With the all-digital currency bitcoin rising in value, hackers have redoubled their efforts to get at the money. Earlier this week, they hacked into a bitcoin bank. Today, Kaspersky Security reports that a malware scheme on Skype is taking over users’ machines to help them hunt for the currency online.
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LinkedIn Remakes Job Search Feature (SocialTimes)
LinkedIn will roll out a streamlined version of its job posting feature over the next few weeks that will include more granular search options, the company said on Friday. The move follows remakes of the social network’s homepage and profiles last year.
In a late-Friday release of bad news, Facebook disclosed this afternoon that it had been hacked. The company said that no user data had been affected, but with the amount of private data Facebook stores on its servers, the hack delivered a stark reminder of how vulnerable user privacy is.
Alleged cyber-criminal Hamza Bendelladj was arrested in Bangkok earlier this week, after the FBI reportedly tipped off local law enforcement. But all the 24-year-old Algerian could do at the arraignment and the press conference that followed was smile.
The FBI arrested 10 people linked to the Butterfly botnet with help from Facebook’s security team, the agency said yesterday.
Researchers at the University of California, Riverside have created a Facebook application called MyPageKeeper to stop hackers from hijacking pages and posting spammy links. In a four-month study, they found that the app caught 97 percent of the social malware that turned up during the experiment.
A worm is sending messages through Skype instant messaging service, according to the security firm Sophos. The messages, which exploit Skype’s API to proliferate, pose as links to photos of the recipient. But they ultimately turn the user’s machine into part of a botnet.
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Twitter Overhauls Search Experience (The Next Web)
Twitter has dropped a brand new search experience on its service to help you find things that really matter to you. Here’s what Frost Li, an engineer on the Search and Relevance team at Twitter had to say about it Friday on the company’s blog: “We’re constantly working to make Twitter search the simplest way to discover what’s happening in real time. To that end, today we’re introducing search autocomplete and ‘People You Follow’ search results to twitter.com. In addition to recent improvements like related query suggestions, spelling corrections and more relevant search results, these updates make it even easier to immediately get closer to the things you care about.” Business Insider While it’s sometimes interesting to see what strangers around the world have to say on a topic in the news, often it’s more relevant to see tweets from the friends and news sources you follow. And the lack of this feature has been a major flaw in Twitter search. VentureBeat Around half of Twitter users are using the service as a super-simplified RSS reader, not as a mechanism for broadcasting their own thoughts to an uncaring world. Since the company wants to grow — and wants to continue to grow more mainstream — it’s in its best interests to make Twitter the simplest, best RSS reader anyone could ask for. And the announcements about finding and following topics take the product a bit closer to that goal. TechCrunch The updates are already live on Twitter.com, and related search suggestions, autocomplete and spelling corrections are also now available in Twitter for iPhone and Android. You can try them out now with a search for “Jeremy Lin,” which returns his username and the real names of teammates as suggestions, plus a filter for tweets from People You Follow. AllTwitter Twitter’s announcement is really a non-announcement as it heavily references previously introduced functionalities like related query suggestions, spelling corrections and more relevant search results, which we told you about in May. Read more
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Malware Could Strand Thousands When Domains Go Dark on Monday (Wired)
Tens of thousands of U.S. Internet users could be left in the digital dark on Monday when the FBI pulls the plug on domains related to DNSChanger malware. Computers belonging to an estimated 64,000 users in the United States, and an additional 200,000 users outside the United States, are still infected with the malware, despite repeated warnings in the news, email messages sent by ISPs and alerts posted by Google and Facebook. The Wall Street Journal In a highly unusual move, the FBI set up a safety net. They brought in a private company to install two clean Internet servers to take over for the malicious servers so that people would not suddenly lose their Internet. The temporary Internet system they set up, however, will be shut down at 12:01 a.m. EDT on Monday. CNBC Hackers are to blame for the malware attack, which was part of an international online advertising scam. The malicious software disabled users’ antivirus software, which could also make their computer prone to other issues. San Jose Mercury News Google and Facebook each used different technical methods of determining which users might have the DNSChanger infection, according to security consultant Barry Greene, a member of the public-private working group that’s been tackling the problem. While Google has alerted users to a potential malware threat once before, Greene said he wasn’t aware that Facebook had ever done so. Google began showing notices to affected users in May; Facebook followed suit last month. AP To check whether a computer is infected, users can visit a website run by the group brought in by the FBI: http://www.dcwg.org. The site includes links to respected commercial sites that will run a quick check on the computer, and it also lays out detailed instructions if users want to actually check the computer themselves. The Globe and Mail Users whose computers are still infected Monday will lose their ability to go online. They will have to call their service providers for help deleting the malware and reconnecting to the Internet. Read more
The security hounds over at Sophos have discovered a Russian website which is trying to sell you a fake version of Instagram for Android. When you click the application, you do get sent to an install page, and it seems as if you are downloading Instagram but you’re actually downloading an imitation app that seems to be sending “background SMS messages to earn its creators revenue.”
