, in this new wave of spamming attack the hackers took advantage of the controversy surrounding the planned new terms and conditions for the website.
In the second attack, Facebook users received notices that they had allegedly being reported for infringing the website’s terms and conditions by a friend added in their contact lists, and instructed users to click on to a provided link which directed to an application named ‘F a c e b o o k - closing down!!!’, which after installation posted spam messages to the members added in the victim’s contact list.
Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at the Sophos blogs, notified that the users who clicked on to the malicious links were inadvertently provided the hackers access to their profile and personal data, as well as unintentionally forwarding spam messages to other members.
However, Facebook responded to the issue by saying, “Our team disabled this application for violating the Facebook Developer Terms of Service. Some additional versions of it have sprung up, and we’ve disabled these as well”
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Figures published by online research firm Nielsen Online show that social networking colossus Facebook has more than doubled in size during the last 12 months, further widening the gap with the likes of Myspace and Bebo.
Facebook had 17.6 million unique users in January 2009, that's nearly twice the size of Bebo and Myspace combined (at 4.3 million and 5.4 million unique UK users respectively). At this rate, it is likely that Facebook exerts an even bigger domination in the UK social networking sector than Google in the search arena.
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A ROMANIAN HACKER who stole cash from an Italian bank has become a star student at a local university and is being courted by several software security firms.
Gabriel Bogdan Ionescu is currently doing three years and one month's porridge in Bassone di Como for writing software to steal money from Poste Italiane's accounts.
Four months ago the 22-year-old enrolled in the Faculty of Engineering of the Politecnico di Milano, and passed exams in computer science and mathematical analysis with top marks.
The Italian press are a little concerned that software companies are lining up to hire the hacker when he gets out. It seems that trying to rob a bank was the best career move he ever made.
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A New Initiative in the fight against Cyber Crime
After eleven months of research and development, Caroline Coats launched her anti cyber crime initiative in the form of a public service website www.cyberfraud.org.uk on Friday 14th November 2008.
Having last year fallen victim to cyber gangsters, Caroline Coats suffered considerable financial loss and this experience has led to the development of a public service dedicated to protecting the consumer from becoming a victim of Internet crime. Her full victim story was featured in the Gloucester Echo recently.
This is the only independent site in the UK to provide a central platform covering all aspects of cyber crime.
Over the past few months Caroline has received full support from local man Mark Coote, Cheltenham’s prospective Parliamentary Conservative Candidate who has praised Caroline’s initiative in establishing a website to advise and assist members of the public. He has also ensured support from the Conservative Front Bench and shadow Minister for E-Crime, James Brokenshire MP, will be visiting Caroline in January to discuss progress of the website.
Speaking at the launch, (and with Mark Coote above)Caroline said that there is one victim of cyber crime every 10 seconds and that nine out of ten offences go unreported because victims believe the police will be unable to investigate due to lack of resources.
It was her intention to lobby government for changes in legislation as the recently launched initiatives are too little too late.
Her thanks went out to the team of technical people from Cleverscape and Callquality who have worked 24/7 over the past weeks to assure the security of the website as well as Jack Stafford of Smarterthinking who designed the site. She added that without the support of Mark Coote the pace of development and the level of media exposure achieved would not have been possible.
Mark said, "He is an example of how someone has turned the trauma of a bad experience in to a benefit for everyone, and this launch has my total support. We all have to be wary of cybercrime, and how we must be alert to cyber carelessness."