Earlier today news spread that social application site RockYou had suffered a data breached that resulted in the exposure of over 32 Million user accounts. To compound the severity of the security breach, it was found that RockYou are storing all user account data in plain text in their database, exposing all that information to attackers. RockYou have yet to inform users of the breach, and their blog is eerily silent – but the details of the security breach are going from bad to worse.
The first issue is that RockYou attempted to downplay the entire incident, first by covering it up by not notifying users and then downplaying it in an official statement as being an issue that only affected ‘older’ applications. The hacker responsible for the initial breach published a small portion of the dataset he had retrieved and was able to show that not only did he have access to their entire database, but also passwords were stored in the clear. This matter now appears worse than originally suspected as the dataset also contains a table where RockYou have stored user credentials for social networks and other partner sites. → Read More
Want a plug-in car, but the Leaf and Volt aren’t doing it for you? Well, Toyota will be entering the market soon, though you should only count on it if you’re feeling lucky. First half of 2010 will only see 150 of these new plug-in Priuses (Prii?) on our shores, though they’re planning a full-size rollout for 2011. Now hang on a second… apparently these things only get 15 miles per battery charge. Are you kidding me? → Read More
Remember that Enermax Caesar I reviewed? Decent keyboard. A friend of mine is still using it and she likes it just fine. It was a more fancy keyboard than this, what with the cool mesh styling and media keys, but it wasn’t nearly as slim. The new Acrylux keyboard, available in wired and wireless versions, has made thin its top priority. → Read More
We knew the nook had some Android blood in it, but it’s been kept well-hidden, merely an underpinning for its custom UI. We expected some special apps or minor compatibility with existing stuff to be pushed out later on, but of course some people can’t wait until “later on.” → Read More
Back before Brazil was the darling economy of Latin America, all eyes were on Argentina—or at least the dot com “eyeballs” were. In the late 1990s, when VCs, private equity houses and wealthy individuals where throwing Internet money around the globe, Argentina got more than its fair share. The relatively small country was home to the fifth-largest number of registered Internet domain names in the world, and in early 2000 the now-defunct Industry Standard estimated that some 50% of the Latin America’s Web startups were concentrated in Argentina.
Of course, when the Nasdaq crashed, most of those global investments did as well. Just like in India, investors bailed on funding commitments happy to write off their far-flung bets and move on. Left in a lurch, most of these Latin American companies went out of business, many others sold, and one—just one—went public on the Nasdaq. → Read More
Do not watch the video above. It will burn your eyes out and cut a few years off your life. Hopefully someone lost their job at GM over it because this is not how you sell the Chevy Volt. [GM-Volt via AutoblogGreen] → Read More
Early this morning we wrote about what appears to be a blatant rip off of Plurk by Microsoft China. Microsoft’s Juku product looks almost exactly like Plurk, and the code appears to almost identical.
Now, more than twelve hours later, Microsoft still has no real response to the situation. It was the middle of the night in China when the story broke, and Microsoft says that they are just now working with their team there to “track down the information.” In the meantime, Juku is being taken down: → Read More
[UK] Spinvox, Spinvox, Spinvox. It promised so much but in the end delivered only so much. Like a latter-day Boo.com it hyped its magical voice-to-text service to the stars, apparently built on highly advanced technology, but in the end it has not lived up to the expectations it went all out to trumpet.
Nuance, possibly the leader in speech-to-text processing, and with 40+ carrier relationship, is reportedly picking up Spinvox in a $150 million sale which might be completed before Christmas. But there was no source on the Sunday Times story and Spinvox tells us they aren’t commenting at all. The Sunday Times is often used as a vehicle to float ‘sale rumours’ which are actually designed to flush out more bidders. → Read More
Short version: Like lots of pockets in a laptop backpack? I count 27 on the Booq Boa Squeeze and wouldn’t be surprised if there are some hiding. → Read More
Well my day just got better. SGU is currently on a mid-season break but at least the news broke that the show got picked up for another season. Now if I can only wait until April to see how Dr. Rush gets back on board the Destiny. → Read More
A lot has been said recently about Facebook’s decision to re-write its privacy rulebook to encourage users to be more open about what they share. Privacy implications aside, at least it appears that Facebook is eating its own dogfood. First CEO Mark Zuckerberg shared a bunch of person images, and now comes a big new feature that everyone should appreciate: Posting individual status updates to Twitter.
