The piece seems to have been primarily reported this winter, just as Chatroulette was becoming a phenomenon and shortly before Ternovsky lit out for the United States. If you’re interested in digital media investing, there are a few tasty tidbits, like Union Square Ventures partner Fred Wilson’s assistance in arranging a visa for Ternovskiy, and the programmer’s disdain for Digital Sky Technologies’ Yuri Milner.

And there’s a tiny bit about Chatroulette’s finances, at least as of a couple months ago: Since Google (GOOG) wouldn’t get cut him an AdWords check, Ternovsky’s sole source of revenue was Mamba, a Russian dating service. But that was enough: He was generating $1,500 in advertising a day, which he said covered his costs. Still, there’s not much in the way of “news” here.

But make a point of reading Julia Ioffe’s story, which paints a compelling portrait of Ternovsky’s Moscow childhood. It’s going to seem both familiar and alien to a lot of you.

He was born on April 22, 1992, less than four months after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and grew up in a tidy apartment in a typically dingy Moscow high-rise. His mother, Elena, is a talented mathematician who works on differential equations at the élite Moscow State University. His father, Vladimir, is an associate professor of mathematics at the same university, and dabbles in cybernetics. Their household was loving but turbulent. The couple fought and frequently separated, and Vladimir started a parallel family, an issue that was never openly discussed. (“It’s a little game we play,” Elena said of the arrangement.) Andrey retreated to his room, where, thanks to Vladimir’s belief that “the future would have something to do with computers,” there was always a machine, as up to date as the family could afford. Vladimir invested great effort in Andrey’s upbringing, engaging a Chinese tutor, a weight-lifting coach, and a chess teacher. But most of Andrey’s learning occurred alone, with his computer. He started with games, usually of the reality-simulating variety. By fourth grade, he was writing code.

Like many young Russians with programming skills, Ternovskiy turned to hacking. When he was eleven, he came upon zloy.org (which translates as angry.org), a hacker forum led by a young man named Sergey (a.k.a. Terminator), who trained his followers in cyber warfare. Using the handle Flashboy, Ternovskiy soon mastered the art of the denial-of-service attack, wherein a target system is paralyzed by a mass of incoming communication requests. Next came Web-site and e-mail hacking, a service he gladly performed for girls who asked nicely. By 2007, at the age of fifteen, Ternovskiy had learned about what hackers call “social engineering”–getting what one wants through deceit or manipulation. Posing as a teacher, Ternovskiy got access to some practice tests before they were delivered to his school.

You can, and should, read the rest here.

Though similar to the late-2009 attacks against Google (GOOG), this effort was a bit less sophisticated. Still, it appears to have been politically motivated and perpetrated by folks with some sort of allegiance to the government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

“The malware infected the computers of potentially tens of thousands of users who downloaded Vietnamese keyboard language software and possibly other legitimate software that was altered to infect users,” Neel Mehta of Google’s security team wrote in a blog post describing the attack.

“While the malware itself was not especially sophisticated,” Mehta added, “it has nonetheless been used for damaging purposes. These infected machines have been used both to spy on their owners as well as participate in distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against blogs containing messages of political dissent.”

Which is frightening, because a number of Vietnamese Internet activists have already been imprisoned for attacking Chinese involvement in the bauxite mining project.

[Image credit: Wikimedia Commons]

The perpetrators in the Google case gained access in some instances to the systems where companies store their “source code,” the computer code at the heart of a tech company’s products, says George Kurtz, McAfee’s chief technology officer. With this access the hacker could either steal the source code or modify it.

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Claims that two schools in China were the source of cyberattacks against Google (GOOG) and other U.S. companies have become the butt of a state-run media joke in the country. First came vehement denials from Shanghai Jiaotong University and Lanxiang Vocational School, which dismissed the stories as unfounded. “We were shocked and indignant to hear these baseless allegations which may harm the university’s reputation,” an SJTU representative told Xinhua News, the official press agency of the People’s Republic of China. He denied any ties between the school and China’s military, as did a rep for Lanxiang.

A relatively diplomatic condemnation of the claims at issue here, but it quickly devolved into outright disparagement and mockery. A subsequent news story, also published by Xinhua, bears the title “Chinese netizens make fun of Google hacking report.”

An excerpt:

A report claiming cyber attacks on Google and other firms originated from two Chinese educational institutions is being jeered at by Chinese netizens.

