Logging The Cyber World

Tags: botnet, botnet masters, mariposa network, ring network, virus infected computers

SAN FRANCISCO – Authorities have smashed one of the world’s biggest networks of virus-infected computers, a data vacuum that stole credit cards and online banking credentials from as many as 12.7 million poisoned PCs.

The “botnet” of infected computers included PCs inside more than half of the Fortune 1,000 companies and more than 40 major banks, according to investigators.

Spanish investigators, working with private computer-security firms, have arrested the three alleged ringleaders of the so-called Mariposa botnet, which appeared in December 2008 and grew into one of the biggest weapons of cybercrime. More arrests are expected soon in other countries.

Spanish authorities have planned a news conference for Wednesday in Madrid.

Read more at Yahoo News

Tags: 50 million tweets, daily tweets, total tweets a day, tweets a day, twitter

Twitter, a popular microblogging site, is continuing its phenomenal growth trajectory. The site, which was launched back in 2007, has seen rapid growth in the past months. Unlike other places where you need other metrics to measure growth, on Twitter, this is quite easy. The easiest way to check its growth is to track the number of tweets sent per day!

Twitter, which was launched in 2007, has enjoyed rapid growth in recent months. In 2007, around 5,000 tweets were sent per day. That increased to 300,000 messages per day in 2008 and now in 2010, it has reached a staggering 50 million tweets per day!

Read More

Tags: credentials, internet, passwords, social networking, sophos, web users

A third of web users have admitted to using the same password for a number of different websites, says Sophos.

According to the security firm, just 19 percent never use the same password twice. Sophos added that three years ago, 41 percent of web users said they used the same password, indicating that just 8 percent of web users have realized the importance of strong, unique passwords.

“It’s worrying that in three years very few computer users seem to have woken up to the risks of using weak passwords and the same ones for every site they visit,” said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.

“With social networking and other internet accounts now even more popular, there’s plenty on offer for hackers and by using the same password to access Facebook, Amazon and your online bank account, you’re making it much easier for them. Once one password has been compromised, it’s only a matter of time before the fraudsters will be able to gain access to your other accounts and steal information for financial gain.”

Full article at PCWorld

Tags: file sharing, ifpi, legalize, norwegian minister, pirate bay

The trial of The Pirate Bay has not gone by unnoticed in Sweden’s neighbor country, Norway. The IFPI has ordered the largest ISP in the country to block the site, while on the other hand Norway’s Minister of Education is critical of the music industry, and wants to legalize (illegal) file-sharingEarlier this week the music industry, headed by the IFPI, gave Norway’s largest Internet provider an ultimatum; block access to The Pirate Bay within 14 days or we will take you to court.

ISPs have criticized IFPI’s move, and Pirate Bay’s spokesman Peter Sunde said that “the crazy people behind IFPI should be stopped.” Bård Vegar Solhjell, Minister of Education and Research in Norway sides with Peter in this assessment, as he vouches for the legalization of file-sharing.

In a recent blog post, the minister who is a member of the Socialist Left Party (SV), said that file-sharing is genius, and a great way to discover and access music. “You and I can get access to all the world’s music when we want. Fantastic!” Solhjell wrote on his weblog.

Article here

Tags: community, facebook, facebook users, social sites, world population

That’s right. Facebook says it now has 120 million members. By my reckoning, that’s 2% of the world’s 6 billion people.

If you think that’s astonishing, consider that there’s still plenty of low hanging fruit for Facebook to pluck. I know plenty of tech savvy people, many of them under 30, who have yet to sign up. Inevitably, these people will give in.

Read more here

Tags: botnets, facebook worms, koobface, myspace worms, network worms, networking sites, networms

Kaspersky Labs has detected two variants of Networm that attack MySpace and Facebook users. The worms transform victim machines into zombie computers to form botnets.

Kaspersky analysts are warning users that the worms, Win32.Koobface.a. and Networm.Win32.Koobface.b, are designed to upload additional malicious modules with other functionality via the Internet. “It is highly probable that victim machines will not only be used for spreading links via these social networking sites, but the botnets will also be used for other malicious purposes,” the analyst firm said in a statement.

Complete story @ Yahoo! News

Tags: cuil, ex-employees, google rivals, online searching, search engine

For those of you who don’t know about this Cuil.com. “Cuil.com” is a new search engine which was launch last sunday by former Google employees. While trying this new search engine, here are some of my experiences.

1.) Need to refresh the main page to show.I tried this on three different browsers(or is it my connection?).
2.) No Page 2 and so on at the moment (high server load?).
3.) When I use keyword “xyberlog”, it shows my blogcatalog’s profile. But hey, this photo really intrigues me, where is this coming from? and what is this? I don’t even have this photo on my entire site.

My impression? Nothing Impressive.

Tags: article, china, internet users, news, surfers

Business-Standard.com – Overtaking the US, Chinas internet-users population has reached 253 million by the end of June, reflecting the explosive growth in the web-user market in the country, data showed.

Latest government figures also showed that China also had the largest number of broadband subscribers at 214 million, more than 80 per cent of the total domestic internet population.

The number of Internet users at 253 million marked a 56.2 per cent rise from 162 million reported in 2007, the China Internet Network Information Centre (CNNIC), a semi-official organisation, said in a report.

The US has 218 million net users till December 31, 2007 when China had 210 million users. Based on the US growth pattern, CNNIC estimated that the numbers in the US could have now reached 230 million by the end of June this year.

Tags: encryption, internet, IPETEE, piratebay, project, security

The team behind the popular torrent site The Pirate Bay has started to work on a new encryption technology that could potentially protect all Internet traffic from prying eyes. The project, which is still in its initial stages, goes by the name “Transparent end-to-end encryption for the Internets,” or IPETEE for short. It tackles encryption not on the application level, but on the network level, the aim being that all data exchanged on your PC would be encrypted, regardless of its nature — be it a web browser streaming video files or an instant messaging client. As Pirate Bay co-founder Fredrik Neij (a.k.a. Tiamo) told me, “Even applications that don’t supporting encryption will be encrypted where possible.”

Full Article from newteevee.com

IMO, I think this is good for all of us. This will add an extra security when surfing or using the net. B-)