AllThingsD » fake http://allthingsd.com Sun, 27 May 2012 01:54:58 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 http://allthingsd.com/theme/images/logo-rss.jpg All Things Digital http://allthingsd.com/ 144 22 Loeb Calls Again for Thompson Firing From Yahoo, as Former eBay Boss Supports Him http://allthingsd.com/20120509/loeb-again-calls-for-thompson-firing-from-yahoo-as-former-ebay-boss-support-him/ http://allthingsd.com/20120509/loeb-again-calls-for-thompson-firing-from-yahoo-as-former-ebay-boss-support-him/#comments Wed, 09 May 2012 14:33:40 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=205930

As expected, activist shareholder Daniel Loeb of Third Point released a new letter on the bio controversy he set off at Yahoo, again calling for the firing of its CEO, Scott Thompson.

“It seems farcical to us that the Board will most likely spend more time deliberating over whether Mr. Thompson should be fired than it did properly vetting whether he should have been hired,” read the letter in part. “The necessary investigation into whether certain senior executives and Board Members knew of Mr. Thompson’s deceptions before hiring him should not delay decisive action over his ethical breaches.”

Loeb, who is waging a proxy fight with Yahoo over board seats he wants, also offered to work with the Yahoo board to find a new CEO if it accepted his slate of directors. In the interim, he suggested Yahoo put either CFO Tim Morse or media head Ross Levinsohn in the job. Morse had taken that position temporarily after Yahoo fired its last CEO Carol Bartz last fall.

Confused yet?

Loeb set off a management crisis there last week with the revelation that Thompson had added a fake computer science degree to his bio.

The first casualty came yesterday with the stepping down of Yahoo director Patti Hart, who was charged with vetting Thompson for the job.

The Yahoo board also announced yesterday that it would be conducting a probe of the circumstances around the hiring, as well as how the faux academic credentials got in Thompson’s bio and also the company’s regulatory filings.

The new letter was a reaction to Thompson’s apology on Monday for the borked bio becoming a “distraction” (but not, oddly, for the mistake itself). Loeb had previously called for Thompson’s firing over the bio fibbing.

Loeb will be appearing at an investor conference in Las Vegas later today, where he will surely be asked about the situation.

In related news, eBay CEO John Donahoe, Thompson’s former boss, lent words of support, but also underscored that the online commerce company’s legal filings of his bio were always correct, even if its Web site and other PR documents handed out were not. Thompson came to Yahoo from a stint as president of eBay’s PayPal payments unit.

As reported by Bloomberg, Donahoe said:

“When Scott was hired at EBay Inc., all of EBay’s filings had the accurate information. Some of EBay’s PR materials had that bio. Our legal filings were taken care of by our legal department. Some of the PR materials had that info,” he said while in Tokyo of the correct bio versus the incorrect one.

Donahoe added: “I think Scott Thompson did a great job at PayPal. I think he’s a very talented leader and I believe he can help Yahoo. I hope they get through this and he can continue to do the very challenging job he’s got of helping to turn Yahoo around. I’m Scott’s biggest fan.”

This has been the first public support of Thompson by a prominent Internet figure, which might help lagging morale at the company.

Here’s the full version of the latest Loeb letter:

Third Point May 9 Letter Release

RELATED POSTS:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120509/loeb-again-calls-for-thompson-firing-from-yahoo-as-former-ebay-boss-support-him/feed/ 0 Place Your Bets: Will Loeb Drop Another Bomb on Yahoo at Vegas Confab Later Today? http://allthingsd.com/20120509/place-your-bets-will-loeb-drop-another-bomb-on-yahoo-at-vegas-confab-later-today/ http://allthingsd.com/20120509/place-your-bets-will-loeb-drop-another-bomb-on-yahoo-at-vegas-confab-later-today/#comments Wed, 09 May 2012 13:00:48 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=205749

Daniel Loeb of Third Point — the activist shareholder who set off a management crisis at Yahoo last week with the revelation that new CEO Scott Thompson had added a fake computer science degree to his bio — will be onstage at a high-profile investor confab in Las Vegas this afternoon.

It’s Loeb’s first public appearance since he scored a direct hit on Yahoo in his ongoing proxy fight against the company — a first casualty yesterday, with the stepping-down of Yahoo director Patti Hart, who was charged with vetting Thompson for the job.

With one win like that, can Loeb resist using the panel — titled “Titans of Wall Street: Insight & Strategies for Capitalizing on Today’s Markets” — to strafe Yahoo a bit?