“The report is sheer nonsense. Is it April Fools’ Day?” netizen sdh13814021912 commented at the www.tianya.cn forum.

“The news is doomed to be a joke.” netizen Jinse Xueguang said.

“A vocational school being used as camouflage for military-sponsored hacker training camp. Am I reading a science fiction?” said another netizen azydn.

Is it April Fools’ Day? Am I reading a science fiction? Clearly Sino-American relations around this matter have sunk to a new low. Still, it’s no surprise that China’s digerati–or the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology officials impersonating them for state-run media–have reacted this way.

Confirming the schools’ involvement in the attacks or their alleged links to the Chinese military is impossible without Beijing’s cooperation. And Beijing is clearly not going to cooperate. Why would it? It has already denied culpability. And ensuring that it remains blameless is as simple as refusing to disclose traffic data from the schools’ data networks.

PREVIOUSLY:

• World War WAN: Google Hack Traced to Schools in China
• Nearly a Month After Debut, Google’s “New” Approach to China Still a Lot Like the Old One
• Google CEO: Ask Not What Google Can Do for China–Ask What China Can Do for Google
• China on “Google Farce”: Our Internet Is Open
• China to Google: No Worries, We Were Planning to Clone Those Android Phones Anyway
• U.S. State Department to Complain to China About Google Hack. Not That China’s Going to Listen.
• Microsoft: “Don’t Be Evil” Is Google’s Motto, Not Ours
• What’s the Chinese Word for Bing? Google Threatens to Leave China.

A: Evernote isn’t a purely cloud-based (Internet-based) system. It does store your notes on its servers, for Web access, but it also exists as a synchronized local application on Windows, Mac and every major smart phone. So your notes are stored locally on the hard disks of your various computers. Local storage is available on the iPhone app, and the company says it plans to add local storage to Android phones soon. Thus, even if the company went out of business, the notes on your Mac or PC or iPhone would be safe.

Evernote says it doesn’t encrypt data on its servers because it indexes all your notes for quick searching, and performs image recognition on photo notes, and it claims encryption would prevent that. Your user name and password, however, are always encrypted in transit, according to the company, and passwords aren’t stored on its servers—even if you have a free account. For premium users ($5 a month or $45 a year) all of the data, not just user names and passwords, are encrypted.

Also, the service allows users to encrypt all, or any part, of any note, and the company says it doesn’t receive the key to decrypt this material. The only part of a wholly encrypted note that the company would hold on its server would be its title and tags, if any.

I’m looking for a lightweight laptop, ideally under five pounds and with long-lasting battery life. I’m confused by all the models. Can you help me to narrow it down to a handful?

A: Unless you are looking for a tiny netbook, I suggest you consider a couple of options. One is a new category of Windows laptops variously called things like “ultrathin” and “thin and light.” All are well under five pounds in weight and many have good battery life. I reviewed three of these laptops—models from Toshiba, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and Lenovo—back in November, and you can read the column at http://bit.ly/m3JQn.

The second option worth considering is a Mac, which I believe has superior software and security, albeit at a higher price. Apple’s (AAPL) MacBook and 13″ MacBook Pro, while heavier than this new batch of Windows machines, weigh slightly under five pounds and have strong battery life. My review of the latest MacBook, from October, is available at http://bit.ly/7brVJk.

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and my other columns, for free at the All Things Digital site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

“Ten of the 13 root name servers in the world are located in the US. They are the top hierarchy of the Internet, which means by controlling them, the US can define the freedom of the Internet. How can Clinton guarantee you a freedom if her country has the power to unplug you?”

– Yu Wanli, an expert on international studies at Peking University

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s speech on Internet censorship Thursday and her call for an investigation into charges that Chinese-backed hackers attacked Google have met with a bristling and indignant response from Beijing.

In a statement posted to China’s foreign ministry Web site, Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said the United States should “cease using so-called Internet freedom to make groundless accusations against China. The US has criticised China’s policies to administer the internet, and insinuated that China restricts internet freedom. This runs contrary to the facts and is harmful to China-US relations. We urge the United States to respect the facts….China’s Internet is open.”

Well, that’s an interesting perspective on the country’s legendary Internet filtering system. Evidently, the vast infrastructure of technology that has made online dissent an impossibility doesn’t exist!

