The group, the Syrian Electronic Army, has claimed responsibility for some of the latest high-profile account hacks, taking over the official Twitter handles of NPR and CBS and, most recently, sending a false tweet from the Associated Press’s Twitter account that sent U.S. stock markets into a tailspin for a few brief moments last week.

“We are aware that a number of Guardian Twitter accounts have been compromised and we are working actively to resolve this,” a Guardian spokesperson told AllThingsD.

Update 3:15 PST: Twitter has sent out e-mail notices to a number of journalists who user Twitter, urging them to take extra security measures with their accounts in light of the recent hacks. A portion of the email, obtained by AllThingsD reads as follows:

“These incidents appear to be spear phishing attacks that target your corporate email. Promoting individual awareness of these attacks within your organization and following the security guidelines below is vital to preventing abuse of your Twitter accounts.”

And also worth noting from the email:

“We believe that these attacks will continue, and that news and media organizations will continue to be high value targets to hackers.”

In this the most recent hack, the SEA tweeted out advertisements for its movement from the Guardian’s smaller, vertical-based Twitter accounts such as @GuardianBusiness and @GuardianFilm, according to the Naked Security Blog, which first noted the attack.

“Follow the Syrian Electronic Army … Follow the truth! @Official_SEA12 #SEA #Syria,” the messages read.

It is possible, as noted by Guardian staffer James Ball, that the SEA used a similar email phishing attack employed last week on members of the Associated Press, in which the hacker cohort sent out well-crafted false emails that tricked staff members into handing over their email account information.

As of mid-morning Monday, a number of the Guardian Twitter accounts had been suspended.

After the spate of recent high-profile hacking incidents — including one on Twitter itself that potentially compromised 250,000 user accounts — Twitter has come under heavy scrutiny for its security practices.

The guys doing the Guardian phishing attack I mentioned yesterday (it’s SEA) are really very good: sustained, changing, mails today.

— James Ball (@jamesrbuk) April 29, 2013

Rumors circulated that the microblogging service would eventually introduce two-factor security authentication, essentially a way of verifying a user’s identity when trying to log in to an account.

It’s worth noting, however, that these rumors floated around last time Twitter was hacked, and we haven’t seen anything yet. Surmise what you will from that.

Representatives from Twitter did not respond to a request for comment.

After a massive breach of its computer systems yesterday, LivingSocial has sent out emails to all of the 50 million customers impacted, a company spokesman said, and is now working with law enforcement in an investigation to help find the perpetrators.

The company declined to give more information about how the hackers might have entered the Washington, D.C., daily deals company’s system to get access to names, emails, birthdates and encrypted passwords. But it did note that it was taking extra measures to restrict access to all of its systems and consumer data and has been doing heavy monitoring of consumer accounts.

LivingSocial also underscored that credit card information of its users has not been hacked. “We store credit card data through a financial processing network, so the full number literally does not exist anywhere in our system,” the spokesman said.

Still, the hack is a huge blow for LivingSocial, which is owned in part by Amazon, impacting 50 million customers, who will now be required to reset their passwords. All of LivingSocial’s countries across the world appear to have been affected, except in Thailand, Korea, Indonesia and the Philippines, as LivingSocial units Ticketmonster and Ensogo there were on separate systems.

This is the latest big data breach in the consumer Internet space, which has seen troublesome incursions into some high-profile companies recently, including Zappos, LinkedIn and Evernote.

The attack comes at a tough time for the company, since it has been trying to turn itself around after a downturn across the daily deals landspace. LivingSocial got a large cash infusion recently from investors to help stanch its losses. Amazon owns 29 percent of the company.

LivingSocial, the daily deals site owned in part by Amazon, has suffered a massive cyber attack on its computer systems, which an email from CEO Tim O’Shaughnessy — just sent to employees and obtained by AllThingsD.com — said resulted in “unauthorized access to some customer data from our servers.”

The hack includes customer names, emails, birthdates and encrypted passwords.

The breach has impacted 50 million customers of the Washington, D.C.-based company, who will now be required to reset their passwords. All of LivingSocial’s countries across the world appear to have been affected, except in Thailand, Korea, Indonesia and the Philippines, as LivingSocial units Ticketmonster and Ensogo there were on separate systems.

One positive note in a not-so-positive situation: The email sent to employees and customers noted that neither customer credit card nor merchant financial information was accessed in the cyber attack.

This is the latest big data breach in the consumer Internet space, which has seen troublesome incursions into some high-profile companies recently, including Zappos, LinkedIn and Evernote.

When asked for comment on the email, a LivingSocial PR spokesman confirmed the attack and that 50 million customers were impacted.

The attack comes at a tough time for the company, since it has been trying to turn itself around after a downturn across the daily deals landspace. LivingSocial got a large cash infusion recently from investors to help staunch its losses. Amazon owns 29 percent of the company.

More to come, but here’s the email sent to employees, including one that will be sent to customers soon:

Re: Security Incident

LivingSocialites –

This e-mail is important, so please read it to the end.

We recently experienced a cyber-attack on our computer systems that resulted in unauthorized access to some customer data from our servers. We are actively working with law enforcement to investigate this issue.

