Technology

Two security companies are questioning claims that a cyber espionage campaign uncovered by a rival firm was sophisticated or even extraordinary.

Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab on Thursday begged to differ, saying that McAfee has simply not provided enough information to justify the claims being bandied about.

The report contains nothing on what particular data has been stolen or how many computers in each organization were hit by the attacks, said Alex Gostev, Kaspersky’s chief security expert, in an emailed statement. Until the information in the McAfee report is backed up by evidence, to talk about the biggest cyber attack in history is premature — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Body scanners being tested at Germany’s Hamburg airport have had a thumbs down from the police, who say they trigger an alarm unnecessarily in seven out of 10 cases, a newspaper said Saturday.

The weekly Welt am Sonntag, quoting a police report, said 35 percent of the 730,000 passengers checked by the scanners set off the alarm more than once despite being innocent.

The report said the machines were confused by several layers of clothing, boots, zip fasteners and even pleats, while in 10 percent of cases the passenger’s posture set them off — via redwolf.newsvine.com

To open a door fitted with the latest US government-certified lock from high-end Swiss lock manufacturer Kaba, an employee must both enter a code up to eight digits long, then swipe a unique identity card coded to comply with a new standard that requires an extra layer of security, one designed to track individual staffers and make covert intrusion harder than ever.

Or, as lockpicking expert Marc Weber Tobias will show a crowd of hackers Friday, you can stick a wire in the tiny display light above the keypad and instantly render all of that security irrelevant — via redwolf.newsvine.com

The firm’s chief executive Neil Berkett told investors that it was in quite advanced negotiations with London councils over the plans and said he was optimistic the rollout would begin in the not too distant future.

The proposition would provide free Wifi access for all, he said.

Virgin Media’s WiFi network will be freely available to anyone at 0.5Mbps, and to its home broadband subscribers at up to 10Mbps.

The approach contrasts with BT’s extensive Openzone network, which although free to BT broadband customers, is charged at as much as £5.99 for 90 minutes’ browsing — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Gmail users in Australia and around the world can now download a plug-in to use Google Voice features to make landline and mobile calls from within their Gmail account.

Users can also use video chat from within Gmail, rendering additional video and text chat programs like Skype effectively redundant — especially since the Google Voice call rates are very competitive — via redwolf.newsvine.com

IT security firm McAfee claims to have uncovered one of the largest ever series of cyber attacks.

It lists 72 different organisations that were targeted over five years, including the International Olympic Committee, the UN and security firms.

McAfee will not say who it thinks is responsible, but there is speculation that China may be behind the attacks.

Beijing has always denied any state involvement in cyber-attacks, calling such accusations groundless — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Google may have failed in its takeover attempt of Groupon last year, but it’s not giving up on the social shopping market.

The technology giant — which recently rolled out Google Offers, its own location-based daily deal service — has acquired the Dealmap, a start-up that aggregates discounts from hundreds of group-buying sites. The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the Dealmap team will join Google’s commerce and local initiatives group — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Have you ever had a DOM element that you wanted lightboxed, but didn’t want all the fanciness of all the lightbox-related plug-ins out there? Lightbox_me is for you.

Lightbox_me is an essential tool for the jQuery developer’s toolbox. Feed it a DOM element wrapped in a jQuery object and it will lightbox it for you, no muss no fuss.

Joe Karaganis, from SSRC, points us to the news that there’s been yet another such study… and this one is from HADOPI, itself. Yes, the French agency put together to kick people off the internet for file sharing did a study on the nature of unauthorized file sharing, too. Not surprisingly (and consistent with every other study we’ve seen on this topic), it found that those who spend a lot of money on content… were much, much, much more likely to also get content through unauthorized means — via redwolf.newsvine.com

The 19-year-old Scotsman fingered Wednesday as a central figure of the LulzSec hacking crew is a fall guy who was framed to take the heat off the real culprit, according to unconfirmed claims from a rival group.

We believe MET Police got the wrong guy and it happens because of lot of disinformation floating on the web, a Thursday post on the LulzSec Exposed blog said. LulzSec and Anonymous members are Master trolls and they are good at this — via redwolf.newsvine.com

LiveJournal is weathering a massive web attack that has meant service disruptions for people who read and write the more than 16 million journals hosted on the community and blogging service — via redwolf.newsvine.com

If you get an e-mail message telling you a hotel has erroneously charged your credit card account, be careful. The odds are that it’s part of a new spam campaign that could infect your computer.

The messages started popping up in recent days and there are already hundreds of variants on the same theme: A hotel wrongly charged a credit card number and the victim is supposed to fill out an attached form to process the refund.

Please see the attached form. You need to fill it out and contact your bank for return of funds, read one such message, titled Hotel Breakers Palm Beach made wrong transaction — via redwolf.newsvine.com