Sources said Loeb is prepping some reaction to Thompson’s apology on Monday for the borked bio becoming a “distraction” (but not, oddly, for the mistake itself), as well as an offer to work with the Yahoo board on a new CEO choice. Loeb has called for Thompson’s firing over the bio fibbing.

But the pugnacious investor will likely also be asked to opine on the situation so far at the off-the-record SkyBridge Alternatives Conference, which describes itself as “committed to facilitating balanced discussions and debates on macro-economic trends, geo-political events and alternative investment opportunities within the context of a dynamic global economy.”

What will be more interesting to see in the days ahead — even as the Yahoo board investigates how the false information about Thompson’s academic credentials got on that bio, as well as in regulatory filings — is if Loeb can be more than just a bomb-thrower and put forth a more specific and substantive plan for the long-troubled company than he has so far.

It’s not a requirement, of course, since Loeb is only seeking board seats and is not lobbying to be CEO, whose job it is to formulate a cogent strategy. But other Yahoo shareholders he is seeking to convince to join him in his proxy battle probably want more than “Yahoo stinks” from him at some point.

Still, for today at about 1:35 pm PT, when Loeb is scheduled to speak, it’s probably a good bet to expect some less-than-pretty noise from Sin City.

Update: In related news, eBay CEO John Donahoe, Thompson’s former boss, lent words of support but also underscored that the commerce company’s legal filings of his bio were always correct, even if its Web site was not. Thompson came to Yahoo from a stint as president of eBay’s PayPal payments unit.

As reported by Bloomberg, Donahoe said:

“When Scott was hired at EBay Inc., all of EBay’s filings had the accurate information. Some of EBay’s PR materials had that bio. Our legal filings were taken care of by our legal department. Some of the PR materials had that info,” he said while in Tokyo, of the correct bio versus the incorrect one.

Donahoe added: “I think Scott Thompson did a great job at PayPal. I think he’s a very talented leader and I believe he can help Yahoo. I hope they get through this and he can continue to do the very challenging job he’s got of helping to turn Yahoo around. I’m Scott’s biggest fan.”

This has been the first public support of Thompson by a prominent Internet figure, which might help lagging morale at the company.

RELATED POSTS:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120509/place-your-bets-will-loeb-drop-another-bomb-on-yahoo-at-vegas-confab-later-today/feed/ 0 Viral Video: The ParkMe Dudes Booting Austin http://allthingsd.com/20120320/viral-video-the-parkme-dudes-booting-austin/ http://allthingsd.com/20120320/viral-video-the-parkme-dudes-booting-austin/#comments Tue, 20 Mar 2012 07:31:04 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=188109

ParkMe is an app that AllThingsD writer Ina Fried wrote was “the best (and worst) marketing gimmick in Austin” at the SXSW Interactive festival last week.

Simply put, the Los Angeles-area start-up used fake tickets and boots to get the word out about their app, which recommends the “cheapest and closest parking around you.”

Yes, boots in Texas. Heh.

Here is a video ParkMe did about the effort:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120320/viral-video-the-parkme-dudes-booting-austin/feed/ 0 The Case of the Unfortunate Underscore: How Twitter Verified the Fake Wendi Over the Real Wendi http://allthingsd.com/20120104/the-case-of-the-unfortunate-underscore-how-twitter-verified-fake-wendi-over-real-wendi/ http://allthingsd.com/20120104/the-case-of-the-unfortunate-underscore-how-twitter-verified-fake-wendi-over-real-wendi/#comments Wed, 04 Jan 2012 19:35:05 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=159606

I went all Encyclopedia Brown yesterday after I and many others had been led astray by an account — @wendi_deng — that Twitter had verified with its famous blue check mark over the holiday weekend as that of Wendi Deng Murdoch, the wife of News Corp. head honcho Rupert Murdoch.

(Yes, the Murdoch who bought Dow Jones, which owns this site!)

As it turned out, it was not Wendi Deng Murdoch’s real account, but a fake one created by another person — unlike the one her husband recently opened, which is indeed that of the media mogul.

In the wake of the revelation — which got the kind of attention usually reserved for a major hurricane’s landfall — Twitter was not forthcoming about how that snafu occurred in its verification process or how that process even works now.

So, because I am obsessive complusive about having to make corrections after being told something is true when it is not, I got to sleuthing for the Bugs Meany of the situation.

As it turns out, according to sources close to the situation, it was a crime of punctuation — specifically an underscore that should not have been there.

