Tech Talk

The FBI sent an email warning Friday evening to officials across America warning them of a potential attack on financial and law enforcement entities by the hacking group Anonymous.

The email, which Tech Talk has obtained a copy of, reports that Anonymous announced a nationwide “Day of Vengence” in dozens of cities across the U.S. beginning at “High Noon” on Sept. 24, stating:

In coordination with these protests across the USA on September 24th, Anonymous and other cyber liberation groups will launch a series of cyber attacks against various targets including Wall Street, Corrupt Banking Institutions – and the NYC Police Department. We encourage the media to follow the Twitter feed @PLF2012 for ongoing reports throughout the day.

The FBI warns that public and private entities associated with the recent execution of Troy Davis in the state of Georgia may also be targed, as well as additional law enforcement agencies.

The federal agency did not release any additional information about the threat, including to the specific nature or means.

However, the FBI did cite history as a potential guide:

[I]n the past, Anonymous has engaged in distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, utilized SQL injection to gain unauthorized access to computer systems, conducted social engineering to gather personal identifying information, and released both personal information (i.e. “doxing”) and the contents of compromised systems (e.g. e-mail message content, passwords, etc.).

The FBI encouraged agencies to use strong, unique passwords, to update software to protect against known vulnerabilities and ensure that Web-based applications are not at risk to attacks, such as SQL injection.

The Internet has been compared with an untamed wilderness because of its seeming ability to foster rebels wishing to strike against the world’s most powerful and then elude capture.

However, the world’s reaction to the WikiLeaks diplomatic cable leaks has shined a light on how even the Web could fall in line with the world’s standards, expecations and influences.

As documents continue to surface against the wishes of some of the world’s most powerful players, a noose continues to tighten around the resources and founder of WikiLeaks.

The site was banished from Amazon’s servers last week, as Tech Talk reported. Days later, PayPal followed suit. And most recently, MasterCard and Visa have cut payments to the organization.

As if Amazon’s blow was not difficult enough for the organization to overcome, the loss of income could be devastating to WikiLeaks’ very survival — particularly at a time when it needs liquid finances the most desperately.

Meanwhile, WikiLeaks founder and editor Julian Assange faces a potential extradition to face sexual assault allegations in Sweden.

The situation reminds us that no one could hide on the Internet from a determined world — and ultimately, cyberspace is not much different from our brick and mortar world.

Folks in some of the most rural parts of New England have been left to fend for themselves at this hour — thanks to the very individuals promising to deliver a better life. Interesting strategy.

The Associated Press is reporting that political robocalls have sparked service outages among Comcast subscribers throughout parts of Massachussets and New Hampshire meaning 911 service has been knocked offline.

The telecommunications company was forced to reroute phone traffic as a result, the wire service reported Monday evening.

In addition, the New Hampshire Democratic Party reported a loss of phone service at 11 locations across the state on Monday afternoon, the wire service reported. The outages reminded Hearst Connecticut copy editor Bob Gottlieb of outages the party suffered in the state eight years ago.

Conspiracy theorists, be on alert.

Tech Talk thanks Hearst Connecticut copy editor Tim Bleasdale for this tip.

The most popular applications on Facebook have been transmitting identifying information to advertising and tracking companies, the Wall Street Journal reports. Tens of millions of users are affected — even those who have the strictest privacy settings, the newspaper reports.

The breach is hardly the first on the network.

It is a good time to remember that users should assume that all information posted online will be ultimately made public to everyone. Assuming anything else would be foolish.

A Facebook spokesperson told the Journal:

“A Facebook user ID may be inadvertently shared by a user’s Internet browser or by an application,” the spokesman said. Knowledge of an ID “does not permit access to anyone’s private information on Facebook,” he said, adding that the company would introduce new technology to contain the problem identified by the Journal.

It is important to note that the majority of applications are not made by Facebook, something many users do not realize.

Click here to read the full Wall Street Journal report.

The Connecticut State Police is warning residents to be wary of graphic e-mails.

Officers in Troop E in Montville are investigating a graphic e-mail sent to e-mail accounts throughout southeastern Connecticut. The public is asked to delete any e-mail with the subject of: ” We are the world, we are the children……..enjoy.”

The contents of the e-mail are graphic and may contain a virus that will further spread the virus to infected users’ contacts, police warn.

The State Police has e-mailed known users who have received the e-mail with a note containing the subject: “STATE POLICE ***WARNING****”

Tech Talk advises residents across Connecticut and throughout the United States to be on the lookout given the apparent ease at which the virus could spread.

As always, Tech Talk warns users to be wary of any e-mails that are not from known recipients; appear to be SPAM or have offers seemingly too good to be true — even if they are from the accounts of trusted individuals. As this case highlights, it is not difficult for accounts to be compromised.

It is also a good idea to update anti-virus software.

Hackers have discovered a new way to rock the Twitterverse Tuesday.

