Vivek Kundra steps down as nation's CIO for Harvard job
The nation's first chief information officer is leaving the White House. Vivek Kundra, who was named to the post in March 2009 to manage the day-to-day technological operations of the US Government, is leaving for a fellowship at Harvard University in August.
Kundra is credited by the Obama White House in saving taxpayers about $3 billion annually by streamlining government IT operations. He was also instrumental in moving Washington into the cloud, and strengthening the country's cybersecurity defenses.
Realities of Pandora's business model catch up to IPO
After initially surging out of the gate to $26 in early morning trading, Pandora's highly anticipated IPO ended giving up much of its gains by the close of trading on Wednesday. At the close, Pandora was only up $1.42 -- about 8.9 percent -- from its IPO price of $16 per share.
The music service's results were drastically different than that of LinkedIn, which saw its shares more than double in its first day of trading last month. It should be noted though that the social networking site's shares have given back about half of those gains, but are still trading some 65 percent above its IPO price.
Facebook set to debut photo-sharing app for iPhone
Facebook is moving beyond its flagship mobile application, reportedly preparing to release a photo sharing application for the iPhone, TechCrunch reported on Wednesday. The site obtained about 50MB of images and documents detailing the social networking site's plans.
Photos on Facebook are a big deal: about 6 billion photos are uploaded to the site every month, and it currently hosts about 100 billion images in total. That's a whole lot of photos, and plenty for an app like the one Facebook's planning to start out with.
How stupid could Citi be?
In what is an embarrassing oversight for Citigroup, attackers that got away with information on over 200,000 credit card holders only needed to make a change in the string of the URL itself. This means that as long as you had the account number, you would be able to access all personal data associated with that particular account.
Citigroup should consider itself lucky that more customers did not have their accounts compromised. How the hackers got the credit card numbers themselves is not clear yet, but the vulnerability allowed them to jump among accounts automatically by just being logged in and running a script.
Breaking into iPhone? Try '1234' or '0000' first
Developer Daniel Amitay has some words of caution for those locking their iPhones down with a four-digit password: use something that isn't on his list of most commonly used passcodes. Amitay created the Big Brother Camera Security app for iOS, and anonymously collected passcode data from users.
The app can take pictures remotely of whomever's using your device with the front-facing camera, as well as its location. What Amitay collected was the passcode information for the app itself, which is nearly identical to the iOS lock screen. He figures the data collected on 204,508 user passcodes would be similar.
LulzSec hacks US Senate website, although no data taken
LulzSec continued to push its collective luck over the weekend, breaking into US Senate computers and publishing the directory structure on its website. The move is LulzSec's most brazen yet: breaking into government computers is a serious offense.
The group is responsible for hacks on FBI-related sites and Nintendo, and has also claimed responsibility for attacks on PBS' site where it posted an article claiming late rapper Tupac Shakur was still alive, as well as at least a half-dozen attacks on Sony.
Facebook plans early 2012 IPO, say sources
Facebook is reportedly set to go public in early 2012, becoming the latest company to cash in on what seems to be a renewed frenzy surrounding technology stocks. Likely to be one of the hottest IPOs so far, experts believe that the company could reach a valuation of $100 billion.
A recent private sale of a large chunk of shares -- about 100,000 -- gave a valuation of about $85 billion. An IPO and the surrounding buzz would push the valuation even higher, experts believe. The news follows Groupon, which announced its IPO earlier this month, and LinkedIn, which started trading publicly last month.
Where in the world are iTunes hack victims? [Map]
View iTunes Hack Reports in a larger map
It all began last Wednesday with a startling discovery. I noticed mysterious charges on iTunes that I didn't make. Someone hacked my account, and I told my story here on Betanews. I didn't realize until after the e-mails began pouring in the next day from readers that I may have stumbled onto something. Some readers wrote in and told us they had experienced something much the same, which we shared with you.
iTunes hack goes global, new affected games identified
As coverage of the apparent hack of the iTunes Music Store expands, so have the reports from readers. The newest round of reports indicate that the issue is not limited to the US: Betanews has been able to identify victims in at least five foreign countries. Worse yet? It's no longer just Sega's Kingdom Conquest anymore: several other games have now been identified. Betanews first reported about the spreading hacks one week ago.