The information accessed includes names, email addresses, date of birth for some users, and encrypted passwords — technically ‘hashed’ and ‘salted’ passwords. We never store passwords in plain text.

Two things you should know:

1. * The database that stores customer credit card information was not affected or accessed.

2. * The database that stores merchants’ financial and banking information was not affected or accessed.

The security of our customer and merchant information is our priority. We always strive to ensure the security of our customer information, and we are redoubling efforts to prevent any issues in the future.

To ensure our customers and merchants are fully informed and protected, we are notifying those who may have been impacted via email explaining what happened, expiring their passwords, and requesting that they create new passwords. A copy of the note is included below this email.

If you have any questions or concerns, please visit Pulse –https://pulse.livingsocial.com/intranet/Home/more_updates.html — for a list of frequently asked questions. If you have additional questions that aren’t answered in the FAQs, please submit them via email to XXX@livingsocial.com.

Because we anticipate a high call volume and may not be able to answer or return all calls in a responsible fashion, we are likely to temporarily suspend consumer phone-based servicing. We will be devoting all available resources to our web-based servicing.

I apologize for the formality of this note, which the circumstances demand. We need to do the right thing for our customers who place their trust in us, and that is why we’re taking the steps described and going above and beyond what’s required. We’ll all need to work incredibly hard over the coming days and weeks to validate that faith and trust.

– Tim

Subject: An important update on your LivingSocial.com account

LivingSocial recently experienced a cyber-attack on our computer systems that resulted in unauthorized access to some customer data from our servers. We are actively working with law enforcement to investigate this issue.

The information accessed includes names, email addresses, date of birth for some users, and encrypted passwords — technically ‘hashed’ and ‘salted’ passwords. We never store passwords in plain text.

The database that stores customer credit card information was not affected or accessed.

Although your LivingSocial password would be difficult to decode, we want to take every precaution to ensure that your account is secure, so we are expiring your old password and requesting that you create a new one.

For your security, please create a new password for your *email_address* account by following the instructions below.

1. Visit LivingSocial.com

2. Click on the “Create a New Password” button (top right corner of the homepage)

3. Follow the steps to finish

We also encourage you, for your own personal data security, to consider changing password(s) on any other sites on which you use the same or similar password(s).

The security of your information is our priority. We always strive to ensure the security of our customer information, and we are redoubling efforts to prevent any issues in the future.

Please note that LivingSocial will never ask you directly for personal or account information in an email. We will always direct you to the LivingSocial website — and require you to login — before making any changes to your account. Please disregard any emails claiming to be from LivingSocial that request such information or direct you to a different website that asks for such information.

If you have additional questions about this process, the “Create a New Password” button on LivingSocial.com will direct you to a page that has instructions on creating a new password and answers to frequently asked questions.

We are sorry this incident occurred, and we look forward to continuing to introduce you to new and exciting things to do in your community.

Tim O’Shaughnessy

CEO, LivingSocial

The official Twitter account of the Associated Press was hacked on Tuesday morning, according to an AP spokesperson, sending out a disturbing message that gained immediate traction across Twitter, spurring upward of 4,000 retweets within minutes of the initial tweet.

The hackers were able to send only a single tweet before Twitter suspended the account, merely minutes after the tweet was sent.

The tweet in question was disturbing. “Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured,” the fake tweet read.

But the rest of the world reacted quickly. Stocks on the DJIA dove briefly by about 130 points on the news, before sharply recovering to roughly where they were before, around 14,700.

The news comes after a weekend of similar hacks on news organizations, including some CBS News accounts. The Syrian Electronic Army claimed responsibility for the attacks. Earlier this month, a number of NPR’s Twitter accounts were hacked, and last month saw hacks to the Human Rights Watch website.

According to a tweet sent from “@officialSEA_6,” the AP hack could also have been carried out by the Syrian Electronic Army. “Ops! @AP get owned by Syrian Electronic Army! #SEA #Syria #ByeByeObama,” the tweet read.

Something worth noting: AP reporter Michael Baker tweeted that the hack “came less than an hour after some of us received an impressively disguised phishing email,” which may explain how the hackers gained access to the AP Twitter account.

“The (at)AP twitter account has been hacked. A tweet about an attack at the White House is false. We will advise on acct. status,” said the Associated Press, via a tweet from its other verified account, @APStylebook.

“The president is fine,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said at a regularly scheduled press conference on Tuesday morning. “I was just with him.”

As is standard operating procedure, Twitter declined to comment on an individual account, citing privacy and security reasons.

“During our investigation, we found a small number of computers, including some in our Mac business unit, that were infected by malicious software using techniques similar to those documented by other organizations,” wrote Matt Thomlinson, General Manager of Trustworthy Computing Security, in a company post.

Microsoft claims no evidence of customer data being compromised.

The security breach of the Redmond-based software company is just one in a series of high-profile tech company hacks, starting earlier this month with Twitter’s announcement that the data of some 250,000 user accounts could potentially have been compromised.

As we reported earlier in the week, laptops belonging to employees at Facebook, Apple and possibly Twitter were infected with malware after visiting an iPhone-focused software developer site. Sources have told AllThingsD that many other companies could have been infected by the malware-spreading site, and perhaps many more will disclose similar instances of hacking in the coming weeks.