Let’s back up first: Sources confirm that Wendi Deng Murdoch has indeed had a Twitter account — @wendideng — that was opened last summer. It was mostly used in connection with a movie she was a producer of, “Snow Flower and the Secret Fan.” She tweeted from the account, which had the screen name Wendi Murdoch, less than a dozen times.

When her husband recently decided to take up tweeting himself, with some amount of gusto, Twitter co-founder, creator and product guru Jack Dorsey personally helped make sure Rupert Murdoch’s account was verified.

Even though Twitter’s public “verified” program beta — to help battle fake accounts — was phased out, the communications company still does it for high-profile people, mostly celebrities or other brand names.

Murdoch certainly qualified as a famous personage and Dorsey even confirmed the News Corp. head’s arrival in the Twitterverse with his own tweet last Saturday.

As a courtesy, Twitter also moved to verify Murdoch’s spouse’s account and that is when an apparent Internet copy-editing scandal was born.

Since the information exchange was done over a hurried holiday weekend, several sources on both sides said there was a miscommunication and the company mangled the @ address it was told by Deng’s assistant. Mistakenly, Twitter apparently thought that the correct account was the one with the underscore and not the one with no space at all.

Unfortunately, the underscore Wendi account was the faux one created by a British man having some fun spoofing the famous Deng, who still had the no-space one for reals.

It’s kind of like a digital version of one of those switched-at-birth plots, except sillier and even more entertaining.

Thus, carrying the distinctive blue check mark, everyone assumed Twitter had verified the right one, until it was soon pointed out by News Corp. and even the fake Deng that it had not.

Awkward!

Twitter then released a statement admitting the obvious, the fake Deng enjoyed basking in the worldwide attention and the still-verified Rupert Murdoch had lobbed some much-noticed tweets (as you can see here, in case you are not one of his more than 101,000 followers).

As for the real Deng? She suspended her account.

For now, at least. Sources said she is likely to come back to Twitter and is still a big fan of Dorsey and the service.

Case, um, closed. (I hope.)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120104/the-case-of-the-unfortunate-underscore-how-twitter-verified-fake-wendi-over-real-wendi/feed/ 0 Viral Video: Fake Steve Jobs Hawks Tea in Taiwan http://allthingsd.com/20110706/viral-video-steve-jobs-lookalike-hawks-tea-in-taiwan/ http://allthingsd.com/20110706/viral-video-steve-jobs-lookalike-hawks-tea-in-taiwan/#comments Thu, 07 Jul 2011 04:39:24 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=95229 No, really.

Thanks to Dan Bloom for pointing out the commercial, which features an Apple iPad giveaway and a Steve Jobs lookalike.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110706/viral-video-steve-jobs-lookalike-hawks-tea-in-taiwan/feed/ 0 Headless Lawsuit in Topless Blog! http://allthingsd.com/20110414/headless-lawsuit-in-topless-blog/ http://allthingsd.com/20110414/headless-lawsuit-in-topless-blog/#comments Thu, 14 Apr 2011 15:46:02 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=42621

On some level of journalism, I guess anything could happen.

At least that’s according to a recent article by Business Insider’s Henry Blodget about an alleged “mole” at Twitter who was allegedly spying for Google, specifically about an exec the microblogging service was trying to poach from the Silicon Valley search giant.

In a decidedly splashy, hello-traffic, ALL-CAPs headline–THE SEARCH FOR THE “TWITTER MOLE”: All Eyes On John Doerr“–Blodget pointed his J’accuse finger at the legendary venture capitalist as the culprit.

Based on…

Well, based on nothing, it appears, except rank speculation and what appears to be no attempt to get Doerr to comment.

And, while it’s not my cup of tea, whatev, I suppose.

Except when I read down to the bottom and landed on this gem:

We have talked to several sources familiar with aspects of the situation. Thus far, we have not been able to confirm either assertion.

First, no one has even confirmed that Google was tipped off in advance of Twitter’s poaching effort, much less by a Twitter mole.

This doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

And later still:

So we haven’t been able to confirm the “high-level mole at Twitter” story. And we think there’s a good explanation for why there might not be a mole at all.

Secondly, we have talked to no one who has any evidence other than the logic above that, even if there is a Google mole at Twitter, the mole is John Doerr. One insider we spoke to, in fact, dismissed the idea out of hand.

Say what?

It’s kind of like thinking that a sparkly Civil War-era vampire falling in love with a moody chick in the Pacific Northwest and flying through the pines all day and mooning over their cruel fate was real.

