Volume 18, Issue 47        Atari Online News, Etc.       December 16, 2016   
                                                                           
                                                                              
                  Published and Copyright (c) 1999 - 2016
                            All Rights Reserved

                          Atari Online News, Etc.
                           A-ONE Online Magazine
                Dana P. Jacobson, Publisher/Managing Editor
                      Joseph Mirando, Managing Editor
                       Rob Mahlert, Associate Editor


                       Atari Online News, Etc. Staff

                        Dana P. Jacobson  --  Editor
                   Joe Mirando  --  "People Are Talking"
                Michael Burkley  --  "Unabashed Atariophile"
                   Albert Dayes  --  "CC: Classic Chips"
                         Rob Mahlert  --  Web site
                Thomas J. Andrews  --  "Keeper of the Flame"


                           With Contributions by:

                                Fred Horvat



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                                  =~=~=~=



A-ONE #1847                                                 12/16/16

   ~ How Russia Hacked DNC!  ~ People Are Talking!     ~ "Retro" Battlezone!
   ~ Yahoo: 1 Billion Hacked ~ Facebook Fact-checking! ~ "Report" Fake News!
   ~ Nintendo To Support VR! ~ Celebrity Hacker Jailed ~ Scammer Is Charged!
   ~ Romanians Are Indicted! ~                         ~ Popcorn Time Scheme  

                  -* Is Gmail More Secure vs Yahoo *-
               -* Yahoo Suffers World's Biggest Hack! *-
           -* Facebook Users Are Fed Up With Fake News!  *-



                                  =~=~=~=



->From the Editor's Keyboard              "Saying it like it is!"
  """"""""""""""""""""""""""



It's been downright frigid here in the Northeast the past few days!
We've also had a little bit of that white stuff, but nothing in the
least bit significant; although that could change a lit this weekend.
Then again, the forecast is for temps in the low 50's on Sunday,
with rain, so a good melting should take care of whatever might fall
tomorrow.

It's been another slow week for news, so this week's issue won't
be jam-packed with articles.  Looking over this issue, it appears
that there isn't a whole lot of "positive" articles.  Yahoo gets
hacked, again.  Facebook and fake news is quite dominant.  Hackers
get caught.  Cyber security seems to be a dominant headline these
days.  Amazing.  While technology has done wonders to improve our
world and our lives, it's also created a "new" source for severe
problems!

As mentioned in recent weeks, we're winding down the days of A-ONE.
We've been around for 18 years - longer than Atari itself (at least
the company that we remember with fondness!).  We've had a lot of
fun over the years; and I don't regret [much] putting this endeavor
together week after week (with some occasional blips in our
publishing schedule).  I've enjoyed working with many people
working to put A-ONE together, as well as the many people that I
have "met" while doing so.  I've received countless letters and
e-mails over the years - both supportive and critical - whether
they pertained to the articles we've published, or the editorial
stances/comments that we've made over the years.  The fact that
you've reacted makes all the difference.  And for that, I thank
you.

Within the next couple of weeks - before the end of the year - 
we will publish our last issue.  Whether it be next week or the
week after will depend on how much material we have available to
share with you.  Even to the last, I want to be able to have an
issue that's filled with news.

Until next time...



                                  =~=~=~=



->In This Week's Gaming Section  - Nintendo's Next Console Will Support VR?
  """""""""""""""""""""""""""""    PS4's Battlezone To Look Like the 1980s Original!
                                   
                                   


        
                                  =~=~=~=



->A-ONE's Game Console Industry News   -  The Latest Gaming News!
  """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""



          It Sure Looks Like Nintendo's Next Video
         Game Console Will Support Virtual Reality


Just over 20 years ago, Nintendo released its least successful
game console ever: the Virtual Boy. It was a red and black
monstrosity with mostly terrible games.

The console was quickly scrapped in favor of more traditional
hardware like the Nintendo 64 and GameCube. 

But in the past few years, virtual reality has re-emerged as a
viable medium. Headsets from Google, Facebook, and Samsung are
all commercially available; most notably, Nintendo's two main
competitors, Sony and Microsoft, are making major investments in
VR. 

    Sony's PlayStation VR headset launched in October  it's
powered by the most popular game console in the world, the
PlayStation 4.
    In 2017, Microsoft is planning to launch a far more powerful
Xbox One, currently dubbed "Project Scorpio." That console will
be capable of powering high-end VR headsets; the expectation is
that Facebook's Oculus Rift headset will work with Project
Scorpio, but nothing specific has been announced just yet.

So that leaves Nintendo.

The company's next console, the Nintendo Switch, is set to arrive
in March 2017. It's a home console/portable console hybrid  the
idea is you can play the same games at home as you do on, say,
the bus to work. It's rumored to be nearly as powerful as the
PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

The gimmick of the Switch is its detachable screen. The screen
itself is the console, processing and all  it's basically a
tablet with a bunch of peripherals.

You attach the screen to two "Joy-Con" controllers and it becomes
a portable console. Or you slide out the kickstand and use the
controllers as gamepads, one in each hand. Or you slide the
screen into a dock at home and it becomes a home console. 

Or, apparently, you slide the screen into a VR headset and it
becomes a full-on virtual reality head-mounted display:

That image comes from a recently published patent, which
Nintendo filed back in June 2016. The patent seemingly details the
tablet at the heart of Nintendo Switch: the way it connects to a
home console dock, and the way it connects to the Joy-Con
controllers to become a portable gamepad. 