And just yesterday, customer service management provider ZenDesk announced that it had been hacked as well. The fallout from that hack affected some of the companies ZenDesk provides its services to, including Pinterest, Twitter and Tumblr.

Microsoft did not respond to a request for further comment.

No passwords were involved in the attack, said the companies, who are alerting their users tonight.

Zendesk CEO Mikkel Svane disclosed the security breach in a blog post on Thursday. Twitter, Tumblr and Pinterest then alerted affected users via email.

The identities of the affected companies were published by Wired, and they each have independently confirmed to AllThingsD via email, though Zendesk declined to identify them directly.

In addition to users’ email addresses, associated subject lines of the three social media companies’ support emails were compromised. Tumblr warned users that because subject lines could include their blog addresses, hackers may be able to associate their emails with their blogs.

A Zendesk spokeswoman said to expect more detail soon, while a Pinterest spokesman noted, “There is an ongoing investigation by authorities.”

San Francisco-based Zendesk is used by some 25,000 companies. Other customers include Sony Music, Disney, Vodafone, Groupon and Kickstarter.

In the spate of large companies hacked in recent weeks, it seems that many of them have one thing in common. Many have visited one compromised website specifically devoted to sharing information related to mobile development — and it’s not just tech companies visiting the site.

The site is called iPhoneDevSDK, according to sources close to the Facebook hacking investigation. It’s a hub for many companies concentrated on the mobile space.

After Facebook employees visited the mobile development site in recent weeks, malicious code injected into the HTML of the site used an exploit in Oracle’s Java plug-in to infect employee laptops, as the company divulged last Friday.

When asked for comment on the site in question, Facebook referred us back to the company’s blog post from last week, without going into further detail.

Of note: Do not visit this site, as it may continue to be compromised. While it’s potentially risky to publicize the website, AllThingsD is providing the name to inform readers, developers and organizations interested in mobile development in order to keep them from becoming infected.

Update 4:22 pm PT: Ian Sefferman, owner and operator of the site iPhoneDevSDK, has reached out to AllThingsD and provided the following statement:

“We’re investigating Facebook’s reports that iPhoneDevSDK was hosting an exploit targeted at Facebook employees. We’re actively ensuring that is not the case. Facebook originally noted that they immediately reached out to other affected companies, but we were never contacted by Facebook, any other company, or law enforcement. Our users’ security is incredibly important to us and we’ll be sure to follow the investigation through to completion.”

When asked for a response to Sefferman’s statement, Facebook declined to comment on an ongoing investigation.

This is likely also the website responsible for the recent hack of Apple employee laptops, as the company announced on Tuesday. “Apple has identified malware which infected a limited number of Mac systems through a vulnerability in the Java plug-in for browsers,” the company said in a statement to AllThingsD provided earlier this morning.

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether or not the iPhoneDevSDK site was involved in its hack.

The site could also be the common thread behind the recent Twitter hack, which potentially compromised the accounts of 250,000 Twitter users. In the language of Twitter’s blog post, head of information security Bob Lord reminded users to disable Java inside of their browsers, a hint that this could be related to the Facebook and Apple hacks.

Apple also released a security update software patch to users on Tuesday which addresses the Java exploit, another indication that the iPhoneDevSDK site is responsible for the company’s hack.

Twitter did not respond to a request for comment.

The hack is different from many familiar modes of attacking individual users and companies. It’s called a “watering hole” attack, in that it’s launched from a centralized, popular location that many people visit across multiple industries.

“Everyone knows about spearphishing now,” said Joe Sullivan, Facebook’s chief security officer, in an interview last week with AllThingsD. “But being able to target a site on the Internet — it’s a really interesting idea that you could target people from there. You don’t have to get someone to open the email or click on the link.”

Or as independent security researcher Ashkan Soltani told us last week: “Rather than attack individual developers, they’ve poisoned the well.”

This type of attack has been used in other recent high-profile hacks. In December of last year, a watering-hole hack was discovered on the website of the Council of Foreign Relations, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank whose influence is widespread in “journalist, business and education circles.”

But the attack on mobile developers is potentially even more worrisome: The iPhoneDevSDK website isn’t just for tech-focused companies working on mobile apps. It’s an iPhone-specific site that any organization interested in mobile could benefit from visiting. And as Facebook said in its recent blog post, “Facebook was not alone in this attack. It is clear that others were attacked and infiltrated recently as well.”

The implications loom large. As the tide has shifted over the past few years and more people have moved to using smartphones and tablets for their computing needs, countless numbers of major companies and organizations have invested heavily in mobile application development. Imagine how many visited the site and could unknowingly be affected.

“It’s the type of forum that anyone who was building apps for mobile devices would visit,” Facebook’s Sullivan told AllThingsD. “It’s pretty popular for sharing tips, tricks, etc.”

So going forward, the question now isn’t which company is next, but rather which one is willing to admit it next.

“I truly believe we’re going to see quite a bit more of these announcements as companies start to get smarter and look more closely at their systems,” Soltani told AllThingsD in a previous interview.

Now, “it’s not a matter of whether or not you’ve been compromised,” Soltani said. “It’s whether you have the expertise to tell.”