Okay, that was a Hollywood movie called “Twilight,” but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen!

Thus, Doerr–a tough customer to be sure, capable of all kinds of sharp-elbowed behavior–is guilty until proven innocent?

Or just not guilty at all, but let’s just say he might be anyway, without a shred of evidence, because it could have happened!

(Courtroom confession: It was All Things Digital‘s Liz Gannes, who did it on the blog with scoop on the Twitter talent raid effort of Sundar Pichai!)

Speaking of evidence, less than a week later, Javert–oops, I mean, Blodget–was back in another kangaroo court performance with another terrifically loud headline:

“The Guy Who Says He Owns 50% Of Facebook Just Filed A Boatload Of New Evidence–And It’s Breathtaking.”

Breathtaking, I guess, if you are in that fantasy teenaged girl mode, but deeply suspect if you are anyone with a modicum of journalistic responsibility.

It is perfectly fine for Blodget to dredge up the copious emails from a man named Paul Ceglia–who alleges he possesses a contract that he struck with Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg at the time of its creation–and analyze them.

And it is certainly notable that a credible law firm, DLA Piper, has taken on the case for Ceglia and it does seems unlikely that it would have done so without doing some level of due diligence.

In fact, in an interview with Am Law Daily, DLA partner Robert Brownlie, international co-chair of the firm’s securities litigation, said: “At first I shrugged it off as incredible. I would not have gotten involved and DLA would not have gotten involved if we had any doubts about the facts or evidence in the case.”

That was, of course, countered by Facebook’s lawyer Orin Snyder at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, who said in a statement that the Ceglia allegations were part of “a fraudulent lawsuit brought by a convicted felon.”

By the way, in fancy-lawyer parlance, that translates to a liar-liar-pants-on-fire defense.

So, microwave the popcorn and get ready for the drama, because no question, it is clearly going to be juicy all around with a whole lot of social networking poking!

In fact, such a case is tailor-made for Blodget, who has always been a very gifted writer with a nose for sharp-edged analysis.

It’s too bad, then, that he did not hone his knife to such an edge when it comes to Ceglia, giving him much too much credibility based on what could be fake emails, especially since they come from a man with a history of fraud.

History, in fact, that Ceglia is depending on in this case, since Zuckerberg most definitely has one in regards to partnerships gone bad.

Thus, Zuckerberg has been sneaky before, ergo he’s sneaky here.

That’s no surprise as a legal tactic, of course, and I threw in the “ergo,” since I too want to play Perry Mason in a blog.

But. More to the point, while Facebook was certainly hard-nosed in dealing with both protracted and high-profile legal challenges from the Winklevoss twins and also Eduardo Severin, I don’t think I have ever seen the company explicitly say evidence was completely fabricated, as it is alleging Ceglia’s emails are.

As I said, I have no idea if they are or they’re not, but I do know this: While those emails are certainly bombshell in nature, they are designed to be so precisely because it is a lawsuit in which the principal is trying to shame Facebook into settling.

None of that seems to concern Blodget, who concludes at the end of the post:

“In short, to us at least, the emails don’t read ‘fake.’”

In short, to me at least, that’s for fake-email experts and the courts to decide.

The real fact of the matter is, who knows? I certainly don’t, although I do know it’s terrifically easy to file a lawsuit and claim just about anything you like.

And the same seems to be true–more and more these days and not for the good–for blogs too.

As for me, I need to get back to my goal of proving that sparkly vampires do exist.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110414/headless-lawsuit-in-topless-blog/feed/ 3 More Fake Videos As "Viral" Web Advertising–Where Is the Old Spice Guy When You Need Him? http://allthingsd.com/20110317/more-fake-videos-as-viral-web-advertising-where-is-the-old-spice-guy-when-you-need-him/ http://allthingsd.com/20110317/more-fake-videos-as-viral-web-advertising-where-is-the-old-spice-guy-when-you-need-him/#comments Thu, 17 Mar 2011 13:15:23 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=41725

Ugh, yet another attempt to pass off “authentic” online videos as real ones, in order to hawk something.

This time, it’s a video of a geeky man using a little transmitter, a red balloon and an Apple iPhone to change screens in New York’s Times Square.

Except not.

The effort is a fake for an upcoming movie called “Limitless,” according to an article in the New York Times.

That has not stopped it from getting more than one million views on YouTube, created by a viral marketing company called Thinkmodo.

“We represent the new age in advertising,” Thinkmodo’s James Percelay told the Times. “Virtual offices and the ‘YouTube aesthetic’ are ushering in a sea change enabling creatives with minuscule overhead to go head to head with those with massive ones.”