And then, in the final example images of how the device could
work, a headset is shown with a Switch tablet being slid into it.
The corresponding text is fascinating:

"Fig. 60 [the headset patent drawing] is a diagram showing an
example HMD [head-mounted display] accessory to which the main
unit can be attached. An HMD accessory to be described below as
an example accessory can be used as a so-called HMD
(head-mounted display) with the main unit attached thereto."

To quickly translate that jargon into English, the text
description of the headset image directly identifies it as a VR
headset (an "HMD") that can be used by slotting the Switch tablet
into the front. For comparison, Samsung's Gear VR works
similarly: Your Galaxy phone becomes the device powering VR and
the screen used to see it, through the lenses of a peripheral
headset.

gear vr galaxy s7 The phone is attached to the front and enters
a VR mode. The concept in Nintendo's patent is very similar,
albeit with a Switch tablet instead of a smartphone.

There's a ton more text about the headset in the patent, from
how it can detect movement using the sensors already built into
the Switch tablet, to how the Joy-Con gamepads can be used as
controllers for the headset, and how the headset has lenses
built in that will widen images for VR use.

All that said, patents aren't necessarily plans. Hardware
companies like Apple and Nintendo publish patents regularly, and
often those patents lead to nothing. It's entirely possible that
this is little more than an idea. If nothing else, it hints at a
potential unannounced feature of the Switch  everything else
detailed in the patent has already been revealed as actual plans
by Nintendo for the Switch.

A representative for Nintendo offered the following statement to
Business Insider: "We have no comment regarding this patent
matter."



                                  =~=~=~=



->A-ONE Gaming Online       -       Online Users Growl & Purr!
  """""""""""""""""""
 


           PS4's Battlezone Will Soon Look Like
           The 1980s Original With a Free Update


A free update is on the way for Battlezone that will let you
play with its graphics similar to the the 1980 original.

Revealed through the trailer below, Classic mode is coming as
part of a free update on December 20. The PlayStation VR game
will allow you to take part in a "retro score-attack game set
across the iconic black and green worlds of the original."

The original Battlezone, released by Atari in 1980, was
technically in black and white, though a green overlay gave it
the distinct look most players will recognize. What's seen in
the trailer seems to be a pretty faithful recreation of those
graphics, albeit at a much higher fidelity.



                                  =~=~=~=



                           A-ONE's Headline News
                   The Latest in Computer Technology News
                       Compiled by: Dana P. Jacobson



         The Simple Email That Let Russia Hack the DNC


By now, U.S. intelligence agencies have established that Russia
did in fact hack both the Democratic National Committee and the
Republican National Committee, which ultimately lead to the
leaking of information intended to swing the 2016 election in
favor of Donald Trump. Now, new reporting from The New York
Times has some horrifying details on exactly how Russian hackers
were able to break into the systems, and they illustrate some
important lessons we could all stand to learn.

According to The New York Times, the Russian cyberinvasion of the
DNC's servers took place in two stages, but the second and most
severe breach happened in mid-March when Hillary Clinton's
campaign chairman John Podesta's private email account was hacked
after he clicked on a phishing email, a fake correspondence
purportedly from Google but actually from hackers, one designed
to trick the recipient into revealing a password.

The Times got a look at the same attack as directed at another
Clinton campaign official, Billy Rinehart. 

The attack referenced by the email is all but certainly
fictitious, whereas the real attack is the big blue button, which
does not actually lead to Google's but instead to an attacker's
where all information will be intercepted. And as far as phishing
emails go, it's pretty good! There are no obvious misspellings or
other blatant errors that might expose the ruse.

The full leaked emails from Wikileaks reveal two important
details: the address the email came from, and the link the button
pointed to. In the case of most phishing attacks, these are the
most obvious points where a hacker's illusions slip. Unable to
use an actual @google.com email address or official Google
website, hackers can only opt for rough approximations. In this
case, the email came from "no-reply@accounts.googlemail.com" and
the link in the email was obscured by the link-shortening service
Bit.ly.

What's worse is that, according to the report, one aide actually
singled out the email as suspect, but another confirmed it to be
legitimate, in what he now says was actually a typo. Per The
Times:

    "This is a legitimate email," Charles Delavan, a Clinton
campaign aide, replied to another of Mr. Podesta's aides, who had
noticed the alert. "John needs to change his password
immediately. "With another click, a decade of emails that Mr.
Podesta maintained in his Gmail account - a total of about
60,000 - were unlocked for the Russian hackers. Mr. Delavan, in
an interview, said that his bad advice was a result of a typo:
He knew this was a phishing attack, as the campaign was getting
dozens of them. He said he had meant to type that it was an
"illegitimate" email, an error that he said has plagued him ever
since. 

Changing the password is generally not a bad idea when you are
worried someone may be attempting to attack your account, but it
was the method by which it was done-clicking the big blue button
- that was the grave error. If there's one bit of useful,
personal advice to come out of this whole mess it is this: Never
ever change your password using a link from an unsolicited
in-bound email. Instead, go to the website directly to start the
process there, and do it on another device if you want to be
extra careful.

