PBS Web Servers Hacked

PBS Web Servers Hacked - fake news story and user login information published!

I share these security breach stories to inform and teach. My hope is that business leaders will give more thought, priority, and budget to security measures. The threat is real, and "black hats are honing in on lower-tier business targets—organizations with less savvy, maturity and investment in countermeasures." (Verizon Report: Hackers Target Small Businesses)

Late Sunday night, hackers gained access to several areas of PBS Web servers and were able publish a fake news story on a PBS news blog. The hackers also published PBS internal user login information that they were able to siphon from PBS databases.

PBS Sites Hacked: Attackers Publish False News Story and Login Data

More Security Stories:

Think you safe on Mac? "And Mac users, for all their pretensions otherwise, are as fallible as the next person." Everything you need to know about Mac scareware

7 questions about the Mac malware scare

Lockheed Martin acknowledges 'significant' cyberattack

Thor! Great tech and incredible father - son message!

Blogger Down!

Sorry folks. Blogger has been down for a little while, and recent blogspot blog posts had to be removed. They are supposed to be restored soon.

"What a frustrating day. We’re very sorry that you’ve been unable to publish to Blogger for the past 20.5 hours... We rolled back to a version of Blogger as of Wednesday May 11th, so your posts since then were temporarily removed. Those are the posts that we’re in the progress of restoring."
Blogger Buzz

Change Your Facebook Password! Facebook Leaks Personal Information!

Change your facebook password today!

... Facebook applications have been inadvertently handing advertisers access tokens -- strings of numbers and letters that can be used by a browser to access Facebook accounts over the Web. "Access tokens are like the 'spare keys' granted by you to the Facebook applications," Symantec said in a blog post. "Each token or 'spare key' is associated with a select set of permissions, like reading your wall, accessing your friend's profile, posting to your wall, etc." ...

One of these access tokens will keep working until the Facebook user changes his password, so Symantec said that concerned users should change their Facebook passwords, like "changing the lock" on their Facebook account.

Symantec says Facebook applications leaked information

Teachers failing cybersecurity - Parents Responsibility

According to a Microsoft-sponsored survey by the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) teachers are failing to adequately train students on online safety and security. ("Teachers get failing grade in cybersecurity education" 04 May 2011)

Well, that may be so, but concerning matters of childhood education, I always throw the ball back in the parents court. Schools, tutors, and teachers are tools to educate our children, but it is our responsibility as parents. We are solely responsible.

Ok, so back to the tech! Parents, among your other plans for teaching, leading, and nurturing your children, teach them safe cyber habits!

A good place to start might be with the NSA Home Network Security Guide, the Bin Laden Cyberscam Alert, and the Sony Playstation Network Hack I posted about recently. Also, just like stranger danger in your neighborhood and public places, we need to be discussing online dangers with our kids. That's assuming, of course, that we understand them ourselves. We do, don't we?

NSA Home Network Security Guide

The National Security Agency has released a Home Network Security Guide available at the link below.

Best Practices for Keeping Your Home Network Secure

Here is an overview from InfoSec Island: NSA Issues Guide for Keeping Home Networks Secure

Beware: Bin Laden Cyber Scams (Updated!)

Sorry I'm getting this out late to my circle of friends, but be cautious of social media (facebook, twitter), emails, and blogs concerning the Usama Bin Laden death.

Be cautious of videos and attachments!

"The world's most wanted criminal was found and killed Sunday. By late that evening, crooks had unleashed a wave of new spam emails, poisoned search results, and specially crafted websites -- all designed to mislead people seeking news."
Read more: Usama bin Laden Death Leads to Rash of Cyberscams

Don't under estimate criminal hackers! They see these events as a way to make money. For instance, a hacker made these comments "on a black hat search engine optimization forum, who encourages the creation of Osama bin Laden is dead fan pages on social networks. 'This is one of those rare opportunities that can build you a great list and a couple of zeros in your profit,' the blog quotes the hacker. 'Use it while the news of bin Laden killed by U.S. forces is hot. I just started one and it had 600 likes in two minutes.'"
Al-Qaida Not Seen as a Cyberthreat (emphasis mine)

"... with any large news event like this, we expect a flurry of e-mails, and likely black hat search engine operations trying to take advantage of the event to distribute malware."
Bin Laden Death Related Malware