Mozilla cops to breach: Mozilla, the company that produces the Firefox browser, told users that there had been a security breach on its site Dec. 17 that resulted in the inadvertent publication of 44,000 inactive user IDs and passwords from part of its addons.mozilla.org database. The user information was stored using a less-secure format that Mozilla phased out in April 2009.
While Mozilla is reasonably sure that the only person who saw the information is the security employee who reported it to the company, TechRadar recommends that anyone who receives e-mails from Mozilla Security change his or her password — just to be safe.
Wal-Mart invests in 360buy.com: The New York Times reports that Wal-Mart is part of a private group that has invested about $500 million in the Chinese online retailer 360buy.com, a Web site the article compares to Amazon.com. While Wal-Mart declined to comment on any investment, the founder and CEO of the Chinese site announced the investment on his Twitter-style microblogging account. The deal was announced Monday by 360buy.com’s spokeswoman.
Russian PM Putin demands Russia use free software: According to Mashable, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has issued an order that all Russian federal bodies and agencies switch to free and/or open-source software by 2015. The order was approved on Dec. 17, affecting all agencies of the federal government.
Russia ordered schools to use open and free software in 2008, with the condition that any school wishing to use proprietary software must buy the programs itself. Mashable has a link to the Russian language report and credits the blog Open… with the scoop.
BoA faces DDoS attacks: The Bank of America suffered some minor slowdowns and outages on Monday as the result of a distributed denial of service, or DDoS attack, claimed by the hacker group Anonymous. ReadWriteWeb reports that the outages were sporadic and caused minimal harm, but did have an impact on the bank’s operations. A message sent by Anonymous under the Twitter handle Anony_Ops announced the attack Monday, using the hashtag #OperationBoA.
Internet is the new tool for activists: Online activism is undoubtedly a growing force in the modern world, and The Washington Post takes a closer look at the ways activist groups use new media to organize.
Article source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/28/AR2010122801182.html?wprss=rss_technology
Category: Vulnerabilities/Exploits