Cybersecurity a Serious Challenge, Obama Says

Calling protection of government and private computer and communications networks "one of the most serious... security challenges we face," President Obama said he would appoint a White House advisor to oversee a national effort to improve cyber-security throughout the U.S. The president noted that millions of Americans already had been victimized by computer tampering and that his own campaign computers had been breached by hackers between August and October.

  • Read the article: Los Angeles Times

  • Pentagon Set to Create New Internet Military Command

    The Pentagon plans to create a new military command for cyberspace, administration officials said, stepping up preparations by the armed forces to conduct both offensive and defensive computer warfare. The military command would complement a civilian effort to be announced by President Obama that would overhaul the way the United States safeguards its computer networks.

  • Read the article: The New York Times

  • Man Gets 8 1/2 Years for Running Phishing Scam

    A Romanian immigrant has been sentenced to 8 1/2 years in prison for running a lucrative computerized "phishing" scheme that collected financial records and personal identification from thousands of individuals, including nearly 100 from Minnesota. Sergiu D. Popa, 23, of Shelby Township, Mich., was sentenced in federal court in Minneapolis for a plot that cost his 7,000 or so victims about $700,000, by his own admission.

  • Read the article: Minneapolis Star Tribune

  • EU Pushing Music Industry to Change Online Licenses

    EU antitrust regulators told the music industry to move quickly and change licenses that currently restrict online music stores such as iTunes from offering the same songs for sale across Europe. Internet music downloads in Europe lag behind those in the United States, pulling in just a fraction of revenues the record industry is losing from falling CD sales.

  • Read the article: SiliconValley.com

  • Music Industry Striking Deals That Work for Smaller Sites

    The recording industry is considering an all-digital future in which it needs popular Web services like Imeem, both as sources of revenue and as supplements to older channels of promotion like radio and MTV. As a result, music labels are now striking more favorable terms with Web firms, while start-ups have come to realize they can’t rely on Web ads to support themselves.

  • Read the article: The New York Times

  • Website Collecting Views on Google Book Settlement

    Caroline Vanderlip believes the escalating debate over Google's plans for a vast Internet library of copyright-protected literature will yield enough compelling material to fill a book. That's one reason why SharedBook, a 5-year-old company run by Vanderlip, has set up a website so the supporters and opponents of Google's digital book project can more easily post their opinions about a legal settlement that will help fulfill or possibly derail the Internet search leader's ambitions.

  • Read the article: USA Today

  • Obama to Announce White House "Cyber Czar"

    President Obama is expected to announce that he will create a "cyber czar," a senior White House official who will have broad authority to develop strategy to protect the nation's government-run and private computer networks, according to people who have been briefed on the plan. The adviser will have the most comprehensive mandate granted to such an official to date and will probably be a member of the National Security Council but will report to the national security adviser as well as the senior White House economic adviser, said the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the deliberations are not final.

  • Read the article: The Washington Post

  • New Phishing Attacks Playing on Twitter's Popularity

    Recent days have seen a slew of Twitter phishing attacks, possibly orchestrated in a chess-like multi-move plan that resulted in three sets of victims and, very likely, some seedy profits. The scheme appears to have begun with the creation of bogus Twitter accounts, which the scammers used to "follow" other users, says Rik Ferguson, a senior security advisor at security-software maker Trend Micro.

  • Read the article: The New York Times

  • Internet Retailers Report Increase in "Friendly Fraud"

    Online merchants are fighting a surge in so-called friendly fraud, as more consumers try to get out of paying for their Internet purchases in the recession. Online jeweler Ice.com Inc. and travel site Expedia Inc. are among companies seeing at least 50% spikes from October in friendly fraud, a term used to describe when a consumer disputes an online charge but doesn't return the item or has already used the product.

  • Read the article: The Wall Street Journal