The social media network launched the new Timeline format in January, and gave users a choice of upgrading or staying with the [...]]]> Traci Townsend won’t be caught off guard when she wakes up Friday morning. The owner of a Folsom sewing shop has already updated her business’s Facebook fan pages to sport a new look.

The social media network launched the new Timeline format in January, and gave users a choice of upgrading or staying with the older format.

But late last month Facebook announced that businesses must convert their fan pages to Timeline. If business owners haven’t changed by Friday’s deadline, Facebook will automatically switch their pages to the new format.

According to news reports, some customers, particularly older ones, have been upset when companies have switched to Timeline.
Townsend said her conversion has been mostly positive.

“I’m still getting used to it, but I like it,” she said of Timeline. “It’s easier to see pictures on the left-hand side, and they’re bigger so you don’t have to click to make them larger.”

Townsend uses Facebook pages to promote products and classes at the Sew Fun Fabrics Quilting and Sewing Center, which she opened with partner Danya MacDonald.

“We post on our Facebook page almost daily,” she said. “On websites, we have to have a whole bunch of information, but Facebook is instantaneous, spur-of-the-moment, and it gets out to people on their Facebook and iPhones immediately.”
The owners use Facebook to post pictures of customers with quilts, a recent field trip for Brownie Girl Scouts sewing on their badges and an upcoming sew-a-thon for making pillowcases for Ronald McDonald House.
“It gets people in the store,” Townsend said of Facebook. “It’s pretty fabulous.”

Joshua Carnes, director of operations for a Sacramento-based social media marketing firm, said he has about 100 business clients with Facebook accounts, and has helped about 20 of those upgrade to the Timeline view.
“They’ve really made it so a business page can do almost anything an individual user can do,” said Carnes, who handles Facebook pages for the clients of AchieveDMA.

While the view has plenty of fans and detractors, Carnes said he advises his clients to embrace the new format. The firm sent out emails to clients informing them of the upcoming changes, and advised them to make the update before the mandatory conversion, so they could work out any bugs prior to the mandatory switch-over.

“We helped them know what to expect, we offered to create new banners and cover images for them, then walked them through it by phone,” Carnes said. “We wanted to make sure no one was shocked and (everyone) knew how to use it.”
Carnes referred clients to the Starbucks fan page, which has been updated.

The most noticeable change is the large banner-like photo across the top of the new profile page. If users don’t upgrade, it will be nothing more than an empty block of light gray, Carnes said. If users do upgrade, they can optimize marketing opportunities with the larger image.

“Businesses can use that to showcase a brand, service or product,” Carnes said.
Carnes said the size of the profile picture also changed from an elongated to a more square shape, measuring 32-by-32 pixels.
“You want to be sure you have an image that can be viewed in a smaller, more square size,” Carnes said.
Another significant change is that users can no longer direct visitors to a “welcome page,” but can have up to 12 custom applications along the right hand side for promotions, coupons or discounts.

Carnes said the “friend” section has been moved up on the profile page, so that visitors can see what users are saying about the business immediately.

“This gives a business a vote of confidence right away, so that will be a positive,” Carnes said. “A business can highlight a certain post and make it more prominent.”

Updating to the new Timeline view is also a good time to remove or hide previous posts that you don’t want the public to see, he said. And businesses can tag other businesses or locations in a post.

Dave Picton, owner of G&R Body and Paint in Sacramento, said he’s heard many users complaining about Timeline. But he thinks it’s better for advertisers and likes the large banner picture in the new format.
Picton uses Facebook for posting articles, blogs and driving safety tips.

“I’m trying to stay positive,” he said. “I’m like, hey, it’s here, we’re not going to change it, so I took the conversion as a positive, and I’m running with it.”

By Anne Gonzales
Bee Correspondent
Last modified: 2012-03-29T16:31:41Z
Published: Thursday, Mar. 29, 2012 – 12:00 am | Page 6B
Last Modified: Thursday, Mar. 29, 2012 – 9:31 am

Five of the alleged hackers in the United States and Europe were [...]]]> NEW YORK (CNN) — Authorities on Tuesday made wide-ranging arrests of top members of the computer hacker group “Anonymous,” and its splinter groups called Internet Feds, AntiSec and LulzSec, which have claimed responsibility for high-profile cyber attacks against government agencies and large companies.