A rogue bug directed thousands of users to third-party websites Tuesday morning after they moved their mouse over malicious tweets, Mashable reported. Some users were directed to hard-core pornography sites in the security breach, FOXNews.com reported. 

Users were advised to use third-party applications, like TweetDeck and Hootsuite, which did not seem to be affected by the Javascript.

However, the nature of the assault is particularly alarming as users’ personal and financial information is once again put at the greatest risk yet.

Tuesday’s incident begs the question: How many breaches and outages are Twitter users willing to deal with before they permanently sign off?

As the social network faces mounting issues, it is becoming increasingly difficult for even its most loyal users to pretend like everything is hunky-dory.

Yes, Twitter is seeing a large increase in users, but so are other social networks like Facebook and FourSquare — only they are not suffering the same infuriating growing pains. But when you add malicious bugs that threaten one’s financial and public well-being, that’s another story.

While your Tech Talk editor remains a loyal tweeter, even he is becoming increasingly wary of the network’s growing risks and headaches. While he is not planning to jump ship anytime soon and is still very commited to the unrivaled information that flows across the network at any given moment, he is much more likely to actively seek an alternative source sooner than later. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.

Hey girls, you might want to change your passwords and lock your computers to ensure your privacy.

While Tech Talk has always been adamant about Internet safety, a recent survey reported by Mashable left us stunned.

A whopping 53.18 percent of men polled said they believe privacy is dead online, according to AskMen’s “Great Male Survey,” Of the more than 100,000 dudes who completed the survey, 21.31 percent said that privacy is alive and well.

The survey, which was conducted over two months and involved more than 100,000 gentlemen, found that 13.32 percent of men read their partner’s electronic correspondences because it was open.

Nearly nine percent of survey participants said they admitted to breaking into their partner’s e-mail or messaging account — and a whopping 23.51 percent said they read a partner’s messages “with my partner’s knowledge,” a very broad answer.

Nearly 22 percent of respondents indicated that they would check their partner’s messages if “I suspected my partner was up to something.”

Of course, not all guys violate their partner’s privacy — and not all girls are innocent in this. There are a lot of good, upstanding gentlemen out there who go the extra mile to ensure their significant other’s cyber security. Nonetheless, however, everyone should be prepared.

The lesson in all of this is your privacy online is growing more difficult to safeguard — but it does not have to be.

Tech Talk recommends that passwords are randomly generated and are changed monthly — and should include special characters (such as exclamation points and asterisks,) capital and lowercase letters and numbers.

For more information on strong passwords, you could check out Microsoft’s corresponding page — and we recommend trying their password checker.  You could create a randomly generated password here.

Happy surfing.

Google collected sensitive data, including passwords, a French data protection agency examination has found.

The information was collected from unsecured wireless networks by the search engine’s Street View vehicles as the company logged WiFi hotspots, the BBC reported Monday.

CNIL, the French data protection agency, told reporters that an early look indicated the presence of “data that are normally covered by… banking and medical privacy rules,” the BBC reported.

Passwords for e-mail and “chunks of text from messages” were reportedly found, according to the British media.

The search engine giant said it was working with authorities and would delete the information it had gathered, if requested, the BBC reported.

Google acknowledged that its vehicles had “mistakenly” collected and stored data broadcast from wireless networks in Connecticut, Tech Talk reported earlier this month.

The search engine called the collection a software mistake, Tech Talk cited a release by Connecticut’s Attorney General, Richard Blumenthal, as saying. Google has stressed that the data has been secured and was not used “in any Google service or product.”

Google said it has grounded its entire Street View fleet and has stopped collecting wireless data, Tech Talk has previously reported. The search engine “believes” it started collecting the data in Connecticut two years ago, Blumenthal said in a statement.

“Our ultimate objective is to delete the data consistent with our legal obligations and in consultation with the appropriate authorities,” a Google spokesperson said.

Investigations have been launched in Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy, New Zealand and Spain. Several U.S. states are considering filing civil suits, the BBC reported.

The company stated earlier this month in a release sent through Blumenthal’s office that it considered the information broadcast from the personal and business networks to be public information. It said it needs the information to “improve our location-based services.”

This is a serious issue. Any information collected could lead to people becoming victimized – not just by Google but by someone who hacks into the technology giant’s servers, which have been compromised before.  This news should remind Web surfers that they should only use secure wireless connections – or else they face becoming a victim. Learn more about wireless security here.

Even before Monday’s news, Connecticut’s attorney general indicated that a probe in the state was underway.

“Google’s actions raise troubling and profound questions about privacy and whether laws need to be clarified or changed,” Blumenthal said in a statement distributed earlier this month. “I urge consumers to consider encrypting their wireless computer networks. An unencrypted network is an invitation to snooping, like broadcasting all communications on loudspeakers. Anyone with the right software and equipment can listen in.”