1.) Salesforce CEO Benioff Invites Laid Off Yammer Employees to Work for Him

2.) Microsoft Could Make Billions From Office for iPad

3.) Apple Working on Fix for iOS 6.1 Passcode Hack

4.) American Express Cardholders Can Now Tweet to Buy

5.) HBO to Finally Let Subscribers Stream HBO Go to TV Over AirPlay

6.) A Big Year for Apple’s iPhone in India

7.) Bill Gates on Philanthropy, Steve Jobs and the Microsoft Product That Never Was

8.) Yes, Intel Is Building a Web TV Service (A Box, Too)

9.) The Cloud’s Dirty Little Secret

10.) Apple MacBook Pros With Retina Display Get Faster, Cheaper

For more of the week in review, you should follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

A new vulnerability has been discovered in iOS 6.1 that can be exploited to bypass passcode locks on iOS devices. The hack to do so is somewhat involved, but once it’s performed, it grants access to a device’s contacts, voicemails and photos. We’ve verified the hack here at AllThingsD, and as best I can tell, there isn’t any immediate way to safeguard against it.

Reached for comment, Apple said it is hard at work on a fix. “Apple takes user security very seriously” spokeswoman Trudy Muller told AllThingsD. “We are aware of this issue, and will deliver a fix in a future software update.”

Revelation of this vulnerability follows the discovery of two other bugs in iOS 6.1, one that’s been fixed and another that Apple is working with Microsoft to resolve.

The hackers accessed names, email addresses and encrypted passwords of users, but the company says it doesn’t believe at this time that the hackers were able to access other information within accounts.

Jawbone has since disabled the affected MyTalk accounts, and has sent around an email asking users to reset their passwords.

Often in situations like these, hack victims are advised to change login credentials for other websites and apps as well, especially if they’re using the same password across accounts, in the event that the attackers will try the login and password elsewhere.

The last week of tech headlines reads like some sort of cybersecurity end-of-days scenario. The New York Times hacked. The Wall Street Journal hacked. The Washington Post hacked.

And finally on Friday, Twitter — one of the world’s largest Internet communication services — also hacked.

“Who’s next?” you may be thinking. But the question to ask isn’t “Who’s next?” The question is, “Who will admit it next?”

You only need to look back on Twitter’s blog post from Friday afternoon, which stops just short of directly naming other companies, although it all but confirms this problem isn’t just affecting Twitter alone.

“This attack was not the work of amateurs, and we do not believe it was an isolated incident,” Director of Information Security Bob Lord wrote in the company blog post. “The attackers were extremely sophisticated, and we believe other companies and organizations have also been recently similarly attacked.”

This shouldn’t be surprising to anyone.

Of the many members of the security community I’ve spoken to over the last 24 hours, all have said the same thing: Companies large and small all over the world face cyberattacks all the time. Sometimes these attacks are potentially connected — as in the case of the Times, Journal (which, full disclosure, is owned by News Corp., which also owns All Things Digital) and Post. But many attacks occur in isolation or at random, from groups or collectives, different nations (especially from Iran, Syria or Russia) and even solo hackers.

The point is that “high value targets,” such as prominent Web companies, hold massive troves of interesting data, making them obvious and constant targets for outsider attack. It’s simply that we, the public, rarely hear about it.

But right now, during a week-long spree of hacking disclosures kicked off by the Times, we’re more apt to hear about other companies getting hacked than ever before.

“There’s a herd mentality when it comes to disclosure,” independent security researcher Ashkan Soltani told AllThingsD. “Having other companies disclose their breaches makes it easier for your company to as you’re less likely to get singled out in the press and public eye.”

In that vein, notice the timing of the hacking announcements last week. The Times kicked off the week of announcements on Tuesday evening. The Journal followed shortly thereafter. Then the Post. And finally Twitter.

So who will fess up next? Experts said now is the best time to come out with it, whether it’s connected to other hacks or entirely separate.

To be fair, there are often reasons that may keep hacked companies from coming out with a disclosure of their own. For one, the company may be working on an ongoing investigation with law enforcement to monitor hackers who may have infiltrated their systems in the past. Tipping the hackers off by “coming out” may jeopardize existing surveillance.

Or even scarier: Perhaps these companies aren’t aware they’ve been hacked in the first place.

“I truly believe we’re going to see quite a bit more of these annoucements as companies start to get smarter and look more closely at their systems,” Soltani said. “It’s not a matter of whether or not you’ve been compromised. It’s whether you have the expertise to tell.”

Even the New York Times wasn’t aware of hacks that had occurred on its network for months on end; the company’s security software, provided by Symantec, failed to identify all but one of 45 separate pieces of custom malicious software over a period of three months.

“Perhaps the press coverage might push them to take a deeper look inside their network,” said Soltani. Indeed, all three of the major papers that were hacked went to outside security firms for aid, and Twitter is currently working with the federal government to track down the hackers responsible for its own network breach (my guess is that Twitter is paired up with the Department of Homeland Security).

But here’s the truth: No system is 100 percent safe. No matter how secure a company tries to make its network, there’s still one giant, glaring point of access that hackers will always go after — you, the user.