Chances are there is not an entire presidential election at
stake in your case, but it's an important thing for all of us to
learn.



        Yahoo Says 1 Billion User Accounts Stolen
            in What Could Be Biggest Hack Ever


More than 1 billion Yahoo user accounts  including phone
numbers, birthdates, and security questions  may have been
stolen by hackers during an attack that took place in August
2013, the company revealed on Wednesday.

The announcement of what could represent the largest hack of all
time is a separate incident than the one Yahoo disclosed back in
September. In that hack, Yahoo said that at least 500 million
user accounts were compromised.

"The company has not been able to identify the intrusion
associated with this theft," Yahoo said on Wednesday about the
new incident.

News of the breach sent Yahoo shares sliding about 2.5% in
after-hours trading on Wednesday.

The revelation of the hack could have implications for the $4.8
billion sale of Yahoo to Verizon, which has yet to close. Yahoo
disclosed the previous hack to Verizon only after agreeing to the
deal, and Verizon has since said that it considers the hack a
material event that could affect the terms and price of the
acquisition.

"As weve said all along, we will evaluate the situation as Yahoo
continues its investigation," Verizon told CNBC on Wednesday,
regarding the latest hack.
Forged cookies

With a billion accounts at risk, that would make this the biggest
breach of ever  bigger than the Myspace breach of 360 million
user accounts and 427 million passwords.

Yahoo said that payment-card data and bank-account information
were not stored on the system the company "believes" was
affected. But the hackers may have collected a trove of other
valuable personal information, such as user names, email
addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, hashed passwords,
and, in some cases, encrypted or unencrypted security questions
and answers.

Yahoo said that it now believes an "unauthorized third party
accessed the company's proprietary code to learn how to forge
cookies." It was not clear which incident the forged cookies
related to. But Yahoo said that "the company has connected some
of this activity to the same state-sponsored actor believed to be
responsible for the data theft the company disclosed on
September 22, 2016."

Here's the entire message from Yahoo:

    "Yahoo! Inc. has identified data security issues concerning
certain Yahoo user accounts. Yahoo has taken steps to secure user
accounts and is working closely with law enforcement.

    "As Yahoo previously disclosed in November, law enforcement
provided the company with data files that a third party claimed
was Yahoo user data. The company analyzed this data with the
assistance of outside forensic experts and found that it appears
to be Yahoo user data. Based on further analysis of this data by
the forensic experts, Yahoo believes an unauthorized third party,
in August 2013, stole data associated with more than one billion
user accounts. The company has not been able to identify the
intrusion associated with this theft. Yahoo believes this
incident is likely distinct from the incident the company
disclosed on September 22, 2016.

    "For potentially affected accounts, the stolen user account
information may have included names, email addresses, telephone
numbers, dates of birth, hashed passwords (using MD5) and, in
some cases, encrypted or unencrypted security questions and
answers. The investigation indicates that the stolen information
did not include passwords in clear text, payment card data, or
bank account information. Payment card data and bank account
information are not stored in the system the company believes
was affected.

    "Yahoo is notifying potentially affected users and has taken
steps to secure their accounts, including requiring users to
change their passwords. Yahoo has also invalidated unencrypted
security questions and answers so that they cannot be used to
access an account.

    "Separately, Yahoo previously disclosed that its outside
forensic experts were investigating the creation of forged
cookies that could allow an intruder to access users' accounts
without a password. Based on the ongoing investigation, the
company believes an unauthorized third party accessed the
company's proprietary code to learn how to forge cookies. The
outside forensic experts have identified user accounts for which
they believe forged cookies were taken or used. Yahoo is
notifying the affected account holders, and has invalidated the
forged cookies. The company has connected some of this activity
to the same state-sponsored actor believed to be responsible for
the data theft the company disclosed on September 22, 2016.

    "Yahoo encourages users to review all of their online
accounts for suspicious activity and to change their passwords
and security questions and answers for any other accounts on
which they use the same or similar information used for their
Yahoo account. The company further recommends that users avoid
clicking links or downloading attachments from suspicious emails
and that they be cautious of unsolicited communications that ask
for personal information. Additionally, Yahoo recommends using
Yahoo Account Key, a simple authentication tool that eliminates
the need to use a password on Yahooaltogether.

Additional information is available on the Yahoo Account Security
Issues FAQs page: https://yahoo.com/security-update.



 Yahoo Suffers World's Biggest Hack Affecting 1 Billion Users


Yahoo has discovered a 3-year-old security breach that enabled a
hacker to compromise more than 1 billion user accounts, breaking
the company's own humiliating record for the biggest security
breach in history.

The digital heist disclosed Wednesday occurred in August 2013,
more than a year before a separate hack that Yahoo announced
nearly three months ago . That breach affected at least 500
million users, which had been the most far-reaching hack until
the latest revelation.

"It's shocking," security expert Avivah Litan of Gartner Inc.

Both lapses occurred during the reign of Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer,
a once-lauded leader who found herself unable to turn around the
company in the four years since her arrival. Earlier this year,
Yahoo agreed to sell its digital operations to Verizon
Communications for $4.8 billion  a deal that may now be
imperiled by the hacking revelations.

Yahoo didn't say if it believes the same hacker might have
pulled off two separate attacks. The Sunnyvale, California,
company blamed the late 2014 attack on a hacker affiliated with
an unidentified foreign government, but said it hasn't been able
to identify the source behind the 2013 intrusion.

