Hackers Steal Law Enforcement Documents From Microsoft

wiredmikey writes “Microsoft on Friday said that attackers breached the email accounts of a “select number” of employees, and obtained access to documents associated with law enforcement inquiries. According to the company, a number of Microsoft employees were targeted with attacks aiming to compromise both email and social media accounts ‘..We have learned that there was unauthorized access to certain employee email accounts, and information contained in those accounts could be disclosed, ‘ said Adrienne Hall, General Manager at Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing Group. ‘It appears that documents associated with law enforcement inquiries were stolen, ‘ Hall said. Targeted attacks like this are not uncommon, especially for an organization like Microsoft. What’s interesting about this is that the incident was significant enough to disclose, indicating that a fair number of documents could have been exposed, or that the company fears some documents will make their way to the public if released by the attackers—which may be the case if this was a ‘hacktivist’ attack.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Hackers Steal Law Enforcement Documents From Microsoft

Apple is reportedly building a mobile payment service

There are plenty of existing mobile payment systems that let you buy goods with your iPhone , but there are now signs that Apple wants to take on some of those duties itself. The Wall Street Journal claims that the company is in the early stages of building a mobile payment infrastructure that would let its customers buy all kinds of products and services, not just those in its own stores . Sources say that Cupertino has tasked the former head of its online store with getting the service off the ground, and it’s reportedly discussing the idea with other companies in the tech industry. Apple isn’t commenting on the rumor, but it has been researching mobile payments for years — we know it’s at least intrigued with the concept. Filed under: Cellphones , Mobile , Apple Comments Source: Wall Street Journal

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Apple is reportedly building a mobile payment service

Netflix ‘post-play’ feature that automatically jumps to the next episode is now optional

Netflix has been rolling out a ‘post-play’ experience (shown above) on various platforms since late 2012 , but not everyone is a fan of how it jumps to a new episode automatically. That’s not a problem anymore, since TechHive points out that now there’s a toggle in your Netflix account settings (under playback settings) that keeps it from playing the next episode automatically. By default the feature is on, although as Netflix explains , it still requires a prompt of some kind to keep going after a couple of episodes have played. The post-play UI remains intact no matter what you choose, so watching the credits for every last best boy, grip and “no animals were harmed in the making of” will still require jumping on the remote to zoom back in. Of course, if your main concern is of House of Cards moving on an episode or two after you’ve dozed off, then this will fix it. Like other settings it’s locked to individual profiles , so turning it off for the kids can keep them from turning out like the rest of us — far too lazy to bother clicking a button to advance. Filed under: Home Entertainment , HD Comments Source: TechHive , Netflix Support

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Netflix ‘post-play’ feature that automatically jumps to the next episode is now optional

Brilliant Transformational Transportation Design: The Track N Go Converts Your Truck Into a Tread-Equipped, Snow-Going Beast in Under 15 Minutes

Even though I live in America, I never saw as many monster trucks anywhere in the ‘States as I did in Reyjkavik. For drivers who need to navigate the Icelandic hinterlands, owning a pickup truck converted to drive man-height tires is more practical concern than pissing contest. Sure, they looked silly and inconvenient in the city, but it was a trade-off everyone was apparently fine with. So I wonder if the Track N Go would gain any traction in Iceland. This has to be the coolest off-road conversion I’ve ever seen, because it’s completely reversible and only takes fifteen minutes. Check out how it drives: Before we get to how they put them on, the following video, narrated in French, gives you a good look at an individual Track N Go (and gives you a sense of how heavy it is): (more…)

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Brilliant Transformational Transportation Design: The Track N Go Converts Your Truck Into a Tread-Equipped, Snow-Going Beast in Under 15 Minutes

Amazing Footage: The Spaceship User Interfaces of Star Wars

Noel Rubin designed the user interfaces for Star Wars Episodes 1 and 3, and now he’s put together a sizzle reel , showing just how awesome the computer screens on those ships really looked. Read more…        

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Amazing Footage: The Spaceship User Interfaces of Star Wars

Investigation of password crackers busts site feds say hacked 6,000 accounts

An international law-enforcement crackdown on paid password cracking services has resulted in at least 11 arrests, including the operators of an alleged cracker-for-hire site in the US that prosecutors said compromised almost 6,000 e-mail accounts. Mark Anthony Townsend, 45, of Cedarville, Arkansas, and Joshua Alan Tabor, 29, of Prairie Grove, Arkansas, ran a site called needapassword.com, according to court documents filed this week in federal court in Los Angeles. The site accepted user requests to hack into specific e-mail accounts hosted by Google, Yahoo, and other providers, prosecutors alleged. According to charging documents, the operators would break into the accounts, access their contents and send screenshots to the users proving the accounts had been compromised. The men would then send passwords in exchange for a fee paid to their PayPal account, prosecutors said. “Through www.needapassword.com, defendant and others known and unknown to the United States Attorney obtained unauthorized access to over 5,900 e-mail accounts submitted by customers,” a criminal information filed against Townsend stated. During the time of Tabor’s involvement, needapassword.com broke into at least 250 accounts, a separate charging document claimed. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Investigation of password crackers busts site feds say hacked 6,000 accounts

Amazon cuts cloud storage prices, Microsoft immediately follows suit

Yesterday, Amazon announced that it would be cutting the prices of both its S3 and EBS cloud-based storage. Today, Microsoft announced that it too was cutting the cost of its cloud storage. The software giant promised last April that it would match Amazon’s prices for commodity cloud services: storage, bandwidth, and computation. Amazon’s pricing varies from region to region, and the price cuts range from 6 percent if you’re storing between 1 and 50 terabytes of data, to up to 22 percent—though you’ll need to be storing at least 5 petabytes to take advantage of this. Microsoft says that not only is it going to match these prices, making cuts of up to 20 percent itself, but it will also charge the same amount in every region . This means that Azure storage will in some parts of the world as much as 10 percent cheaper than the Amazon equivalent. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Amazon cuts cloud storage prices, Microsoft immediately follows suit

Astronomers know when Monet made this painting — to the very minute

Back in the late 19th century, impressionist artist Claude Monet captured this striking sunset on the Normandy Coast. Now, thanks to the work of forensic astronomers, we known the precise moment it happened: February 5th, 1883 — at exactly 4:53 PM. Read more…        

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Astronomers know when Monet made this painting — to the very minute

This Transforming Medieval Text Is Actually Six Books in One

With a literacy rate hovering around an estimated 5 to 10 percent of the population during the Middle Ages, only a select few of society’s upper echelons and religious castes had use for books. So who would have use for a sextuplet of stories bound by a single, multi-hinged cover like this? Some seriously busy scholar. Read more…        

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This Transforming Medieval Text Is Actually Six Books in One

Gmail Is Down, Everybody Freak Out (Update: Okay We’re Cool)

It’s not just you; Gmail appears to be down. Usually when this sort of thing happens it gets resolved quickly, but for now you might be stuck chatting with a real human person in your physical presence. Read more…        

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Gmail Is Down, Everybody Freak Out (Update: Okay We’re Cool)