All it takes is an errant clicked link to exploit massive vulnerabilities in Java, a phishing attempt in a lookalike email.

“Humans are the weakest link in any security strategy,” said Soltani.

Twitter disclosed on Friday evening that its systems had been attacked in the past week by an unidentified group of hackers. As a result of the the attack, the hackers may have had access to the usernames, email addresses and other sensitive information of nearly a quarter of a million twitter users.

“This week, we detected unusual access patterns that led to us identifying unauthorized access attempts to Twitter user data. We discovered one live attack and were able to shut it down in process moments later,” the company said in a blog post. “However, our investigation has thus far indicated that the attackers may have had access to limited user information – usernames, email addresses, session tokens and encrypted/salted versions of passwords – for approximately 250,000 users.”

On Friday evening, Twitter sent out emails to those users whose accounts may have been compromised, notifying them that the company had automatically reset their user passwords, and that they would need to create a new password in order to access the service again.

The hack comes on the heels of a week of major, nationally publicized security issues with a number of major publications, including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal (which, disclosure, is owned by News Corp., ATD’s parent company). In their stories on the hacks, both publications made allegations that the attacks stemmed from their investigative reporting efforts covering Chinese officials, and that the Chinese government may be involved in some capacity.

The week also saw prolonged service outages from Amazon, Bank of America and other major institutions that touch the daily lives of hundreds of millions of people globally.

Sources close to Amazon, however, told AllThingsD that the outage was related to internal issues. And on Friday, a source familiar with the matter told AllThingsD that Bank of America’s prolonged outage was again not related to the recent attacks on the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal or Twitter.

In Director of Security Bob Lord’s company blog post, Twitter makes no indication as to who was responsible for Twitter’s security breach, nor does Lord connect the hack directly to any of the incidents affecting major Web companies this week.

“The attackers were extremely sophisticated, and we believe other companies and organizations have also been recently similarly attacked,” Lord wrote in his post.

As of Friday evening, Twitter has not disclosed, nor does it seem to know, who the group of hackers are.

Whether or not the attacks on the two media companies and Twitter are related, there is a major difference in the incidences: The disparate levels of in-house security each company has. The New York Times reported that the Symantec software it had installed on its systems had only detected one of the 45 major security intrusions over the last few months. And both the Times and the Journal went with third-party security consultants to assess the extent of their system breaches.

Twitter, however, employs a world-class in-house team of security researchers, well versed in their ability to detect system vulnerabilities.

And Twitter has made no bones about carting out some of their highest profile hires in the operational security (OpSec) sector: Moxie Marlinspike (who recently left the company), Bob Lord and Charlie White, all of whom head up the company’s security efforts, are highly respected in the security community. And in January of 2012, Twitter acquired Dasient, a security firm focused on malware.

Jim Prosser, a Twitter spokesman, did not answer questions related to how the attack occurred, nor why only a set of 250,000 users were affected in the attack.

“We’re limited on the amount of information we can share at this time, given the nature of the attack and its potential scope in the general Internet community,” Prosser said.

Though the company won’t go into details on how the attack occurred, some elements of Twitter’s blog post could shed some light on the nature of the attack. For one, Twitter recommends that users disable Java plug-ins inside their browsers, as the technology has been labeled highly vulnerable to malicious software attacks, including by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Second, and perhaps more interesting; Twitter’s blog post, again, was penned by Bob Lord, director of Information Security. That suggests that whatever vulnerability led to Twitter’s being hacked, it could have happened from theft or access to sensitive information which led to system access, rather than on the Twitter application, or AppSec, side.

Ashkan Soltani, an independent security researcher, speculated that because Twitter was able to identify the users whose accounts may have been compromised, the scope of the breach may be somewhat limited.

“It depends on how deep the attack went,” Soltani told AllThingsD in an interview. “My gut feeling is that because they’ve identified the affected and contacted them, it would be something on an edge server. It depends on how Twitter has set up its infrastructure.”

Reports coming in on Twitter and the message board Hacker News are claiming that many of the affected accounts are early adopters of Twitter, those having signed up in Twitter’s early days. It is not clear whether the accounts affected are strictly those who signed up for Twitter early on.

Whatever the case, in its company blog post, Twitter took the occasion to urge its users to employ better security “hygiene,” remembering to use long, complicated passwords when registering their accounts.

The group used a denial-of-service brute-force attack (commonly known as DDoS-ing) to bring down the site for a period of time, while posting a message to the school’s site shortly thereafter.

“Whether or not the government contributed to his suicide, the government’s prosecution of Swartz was a grotesque miscarriage of justice, a distorted and perverse shadow of the justice Aaron died fighting for,” the group wrote in the message.

The attack comes just two days after news of Swartz’s death was first made public. Swartz was being prosecuted for his alleged theft of nearly five million JSTOR academic articles in 2010, accessed on the MIT campus network.

Swartz faced charges of computer fraud, wire fraud and other allegations from the U.S. Attorney’s office, which, if he were convicted, could have put the young activist in prison for upward of 30 years and slapped him with $1 million in fines.

While JSTOR eventually did not pursue any legal action against Swartz after he handed over a number of hard drives, the U.S. Attorney’s office continued to prosecute Swartz. His trial was set to begin this April.

