A software development student from York, UK, who hacked into Facebook has been jailed for eight months yesterday.
Glenn Mangham, 26, admitted infiltrating the social networking site between April and May last year by impersonating an employee of the social networking site and hacked into three of its servers.
According to the Daily Mail UK, he downloaded ‘highly sensitive intellectual property’ including valuable computer ‘code’ sparking panic and fear among American authorities, including the FBI, of industrial espionage.
Prosecutors described the hack as the most serious case of social media hacking ever brought before the country’s courts, and added that his actions could have brought down the whole enterprise. Facebook reportedly spent $200,000 (£126,400) dealing with his crime.
Mangham told police he was looking for a ‘mini project; when the targeted the site. He first hacked into the puzzle server, which sets tests for potential employees. He reportedly uploaded his own programs to the server.
He then hacked and hijacked the account of employee Stefan Parker after bypassing security and reset his password. Using the details, he than accessed the ‘mailman server’ and the ‘phabricator server’ which is said to contain the sites’ most sensitive intellectual property.
He told the court that his intend was to identify and compile the vulnerabilities in the systems and then bundle off to Facebook and show them what was wrong.
Have you ever wondered how Facebook, with more than 800 million users and billions of updates everyday manage to keep the porn, gore, and hate out of your news feed? An article on Gawker Inside Facebook’s Outsourced Anti-Porn and Gore Brigade, Where ‘Camel Toes’ are More Offensive Than ‘Crushed Heads’ sheds some light on Facebook’s content moderation. Definitely not how I expected.
Facebook subcontracts its screening to an online outsourcing company name oDesk, that employed rougly 50 people in countries such as Turkey, the Philippines, Mexico, India, and Morocco. These moderators checks every piece of flagged content for around $1 an hour, which could go upto $4 with commissions.
Gawker interviewed a number of moderators (both past and current), including a man who only managed to last three weeks.
“Pedophelia, Necrophelia, Beheadings, Suicides, etc … I left [because] I value my mentl sanity,” Gwaker quoted him.
More descriptions of the job by former moderators included:
“Think like that there is a sewer channel, and all the mess/dirt/waste/shit of the world flow towards you, and you have to clean it.
“You had KKK cropping up everywhere.”
“They did mention that the job was not for the light of heart before hiring me,” he added. “I think it’s ultimately my fault for underestimating JUST how disturbing it’d be.”
A 21-year-old Moroccan shared a 17-page manual with Gawker that include a one-page cheat sheet which you can see below.
The U.S. Department of Transportation asked automakers to redesign distracting electronic systems and prevent drivers from accessing social networks like Facebook and Twitter while a car is moving.
According to Bloomberg Businessweek, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, in non-binding guidelines issued today, called for disabling manual texting, internet browsing, 10-digit phone dialing and the ability to enter addresses into a built-in navigation system for drivers unless a car is parked.
When a car is moving, messages and other infotainment tasks should require no more than two-second glances.
The guidelines are part of the U.S. government’s broader effort against distracted driving. According to the National Highway Transportation and Safety Agency, distracted driving cost the life of 3,092 people in 2010.
The guidelines does not apply to electronic warning systems such as lane-departure or collision alerts. The department seek comments before making them final.
Mobile service provider Orange announced that it is bringing Facebook via Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) to Africa, allowing all Orange customers to access the service regardless of the phone they use.
Even users with older or very basic handsets without an internet connection or data plan will be able to use Facebook via the text-based service.
Users only need to type a specific code into their phone to open Facebook via USSD session and enter a PIN code to access the service securely.
If a customer is using Facebook via USSD for the first time, they will have to register by providing their Facebook login, Facebook password and by creating a PIN code.
Once connected, users’ will be able to search for friends, invite friends, accept or deny friend requests, update status, and comment/like/unlike their friends’ statuses. Pricing options include: per session (10 to 20 minutes), daily, weekly, and monthly.
USSD is a technology used by all GSM mobile devices to send information across a 2G network, and is already used widely in Africa. And since there is no barrier in terms of handset requirements, Orange expects that over one million customers will use the service in the first year.
Orange launched this service for Mobinil customers in Egypt at the end of 2011, and over 350,00 customers connected to Facebook via USSD in the first month. The service launches in Orange Côte d’Ivoire this month.
State and federal law enforcement authorities are looking into how the photos of seventeen Massachusetts high school students ended up on a pornographic websites.
Police believes that the pictures of the students of the Bay Path Technical Vocational Regional High School in Charlton, Ma., were scrapped from Facebook and other social networking sites.
Although the students in the pictures were fully clothed, the images reproduced on the sites were augmented with sexually suggestive headlines and captions.
The photos were said to contain information that could be used to identify the teens, including town and school signs.
“My friend called me and told me that I was on a website, and I was in shock because I kept checking it every day to see if I wasn’t,” one 18-year-old student told 7 News. “Being on that website and being on a child porn website just makes me look bad as a person.”
Police told WCBV-TV that this case isn’t the only one in the region.
