Voices
Chad Bray, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal in News on March 9 at 12:06 am PT
As soon as he was caught, an influential computer hacker agreed to become a government informant and “literally worked around the clock” to help federal agents nab an elusive collective of alleged cyber criminals who have launched online attacks against companies, governments and individuals.
Kara Swisher in News on August 3, 2011 at 1:23 pm PT
Randi Zuckerberg, who is director of marketing at Facebook and also the sister of CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg — is leaving the company. IMHO, Facebook just got 100 percent less fun.
News Byte
Liz Gannes in Social on June 27, 2011 at 9:38 am PT
George Hotz, the young hacker who unlocked the iPhone and jailbroke the Sony PlayStation 3, has taken a job at Facebook, reports
iPhone Download Blog. Known as “GeoHot,” Hotz was sued by Sony for copyright infringement and violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and
settled with the PS3 maker in March.
Arik Hesseldahl in Enterprise on December 30, 2010 at 3:32 pm PT
The weaknesses of Gawker’s password system were pointed out clearly in 2008, although nothing was ever done about it. You know how that turned out.
Peter Kafka in Media on December 14, 2010 at 9:37 am PT
Gawker Media is still cleaning up the mess left by a hacker attack this weekend, but now other sites have their own work to do. Today’s example: LinkedIn temporarily disabled the accounts of users whose email accounts were exposed during Gawkergate.
Peter Kafka in Media on December 13, 2010 at 10:56 am PT
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.
Voices
Spencer E. Ante, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal in News on November 3, 2010 at 2:45 pm PT
Internet-payment provider PayPal said its iPhone application contained a security flaw that could allow a hacker to access users’ accounts and has rushed out an update to correct the problem.
The hole stems from the app’s failure to confirm the authenticity of PayPal’s website when communicating over the Internet–a basic lapse that the security researcher who found the flaw said would allow someone to intercept passwords from unsuspecting users.
John Paczkowski in D8 on June 3, 2010 at 8:17 am PT
As an indicator of the headwinds facing Microsoft and its CEO, Steve Ballmer, today, two pieces of news last week are worth considering. The first, that Apple had overtaken Microsoft as the world’s most valuable technology company, would seem to signal Microsoft is no longer quite the driving force in technology that it once was, particularly in the consumer space. The second, word of a restructuring that will give Ballmer greater oversight of Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices Division, indicates the company is scrambling to change this.
Walt Mossberg in Personal Technology on May 12, 2010 at 6:03 pm PT
Two new products, Orggit and InformationSafe, aim to digitally collect your important data on your computer or on the Web. They are potentially very valuable, especially as your life gets more complicated, writes Walt.