Yahoo has more than a billion monthly active users, although
some have multiple accounts and others have none at all. An
unknown number of accounts were affected by both hacks.

In both attacks, the stolen information included names, email
addresses, phone numbers, birthdates and security questions and
answers. The company says it believes bank-account information
and payment-card data were not affected.

But hackers also apparently stole passwords in both attacks.
Technically, those passwords should be secure; Yahoo said they
were scrambled twice  once by encryption and once by another
technique called hashing. But hackers have become adept at
cracking secured passwords by assembling huge dictionaries of
similarly scrambled phrases and matching them against stolen
password databases.

That could mean trouble for any users who reused their Yahoo
password for other online accounts. Yahoo is requiring users to
change their passwords and invalidating security questions so
they can't be used to hack into accounts. (You may get a
reprieve if you've changed your password and questions since
September.)

Security experts said the 2013 attack was likely the work of a
foreign government fishing for information about specific
people. One big tell: It doesn't appear that much personal data
from Yahoo accounts has been posted for sale online, meaning
the hack probably wasn't the work of ordinary criminals.

That means most Yahoo users probably don't have anything to
worry about, said J.J. Thompson, CEO of Rook Security.

News of the additional hack further jeopardizes Yahoo's plans to
fall into Verizon's arms. If the hacks cause a user backlash
against Yahoo, the company's services wouldn't be as valuable to
Verizon, raising the possibility that the sale price might be
re-negotiated or the deal may be called off. The telecom giant
wants Yahoo and its many users to help it build a digital ad
business.

After the news of the first hack broke, Verizon said it would
re-evaluate its Yahoo deal and in a Wednesday statement said it
will review the "new development before reaching any final
conclusions." Spokesman Bob Varettoni declined to answer
further questions.

At the very least, the security lapses "definitely will help
Verizon in its negotiations to lower the price," Litan
predicted. Yahoo has argued that news of the 2014 hack didn't
negatively affect traffic to its services, strengthening its
contention that the Verizon deal should be completed under the
original terms.

"This just adds to fuel to the fire and it won't help Yahoo's
cause," said Eric Jackson, a longtime critic of the company's
management. Although he has in the past, Jackson doesn't
currently own Yahoo stock.

Investors appeared worried about the Verizon deal. Yahoo's
shares fell 96 cents, or 2 percent, to $39.95 after the
disclosure of the latest hack.



            Is Gmail More Secure Than Yahoo?


Yahoo confirmed 1 billion of its email accounts had been
breached, but Gmail also has reported intrusions.

With Yahoos announcement it had confirmed 1 billion of its
accounts had been hacked, you may be wondering which email
provider is the most secure.

Yahoo said Wednesday user data apparently was stolen by a
state-sponsored actor in August 2013, including names, email
addresses, telephone numbers, birth dates, passwords, and
security questions and answers. It was the second confirmation
of a massive intrusion in recent months. Yahoo announced Sept. 22
an intruder had used forged cookies to gain access to 500 million
accounts.

But Yahoo is far from the only provider that has been hacked.
Google announced last month it had patched a hole in its Gmail
verification system that allowed a hacker to hijack a targeted
Gmail account.

The hack exploited a verification bypass vulnerability that
allows users to send email from a second Gmail account and make
it look like the target account was the sender. The problem was
discovered by security researcher Ahmed Mehtab, founder of
Security Fuse.

Kaspersky Lab reported Mehtab was able to send email as
google@gmail.com and gmail@gmail.com by using deactivated,
nonexistent or blocked email accounts.

People running an older version of Android could be putting
their Gmail accounts at risk, CheckPoint reported Nov. 30. The
cybersecurity firm said a piece of malware called Gooligan mines
Android devices for email addresses and authentication tokens,
giving hackers the ability to breach Gmail, Google Photos,
Google Docs, Google Play, Google Drive and G Suite accounts. The
company said 1 million Google accounts had been affected at a
rate of 13,000 devices a day.

WikiHow lists several ways to hack Gmail, admonishing that its
illegal to hack anyones account except your own. The first
method involves a key logger that needs to be installed on a
target computer. The second method is to enable autofill and let
the computer do the work for you. The third method is to use a
packet sniffer, which seeks out cookies.

There are three easy ways to determine if your Gmail account has
been hacked, ShoutMeLoud advised last month. One way is to check
the activity log at the bottom of your account page to determine
when the account was last accessed. The second is to go to the
forwarding page and determine whether someone has been rifling
your account. Also check to see if the IMAP and/or POP features
are enabled. If they are and youre not using a third-party
email program, turn them off since anyone can collect your
email in their accounts if they know your password.



            Facebook Users Are Fed Up With Fake News


Each week day after making the kids' lunches, Lisel Laslie takes
out her iPhone to scroll through Facebook over her morning cup
of coffee.

At noontime, while eating lunch at her desk, this 48-year-old
mother of two from Tallahassee, Fla., sneaks another peek at her
notifications and News Feed. In the evening after she tucks the
kids into bed, she curls up in the living room for an hour or
two of blissfully uninterrupted social-media updates.

But, over the summer when bogus articles trashing both
presidential candidates began flooding her News Feed, Laslie
began posting less frequently and spending less time on
Facebook.