I am not sure when rank fakery qualified as a new age or even creative, but whatev.

Because besides the media attention the movie gets once the jig was declared up, which seems silly, the only time you see “Limitless” is in a video trailer on the big screen that is displaced by the balloon nerd’s one.

I hardly noticed it.

Oddly, the Times compares the lame stunt to the wonderful Old Spice online advertising campaign, which I thought was genius in its innovative use of social media combined with a clever professional effort.

Not so this one from a pair of guys who also did another faux video for a product called HeadBlade, by making a pretend video titled “The Shaving Helmet.”

You can see that, as well as the “Limitless” video below, along with a much more clever fake promotion for NZT, a pill that the main character takes in the film to become supersmart.

I wish some viral marketing types would take one of those more often.

Enjoy:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110317/more-fake-videos-as-viral-web-advertising-where-is-the-old-spice-guy-when-you-need-him/feed/ 1 Cisco Security Survey Finds Windows Vulnerabilities And Spam Decreasing http://allthingsd.com/20110120/cisco-security-survey-finds-windows-vulnerabilities-and-spam-decreasing/ http://allthingsd.com/20110120/cisco-security-survey-finds-windows-vulnerabilities-and-spam-decreasing/#comments Thu, 20 Jan 2011 14:40:09 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://newenterprise.allthingsd.com/?p=2000
Cyber criminals have fewer ways to attack Microsoft Windows, and sent less spam in 2010 than in 2009–a first-ever decline of spam from year to year. Those are among the findings in an annual report on the state of Internet security released today by networking giant Cisco Systems.

All the security attention paid in recent years to securing the Windows desktop and the applications running on it have paid off a little, Cisco found, making it harder for computer scammers to successfully carry off their intended crimes on that platform. The trouble is they’re now starting to focus more attention on mobile devices, including Apple’s iPhone and iPad, and devices running Google’s Android operating system, Cisco said.

Meanwhile, the overall global volume of spam, which often contains troublemaking links that are used to deliver attacks, decreased for the first time ever in 2010. Even so, spam still increased in some developed countries where broadband connections are multiplying. In the United Kingdom, spam volume nearly doubled, while the volume in France went up 115 percent. The U.S. saw a slight decline–11.1 trillion messages down from 11.3 trillion in 2009. Spam in Brazil, China and Turkey also declined. Some of the decline can be attributed to last year’s arrest by FBI agents in Milwaukee of a Russian accused of being the “king of spam,” and to the shutdown of a few botnets used by scammers to send spam.

One thing about Cisco’s report that’s likely to draw some attention is its finding that the raw number of vulnerabilities on Apple products appear to be growing. Apple users are usually pretty sensitive about this topic, and any comparison of the Mac to Windows on the security front tends to make them grind their teeth and pound out annoyed comments on tech blogs. I know because I’ve done the same teeth-grinding and have in the past criticized other reports for similar findings.

Here Cisco is addressing vulnerabilities that Apple has itself documented and patched in software updates. One thing that’s not clear to me–though it sure looks like it–is whether Cisco is combining vulnerabilities found on both iOS (iPhone and iPad) and OS X (the Mac). The data it’s using is from its IntelliShield service, which tracks vulnerabilities and security incidents, and shows that over five years Apple’s vulnerabilities rose, from less than 200 in 2006 to more than 350 in 2010. That rate was higher than Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard and Cisco itself, the report found, though it goes on to say that Apple has worked harder than most other vendors to protect its users. Security is one of the reasons Apple imposes such strict rules on what’s available in the App store, though people still jailbreak their phones.

Another trend Cisco found is something called “money muling.” Tom Gillis, VP and general manager of Cisco’s Security business unit, describes money muling as using unsuspecting people who are attracted by “work at home” spam messages and Web ads to participate in money laundering by moving small amounts of money into bank accounts, just a few thousand dollars at a time. He says the operations around this are becoming increasingly elaborate, and criminals will devote a lot of effort to developing it this year.

I talked with Gillis about the report and other security trends that Cisco found. Here are a few highlights from our conversation:

NewEnterprise: So you’re seeing fewer attacks on Windows and more on mobile devices. Is that simply because there are more of them?

