secrets

WikiLeaks, Assange feel the heat (roundup)

Whistle-blower site continues to face heavy criticism and repercussions for publishing extensive details of U.S. military and diplomatic activity. Controversial editor Julian Assange, meanwhile, confronts his own challenges in court.

Assange can be extradited to Sweden U.K. judge approves extradition of WikiLeaks founder to Sweden to face questioning over sexual assault and rape allegations. Assange has a week to appeal. • Witness: Assange's version of events needed to be heard • Assange extradition hearing kicks off in London (Posted in Politics and Law by Tom Espiner) February 24, 2011 3:38 AM PT

WikiLeaks hearing set in dispute over Twitter data … Read more

Feds seek new ways to bypass encryption

SAN FRANCISCO--When agents at the Drug Enforcement Administration learned a suspect was using PGP to encrypt documents, they persuaded a judge to let them sneak into an office complex and install a keystroke logger that recorded the passphrase as it was typed in.

A decade ago, when the search warrant was granted, that kind of black bag job was a rarity. Today, however, law enforcement agents are encountering well-designed encryption products more and more frequently, forcing them to invent better ways to bypass or circumvent the technology.

"Every new agent who goes to the Secret Service academy goes through … Read more

More details about sale of Apple, Dell secrets

CNET has obtained a copy of the FBI's complaint against four men who had access to vital trade secrets belonging to such tech companies as Apple, Dell, and AMD, and are accused of repeatedly violating securities laws by selling this information to hedge funds, according to the FBI.

As a result of a sophisticated sting operation that involved wiretaps and recorded phone conversations, FBI agents have arrested the four men on a score of charges that include securities fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy.

The government's complaint, filed this week with U.S. District Court for the Southern District … Read more

Blogging underground secrets into the light

This is a story about a series of tubes.

Well, it's about two series of tubes. There's the Internet, the "series of tubes" per the late Sen. Ted Stevens, the web of invisible filaments that tie together our e-mail accounts, Facebook profiles, RSS readers, instant-message clients, and so forth.

Then there's the New York City subway system, the creaking circuitry of tunnels and machines that has shuttled the town's millions of residents and visitors underneath its streets for well over a century now--and which, it was revealed in a shadowy and alluring New York Times feature last week, … Read more

Report: Most data breaches tied to organized crime

Organized criminals were responsible for 85 percent of all stolen data last year and of the unauthorized access incidents, 38 percent of the data breaches took advantage of stolen login credentials, according to the 2010 Verizon Data Breach Investigations report to be released on Wednesday.

While external agents were behind 70 percent of the breaches, nearly 50 percent were caused by insiders and only 11 percent were attributed to business partners, concluded the report, which focused on data breaches that took place in 2009.

The study combined data from investigations and statistics worldwide compiled by Verizon and the U.S. … Read more

Nokia sics Russian police on blogger with prototype phone

Stop me if you've heard this one before. A prominent consumer electronics company has asked authorities to help it retrieve a prototype phone from the journalist who revealed it--prematurely--to the world.

Sounds a lot like the Gizmodo/iPhone 4 prototype debacle, doesn't it? But it's not. This time, the consumer electronics company is Nokia, the journalist is Eldar Murtazin, editor-in-chief of Moscow-based mobile-review.com, and the authorities are the Russian police.

Claiming that it's been unable to recover the prototype N8 that Murtazin previewed unfavorably earlier this year, Nokia has turned to Russia's Ministry of … Read more

Behind the scenes with PostSecret

GERMANTOWN, Md.--When postal carrier Sonia Warren was given a new assignment last May, route 46 in this town about 30 miles from Washington, D.C., she had no idea that one of the people she'd be delivering to was among the most famous people in the world with her last name: Frank Warren.

To the uninitiated, Frank Warren is the founder and curator of the PostSecret project--an ongoing collection and public presentation of the heartfelt secrets of strangers from around the world. Each week, Warren receives hundreds of postcards (see video below) and letters from these strangers, and … Read more

Road Trip 2010 ready to roll through East Coast

SAN FRANCISCO--Each summer for the last four years, I've been lucky enough to get to pick a region of the country and spend several weeks driving around, writing stories and taking photos of some of the best geek-oriented destinations I could find.

In 2006, it was the Pacific Northwest. In 2007, the Southwest. In 2008, it was the Southeast. And in 2009, I traveled through almost the entire Rocky Mountain and Continental Divide region. Over the four years, I've covered 18,528 miles and visited dozens of the most interesting research labs, military bases, aviation facilities, NASA centers, … Read more

Zuckerberg hoodie makes mountains of molehills

It's summer. It's the time of year when us business reporters are more likely to grudgingly (or not-so-grudgingly) refer to a day as a "slow news day," when CEOs are languishing on the decks of their yachts, when legislative bodies are more likely to be out of session. It's the season when we start wallowing in the quicksand of C-list celebrity deaths and even "X-Files"-caliber cryptozoology--as when, two years ago, gossip outlet Gawker became ensconced in the mystery surrounding the "Montauk Monster," a bizarre carcass that washed ashore on a … Read more