"Facebook is a place to go for distraction. I want to see
puppies and pictures of my friends' kids. Then your feed gets
clogged up with all that stuff," she said.

Facebook has a fake news problem. And some of its users are fed
up with it. They're not sure if the solution is to let the social
network, with its own biases, decide what's true. Or whether they
themselves should become better fact-checkers.

"I find myself wasting my day verifying stories," says Kristen
Stanley, a 49-year-old homemaker from Morgan City, LA, who used
to work in the ship building industry. "I didn't used to do that.
It's all new and it's all started with the election."

It turns out that by creating the world's most popular place to
share, Facebook also created the world's most efficient delivery
system for fake news.

Some 170 million people in North America use Facebook every day.
Nearly half of all adults in the U.S. say they get their news
from Facebook. Fake news creates significant public confusion
about current events, with nearly one-fourth of Americans saying
they have shared a fake news story, according to a Pew Research
Center survey.

And that ticks off Stanley. She wishes her friends would do some
research before sharing "nonsense."

"Some of it makes me wonder if my friends have brains," says
Stanley, whose News Feed during the election was rife with
"things on both sides that were completely false."

Facebook has taken a lot of heat since the election for not
doing enough to remove fake news reports, such as a widely
shared but erroneous article claiming Pope Francis endorsed
Donald Trump.

The giant social network is taking steps to do something about
it. On Thursday Facebook said it was rolling out a series of
experiments to stem the flow of fake news. It plans to make it
easier to report a hoax and for fact-checking organizations to
flag fake articles. It's also removing financial incentives for
spammers and plans to pay closer attention to other signals,
such as which articles Facebook users read but then don't share.
Last month, Facebook barred fake news sites from using its
ad-selling services.

Not everyone is happy about that. When Facebook CEO Mark
Zuckerberg announced efforts to wipe out fake news in a Facebook
post, some users responded with skepticism.

"How will you know if these fact checkers are not politically
motivated or affiliated themselves?" one user asked. "Even
'respected' news outlets are biased and misrepresent news as it
is. It's a very grey complex area."

Another replied: "People choose what they want to read and what
they don't want to read, so what gives you the right to decide
what people get to read?"

Stanley, a Trump supporter, says demonstrably false news needs
to go.

"I really do believe these articles cause problems. They destroy
friendships," she said. "Facebook people take it way too
seriously and extremely personally. Everything is so negative
now. I don't like to get on Facebook. It's depressing."

Sharing fake news has picked fights and eroded family ties.
Summer Davis, 35, a writer and blogger from Santa Rosa Beach,
Fla., says she has family members who regularly spread fake
news. She even unfollowed one of them whom she says scans
headlines of fake news articles and shares them without reading
them, the more sensational the better.

Davis says she herself hasn't been fooled by fake news. But, she
says, "some of the headlines have definitely caused some anxiety
before I could fact-check."

Holding Facebook responsible for the fake-news onslaught doesn't
sit right with Davis, though. That, she says, "is like blaming
McDonald's for obesity."

"The real problems are ignorance and this fast-food society that
expects information served hot and fast whether it's true or
not," she said. "There is too much knee-jerk emotion happening
and not enough fact checking."
Conservative concern: censorship

Not everyone wants Facebook to step in and become the arbiters of
what content is misleading. That is rooted in the growing
distrust of establishment news sources. A Gallup poll in
September said Americans' trust in the media had sunk to its
lowest point ever, with only 32% of American saying they have a
"great deal" or "a fair amount" of confidence that the media
reports the news "fully, accurately and fairly."

Danielle Sgantas, a self-identified conservative from Yucca
Valley, Calif., says she has never been fooled by fake news
sites. And, she says, she believes the fake news controversy was
created to crack down on alternative sources of news "so that we
only get the news that the Democrats, which includes about 99%
of the news media, wants us to hear and believe."

"I want freedom of speech to continue. I want alternative news
sites not to be censored," she said. "I can determine what is
real and what is not real by making searches on my own."

Others believe something has to be done. Whitney Hoffman, a
50-year-old digital marketer from Chadds Ford, Pa., says fake
news is a virus that should be stamped out by any means
necessary. Every day during the election, she says she saw things
in her News Feed "that were completely false and that were
obviously false." But, she says, she also saw fake news that
could dupe even very news savvy people.

"Some of it sounds plausible and when it's spread by trusted
friends, there's an assumption it must be true," Hoffman said.
"I feel like we all need to wear finger condoms every day
otherwise we are going to spread fake-news viruses everywhere."

Laslie, who says she was embarrassed when she unwittingly shared
fake news on Facebook, has come up with a radical solution of
her own. She doesn't share articles on Facebook anymore. It's
just too much work figuring out what's real, she says.

"It's like I am an investigative reporter and I have to check
eight sources before sharing anything," Laslie said. "I will
share pictures of kitties and animals all day long before I
share a news story."



         Facebook Is Going To Use Snopes and Other
       Fact-checkers To Combat and Bury 'Fake News'


Facebook is going to start fact-checking, labeling, and burying
fake news and hoaxes in its News Feed, the company said Thursday.

The decision comes after Facebook received heated criticism for
its role in spreading a deluge of political misinformation
during the US presidential election, like one story that falsely
said the Pope had endorsed Donald Trump.