On Friday evening, Swartz was found hanged to death in his Brooklyn apartment, by his partner, Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman. He was 26.

“… The situation Aaron found himself in highlights the injustice of U.S. computer crime laws, particularly their punishment regimes, and the highly questionable justice of pre-trial bargaining. Aaron’s act was undoubtedly political activism; it had tragic consequences.”

The attack came only hours after MIT released a statement on Swartz’s death, announcing that the school would launch an internal investigation on the events that led up to Swartz’s passing.

Earlier this summer, I went to Israel to check out the tech scene, which is thriving and vibrant.

So much so, that several Silicon Valley companies have been eyeing and buying several start-ups there of late.

That includes Face.com, the facial recognition start-up which was scooped up by Facebook earlier this summer for $60 million. In addition, recent reports correctly have the social networking giant in talks with GPS navigation app maker Waze, which is widely considered to be Israel’s hottest start-up.

I found that out when I went to visit and give a little talk at GarageGeeks, in the Holon Industrial Zone near Tel Aviv, at the invitation of Israel’s entrepreneur godfather Yossi Vardi.

GarageGeeks describes itself as a “not-profit physical and virtual space for innovative and creative people to introduce, network, expose, create, brainstorm, innovate and build.”

In other words, a nerd crash pad, Israeli-style. Which is to say, it’s universal to all geeks who love to hack away in electronics, software, mechanical, art, design, music and gaming.

Here’s a video I made while there, as well as a video of me (by Ayelet Noff) doing word association on Internet players and companies — such as Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer and more — with Vardi:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120829/silicon-wadi-a-visit-to-garagegeeks-in-israel-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120803/gizmodo-twitter-account-hijacked-by-foul-mouthed-hackers/ http://allthingsd.com/20120803/gizmodo-twitter-account-hijacked-by-foul-mouthed-hackers/#comments Sat, 04 Aug 2012 00:55:46 +0000 Mike Isaac http://allthingsd.com/?p=237946 The technology site Gizmodo’s Twitter account was taken over on Friday evening for a brief period from approximately 5:15 to 5:30 PT. The hijackers appear to be part of a hacking group named “Clan Vv3,” and used the account — which has nearly a half million followers — to post racist and offensive messages. The attackers seem to have gained access after compromising former employee Mat Honan’s e-mail and Twitter account. We’ve reached out to Gawker Media, which owns Gizmodo, for comment.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120803/gizmodo-twitter-account-hijacked-by-foul-mouthed-hackers/feed/ 12 http://allthingsd.com/20120802/prankster-commits-errors-on-mlb-facebook-pages/ http://allthingsd.com/20120802/prankster-commits-errors-on-mlb-facebook-pages/#comments Thu, 02 Aug 2012 23:50:45 +0000 Mike Isaac http://allthingsd.com/?p=237443 A rogue prankster gained access to Major League Baseball’s main administrative Facebook account on Thursday, posting a series of lewd, sarcastic and false updates across the pages of multiple baseball teams.

The prank updates, first reported by Deadspin, ranged from the comical (“FREE PITBULL NIGHT at Marlins Park”) to the nasty (“Just a note: Though the handicapped are allowed to enjoy Padres games at Petco Park their attendance is STRONGLY DISCOURAGED”).

It’s unclear as to whether the account was outright hacked, or if the hijacking involved someone who already had access to the administrator account. Facebook seems be tackling the problem, as security team spokesman Frederic Wolens told AllThingsD:

“Recently, several Pages made unauthorized posts as a result of actions from a single rogue administrator of these Pages. Our team responded quickly and worked with our partners to eliminate the spam caused by this attack. This was a unique, isolated incident and we are always working to improve our systems to better protect our users and their data.”

Though it may not be completely over — the Anaheim Angels’ Facebook Page was altered as recently as 3:42 pm PT.

We’ll keep an eye on it and follow up with Facebook to see what’s behind the crazy updates.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120802/prankster-commits-errors-on-mlb-facebook-pages/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111202/carrier-iq-how-to-hack-back-your-phone/ http://allthingsd.com/20111202/carrier-iq-how-to-hack-back-your-phone/#comments Fri, 02 Dec 2011 13:30:29 +0000 Lauren Goode http://allthingsd.com/?p=149602

The findings of a Connecticut-based systems administrator have sparked alarm in millions of smartphone users, after security researcher Trevor Eckhart published a video showing how a cellphone software company has the ability to log users’ Web searches and keystrokes.

The technology, made by Carrier IQ, is currently deployed on more than 150 million devices worldwide.

Research In Motion and HTC — the maker of the phone targeted in the security demo — have issued statements denying that Carrier IQ is preinstalled on their devices. Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) has sent a letter to Carrier IQ seeking more information on what the software does.

Carrier IQ has told AllThingsD that while its software has the ability to receive a tremendous amount of information, some of which could be relayed to a carrier for diagnostics purposes, the company doesn’t log keystrokes and the software is not being used to gather intelligence about the phone’s user.

But while we wait for more answers, what’s a smartphone user to do?