Tom Gillis: It’s the simple fact that there’s this new class of mobile device coming into the enterprise that used to be a phone and now it’s a computer, and it can access enterprise information. So what we’re seeing is that the raw number, but not the severity, is down on Windows. Part of this is that Windows 7 was a very good release on Microsoft’s part from a security standpoint. And we’ve got these new devices coming into the enterprise, and so we’re seeing a shift in focus of attacks on these mobile devices. They’re vulnerable to attack and they’re relevant in the enterprise. Two years ago this would have been too small a population to be meaningful.

What kind of attacks are you seeing?

It varies. In some cases there’s a little “phone home” code in a free gaming app. Pretty gentle stuff so far. But as people start using smartphones to access sensitive information we need to start thinking about security considerations on these devices. There’s a larger theme here that the whole nature of attacks is changing dramatically. The fact that spam volumes dropped at all is a big tell. For 10 years this has only gone up. We’re not forecasting a steady decline in spam, but the fact that it slowed down at all is an indicator of the shift in the way that attackers are using email. The attacks are more targeted and personal, for one thing.

Can’t some of this decrease be attributed to some of the arrests that happened last year?

It can. There’s been a handful of arrests. And they went after not only the botnet operators but other parts of the spam value chain. There are firms and entities that build botnets of compromised machines that relay the spam, and then there are other firms and entities that rent time on those botnets that do the merchandising. The biggest category is selling fake pharmaceuticals. Some of these fake pharma operations were shut down and the people associated with them arrested. It’s not an easy thing to do, because they’re global, they move around, and so to make an arrest in this space is a huge accomplishment.

So what is the thinking now about securing the mobile device?

We think there are two ways to make mobile devices work in the enterprise. The flood of devices into the enterprise is huge, and everyone wants to use them to check their email and access corporate directories and other fundamental things. There needs to be some kind of software on the end point–the phone or device. It will have to be light. You can’t have some kind of antivirus suite running on the phone. It would be a little piece of software that’s on all the time that knows when you’re behind the corporate firewall and when you’re not, and manages your connection accordingly. We bought a company called ScanSafe that has 40 data centers around the world. When you’re outside the firewall it connects to you the nearest data center and enforces your corporate policies, but all you as the user know is that it just works. This notion of being on or off the corporate network goes away. And we can do all kinds of scanning for security, independent of the device that’s being used.

This year we also saw the Stuxnet attacks, which we now know for certain were carried out against the Iranian nuclear program. Clearly this is a new kind of attack that can be mounted against industrial control systems via computer networks. Is Cisco researching this?

Massively. Often these types of attacks are targeted against Cisco’s biggest enterprise customers. Who buys Cisco’s infrastructure? The biggest banks in the world, the defense contractors. If the goal of an attacker is to disrupt an economy, their targets will be our customers, and they’re demanding a response from us. I like to call it global threat correlation, but it comes down to taking huge samples of network traffic and picking out good traffic from the bad. Cisco has a good advantage here because our equipment is so widely deployed around the world. As we start measuring traffic we can develop reputation data on every publicly routable IP address on the Internet. As we start putting telemetry info into that equipment–and the customer can choose to enable it or not, and it’s turned off by default. But people turn it on because it helps them against the unknown kind of attacks that are popping up. If a Web server says its a Web server, but you just saw it sending spam three minutes ago, there’s a pretty good chance it’s part of a botnet. Once you know that you know that, you can start to mount a pretty good defense. We’re putting a lot of energy into developing that, and it’s proven to be pretty robust.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110120/cisco-security-survey-finds-windows-vulnerabilities-and-spam-decreasing/feed/ 1 Why Facebook Carded Some Users http://allthingsd.com/20101118/why-facebook-carded-some-users/ http://allthingsd.com/20101118/why-facebook-carded-some-users/#comments Thu, 18 Nov 2010 13:00:07 +0000 Geoffrey A. Fowler http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=32787 On Tuesday, Facebook discovered a bug: An automated system designed to detect spammers and people with fake accounts spun out of control, and started challenging a wider set of regular users. It disabled some people’s accounts, and asked them send in a copy of their real-world ID.

Facebook said the issue only affected a “fraction of a percentage” of the social network’s users, and they fixed it within hours. The company also deleted all the ID information that some people sent in.

But the incident raised an interesting question: Why was Facebook asking for real-world IDs in the first place?