To combat fake news, Facebook has teamed up with a shortlist of
media organizations, including Snopes and ABC News, that are part
of an international fact-checking network led by Poynter, a
nonprofit school for journalism in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Starting as a test with a small percentage of its users in the
US, Facebook will make it easier to report news stories that are
fake or misleading. Once third-party fact-checkers have confirmed
that the story is fake, it will be labeled as such and demoted in
the News Feed.

A company representative told Business Insider that the social
network will also use other signals, like algorithms that detect
whether a story that appears fake is going viral, to determine if
it should label the story as fake and bury it in people's feeds.

"We've focused our efforts on the worst of the worst, on the
clear hoaxes spread by spammers for their own gain, and on
engaging both our community and third party organizations,"
Facebook News Feed chief Adam Mosseri said in a company blog post
on Thursday.

A team of Facebook researchers will also review website domains
and send sites that appear to be fake or spoofed (like
"washingtonpost.co") to third-party fact-checkers, a Facebook
representative said. Of the 42 news organizations that have
committed to Poynter's fact-checking code of ethics, Facebook is
starting out with the following four: Snopes, Factcheck.org, ABC
News, and PolitiFact.

The Associated Press will also be a fact-checking partner.

"We are only involved to the extent that Facebook relies on the
list of signatories to our code of principles as a starting
point for the organizations it chooses to verify," a Poynter
representative told Business Insider. "Facebook is the only
organization certifying third party fact-checkers on its
platform."

Facebook has given its four initial fact-checking partners
access to a tool that will let them label stories in the News
Feed as fake, a Facebook spokesperson said. The person said
Facebook is not paying the organizations to fact-check.

The websites that Facebook determines to be fake news
organizations or spoofed domains will also not be able to sell
ads on the social network. Owners of fake-news sites can make
thousands of dollars per month through internet ads.

Facebook has repeatedly said that it's not a media company, but
rather an open technology platform that relies on media
publishers and its users to share accurate information.

We do not think of ourselves as editors," Patrick Walker,
Facebook's head of media partnerships, said during a recent
journalism conference in Dublin. "We believe its essential that
Facebook stay out of the business of deciding what issues the
world should read about. Thats what editors do.

Politicians such as President Barack Obama and former Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton have recently expressed concern about
the prevalence of misinformation on social media, with Obama
calling it a "dust cloud of nonsense" and Clinton calling it
"an epidemic."

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has meanwhile gone so far as to
say that it's "pretty crazy" for some to suggest that fake news
on Facebook could have swayed the election in favor of either
candidate.

But after facing significant backlash for its denial to
fact-check stories on its network, Zuckerberg now calls Facebook
a "new kind of platform" with a responsibility to "build a space
where people can be informed."

"Facebook is a new kind of platform different from anything
before it. I think of Facebook as a technology company, but I
recognize we have a greater responsibility than just building
technology that information flows through," the Facebook founder
said in a Thursday post.

"While we don't write the news stories you read and share, we
also recognize we're more than just a distributor of news. We're a
new kind of platform for public discourse  and that means we have
a new kind of responsibility to enable people to have the most
meaningful conversations, and to build a space where people can be
informed."

You can read Zuckerberg's full post below:

A few weeks ago, I outlined some projects we're working on to
build a more informed community and fight misinformation. Today,
I want to share an update on work we're starting to roll out.

We have a responsibility to make sure Facebook has the greatest
positive impact on the world. This update is just one of many
steps forward, and there will be more work beyond this.

Facebook is a new kind of platform different from anything
before it. I think of Facebook as a technology company, but I
recognize we have a greater responsibility than just building
technology that information flows through. While we don't write
the news stories you read and share, we also recognize we're
more than just a distributor of news. We're a new kind of
platform for public discourse -- and that means we have a new
kind of responsibility to enable people to have the most
meaningful conversations, and to build a space where people can
be informed.

With any changes we make, we must fight to give all people a
voice and resist the path of becoming arbiters of truth
ourselves. I believe we can build a more informed community and
uphold these principles.

Here's what we're doing:

Today we're making it easier to report hoaxes, and if many
people report a story, then we'll send it to third-party fact
checking organizations. If the fact checkers agree a story is a
hoax, you'll see a flag on the story saying it has been disputed,
and that story may be less likely to show up in News Feed. You'll
still be able to read and share the story, but you'll now have
more information about whether fact checkers believe it's
accurate. No one will be able to make a disputed story into an
ad or promote it on our platform.

We've also found that if people who read an article are
significantly less likely to share it than people who just read
the headline, that may be a sign it's misleading. We're going to
start incorporating this signal into News Feed ranking.

These steps will help make spreading misinformation less
profitable for spammers who make money by getting more people to
visit their sites. And we're also going to crack down on spammers
who masquerade as well-known news organizations.

You can read more about all of these updates here:
http://newsroom.fb.com/?p=7014

This is just one of many steps we'll make to keep improving the
quality of our service. Thanks to everyone for your feedback on
this, and check back here for more updates to come.



         Facebook Lets Users Click To Report Fake News


Facebook announced Thursday it was offering a tool allowing users
to report fake news, a move aimed at stemming a wave of
misinformation which some claim influenced the 2016 US election.

