On Friday, the U.S. Department of Defense announced a new policy which allows all users of unclassified computers in the .mil domain access to popular social networking sites including Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube among others. This change in policy effectively reverses the previous ban on accessing these types of sites – a ban that had been in place for nearly three years. In embracing the new policy, the department also launched its own social media hub, a blog-like site complete with live Twitter feeds, Tweetmeme buttons and “share on Facebook” links.
And in case you thought they weren’t serious, it’s also worth noting (as spotted by the New York Times) that news of this announcement broke on the Twitter feed of Price Floyd, the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, and not via a traditional press release …
The big Hollywood pictures always make breaking into computers look like a fabulously hip and complicated process. It involves excitement and ingenuity and often times, because it’s just so difficult and exciting, a bit of sweat on the brow. But in reality, it’s as easy as “123456″. And if that doesn’t work, we’d suggest trying “12345″, next.
A report released today looks at a list of 32 million passwords and what it finds doesn’t say good things about most of us and our password practices …
A recently discovered security flaw in Twitter’s Flash-based website widget may have allowed attackers access to the login credentials of any Twitter user. According to Mike Bailey, an analyst at Foreground Security, the problem involves a known vulnerability in Adobe’s Flash programming language, the language used to code the Twitter widget. In response, Twitter has disabled the widget in question while they research the issue further.
Oddly enough, the vulnerability in question was initially discovered back in 2006, but many website operators have yet to address it says Bailey, according to a Reuters UK news story about the potential Twitter security hole. After analyzing Twitter’s website, Bailey says the site may have been open to attack from hackers attempting to exploit this particular security hole for over a year.