Ma’s criticism of Clinton was echoed in the China’s state-run media, which refers to the current debacle as “the Google farce.” An editorial in the Global Times today denounced Clinton’s call for free access to the Internet to be a foreign policy matter as a form of “information imperialism.”

“The U.S. campaign for uncensored and free flow of information on an unrestricted Internet is a disguised attempt to impose its values on other cultures in the name of democracy,” the editorial reads. “The U.S. government’s ideological imposition is unacceptable and, for that reason, will not be allowed to succeed.”

PREVIOUSLY:

• Clinton Calls on China to Probe Google Hack
• China to Google: No Worries, We Were Planning to Clone Those Android Phones Anyway
• U.S. State Department to Complain to China About Google Hack. Not That China’s Going to Listen.
• Microsoft: “Don’t Be Evil” Is Google’s Motto, Not Ours
• China’s “New Approach” to Google: Bai-Bai
• What’s the Chinese Word for Bing? Google Threatens to Leave China.

Last week, a cougar was reported to be roaming on the Redmond, Wash., campus of Microsoft, which led to all kinds of cutesy jokes about the new Snow Leopard operating system from Apple (AAPL).

No, BoomTown cannot make this stuff up!

Nor did I make up this original and very fine global alert that Microsoft Global Security sent last week, which assured employees of the software giant that “Microsoft Security will conduct frequent patrols of all wooded areas of the campus.”

That’s more than you can say about how the software giant handles hackers!

Here’s an image of the memo (click on it to see a large version):

Previously, TechFlash had the text of the second warning, which gives cougar-fighting tips.

They included:

“Stay calm. Talk to the cougar in a confident voice.”

“Do not run. Try to back away from the cougar slowly. Sudden movement or flight may trigger an instinctive attack. Do not turn your back on the cougar. Face the cougar and remain upright.”

And, most important of all: “Do all you can to enlarge your image. Don’t crouch down or try to hide. Pick up sticks or branches and wave them about.”

Which, if you think about it, is even better advice for Microsoft (MSFT) Bing execs–this means you, Yusuf!–in tangling with search archrival Google (GOOG).

In letters to sent Monday to 90,000 developers who work on eBay’s Developers Program, the company warns about a security hole that could cause problems, but hasn’t yet. It also takes pains to point out that the security flaw doesn’t affect eBay customers themselves. eBay says third-party software now accounts for 25 percent of its listings.

An eBay spokesman tells me that eBay came across the weakness itself not because a hacker had exploited it, and that the company is acting “out of an abundance of caution,” which is a term the eBay folks seem to favor (see email text below). “The information that *may* have been compromised consisted of basic contact information that could potentially be used in a phishing attack. At this point, we have not identified any unusual patterns in our developer accounts and we are notifying them and requesting they change their developer passwords out of an abundance of caution [sic].”

Here’s the complete text of eBay’s heads-up letter:

Hello [redacted], this is Kumar Kandaswamy, and I manage the eBay Developers Program. I’d like you to read this important message about account safety. The safety and security of the eBay Developers Program is a top priority. While we believe that people are basically good, we also must live with the reality that there are fraudsters out there who have made it their illicit “profession” to find ways to exploit others on the Internet.

Occasionally, fraudsters attempt to gain unauthorized access to the eBay Developers Program. eBay has recently identified a means by which someone could gain access to eBay Developers Program account information. This type of access DOES NOT allow the capture of financial or other sensitive information, such as credit card or bank account information or Social Security numbers.

Fortunately, we have not detected any unusual activity with any Developer account. Out of an abundance of caution and to help ensure the security of the eBay Developers Program, we are requiring that all developers take the following steps:

* Take advantage of our new, stricter password standards and change your eBay Developers Program (developer.ebay.com) passwords. It is not necessary to change eBay (www.ebay.com) passwords. If you believe you or your customers have been the victim of fraudulent activity, contact us immediately at apifeedback@ebay.com.

Sincerely, Kumar Kandaswamy

This morning, in a blog post titled “The Adventure Continues,” Twitter co-founder Biz Stone gave more of an explanation for the outage that the microblogging service endured due to a denial-of-service attack yesterday.

Fortunately, BoomTown can read between the lines in order to decipher the secret message herein!

Biz wrote: The Adventure Continues.

Translation: By “adventure,” I mean yet-another-friggin’-Twitter-birdie-crisis.

