Majority of South Koreans’ data exposed
South Korean regulators said they are investigating the most massive loss of user data ever in the most wired country on earth. Read more
A big hacking arrest and a PayPal boycott
As UK police said they arrested the alleged second of four co-founders of the hacking supergroup Lulz Security, one of those still at large branched out into a legal form of protest, promoting a boycott of PayPal. Read more
Tech news from around the web:
Apple is considering making a bid for the Hulu online video service, Bloomberg reports. The service would give Apple a new subscription service and present a possible challenge to Netflix, Bloomberg says.
Investigators probing the recent hacking attacks on International Monetary Fund computers have concluded they were carried out by cyber spies connected to China, according to Bloomberg. Computer specialists have spent several weeks piecing together information about the attack, which the IMF disclosed on June 8. Read more
Tech news from around the web:
Google has announced that it is to use its own data to detect malware viruses targeting its users, Techcrunch reports. From today, the online search giant will use Google Search results pages to warn users if their computers are infected with a specific form of malware.
Chinese search engine Baidu has launched an internet browser designed to compete with Internet Explorer and Chrome, The Wall Street Journal says. The program’s home page will display links to software applications and popular websites, such as the Weibo microblog service. Read more
Tech news from around the web:
References to a product called “Vibes” found in Facebook’s code has sparked speculation that it could be related to a music service, Mashable reports. The service – unearthed in the code for the installation programme for the video chat service launched in partnership with Skype this week – appears to point to a download service. Read more
Tech news from around the web:
AntiSec, a group of computer hackers, has posted a document it claimed contains user names and passwords for an Apple server, The Wall Street Journal reports. In a statement posted on Twitter, AntiSec said it had accessed Apple’s systems due to a security flaw in software used by the company. “But don’t worry,” the hackers said, “we are busy elsewhere.”
NBC Universal Digital Studio, Comcast’s unit responsible for creating original web content, is to be shut down over the next few months, PaidContent says. Comcast is said to be looking to shift its online resources to support its existing broadcast and cable programmes. Read more
Zynga’s Las Vegas issue
As an unusual sort of company, Zynga comes with an unusual set of warning labels, including its dependence “on a small percentage of our players for nearly all of our revenue”, as the prospectus filed on Friday puts it. That raises an interesting and still unanswered set of questions. Read more
Spam, spam and slightly less spam
At first this looks so promising. Volumes of spam are down nearly 70 per cent from last year according to a report from Symantec, the IT security company. In June, there were 39.2bn unsolicited, “spam” messages in circulation each day, compared with 121.5bn a day in June 2010. This echoes findings earlier this month from rival McAfee, which suggested spam levels had halved in the last year.
But sadly, this doesn’t mean we are winning the war on cybercriminals and botnets. Rather, it is a reflection on how use of the internet is evolving to become more centred around social networking sites and mobile phones. Spam on Twitter and Facebook is becoming a growing problem. Read more
Lulz Security goes WikiLeaks; so do foes
Both the hacking supergroup calling itself Lulz Security and researchers fighting against it have borrowed tactics from WikiLeaks in recent days, dumping sensitive information onto the internet for others to comb through. Read more
| About this blog | Blog guide |
Richard Waters has headed the FT's San Francisco bureau since 2002 and covers Google and Microsoft, among other things. A former New York bureau chief for the FT, he is intrigued by Silicon Valley's unique financial and business culture, and is looking forward to covering his second Tech Bust.
Chris Nuttall has been online and messing around with computers for more than 20 years and since 2004 has reported from the FT's San Francisco bureau on semiconductors, video games, consumer electronics and all things interwebby.
Maija Palmer has been writing about technology for the FT since 1999 and is fascinated by cybercrime, privacy and all the other issues of the information society. Based in London, she covers European tech companies and hopes that they won't all get acquired by American rivals.
Robin Kwong is the FT's technology, media and telecoms page editor in London. Formerly he was the Taipei correspondent and wrote about the companies that manufacture the vast majority of the world's computers and gadgets. He is interested in the intricacies of the technology supply chain and how China is increasingly changing the tech landscape.
Tim Bradshaw is the FT's digital media correspondent, and has just moved from London to join our team in San Francisco. He has covered start-ups such as Twitter and Spotify, as well as the online ambitions of more established media companies, such as the BBC iPlayer. He also covers the advertising, marketing and video-game industries. Tim has been writing about technology, business and finance since 2003.
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