Unlike some other social networks, Facebook takes pride (and pitches advertisers) on the idea that its users present their real-world selves. But the ID request isn’t part of a broader effort to verify users’ identities–something that sites in countries such as China sometimes do.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101118/why-facebook-carded-some-users/feed/ 0 Viral Video: Kathy Griffin Laments Fake Boyfriend Levi Johnston's Engagement http://allthingsd.com/20100716/viral-video-kathy-griffin-laments-fake-boyfriend-levi-johnsons-engagement/ http://allthingsd.com/20100716/viral-video-kathy-griffin-laments-fake-boyfriend-levi-johnsons-engagement/#comments Fri, 16 Jul 2010 07:13:23 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=30749

One of the better bits on her terrific television reality show, “My Life on the D-List,” is comic Kathy Griffin’s antics with fake boyfriend Levi Johnston.

As in, baby father to Sarah Palin’s grandchild. Johnston and the Palins had been on the outs, until it was announced this week in a turnabout that he was now engaged to Bristol Palin, the baby mother.

Never to miss an opportunity, Griffin naturally fakes breakup heartache, using Johnston’s nude cover shoot from Playgirl as a prop.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100716/viral-video-kathy-griffin-laments-fake-boyfriend-levi-johnsons-engagement/feed/ 0 Is This Apple's Next iPhone? http://allthingsd.com/20100419/is-this-apples-next-iphone/ http://allthingsd.com/20100419/is-this-apples-next-iphone/#comments Mon, 19 Apr 2010 14:31:02 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=38626

Gizmodo claims it is and it certainly appears to be a legitimate Apple prototype. “Found” in a bar in Redwood City, Calif., (reportedly running iPhone OS 4), the device boasts a number of new features. Among them: A front-facing camera, improved back-camera with flash, Micro-SIM, a screen with a seemingly higher resolution, and a new glass and aluminum design more akin to the iPad.

Could it be a fake? Perhaps, but as Gizmodo notes, the device’s build, design and internal components reek of Apple (AAPL). Beyond this, it behaves like an iPhone when connected to a computer and its internals feature a number of parts clearly labeled “APPLE.”

“We get false tips all the time,” the site explains. “But after playing with it for about a week–the overall quality feels exactly like a finished final Apple phone–and disassembling this unit, there is so much evidence stacked in its favor, that there’s very little possibility that it’s a fake. In fact, the possibility is almost none. Imagine someone having to use Apple components to design a functioning phone, from scratch, and then disseminating it to people around the world. Pretty much impossible.”

Indeed, my guess is that Apple is getting ready to throw the person responsible for losing this off the roof of 1 Infinite Loop. Or it’s investigating the incident as a potential theft.

Below, Gizmodo’s too-short video overview of the device. You’ll find additional pictures, longer videos and a more detailed tear-down here.

[Image, video credits: Gizmodo]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100419/is-this-apples-next-iphone/feed/ 0 Ad Giant Publicis Tells Publishers to Throw Bodies at the Fake Web Ads Problem http://allthingsd.com/20091013/ad-giant-publicis-tells-publishers-to-throw-bodies-at-the-fake-web-ads-problem/ http://allthingsd.com/20091013/ad-giant-publicis-tells-publishers-to-throw-bodies-at-the-fake-web-ads-problem/#comments Tue, 13 Oct 2009 12:12:27 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=12001 the-sting-soundtrackLast month, the New York Times (NYT) was attacked by hackers who bought fake Web ads from the publisher. And one of the world’s biggest ad companies says that won’t be the last assault.

Publicis, the giant French ad holding company, has been warning Web publishers to be “hyper-vigilant” about other bogus ads like the ones the Times mistakenly sold, which were purportedly for Vonage (VG) but were actually designed to distribute malware. Publicis, whose units includes Starcom, Digitas, Optimedia, MediaVest, Zenith, and Spark, has been sending out letters warning publishers to be wary of the rogue ads, which it describes as an “industry issue.”

The catch: It appears that the only way to combat the attacks, at least in the near-term, is to do something that runs counter to industry trends: Throw bodies at the problem. Publicis wants publishers to individually verify the ad orders they receive, which would be a nonissue for traditional media but is a problem for Web publishing, which increasingly relies on automation. Mediapost:

The incidents have exposed potential vulnerabilities in on online publishing security, and are causing advertisers, agencies and publishers alike to reassess the processes they use to conduct business, especially as they interact with an increasing array of third-party intermediaries–advertising networks, exchanges, etc.–many of which place insertion orders automatically and without human intervention. The solution, as the Times’ and Publicis’ new policies suggest, is to reinsert human interaction into the process–at least for the time being.

Whoops. That whole thrust of Web publishing is get humans as far away as possible from buying and selling decisions: The ad exchange that Google (GOOG) launched last month, for instance, is designed to handle those tasks in milliseconds. Now think about how long it takes to pick up the phone to actually confirm that ad buyers are who they say they are [shudder].