Five of the alleged hackers in the United States and Europe were charged in Manhattan federal court after their arrests, according to the indictment. A sixth has pleaded guilty to computer hacking and other crimes.

Ryan Ackroyd, 23; Jake Davis, 29; Darren Martyn, 25; and Donncha O’Cearrbhail, 19, were charged with conspiracy regarding cyber attacks against Fox Broadcasting Co., Sony Pictures Entertainment and the Public Broadcasting Service, or PBS. Jeremy Hammond, 27, was charged with crimes regarding a December cyber attack — against a Texas firm called Strategic Forecasting Inc. — that authorities say may have affected about 860,000 people.

Ackroyd and Davis are from the United Kingdom, the indictment said. Martyn and O’Cearrbhail are from Ireland, and Hammond is from Chicago.

Hector Xavier Monsegur, 28, a New York resident, this summer pleaded guilty to 12 counts of computer hacking and other crimes.

Monsegur and others claimed responsibility for a slew of cyber strikes between December 2010 and June 2011 that included denial of service attacks against the websites of Visa, MasterCard and PayPal.

Authorities say those attacks were prompted by the firms’ refusals to process donations to WikiLeaks, an organization that facilitates the anonymous leaking of secret information. Its website has released thousands of classified diplomatic cables as well as confidential — and, at times, controversial — messages about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Authorities said they investigated the hacker suspects with help from a leader within the organization who had been secretly working with government officials.

From Susan Candiotti, CNN
updated 12:49 PM EST, Tue March 6, 2012

Safari’s hold on 62.17% of mobile traffic has reduced IE’s overall share of web browsing, despite still claiming 52.63% of desktop traffic, according to Netmarketshare.com.

The [...]]]> (Mashable) — Internet Explorer can no longer claim more than half of the web’s traffic, as of October, ending more than a decade of the default Microsoft browser’s reign.

Safari’s hold on 62.17% of mobile traffic has reduced IE’s overall share of web browsing, despite still claiming 52.63% of desktop traffic, according to Netmarketshare.com.

The Microsoft browser’s diminishing share (49.6%) reflects its near absence from the realms of mobile and tablet, which now make up 6% of web traffic. However, chances are, you gave up on IE long enough ago that this milestone makes you more curious as to who actually still uses the browser.

As of October, Firefox is the second most popular web browser, accounting for 21.20% of traffic, followed by Google Chrome and Safari, which account for 16.60% and 8.72% respectively.

Chrome, which recently celebrated its third birthday, experienced the most expansion in October, increasing its share of the desktop market 1.42%.

Safari, the default browser in Apple’s iPhone and iPad, continues to increase its dominance over the mobile web, gaining 6.58% of the market. Safari’s share is increasing faster than the iPhone’s, probably due to how much mobile traffic is now driven by iPads.

As IE loses its edge on the competition, we’re curious to know which browser our readers prefer. Tell us in the comments below.

See the original article on Mashable.com

“We are working diligently to address this issue and will release a security update for customers,” Microsoft said on Tuesday [...]]]> Reuters) – Microsoft Corp said hackers exploited a previously unknown bug in its Windows operating system to infect computers with the Duqu virus, which some security experts say could be the next big cyber threat.

“We are working diligently to address this issue and will release a security update for customers,” Microsoft said on Tuesday in a short statement.

News of Duqu surfaced in October when security software maker Symantec Corp said it had found a mysterious computer virus that contained code similar to Stuxnet, a piece of malicious software believed to have wreaked havoc on Iran’s nuclear program.

Government and private investigators around the world are racing to unlock the secret of Duqu, with early analysis suggesting that it was developed by sophisticated hackers to help lay the groundwork for attacks on critical infrastructure such as power plants, oil refineries and pipelines.

Details on how Duqu got onto infected machines emerged for the first time on Tuesday as Microsoft disclosed its link to the infection.

Separately, Symantec researchers said they believe hackers sent the virus to targeted victims via emails with tainted Microsoft Word documents attached.

If a recipient opened the Word document and infected the PC, the attacker could take control of the machine and reach into an organization’s network to propagate itself and hunt for data, Symantec researcher Kevin Haley told Reuters.