To date, reports have been received primarily from the US. However, since then reports have been received from Britain, Ireland, and Germany. Betanews has also been able to source reports through its investigation to New Zealand and Canada as well. Since the reports are not centered to one particular region per se, it's likely this has become a worldwide problem for Apple.
Skype outage knocks service offline for millions
A portion of Skype users found themselves without service Tuesday after a configuration problem caused the VoIP provider's systems to crash. A message to Heartbeat, Skype's status page, indicated that the company was aware of the problem and was working to fix it.
The most recent update indicates that the problem has been "stabilized" and most should be able to log back in shortly. "You shouldn't need to manually sign back in to Skype - it should reconnect automatically when it's able to do so," Skype's Peter Parkes said in an update.
iTunes hack widespread, and Apple appears to know about it
Since Betanews' original report last Wednesday, dozens of readers have e-mailed their own reports of account issues, most dealing with Sega's Kingdom Conquest. Some of these initial reports were detailed in a followup to our original piece, but we have received more since then.
(Betanews is still actively collecting reports. If you've been hacked, whether it's Kingdom Conquest or not, we'd like to know. Send your reports to ed at edoswald dot com.)
LulzSec turns its hacking sights on Nintendo, FBI
Fresh off a hack of the Sony Pictures website last week, hacking group LulzSec turned its attention elsewhere. FBI related websites were attacked on Friday night, and it was revealed this weekend that the US web servers of Nintendo had been hit by the group several weeks ago.
In the Nintendo hack, LulzSec took no information. "Re: Nintendo, we just got a config file and made it clear that we didn't mean any harm. Nintendo had already fixed it anyway.
Hijazi claims that LulzSec attempted to extort money from Unveillance in exchange for them not publicly releasing his information, although the hacking group claimed that Hijazi wanted LulzSec to hack his competitors. Hijazi maintains that no sensitive information was disclose about his company's anti-hacking efforts, since the e-mails were of a personal and work nature.
Sony hacked again, 1 million user accounts compromised
The same group that was responsible for hacking into PBS' site recently to post fake news claiming Tupac Shakur was alive has set its sights on Sony. Lulz Boat said it had broke into the SonyPictures.com website and compromised the personal information of one million users.
Among the information is name, password, e-mail address, date of birth, and home address. Any other information the user opted to share with Sony is also in the hands of these hackers as well. The hackers were only able to download data on 150,000 of those users, but walked away with admin details and 3.5 million music coupons and 75,000 music codes, it said.
Groupon plans $750 million IPO
Becoming the second major Internet company in as many months to go public, online coupon site Groupon announced Thursday its intentions to file for an initial public offering. The site says it preliminarily expects to raise $750 million.
Groupon has seen some successes as of late: after only pulling in a little over $713 million in all of 2010, in the first quarter of this year it had already pulled in some $645 milion. This is a likely indication of the swelling interest in discount sites among consumers, and very well could be seen as a validation of Groupon and other's business model.
Meet three people ripped off by iTunes fraud ring
Reports from victims of fraud on iTunes are beginning to paint a picture of what could be a significant security issue for Apple's online entertainment store. Worse yet, several of the victims that reported into Betanews on their experience are employed in IT -- obviously understanding the risks of improperly secured personal data.
Although not uniform, Betanews investigations into the issue seem to suggest that attackers have primarily targeted users that had credit balances with iTunes. Monitoring of Sega's Kingdom Conquest app page show new comments posted today of fraudulent charges, indicating the hack is ongoing. But that's not the worst of it: other apps may be victims of these hackers.
Ed's Bio
Ed Oswald is a freelance journalist from the Reading, PA area. Although he has written across a variety of subjects, Ed’s passion and focus has been on technology and gadgets. His work regularly appears on tech news sites BetaNews, PCWorld, and Technologizer, and has been syndicated to eWeek, Time’s Techland blog, VentureBeat and the New York Times.
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