Considering all the fail whales, the stolen documents and now this, I would have to say we have now taken Time Warner (TWX) online unit AOL’s title as Internet company most likely to experience technical difficulties. Do not adjust your screens! Please stand by!

Biz wrote: In the past 24 hours, we’ve been contending with a variety of attacks that continue to change in nature and intensity. We’re working to restore access to apps built on the Twitter platform that were affected by defensive measures–there was some overcompensation on our part as we tune our system to deal with this scale of attack.

Translation: We’d like to blame this one on TechCrunch somehow, and are hard at work on another impolitic internal memo about how to do so that also manages to insult potential acquirers, such as Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), and our investors.

The reason we doused this crisis with extra amounts of weed killer is because no one will be able to accuse us of sitting by in our usual chill manner, which is exemplified by the official Twitter company motto: “Scoble dude, relax, it’s only 140 characters.”

Biz wrote: The ongoing, massively coordinated attacks on Twitter this week appear to have been geopolitical in motivation. However, we don’t feel it’s appropriate to engage in speculative discussion about these motivations. The open exchange of information can have a positive impact globally and our job is to keep Twitter services running reliably to the best of our ability.

Translation: And if blaming TechCrunch does not work, there is always Iran to point the finger at!

However, we don’t feel it’s appropriate to engage in speculative discussion of these motivations–mostly because it will just piss off the hackers more and they will crush our little technical operation like it is papier maché.

Which, let’s be honest, it is. Anybody got any spare Elmer’s Glue?

Biz wrote: As a reminder, no data or personal information of any kind has been compromised. Denial of Service attacks are a known quantity on the web and they are not going away any time soon. Nevertheless, we can and will improve system response to these assaults such that they don’t interfere with our normal, everyday Twittering.

Translation: No data or personal information of any kind have been compromised, except–of course–for Ashton Kuchter’s.

But, to be fair, that dude overshares like Perez and Paris Hilton combined and on steroids.

Not that we mind him tweeting pictures of his wife’s posterior, but he makes John Mayer seem shy.

Denial-of-service attacks are a known quantity on the Web, much the way our fail whale is.

Nevertheless, we can and will fail again, so there will be yet another spate of articles and blog posts about the indignity of life without Twittering to show just how indispensable we are.

The flaw was first demonstrated Thursday. “This is serious. The only thing you can do to prevent it is turn off your phone,” security researcher Charlie Miller said of it earlier this week. “Someone could pretty quickly take over every iPhone in the world with this.”

Well, not anymore, as Apple (AAPL) was quick to note. “This morning, less than 24 hours after a demonstration of this exploit, we’ve issued a free software update that eliminates the vulnerability from the iPhone,” said an Apple spokesperson. “Contrary to what’s been reported, no one has been able to take control of the iPhone to gain access to personal information using this exploit.”

The flaw was first demonstrated Thursday. “This is serious. The only thing you can do to prevent it is turn off your phone,” security researcher Charlie Miller said of it earlier this week. “Someone could pretty quickly take over every iPhone in the world with this.”

Well, not anymore, as Apple (AAPL) was quick to note. “This morning, less than 24 hours after a demonstration of this exploit, we’ve issued a free software update that eliminates the vulnerability from the iPhone,” said an Apple spokesperson. “Contrary to what’s been reported, no one has been able to take control of the iPhone to gain access to personal information using this exploit.”

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone took the stage at Fortune magazine’s Brainstorm Tech conference late this afternoon and was greeted by that old chestnut: When is Twitter going to make some simoleons?

Fortune’s Adam Lashinsky, who interviewed Stone (the pair are pictured here) posted a poll about that and a few other topics (the audience preferred Facebook to Twitter by about three to one, for example), and then asked a question he said was on the minds of many in Silicon Valley:

“Why the hell aren’t you guys making money?”

“I think that’s a legitimate concern,” said Stone. “We need to focus on value before we focus on profit.”

But, he added that the San Francisco-based Twitter was ready to show some commitment to revenue this year.

Oh dear, what will BoomTown have to gripe about at Twitter now?

Because–aside from the lack of a business model–I must confess I like Twitter an awful lot and find it extremely useful!

Earlier, Stone made the salient point that Twitter was just in the first innings.

“We have a lot of growing to do,” he said. “In general, we feel we are about one percent into the growing of Twitter.”

One more important issue than money-making, he noted correctly, was that the level of engagement at Twitter is not as high as the level of awareness.

“We just have to position our product better,” said Stone.