Google Android Phones: If you’re wondering whether your Google Android phone might have Carrier IQ installed on it, Eckhart, the researcher behind all of this, points people to a Logging Test app that he claims can be used to verify “what logging is being done on your phone and where the data is going to.” If successfully installed — which we hear may take some finagling, including emailing the app link to yourself to access it, and “rooting” your phone first — the $1 app is meant to detect Carrier IQ and remove it.

According to his blog post, Eckhart has tested this app on the HTC Evo 3D phone; he believes it works on the Sprint Evo 4G and HTC Thunderbolt, as well.

But since the Google Android operating system runs on devices from multiple manufacturers, it is not known at this point which models could be running Carrier IQ and which ones are not.

It should be noted that some manufacturers have denied responsibility for the app; HTC, for example, has put the blame on wireless carriers, and basically advises HTC phone owners to contact their carriers. The company did add it was looking into an option for allowing its customers to opt out of the Carrier IQ application, but no further details were given beyond that.

Sprint has not yet responded to my inquiry as to whether the wireless company was actively involved in the installation of Carrier IQ, or how users might disable such applications on Sprint. AT&T said it uses Carrier IQ solely to improve its network performance; Verizon claims not to use it at all, although my colleague John Paczkowski reports that may not be the case.

RIM BlackBerrys: While RIM hasn’t explicitly pointed to wireless carriers as HTC did, the BlackBerry maker also denies any involvement with Carrier IQ, stating “RIM does not pre-install the CarrierIQ app on BlackBerry smartphones or authorize its carrier partners to install the CarrierIQ app before sales or distribution.”

However, the next part of RIM’s statement on the BlackBerry developers forum indicates that it’s possible Carrier IQ could live on a BlackBerry device.

According to BlackBerry Development Advisor Mark Sohm: “If the Carrier IQ application is present on a BlackBerry smartphone, it does not mean that the Carrier IQ application has ‘hacked’ the BlackBerry platform. It means that either the BlackBerry smartphone user or the user’s BlackBerry Enterprise Server admin explicitly installed the application and authorized it to run.”

In other words, if it’s on your phone, you may have granted it access in some way, shape, form or click of your Qwerty keypad.

Apple iPhones: Apple has issued a statement to AllThingsD declaring that the company stopped supporting Carrier IQ with iOS 5, its latest version of mobile software, and plans to remove it from future mobile software updates, too.

But what if you’re running an earlier version of iOS on your iPhone and are worried about where your data is going? Apparently, you can opt out of having your usage data submitted for diagnostics. To do that, go to to Settings → General → About → Diagnostics & Usage. Select “Don’t Send.”

More info to come as I get it.

Related Posts on Carrier IQ:

• Exclusive Interview: Carrier IQ Gets Transparent About Its Mobile Monitoring
• Carrier IQ: How to Hack Back Your Phone
  
• Carrier IQ Speaks: Our Software Monitors Service Messages, Ignores Other Data
• Apple: We Stopped Supporting Carrier IQ With iOS 5
• RIM, HTC, Google on Carrier IQ: Blame the Carriers
• Carrier IQ Improves My Wireless Service by Logging My Keystrokes? Please Explain.

Full Carrier IQ Coverage »

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111202/carrier-iq-how-to-hack-back-your-phone/feed/ 6 http://allthingsd.com/20101214/gawker-password-mess-spreads-to-world-or-warcraft-apparently-yaho/ http://allthingsd.com/20101214/gawker-password-mess-spreads-to-world-or-warcraft-apparently-yaho/#comments Tue, 14 Dec 2010 20:43:53 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://newenterprise.allthingsd.com/?p=552 The residual effects of the weekend hacking attack on Gawker have now spread to Yahoo and World of Warcraft players.

Yahoo spokeswoman Dana Lengkeek just emailed a statement saying that some Yahoo users were required to reset their passwords. “As part of our ongoing security measures we issued a password reset to some users. Yahoo! does this periodically to ensure the security of users.” She didn’t specify whether or not this was in direct response to the Gawker incident, but it’s not hard to conclude that it was, given the timing. I’ll update if Yahoo says anything further.

I have a Yahoo account and was required to change my password today, and yes, I also had a Gawker commenting account, so at this point it’s safe to say they certainly seem connected.

Meanwhile, Blizzard Entertainment (developer of World of Warcraft and provider of the Battle.net gaming service) was abundantly clear about the connection in an email to its customers. “We’ve recently been informed that several Gawker Media websites have been compromised…To help minimize the effects of this compromise and help keep your Battle.net account safe and secure, we’ve reset your account password,” it said.

Other Web incidents–perhaps connected to Gawkergate, perhaps not–have occurred during the past few days as well. For instance, McDonald’s disclosed that a database containing email address and birthdates of people who had signed up to receive promotions was compromised. It notified those customers on Monday. Again, it’s not clear what connection, if any, there may be to the Gawker incident, but the timing certainly makes it seem possible. I’ve asked McDonald’s for a comment and will update if I get one.

In another incident, drugstore chain Walgreens disclosed on Friday that a database of email address belonging to its customers had been breached. Given the timing–the Gawker incident happened over the weekend–it’s probably not connected, though it’s hard to be sure, as the folks at Anonymous Gnosis, the group that attacked the Gawker sites, say they’ve had access to the database for about a month. I’ve asked a Walgreens spokesman for a comment, and as with all the other cases above will update if I hear back.