Yes, at some point this week, Facebook will roll out the ability to send your status updates to its rival, Twitter, we’ve confirmed. This will be built-in directly to its UI and not through some separate app you have to install, we’re told. It will be similar to the functionality it rolled out for its Pages feature in August, but this will be available on all profiles. → Read More
Too bad the upcoming $99 Blu-ray release is just the theatrical edition and not the extended-cut version. It’s not even worth the $69 price Amazon has it set at for pre-order as you know the other version will come out eventually anyway. New Line just wants fans to double dip. Fail. Amazon via High-Def Digest → Read More
The short gloves are off. Earlier today, both Google and Facebook got into the URL shortening game with goo.gl and fb.me. Google’s move in particular is a direct challenge to bit.ly, the rising independent standard among link shortening services. Bit.ly’s response is in effect to ask publishers and consumers who they trust with all their data: Google or the rest of the Web?
To that effect, it is rolling out a new service called bit.ly Pro, which allows Web publishers to bit.ly to send out short links with their own branded (short) domain names such as nyti.ms, 4sq.com, mee.bo, or tcrn.ch. Publishers in the beta include AOL, Bing, foursquare, Hot Potato, the Huffington Post, Meebo, MSN, the New York Times, the Onion, TechCrunch, and the Wall Street Journal. What bit.ly is offering these publishers (us included) is a way to use a branded, trusted short URL which is powered by bit.ly. Publishers also get an analytics dashboard which shows realtime stats like the total number of clicks, and their distribution by geography and referring sites. Pro accounts is where all the money is, although bit.ly is not yet charging. → Read More
Update: It’s overrr! Someone won, and he’s very excited. Thanks for playing, and keep an eye out for other giveaways. ‘Tis the season. Did you see my review of the ContourHD 1080p? Well, go check it out so you know whether or not you can make use of this sucker. It’s basically a compact HD camcorder stripped of everything but the lens, sensor, and storage, stuck inside a tiny, semi-rugged aluminum case. It’s for sticking to your helmet or bike frame and documenting all that extreme stuff you do. And we want to give one to you. → Read More
It’s no secret that most people use the same password over and over again for most of the services they sign up for. While it’s obviously convenient, this becomes a major problem if one of those services is compromised. And that looks to be the case with RockYou, the social network app maker.
Over the weekend, the security firm Imperva issued a warning to RockYou that there was a serious SQL Injection flaw in their database. Such a flaw could grant hackers access to the the service’s entire list of user names and passwords in the database, they warned. Imperva said that after it notified RockYou about the flaw, it was apparently fixed over the weekend. But that’s not before at least one hacker gained access to what they claim is all of the 32 million accounts. 32,603,388 to be exact. The best part? The database included a full list of unprotected plain text passwords. And email addresses. Wow. → Read More
Zink stands for “zero ink.” It’s the name of a company that has created a new way of printing that uses, yes, zero ink. It’s all in the paper, hoss. → Read More
While Seesmic has been available for BlackBerry handsets since right around the end of November, it has thus far required you to manually download the application by visiting http://m.seesmic.com/. That’s like what, a million letters to type? Typing is for chumps. Fortunately for all of us lazy-thumbed folks, RIM has just given Seesmic the greenlight for distribution in the BlackBerry App World – no typing required. Seesmic is celebrating their newfound availability with an update to the client, adding a handful of new features to the mix. → Read More
Ubisoft hasn’t given up on the Prince of Persia series just yet (despite the fact that Assassin’s Creed is essentially Persia of Persia with a different pair of shoes). There’s the movie with that guy, and the just-announced Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands. It’s coming out in May of 2010 for all the usual suspects. → Read More
Thanks largely to its search deals with Bing and Google, Twitter is already making revenue. But that income is not the where Twitter expects its true business model to lie. Instead, it believes that will come from premium features given to businesses that wish to use Twitter. Thus far, Twitter has yet to enable such features. But starting today, it’s beginning to test what is likely to be one of them.
As it notes on its blog, Twitter is testing a new feature it calls “Contributors.” Basically, this allows business accounts to be controlled by multiple Twitter users. Yes, it’s a form of multi-account support. For example, if any of us who work for TechCrunch were given the proper permission by the account owner, we could control this account from our own individual Twitter accounts. This includes the ability to DM people, follow new users, and most importantly, tweet from it. And if you were to tweet from it using your own account, your Twitter name would be appended onto the bottom of that tweet (see image). → Read More
Even if you’re staying away from the sauce this holiday season, it’d still be nice to be able to clink your glass with everyone else when the toasts go down. Sure, you could just have glass of water – but why do something practical and not absurd when there’s an iPhone app? → Read More
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