This form of exploiting innocent photos scrapped from Internet is called as “image jacking” or “Photo jacking,” and is not limited to minors.
Facebook is tweaking it’s policy to allow pseudonyms on its site for celebrities and other public figures.
In an effort to root out imposters, Facebook is going to launch Twitter-style ‘verified celebrity’ pages, and allow stars such as Lady Gaga use their stage names.
According to TechCrunch, the launch will begin tomorrow, with the option to ‘verify’ being sent to celebrity Facebook accounts. Notified users will have to verify their accounts with government issued ID, with an enter their alternate name that will appear next to their real name in parenthesis such as Stefani Germanotta (Lady Gaga), or simply as “Lady Gaga” with Stefani Germanotta appearing in the About section of her Timeline.
The verification will allow celebrities such as Stefani Germanotta to be more accessible to fans, as they can be easily found when searched using her stage name instead of her birth name. The verification will also boost the verified users’ prominence in Facebook’s “People To Subscribe To” suggestions.
Facebook will be manually approving the alternate names to make sure the individuals are really the celebrities, politicians, journalist etc. that they claim to be.
The program was launched in a bid to curb the influx of imposter on the social network, most of which are set up to dupe subscribers and/or for spamming. However, unlike at Twitter or Google+, verified Facebook accounts will not be sporting any sort of badge or denotation that indicates the ‘verified’ status.
Paul Ceglia, the man who claimed that he is entitled to half of the social-networking giant’s fortune, according to a contract with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, was ordered to pay Facebook $75,766.70 in legal fees related to the case.
Last month, Ceglia was also ordered to pay $5,000 to the court for ignoring court orders. So far, the fines imposed on Ceglia are: $5,000 payable to the court, $75,766.70 payable to Facebook, plus some unknown amount(s).
The decision was made Tuesday by U.S Magistrate Judge Leslie G. Foschio in Buffalo, N.Y., after ruling that he violated a pretrial discovery order and failed to turn over email account information.
The judge, however, denied Facebook’s request for an order preventing Ceglia from filing any additional motions in the case until those fees were paid.
Microsoft announced the release of a new version of Facebook for Windows Phone. The new version, 2.3, is now available from Microsoft’s Windows Phone Marketplace. You can also update the app through the Marketplace on your phone.
The update includes improved design and support for several new Facebook features. There’s Pages view, the ability to access Groups, and see the Likes on any posts or photos, as well as the ability to apply filter to your News Feed. All your requests, messages, and notifications sits at the top of the main interface.
A refined toolbar at the bottom provides quick access to Check in, Add (post, or add/take a new photo.)
“Test out your groups. Visit your pages. Look at who like your posts. Change the banner image. Check out the improved news feed performance. Use the new filters. Explore the improved navigation,” Microsoft said on said..
There is no full Timeline support though. Hopefully, we will see a full integration of the feature in the next update.
There are about 1.4 million active users of the Facebook app for Windows Phone, according to the Next Web.
If you use Facebook app for Windows Phone, do share your thoughts on this updated version.
Today there are millions of websites that carter to the needs of web users. Millions of users go online every second to shop, learn, socialize, communicate, learn, and chill out from the comforts of their chair.
However, internet isn’t exactly the safest place to be if you are not one of those people who care about privacy and security and keep updated with information.
There are many crafty people out there who are online just for the sake of duping other and making quick money. And these people could easily become your virtual neighbour with a click of the mouse.
Trend Micro released an inforgraphic titled, “Know Your Enemies online” that shows how these cyber crooks go about doing what they do, as well as how much they make from the stolen data.
Click on the screen shot below to view the full infographic.
“Make no mistake about it: cybercriminals are out there lurking around your online neighborhood. They may pretend to be a trusted contact, a well-known vendor, or even a new friend you made online,” cautioned Gelo Abendan.
He stressed that every netizen should know who they are dealing with, and by doing so they are already protecting themselves from becoming a victim of cybercrime.
As the news of Whitney Houston’s sudden demise spread like wildfire, and becomes a trending topic on social networking sites, cyber crooks are wasting no time to capitalize on her tragic death.
The security firm TrendMicro found two scams – a clickjacking attack on Facebook and another link circulating on Twitter.
The scam on Facebook was spreading with through wall posts the read, “I Cried watching this video. RIP Whitney Houston”, and a link to the supposed video. As usual, clicking on the link takes the users through several redirections until they are landed on a survey scam site.
The security firm, upon further investigation on the domains involved in the redirections, found 101 more survey scams registered on the same IP where the domains are hosted.
The firm also found tweets with malicious links taking advantage of the singer’s death, which is trending worldwide on Twitter. Clicking on the link takes people to a blog dedicated to Houston’s career, but redirects them to a Web page offering several Whitney Houston wallpapers.
Downloading wallpaper triggers another offer to download Whitney Houston ringtones, and the user is eventually taken to a survey site that asks for mobile number.
Always be cautious when clicking news items on Facebook or Twitter feeds, especially with trending topics.
