This might be a clue about the hacking going on the past week or so. According the All Things D, a site called iPhonedevSdk (do not visit this site; it’s malicious), is responsible for the hacks of Facebook and Apple. More »
Google’s stock has just passed $800 for the first time. The technology juggernaut has many services that it can thank for that. There’s its monopolizing search engine, its variety of services like Gmail and YouTube, and of course its extremely popular Android operating system. Google has made some very great decisions within the last few years that brought it to its great milestone today. However, things didn’t always look so bright for the company.
Back in late 2008, Google’s stock price fell all the way down to $247.30. This was all due to the recession that swept the nation in 2007. Good Guy Google made a decision to re-price its stock options for its employees that would allow them to make more money once Google’s stock picked itself back up. Late 2008 began a pretty dark period for Google. Investors were scared that Google was losing its dominance in the market. They were also scared when Facebook started booming with popularity because they feared that it would replace Google as the most important online advertisement medium.
Things started picking back up in late 2009 when the recession began to fade out and Google’s stock began to rise. Despite the rise, Google’s stock was still falling behind in the market. This resulted in a change of leadership in April 2011. Larry Page took over the Google CEO position from Eric Schmidt, and since then Google’s stock has risen over 35%. Things have turned around. Facebook’s popularity has died down while Google’s is consistently rising. Google’s own social media service, Google+, has been gaining a lot of traction since its inception in 2011. Some reports say that it may be the 2nd most popular social media platform.
Google will continue to rise, and it doesn’t look like it will be falling anytime soon. The company has a lot going for it. It’s going to be opening its own retail stores by the time the holidays roll around, it’s Android operating system is only getting better and better, and its services are continually increasing in popularity. There are a lot of things that Google is planning that should keep investors happy and optimistic.
[via CBS News]
Google’s stock price passes $800 for the 1st time is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
The Daily Roundup for 02.18.2013
Posted in: Today's ChiliYou might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
With just two days to go until Sony makes their big announcement at a press event in New York City, we’re almost certain what will be unveiled will be the PlayStation 4, especially when you consider their Evolution of PlayStation video series which was published over the weekend.
We’ve already heard reports of what the PlayStation 4 could include in terms of its hardware and possible refocusing on new playing options, and today, we’re hearing a new report which highlights what kind of additional sharing methods we could expect from the PlayStation 4. (more…)
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Starcraft 2 MMO Mod Finally Launches, USF Monster Tesla Coil Used To Play Super Mario Bros. Theme Song,
When it comes to social networking, most people know that Facebook is by far the largest social network around. Pew Research Center released a survey recently looking at late 2012 for the social networking landscape. As expected, Facebook was in the lead with 67% of Internet users in the United States using the social network.
The battle in the social networking market right now is for the second place spot. Pew shows that 16% of American Internet users are on twitter while 15% are on Pinterest. The two social networks being separated by one percentage point is a very close race and even closer when you consider Pew’s margin of error.
Pew says that its numbers can be off plus or minus 2.6%, meaning that Pinterest could easily be the second largest social network in the world right now. Pinterest is also growing having only 12% of United States Internet users on the network as of August 2012. The fourth place spot for the most popular social network went to Instagram boasting 13% of Internet users in the US on its service.
However, if we again consider the plus or minus 2.6% margin of error Pew admits to, Instagram could easily be the third most popular or even the second most popular social network in the United States. All we know for sure is that Facebook is dominating on a massive scale and it’s a three horse race for the second place spot.
[via Huffington Post]
Pew Research shows Pinterest is larger than many think is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Police Raided a Guy’s House Because He Posted a Picture of a Toy Mortar on Facebook
Posted in: Today's Chili The British police officers that raided Ian Driscoll’s Tewkesbury home found the mortar they were looking for. They just didn’t expect it to be plastic. Or a model. More »
We’re sure that many of you dread the thought of your Facebook account being hacked, especially those who keep their profiles extra guarded and only viewable to close friends or family. In any case it seems that Facebook has recently admitted that they were hacked, and this was actually brought about when some of their staff unknowingly installed malware on their laptops. While the attack is said to have been sophisticated, you might want to breathe a sigh of relief because according to Facebook, while an attack did occur, they claim that no user data was compromised. In a statement released by the company:
Last month, Facebook Security discovered that our systems had been targeted in a sophisticated attack. This attack occurred when a handful of employees visited a mobile developer website that was compromised. The compromised website hosted an exploit which then allowed malware to be installed on these employee laptops. The laptops were fully-patched and running up-to-date anti-virus software. As soon as we discovered the presence of the malware, we remediated all infected machines, informed law enforcement, and began a significant investigation that continues to this day.
In any case we can only take their word for it, but Facebook is said to be currently working with law enforcement agencies and other organizations who have been thought to have been attacked via the same exploit.
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Iceland Proposes To Block Internet Pornography, Facebook Lets You Pay To Promote Your Friends’ Posts,
In a social scene that looks like someone spun a roulette wheel, The Zuck, Nas, and mega-rich Silicon Valley investor Ben Horowitz were all in a room for some reason. And it was all Instagrammed. More »
It’s never good when you have to make an official report to the public about a hacker attack your multi-billion dollar social network has had. That’s what’s happened this week as Facebook’s Chief Security Officer Joe Sullivan lets it be known that several engineers on staff with Facebook had been the subject of a zero-day Java exploit. The good news is that no customer data was exposed (that’s your stuff), the bad news is that Facebook wasn’t the only company targeted by this attack.
According to Sullivan, this attack worked as a “watering hole”, using an unnamed “popular mobile developer Web forum” as a trap for unsuspecting visitors. When the first user on Facebook’s engineering team visited the site, that engineer tripped a wire, so to speak, that let the zero-day Java exploit begin to take hold of machines at Facebook. The attack here is related back to a Java exploit documented by Oracle earlier this month.
Similar attacks have been popping up recently in several places, one of them relating to Twitter’s recent incident in which 250,000 account passwords were stolen. Another related event occurred with Mozilla as they made Java instances blocked by default – can’t be too careful!
With the Facebook situation it would appear that even the patch from Oracle wouldn’t have helped the engineers as Sullivan notes that this attack was “injected into the site’s HTML.” In this case any user visiting the site with Java enabled would have been infected, bar none. This situation did allow the hackers to gain access to some “corporate data, email, and come software code.” How much and how serious this breach really was is not being made entirely clear.
What is being made clear by Sullivan is that Facebook’s engineers are attempting to reduce the amount of products they use that are dependent on Java. Of course that’s not the end of the story as the hacking attack community rolls on – a cat and mouse game ensues for all time. Check the timeline below for more Java-related history to see how one bit of software history may be on its way out.
[via Ars Technica]
Facebook security reveals zero-day Java attack is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Facebook Got Hacked Last Month and Is Just Telling You Now (Update: Facebook Comment)
Posted in: Today's Chili Facebook just announced that it was hacked last month in a short statement on its website. Apparently, an unknown number employees visited a compromised developer site and were infected with malware. Facebook’s being very cagey about all this, but we’ve been able to scrounge up some details. More »