"We believe in giving people a voice and that we cannot become
arbiters of truth ourselves, so we're approaching this problem
carefully," Facebook's vice president Adam Mosseri said in a blog
post.

"We've focused our efforts on the worst of the worst, on the
clear hoaxes spread by spammers for their own gain, and on
engaging both our community and third-party organizations."

Facebook said it would begin testing a system allowing users to
click on a news item if they suspect it is fabrication.

The huge social network said it would work with global
fact-checking organizations subscribing to the Poynter
Institute's International Fact Checking Code of Principles.

"If the fact-checking organizations identify a story as fake, it
will get flagged as disputed and there will be a link to the
corresponding article explaining why," Mosseri said. "Stories
that have been disputed may also appear lower in News Feed."

Facebook has been under fire for failing to stem a wave of fake
news, which according to some critics may have helped the
election of Republican property tycoon Donald Trump by spreading
unfounded negative news about his Democratic opponent Hillary
Clinton.

Facebook has dismissed the notion that fake news shared on the
social network swung the election results but has been stepping
up its efforts to weed out clearly false news.

The US social giant, with some 1.8 billion users worldwide, has
however avoided being labeled a "media company" or implemented
efforts to impose editorial judgments on news being shared.

Separately Thursday, a survey by the Pew Research Center showed
nearly two out of three US adults (64 percent) believed fake
news causes confusion about basic facts in current events.

Although many respondents said they sense fake stories are
spreading confusion, they were relatively confident in their own
ability to detect hoaxes.

The survey found 39 percent "very confident" that they can
recognize news that is fabricated and another 45 percent
"somewhat confident."

However, nearly one in four said they have shared a made-up news
story: 14 percent acknowledged they shared a news item they knew
was fake at the time and 16 percent saying they shared a story
they later realized was fake.

Concerns over fake news grew during the 2016 presidential
campaign amid widespread sharing of hoaxes including stories
saying Pope Francis had endorsed Donald Trump, or that Hillary
Clinton was linked to a pedophilia ring operating out of a
pizzeria.

The survey of 1,002 adults was conducted December 1-4, with the
margin of error estimated at 3.6 percentage points.



U.S. Charges Nigerian with Role in Cyber Scam Targeting Thousands


A Nigerian man is facing U.S. charges that he participated in
scams targeting thousands of victims globally in which company
executives or vendors were impersonated in emails directing
employees to make large wire transfers.

David Chukwuneke Adindu, 29, pleaded not guilty in Manhattan
federal court on Wednesday to charges including wire fraud,
prosecutors said, more than three weeks after the FBI said he
was arrested at a Houston airport.

Adindu's attorney could not be immediately identified.

The case was the latest example of a growing type of cyber scam
called a "business email compromise," in which fraudsters target
businesses that work with foreign suppliers or regularly perform
wire transfers.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation said in June that since
October 2013, U.S. and foreign victims have reported 22,143
complaints involving business email compromise scams in which
criminals sent requests for almost $3.1 billion in transfers.

According to the indictment, Adindu, who during the period in
question resided in both Guangzhou, China and Lagos, Nigeria,
worked with others to carry out the scams from 2014 to 2016.

The indictment said Adindu and others exchanged information
regarding, among other things, scripts for requesting wire
transfers and lists of names and email addresses for contacting
and impersonating potential victims.

Among those targeted, the indictment said, was an unnamed New
York investment firm, where an employee received an email
claiming in June 2015 to be from an investment adviser at another
firm asking for a $25,200 wire transfer.

The employee later learned the email was not actually sent by
that adviser, and as a result did not comply with a second wire
transfer request for $75,100, the indictment said.

The case is U.S. v. Adindu, U.S. District Court, Southern
District of New York, No. 16-cr-00575.



   Man Who Hacked 130 Celebrities Jailed for Five Years


Maybe youll recall 24-year-old Bahamian Alonzo Knowles, who
recently pleaded guilty to hacking the email accounts of some
130 media, sports and entertainment celebrities? And trying to
sell everything from their confidential scripts to their sex
tapes? The judge just threw the book at him: five years in
federal prison.

Thats roughly twice the 27 to 33 months you might have
expected from the US federal sentencing guidelines, according to
the New York Times. Why such a tough sentence? Because Knowles
made a couple of really dumb mistakes.

Dumb mistake #1: flying to New York to sell a stolen script to a
Department of Homeland Security undercover agent, and telling the
fully-wired agent all about how hed done it all.

As the NYT reported when Knowles was arrested:

    He gave an interested buyer his name, birth date, passport
number and money transfer account number to set up the trip Mr.
Knowles told [the undercover agent] that going after a
high-profile celebrity can be difficult.

    So, instead, he used what he described as his social
engineering process, in which he identified celebrities friends
through photos and got into the friends email accounts to learn
about his target

Dumb mistake #2: given access to a prison email system the
authorities told him they monitored, Knowles wrote:

    When i get out im gon shake up hollywood for real!

..and (promising to write a book about the stars hed hacked):

    Im name dropping everyone involved and what i know and im
including pictures of paperwork that aint public.

and:

    This gonna be the most talked about thing on tv Eat a steak
for me tomorrow.

and, to a female friend:

    These people dont want me to be a millionaire. They want me
be a loser and not be able to afford women like you lol.

 and, last but not least:

    Everyone loves gossip. I cant wait to get out i already know
how the cover is gonna look.