He said some of the source code used in Duqu was also used in Stuxnet, a cyber weapon believed to have crippled centrifuges that Iran uses to enrich uranium.

That suggests that the attackers behind Stuxnet either gave that code to the developers of Duqu, allowed it to be stolen, or are the same people who built Duqu, Haley said.

“We believe it is the latter,” he said.

(Reporting by Jim Finkle. Editing by Robert MacMillan)

Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters

The virus, first detected nearly two weeks ago by the military’s Host-Based Security System, has not prevented pilots at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada from [...]]]> (WIRED) — A computer virus has infected the cockpits of America’s Predator and Reaper drones, logging pilots’ every keystroke as they remotely fly missions over Afghanistan and other warzones.

The virus, first detected nearly two weeks ago by the military’s Host-Based Security System, has not prevented pilots at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada from flying their missions overseas. Nor have there been any confirmed incidents of classified information being lost or sent to an outside source. But the virus has resisted multiple efforts to remove it from Creech’s computers, network security specialists say. And the infection underscores the ongoing security risks in what has become the U.S. military’s most important weapons system.

“We keep wiping it off, and it keeps coming back,” says a source familiar with the network infection, one of three that told Danger Room about the virus. “We think it’s benign. But we just don’t know.”

Military network security specialists aren’t sure whether the virus and its so-called “keylogger” payload were introduced intentionally or by accident; it may be a common piece of malware that just happened to make its way into these sensitive networks. The specialists don’t know exactly how far the virus has spread. But they’re sure that the infection has hit both classified and unclassified machines at Creech. That raises the possibility, at least, that secret data may have been captured by the keylogger, and then transmitted over the public internet to someone outside the military chain of command.

Drones have become America’s tool of choice in both its conventional and shadow wars, allowing U.S. forces to attack targets and spy on its foes without risking American lives. Since President Obama assumed office, a fleet of approximately 30 CIA-directed drones have hit targets in Pakistan more than 230 times; all told, these drones have killed more than 2,000 suspected militants and civilians, according to the Washington Post. More than 150 additional Predator and Reaper drones, under U.S. Air Force control, watch over the fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. American military drones struck 92 times in Libya between mid-April and late August. And late last month, an American drone killed top terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki — part of an escalating unmanned air assault in the Horn of Africa and southern Arabian peninsula.

But despite their widespread use, the drone systems are known to have security flaws. Many Reapers and Predators don’t encrypt the video they transmit to American troops on the ground. In the summer of 2009, U.S. forces discovered “days and days and hours and hours” of the drone footage on the laptops of Iraqi insurgents. A $26 piece of software allowed the militants to capture the video.

The lion’s share of U.S. drone missions are flown by Air Force pilots stationed at Creech, a tiny outpost in the barren Nevada desert, 20 miles north of a state prison and adjacent to a one-story casino. In a nondescript building, down a largely unmarked hallway, is a series of rooms, each with a rack of servers and a “ground control station,” or GCS. There, a drone pilot and a sensor operator sit in their flight suits in front of a series of screens. In the pilot’s hand is the joystick, guiding the drone as it soars above Afghanistan, Iraq, or some other battlefield.

Some of the GCSs are classified secret, and used for conventional warzone surveillance duty. The GCSs handling more exotic operations are top secret. None of the remote cockpits are supposed to be connected to the public internet. Which means they are supposed to be largely immune to viruses and other network security threats.

But time and time again, the so-called “air gaps” between classified and public networks have been bridged, largely through the use of discs and removable drives. In late 2008, for example, the drives helped introduce the agent.btz worm to hundreds of thousands of Defense Department computers. The Pentagon is still disinfecting machines, three years later.

Use of the drives is now severely restricted throughout the military. But the base at Creech was one of the exceptions, until the virus hit. Predator and Reaper crews use removable hard drives to load map updates and transport mission videos from one computer to another. The virus is believed to have spread through these removable drives. Drone units at other Air Force bases worldwide have now been ordered to stop their use.