Of course, Lashinsky had to ask about the recently stolen documents that a hacker nabbed from some Twitter employees’ personal accounts.

Stone said that there are “unpolished notes,” which only “give you an idea of scope we are thinking of…the idea is that we are thinking big.”

Lashinsky asked if Twitter would sue either TechCrunch, which published some of the stolen documents, or the hacker who stole them.

(My first thought: Let’s all pray that TechCrunch will avoid touting that navel-gazing nonstory into the weekend.)

“I don’t know,” said Stone diplomatically, since TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington was sitting right in the room. “In general, we have a responsibility to look into these things and see what makes sense.”

Then, it was pretty much back to business models, and Stone seemed open to a lot of them, as long as they were not forced on the innovative digital darling.

“We want to develop a revenue model that is baked-in…and is not something that is tacked on,” he said.

Some ideas: Advertising, of course, as well as commercial accounts and verifying brands.

“We spent a lot of 2008 trying to get ahead technically of the unexpected popularity,” said Stone. “The very, very high level [of what Twitter needs to be doing] is to add more value to users.”

That means more focus on adding new features, such as a reputation system, better discovery and more explanation–for David Letterman, for example–of exactly how Twitter can be used.

And yes, making money. Stone noted that Twitter wanted to change the world too, and the best way to do that was to make “tons of money.”

“What we don’t want is to become that child actor that grew up all freaky,” he said, noting a Ron Howard development cycle was Twitter’s goal.

All hail Opie Twitter, oops, Taylor!

[Photo credit: Brad Markel for Fortune]

In a post from co-founder Biz Stone, the company counsels users that, with the exception of a single account, none of their personal information seems to have been exposed as a result of the hack. But before establishing that, Stone goes out of his way to explain that Twitter’s security problems are Twitter’s security problems, not cloud computing’s security problems or Google’s (GOOG) security problems.

This attack had nothing to do with any vulnerability in Google Apps which we continue to use. This is more about Twitter being in enough of a spotlight that folks who work here can become targets. In fact, around the same time, Evan’s wife’s personal email was hacked and from there, the hacker was able to gain access to some of Evan’s personal accounts such as Amazon and PayPal but not email. This isn’t about any flaw in web apps, it speaks to the importance of following good personal security guidelines such as choosing strong passwords.

That last line seems directed at the likes of analysts like yours truly, who suggested this morning that the hack would raise concerns about the security of services that place work data on shared servers accessed via the Web. (Though the Twitter guys did seem to like my underwear-drawer metaphor. Cool!)

Stone then goes on to rattle a sword, gently but pointedly, at Web sites that have published stuff pilfered by the hacker.

We are in touch with our legal counsel about what this theft means for Twitter, the hacker, and anyone who accepts and subsequently shares or publishes these stolen documents. We’re not sure yet exactly what the implications are for folks who choose to get involved at this point but when we learn more and are able to share more, we will.

Note that while it’s easy enough to find this stuff on the Web, only a handful of mainstream Web sites, including TechCrunch, Gawker and Silicon Alley Insider, have published it, and most of what they have published is banal. I’ve asked all three sites for a response to Twitter’s response.

In the meantime, TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington, who has promised to publish more, announces in a new post that he is in the midst of “negotiations” with Twitter’s lawyers about his plans. Happy to hear from a First Amendment specialist, but I don’t think Twitter has a case against Web publishers here; the issue is an ethical one, not a legal one.

UPDATE: Here’s Gawker Editor-in-Chief Gabriel Snyder’s “bring it on” retort:

It’s hilarious to see Twitter, which has become a conduit for real-time, unauthorized information from places like the New York Times’ internal meetings, now get prissy about corporate privacy. Ev Williams seems to have learned a lot about the mores of the institutional elite during his stay in Sun Valley. As for Twitter coming after us for publishing the docs, the only thing I’m upset about is that the leaker didn’t come to us with them first.

The brouhaha began when TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington blogged that a French hacker calling himself “Hacker Croll” said he had broken into Mr. Williams’s account as well as those of Mr. Williams’s wife and two Twitter employees.

An English translation of a post on French blog Koren shows that the hacker claims he gained access to Mr. Williams’s Gmail, PayPal, Amazon (AMZN) and AT&T (T) accounts, among others, and thus was able to find documents containing Twitter employee food preferences, credit card numbers, phone numbers and salaries.

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