America’s Federal Trade Commission will hold a roundtable discussion later this month on the privacy and security of cloud computing. Social networking and mobile computing will also be covered.

David Vladeck, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, stated in a letter to the government agency:

…the ability of cloud computing services to collect and centrally store increasing amounts of consumer data, combined with the ease with which such centrally stored data may be shared with others, create a risk that larger amounts of data may be used by entities in ways not originally intended or understood by consumers.

The discussion is slated for January 28. The security and reliability of cloud computing have been under consumer scrutiny for some time. The FTC is also concerned about the wide amount of data social networking sites have access to and how it might pose a threat to consumer privacy.

Source | Data Center Knowledge

Continue reading: FTC to look into security and privacy of cloud computing

According to reports, North Korean hackers are believed to have launched cyber attacks on government offices in the US and South Korea. Some South Korean and US websites were momentarily taken down. Among the South Korean sites with service disruption were the Blue House, defense ministry, national assembly, Shinhan bank, Korean Exchange bank, and Internet portal Naver.

As of yet, there seems to be no concrete evidence that the North Korean government had any involvement in the attack, despite the suspicions to the contrary. South Korean officials announced that they suspected North Korea or its sympathizers of initiating the attack and that they are working with the US in the investigation. The US treasury department, secret service, Federal Trade Commission, and transport department websites were hit and momentarily taken off line over the past weekend.

The method of attack appears to be DoS (denial of service), a technique preferred by hackers because of its effectiveness at taking down websites without the need to infiltrate security systems. The hackers will normally use several computers connected to the Internet, sometimes spread all over the world, to bombard a website with simultaneous connections until the site can no longer handle the load. The site then either goes offline or is simply unreachable to legitimate visitors.

Source: Guardian
Photo: Flickr

Continue reading: Hackers attack South Korea and US

Earlier this week, the Federal Trade Commission shut down a California web hosting firm for involvement in spam operations. This is the first time the FTC has ever taken action against a hosting provider.

The company, Triple Fiber Network, hosted some 15,000 websites at a data center in San Jose, California. The sites were taken offline Tuesday after the FTC told its bandwidth provider to stop routing the host’s traffic.

Triple Fiber allegedly hosted all sorts of illegal content, including malware and child pornography. “Anything bad on the Internet, they were involved in it,” FTC Chairman Jonathan Leibowitz said. “We’re very proud, because in one fell swoop we’ve gone after a big facilitator of some of the utterly worst conduct.”

The FTC stated:

[Triple Fiber Network] hosts very little legitimate content and vast quantities of illegal, malicious, and harmful content, including child pornography, botnet command and control servers, spyware, viruses, trojans, phishing related sites, illegal online pharmacies, investment and other Web-based scams, and pornography featuring violence, bestiality, and incest.

The black market provider also hosted the control servers for one of the world’s largest botnets, “Cutwail.” According to the government agency, the host marketed itself to overseas criminals by placing ads in the “darkest corners of the Internet.”

Most of the host’s personnel work overseas. In a message to customers, Three Fiber promised to be back up within days in another location. Meanwhile, some of its customers have already found other hosts and have placed their illegal content back online.

Source: Washington Post
Photo: Flickr

Continue reading: FTC Shuts Down California Web Host