It’s possible that this is simply butt-covering on the part of Publicis (these attacks have been out there for quite some time) and that this will blow over soon. But I don’t think so. Which means the ascent of Web ads may slow down, just a bit, as the industry figures out just how many humans it will take to fight the problem.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091013/ad-giant-publicis-tells-publishers-to-throw-bodies-at-the-fake-web-ads-problem/feed/ 0 Twitter Scandal! New York Times Columnist Maureen Dowd Tweets Against Her Will! http://allthingsd.com/20090422/twitter-scandal-new-york-times-columnist-maureen-dowd-tweets-against-her-will/ http://allthingsd.com/20090422/twitter-scandal-new-york-times-columnist-maureen-dowd-tweets-against-her-will/#comments Wed, 22 Apr 2009 14:18:31 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=6515 maureen-dowd-twitter-smallNavel-gazing Twitter story of the day, or at least, of the morning: What do Twitterers think about New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd’s interview with Biz Stone and Evan Williams in which she made the Twitter co-founders answer her questions Tweet-style–in 140 or fewer characters?

I liked it, actually. The Twitter dudes came off just fine. And if Twitter fans thought Dowd came off as condescending or smarmy, then they ought to brace themselves, because there’s going to be plenty more like this.

But here’s my real question: Who is operating Maureen Dowd’s Twitter account? Because according to her own column, she can think of other things she’d like to do than Tweet:

“I would rather be tied up to stakes in the Kalahari Desert, have honey poured over me and red ants eat out my eyes than open a Twitter account. Is there anything you can say to change my mind?”

But as Editor & Publisher editor Greg Mitchell notes, someone opened an account with Dowd’s name last year. It’s not scintillating stuff–like many journalists’ accounts, it’s basically a promotional device for her work–but it does have some 5,000 followers.

maureen-dowd-tweet-full

Of course, Twitter doesn’t actually require people to prove they are who their Twitter accounts say they are, so it’s entirely possible Dowd’s account is a fake, set up by a well-meaning fan. My hunch: It’s actually set up by the Times itself and operated by a well-meaning staffer. (Tellingly, the account isn’t “following” anyone, which pretty much anyone who gives Twitter a try does at some point.)

UPDATE: I’m wrong, says NYT spokesperson Catherine Mathis. Or at least, I’m probably wrong: “It does not belong to Maureen Dowd. It appears as though it was created by someone outside The Times.”

Either way, you’d think Dowd would have noted the account at sometime in the last few months–perhaps while she was prepping for her interview at Twitter HQ.

I’ve asked the Times (a bit sheepishly, I’ll admit) for details on this pressing story. I’ll update as soon as I get them.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090422/twitter-scandal-new-york-times-columnist-maureen-dowd-tweets-against-her-will/feed/ 0 How to Dupe The New York Times: A Letter to the Editor http://allthingsd.com/20081223/how-to-dupe-the-new-york-times-a-letter-to-the-editor/ http://allthingsd.com/20081223/how-to-dupe-the-new-york-times-a-letter-to-the-editor/#comments Tue, 23 Dec 2008 14:13:35 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=2393 The New York Times (NYT) admits that it has been duped by someone who pretended to be the mayor of Paris. How did the duper ever get one over on The Paper Of Record? By writing a letter to the editor. NYT:

Editors’ Note: December 22, 2008
Earlier this morning, we posted a letter that carried the name of Bertrand Delanoë, the mayor of Paris, sharply criticizing Caroline Kennedy.

This letter was a fake. It should not have been published.

Doing so violated both our standards and our procedures in publishing signed letters from our readers.

We have already expressed our regrets to Mr. Delanoë’s office and we are now doing the same to you, our readers.

This letter, like most Letters to the Editor these days, arrived by email. It is Times procedure to verify the authenticity of every letter. In this case, our staff sent an edited version of the letter to the sender of the email and did not hear back. At that point, we should have contacted Mr. Delanoë’s office to verify that he had, in fact, written to us.

We did not do that. Without that verification, the letter should never have been printed.

We are reviewing our procedures for verifying letters to avoid such an incident in the future.”

Expect this story to generate a lot of new media rulz! from the blogosphere. But you can file that in the same place you put the “Twitter is like a news wire, only better!” arguments. I’m just glad the Times can afford to have a staff big enough to verify the authenticity of every letter it prints. And I worry that this won’t be the case in the near future.

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