dailylicious!
Daily deals site and Groupon competitor, LivingSocial, said on Friday that it had fallen victim to a cyber attack that put its roughly 50 million users at risk.
“LivingSocial recently exp …
LivingSocial has revealed that it has had it’s entire user database of over 50 million members breached and stolen. While no credit card data was taken, the database contains names, emails, and birthdays, which would be useful for various online identification purposes. The database is both hashed and salted, meaning it has been scrambled or randomized in multiple different ways but some security experts believe that it’s only a matter of time before those data are unscrambled. This theft serves as a reminder that high profile companies will continue to be a target of database theft and that every precaution should be taken.
We’re committed to keeping Twitter a safe and open community. As part of that commitment, in instances when we believe an account may have been compromised, we reset the password and send an email letting the account owner know this has happened along with information about creating a new password. This is a routine part of our processes to protect our users. In this case, we unintentionally reset passwords of a larger number of accounts, beyond those that we believed to have been compromised. We apologize for any inconvenience or confusion this may have caused. As always, we recommend that people review these tips on how to keep their Twitter accounts secure: https://support.twitter.com/articles/76036-keeping-your-account-secure#
If you got the email, definitely change your passwords folks. Because reasons :(
The all important certification clears RIM’s upcoming BlackBerry 10 devices to be used across US government departments. It signifies that the system is able to carry and transfer data securely to the specifications required for sensitive government documents. According to RIM it’s the first to receive such a certification prior to launch.
FIPS certification, which is given by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, is one of the minimum criteria that is required for products used by U.S. government agencies and regulated industries that collect, store, transfer, share and disseminate sensitive information.
SMS authentication secures Facebook accounts but can also be troublesome
In the wake of all these recent security breaches, it’s a good idea to remind people that Facebook has a two-factor security lock that involves sending an SMS to your mobile number to authenticate your identity when logging into the service. Once your identity is confirmed, you’ll also be able to whitelist several devices to bypass the two-step login requirement. This is similar to Google’s version which also uses a mobile app for authentication purposes.
The security settings can be accessed by opening Facebook from a computer, going to your Account Settings by clicking the downward triangle on the edge of the blue bar, and selecting the Security section.
Unfortunately SMS confirmation codes can take a very long time to be delivered, sometimes not at all and this applies to any service that uses this method, not just Facebook. This issue clearly undermines the entire purpose of the SMS-based security procedure and discourages people from implementing it.
Several sound advice from Lifehacker to help you avoid having your online backups and personal accounts stolen or deleted by someone else. Perhaps the most important thing you can do is enable two-step verification on your Gmail account and back up your data regularly. Apple wasn’t kidding about backing up when it introduced Time Machine in 2006.
A paper to be presented at an IEEE conference reveals a number of concerns regarding passwords including:
- Older people use better passwords than younger ones.
- Koreans and Germans choose the most secure passwords, Indonesians choose the least secure passwords
- Telling people their passwords are not secure does not make a difference
- People whose accounts have been hacked do not don’t usually enhance the security of their accounts
More on the research paper on the Economist article.