This comes on top of other related forced password changes at Twitter and LinkedIn, as my colleague Peter Kafka reported earlier today.

Meanwhile, our friends at Digits have a fascinating graphic on the Top 50 passwords used on Gawker. Topping the list: “123456,” “password” and “12345678.” The two lessons in all this? Make your passwords complex, and don’t use the same password for multiple sites.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101214/gawker-password-mess-spreads-to-world-or-warcraft-apparently-yaho/feed/ 12 http://allthingsd.com/20101214/the-top-50-gawker-media-passwords/ http://allthingsd.com/20101214/the-top-50-gawker-media-passwords/#comments Tue, 14 Dec 2010 08:00:27 +0000 Zachary M. Seward and Albert Sun http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=33964 Readers of Gizmodo, Lifehacker and other Gawker Media sites may be among the savviest on the Web, but the most common password for logging into those sites is embarrassingly easy to guess: “123456.” So is the runner-up: “password.”

On Sunday night, hackers posted online a trove of data from Gawker Media’s servers, including the usernames, email addresses and passwords of more than one million registered users. The passwords were originally encrypted, but 188,279 of them were decoded and made public as part of the hack. Using that dataset, we found the 50 most-popular Gawker Media passwords.

How do Gawker Media users express themselves when no one is watching? While many of their passwords are common phrases like “qwerty,” others appear distinctive to the Gawker community. Where else would “f—you,” “blahblah” and “whatever” rank among the most popular passwords? And why, oh why, is “monkey” in the top 10?

Read the rest of this post on the original site

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101214/the-top-50-gawker-media-passwords/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101213/nick-denton-so-very-sorry-about-giant-gawker-media-hack/ http://allthingsd.com/20101213/nick-denton-so-very-sorry-about-giant-gawker-media-hack/#comments Mon, 13 Dec 2010 18:56:46 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=27014 It takes something pretty catastrophic for Nick Denton to apologize in public. So mark this one down: The Gawker Media owner says he’s “so very sorry” about the hacking attack that exposed some 1.5 million of his readers’ passwords.

Denton being Denton, he made his mea culpa in a relatively obscure corner of his blog network–an open comments thread with Gawker readers. And if you had a bit too much of the wrong kind of skepticism, you might think that this photo Denton posted to the thread was a bit cavalier:

But nope, says Denton. That’s real contrition: “Okay, here you go. That’s me on the left and Tom Plunkett, our CTO, on the right. We’re looking appropriately glum. It didn’t take any acting.” (Also worth noting that Denton was responding directly to a reader request for “a photo of yourself wearing a dunce cap or something of that nature. With a big ‘I’m sorry’ sign.”)

In more important news: Denton’s sites, which stopped posting yesterday afternoon as a result of the attack, are now back up again. And if you’ve ever left a comment on one of the sites, you should go there and change your password, then do the same at any other site where you’ve used the same login/password combo.

A few other notes:

• Gawker Media says that readers who used Twitter or Facebook logins to leave comments on the blog network haven’t been affected. But people who used the same login on Gawker as they have on Facebook or Twitter may very well be in trouble. Which may be one reason so many Twitter users I know are now promoting a bogus weight-loss berry.
• There’s a Google document that contains some of the hacked email/login info, and something called Hint has been emailing some hacked commenters with a reminder to change their passwords. (Who are they? Why do they want to associate their yet-to-launch site with a security breach? Anyone?) But not finding your info on the document and not getting an email doesn’t mean you don’t have a security problem. Play it safe and change your password now, regardless.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101213/nick-denton-so-very-sorry-about-giant-gawker-media-hack/feed/ 9 http://allthingsd.com/20100204/and-now-a-few-words-of-reassurance-from-national-intelligence-director-dennis-blair/ http://allthingsd.com/20100204/and-now-a-few-words-of-reassurance-from-national-intelligence-director-dennis-blair/#comments Thu, 04 Feb 2010 20:01:31 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=34284 Coming as it does after Google’s revelation that its network was compromised by malicious hackers, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair’s warning that the United States is not yet able to guard its national networks against cyber attacks seems to be, well, stating the obvious. That said, it’s well worth noting, because the sophistication of the attacks against Google (GOOG) obviously does not bode well for national security.

“What we don’t quite understand as seriously as we should is the extent of malicious cyberactivity that grows, that is growing now at unprecedented rates, extraordinary sophistication,” Blair told the House Intelligence Committee in the course of delivering his annual threat assessment. “And the dynamic of cyberspace, when you look at the technological balance, right now it favors those who want to use the Internet for malicious purposes over those who want to use it for legal and lawful purposes.” 

Sadly, the former seem to be far more on top of their game these days than the latter, which makes defending our financial, commercial and physical infrastructure all the more difficult.

“Attacks against networks that control the critical infrastructure in this country…could wreak havoc,” Blair continued. “Cyber defenders right now, it’s simply the facts of the matter, have to spend more and work harder than the attackers do, and our efforts frankly are not strong enough to recognize, deal with that reality.” 

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