In the meantime, technicians at Creech are trying to get the virus off the GCS machines. It has not been easy. At first, they followed removal instructions posted on the website of the Kaspersky security firm. “But the virus kept coming back,” a source familiar with the infection says. Eventually, the technicians had to use a software tool called BCWipe to completely erase the GCS’ internal hard drives. “That meant rebuilding them from scratch” — a time-consuming effort.

The Air Force declined to comment directly on the virus. “We generally do not discuss specific vulnerabilities, threats, or responses to our computer networks, since that helps people looking to exploit or attack our systems to refine their approach,” says Lt. Col. Tadd Sholtis, a spokesman for Air Combat Command, which oversees the drones and all other Air Force tactical aircraft. “We invest a lot in protecting and monitoring our systems to counter threats and ensure security, which includes a comprehensive response to viruses, worms, and other malware we discover.”

However, insiders say that senior officers at Creech are being briefed daily on the virus.

“It’s getting a lot of attention,” the source says. “But no one’s panicking. Yet.”

Copyright 2010 Wired.com.

The state Office of Privacy Protection is warning consumers to protect their smart phones against the same types of dangers – hackers, viruses – that can lurk within a [...]]]> With so many of us accessing the Internet or storing sensitive data on our iPhones, Droids or BlackBerrys, our mobile phones are increasingly vulnerable to cyberthieves.

The state Office of Privacy Protection is warning consumers to protect their smart phones against the same types of dangers – hackers, viruses – that can lurk within a big, bulky computer or laptop.

“We treat them like it’s only a phone, but it’s really a little computer that has the same kind of vulnerability as your PC,” said privacy office chief Joanne McNabb.

McNabb said consumers download apps that may not contain enough security coding to thwart hackers.

Or smart phone users may be unaware they need the same type of anti-virus and anti-malware protections used on their home or work computers.

In one case earlier this year, a mobile game, “3D Anti-terrorist Action,” inadvertently allowed hackers to rack up expensive, international phone bills on users’ phones.

McNabb’s tips:

• Install the same type of software and security programs you’d want on your computer. There are mobile versions of security software from the same companies that offer products for your desktop. Or contact your phone service provider for guidance.

• Check out apps before downloading them. Look on review sites, such as www.whatapp.org, which rates some apps for privacy and security.

• Be aware. Although it’s a challenge on a small screen, read the app’s privacy policy to be sure your data aren’t being shared. Try to avoid or limit such sharing.

– Claudia Buck

Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2010/10/29/3141926/the-public-eye-wise-up-make-sure.html#ixzz1ZT7smoO0

Law enforcement officers may feel they’ve made a dent in the fight against hackers, but that doesn’t seem to be stemming the tide of activity.

A 19-year-old U.K. man has been arrested on suspicion of hacking and online [...]]]> CNET reports:

Law enforcement officers may feel they’ve made a dent in the fight against hackers, but that doesn’t seem to be stemming the tide of activity.

A 19-year-old U.K. man has been arrested on suspicion of hacking and online attacks by the U.K.’s Metropolitan Police. Sky News reported early on that the teenager is the mastermind behind LulzSec, a prominent hacking group that has wreaked havoc on several companies and government organizations of late. However, the Metropolitan Police’s e-Crime Unit stopped short of saying whether the man in custody might be connected to LulzSec.

LulzSec seemed amused by the arrest, with a cheeky post to its Twitter account that it’s still in operation. “Seems the glorious leader of LulzSec got arrested,” the group wrote on its Twitter account. “It all over now. Wait, we’re all still here! Which poor bastard did they take down?”

Read more here:

Police are investigating a possible data breach at a NATO-related Web site.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization said the “probable data breach” involved NATO’s e-Bookshop, a service for releasing documents to the public that’s operated by an external company. The site does not contain classified documents, NATO said in a statement [...]]]> CNET reports:

Police are investigating a possible data breach at a NATO-related Web site.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization said the “probable data breach” involved NATO’s e-Bookshop, a service for releasing documents to the public that’s operated by an external company. The site does not contain classified documents, NATO said in a statement Thursday, adding that the site has now been blocked and subscribers have been notified.

It’s unknown whether the attack is related to NATO’s recent clash with the online group Anonymous after the global organization warned member nations about the rising threat of “hacktivism,” or carrying out cyberattacks for political purposes

Read more: