According to the Washington Post’s Security Fix blog, cyber criminals are populating the Internet with Web sites designed to exploit several recently-discovered security holes in a half-dozen widely used ActiveX plug-ins for IE 6 and 7, most notably the one offered by Facebook and MySpace to help users upload photos. The sites, advertised via links in email and instant message spam, also ‘probe for other vulnerable IE plug-ins, including two recently discovered from Yahoo! and one for QuickTime (this one attacks a vulnerability Apple patched just last month). The sites also throw in an exploit against a six-month-old IE flaw.’ The article notes that the SANS Internet Storm Center has released a GUI tool to help users safely deactivate the vulnerable plug-ins in the Windows registry.
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Tag: MySpaceThe policy is being implemented to protect information and reduce drag on the department’s networks, according to Bell.
“This recreational traffic impacts our official DoD network and bandwidth ability, while posing a significant operational security challenge,” the memo said
…Iraqi insurgents or their supporters have been posting videos on YouTube at least since last fall, and the Army recently began posting videos on YouTube showing soldiers defeating insurgents and befriending Iraqis.
But the new rules mean many military personnel won’t be able to watch those videos – at least not on military computers.
…The sites covered by the ban are the video-sharing sites YouTube, Metacafe, IFilm, StupidVideos and FileCabi; social networking sites MySpace, BlackPlanet and Hi5; music sites Pandora, MTV, 1.fm and live365; and the photo-sharing site Photobucket.
Several companies have instituted similar bans, saying recreational sites drain productivity.
Mark Burnett, known for being the creator of the popular reality shows Survivor and The Apprentice has approached MySpace with a offer to start a reality show, this would be the first for a social networking site, and might be the last (doesn’t sound interesting to me.) Mark has decided to bring social networking site MySpace into his “next big project.â€
The reality show will be called “Independent†and will be centered around the upcoming political campaigns, it will pit contestants in a fictional run for the White House with the prize being $1 Million. Potential contestants will submit movies to be chosen for the show, and if chosen they will decorate their MySpace profiles to appear as mock campaign sites. Which I am guessing after decorating users of myspace etc. will vote for who they like best in the race for One million. (I don’t really understand either) This will be a first for a social networking site, and probably the last if they can not come up with better ideas then this.
For second time this year, Photobucket is saying MySpace is blocking photos and videos hosted by Photobucket. Back in January 2007, when the first such incident happened, it ended up amounting to saber rattling.
Fox Interactive Media soon explained it was merely trying out a new filter to prevent security breaches on MySpace. Now, it is happening again. MySpace is apparently blocking Photobucket videos. The blocking (or outage) began at 10.30 P.M. Pacific Time, and this time it seems to be pretty serious. This time Photobucket is taking the battle to the keyboards, rallying their users and asking them to put pressure on MySpace. So much for the claim that they were the third-largest video site behind YouTube and MySpace!
Regardless of who is to blame, this widget squeeze, if that is indeed the case, exposes the soft underbelly of all these start-ups that have pinned their hopes on the MySpace ecosystem.
Well, it seems like there is a toll to pay to get access to MySpace. Google paid hundreds of millions of dollars to get access to FIM’s playground. It is not surprising to see Rupert’s lieutenants play whack-a-mole with start-ups with little to offer in terms of monetary compensation. continue reading…
Just in case there was any confusion about the matter, a court in Indiana has ruled that the First Amendment applies inside of MySpace just as it does everywhere else. Apparently there was actually some debate about this seemingly obvious question after a court gave a middle school student probation for posting an “expletive-laden” critique of her school’s policies on MySpace. In reversing that sentence, the appellate court noted its abhorrence of the student’s language, but agreed nonetheless that it was protected. It’s really hard to fathom the initial court’s reasoning. There’s nothing in the law to suggest that students have any less of a right to free speech than anyone else, and there’s no reason to think that postings on MySpace would make things any different. However, even though the law is settled on this issue, it’s likely that schools and will continue to go after students, only to be slapped down by higher courts
Not all MySpace-related lawsuits involve the same predictable factors like underage users and sexual assault. A high school principal in Pennsylvania has sued four students after they created parody MySpace profiles for him that listed interests such as smoking pot and watching pornography. He claims that the profile has damaged his future earnings potential and so he wants monetary compensation. It’s not clear whether the students’ actions qualify as first amendment-protected parody or whether they’d be seen as defamation of a private citizen. Either way, the most likely outcome here is more copycat attempts as he’s just put a target on himself inviting other students to attack him. Instead of suing, it seems like a better course of action would have been to simply contact MySpace and request that the profiles be taken down. Now, for better or worse, he’ll always be known as the principal that sued his students over fake MySpace profiles, to anyone who searches for his name. To his credit (or maybe his lawyer’s) he’s suing the students and not the site itself, which is the proper legal course. Then again, it’s hard to imagine that he’ll be able to get much in damages from a few high school students.
They won’t divulge their real names, they call their project a “whiny, attention-seeking ploy,” and they appear to take their fashion cues from Beastie Boys music videos.
But two hackers going by the names of Mondo Armando and Müstaschio promise to begin disclosing security vulnerabilities in MySpace, News Corp.’s popular social networking site, every day next month.
“The purpose of the exercise is not so much to expose MySpace as a hive of spam and villainy (since everyone knows that already), but to highlight the monoculture-style danger of extremely popular websites,” wrote Mondo Armando in an e-mail interview.
“We could have just as easily gone after Google or Yahoo or MSN or IDG or whatever. MySpace is just more fun, and is becoming notoriously [obnoxious] about responding to security issues,” he said. continue reading…
In addition to their upcoming “Zephyr†MySpace tracker for parents, MySpace is also announcing two further features. The first is email verification (finally!), which will send an email to the address provided at sign up – that will not only ensure that more of the site’s users can be tracked down if necessary, but it also means that those creating spammy accounts should have a harder time. MySpace says it held off adding this feature for fear that the mails would end up in spam folders – since almost every other service verifies emails, that’s not a strong reason. Change number two: they say they’re implementing a tool to prevent adults from contacting users under 18. Thankfully, that’s optional, so it should avoid problems where a 17 year old is friends with an 18 year old.
All this is surely a response to MySpace being sued by the parents of users who were sexually assaulted – MySpace needs to be seen doing as much as it can to prevent these incidents.
NEW YORK (AP) — Four families have sued News Corp. and its MySpace social-networking site after their underage daughters were sexually abused by adults they met on the site, lawyers for the families said Thursday.
The law firms, Barry & Loewy LLP of Austin, Texas, and Arnold & Itkin LLP of Houston, said families from New York, Texas, Pennsylvania and South Carolina filed separate suits Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleging negligence, recklessness, fraud and negligent misrepresentation by the companies.
“In our view, MySpace waited entirely too long to attempt to institute meaningful security measures that effectively increase the safety of their underage users,” said Jason A. Itkin, an Arnold & Itkin lawyer.
The families are seeking monetary damages “in the millions of dollars,” Itkin said.
“Hopefully these lawsuits can spur MySpace into action and prevent this from happening to another child somewhere,” he said. continue reading…