The prosecutor and judge were not impressed with his lawyers
claim that Knowles was just a lonely guy, trying to impress a
woman. Hence five full years in a federal penitentiary.

This is more than another incompetent criminal story:
Knowless very human victims deserve to be heard.

Fortunately, one of them  Naturi Naughton (pictured), an actor
on the Starz network show Power  recorded an eloquent victim
statement. We thought it was worth quoting at length:

    I felt violated. This man hacked into my personal emails, my
account, jeopardized my job by potentially trying to sell
scripts to my show Power, he stole six of those scripts and
tried to extort me, my producer 50 Cent, and my showrunner. I
know a lot of public figures and celebrities go through this, so
the only reason I wanted to talk about this was, Im sick of it,
people in the public eye being treated like we can just be
hacked into and [steal] naked pictures, our information he had
all my passwords, [jeopardized] my financial stability

    Its really a frustrating and emotional experience, because
I couldnt control it. While I was being hacked I noticed my
email passwords were constantly being changed, and then my boss
at Starz called about the scripts being basically stolen, I had
never felt more violated and out of control in my entire life.

    I never thought I would be a victim of this kind of
cybercrime. But its serious, and I hope the man who did this
thinks about how he affected not just me but so many other
peoples lives, who worked really hard. We dont deserve it.
This cant be acceptable. Its not a game, its not a joke,
this is our lives I would never wish this on anyone.

Seconded.



 U.S. Indicts Three Romanians Over $4 Million Cyber Fraud


Three Romanian nationals have been extradited to the United
States to face charges that they operated a cyber fraud scheme
in which they infected at least 60,000 computers and stole at
least $4 million, U.S. prosecutors said on Friday.

Bogdan Nicolescu, 34, Tiberiu Danet, 31, and Radu Miclaus, 34,
were charged in an indictment filed in federal court in
Cleveland with charges including wire fraud, aggravated
identity theft and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

The trio were extradited to the United States this week after
being arrested in Romania earlier this year, prosecutors said.
In court on Friday, Danet and Miclaus pleaded not guilty.
Nicolescu has not yet been arraigned, court records show.

Danet's lawyer confirmed his client pleaded not guilty. A lawyer
for Miclaus did not respond to requests for comment and an
attorney for Nicolescu could not be identified.

Prosecutors said they belonged to a group in Bucharest called
"Bayrob" that in 2007 began to develop and deploy malware sent
through emails claiming to be from entities like Western Union,
Norton AntiVirus and the U.S. Internal Revenue Service.

Prosecutors said after users clicked on an attached file, the
malware would get installed on the computer. It would then
harvest email addresses from contact lists or email accounts,
which then received email with the malware as well, they said.

More than 60,000 computers were infected, prosecutors said.
Once infected, the defendants could control these computers to
collect information including credit card details, user names
and passwords, they said.

They also used the infected computers to mine for digital
currencies like bitcoin, causing the devices to become unusable
or slow, prosecutors said.

When users with infected computers visited websites like
Facebook or eBay, the defendants would redirect the computer to
a nearly identical site, allowing them to steal account
credentials, prosecuotrs said.

They also placed over 1,000 listings for cars, motorcycles and
other goods on auction sites like eBay with photos infected with
malware that would redirect a victim who clicked on the image to
fake webpages, prosecutors said.

These webpages prompted users to pay through a nonexistent
"escrow agent" who wired the money to others in Eastern Europe,
who then gave it to the defendants, prosecutors said, resulting
in about $4 million in losses.

Symantec Corp, which in a statement claimed credit for helping
unearth the "Bayrob" gang, said the group had stolen up to $35
million USD from victims through various means.

The case is U.S. v. Nicolescu et al, U.S. District Court,
Northern District of Ohio, No. 16-cr-00224.



      New Popcorn Time Malware Offers Victims Free
     Ransomware Decryption If They Help Infect Others


A new type of ransomware dubbed Popcorn Time was recently
discovered by security researchers and brings with it a sinister
twist that feels like some kind of strange psychological
experiment.

Ransomware is a popular kind of malware attackers will use to
infect a victims computer. Once installed, the malware encrypts
and, in some cases, locks files and data stored on the victims
computer or infected device. Attackers then demand a ransom
payment in order to restore the files. For most ransomware
infections, there is no way to decrypt scrambled files unless
the victim purchases the decryption keys. If victims lack
appropriate backups, they can find themselves shelling out
hundreds or even thousands of dollars to have their files
restored.

While most ransomware tends to work in the same way,
cybercriminals are constantly coming up with new and more
effective ways to wield their nasty tools. The latest Popcorn
Time malware is no exception. First discovered by researchers
on the MalwareHunterTeam, the Popcorn Time ransomware offers
infected victims two choices for restoring their files  one of
which will challenge their moral fiber.  Victims are given the
option to pay the fee to decrypt their files or help the
ransomware attackers spread the infection to others.

In the ransom message, Popcorn Time developers offer the
nasty option of sharing a link to the Popcorn Time malware
with people they know via email, text, etc. If two or more
people end up getting infected by the link and pay the ransom,
the attacker will give the original victim the gift of free
encryption keys.

While Id really like to hope that no one would be desperate
(or amoral) enough to actually share the Popcorn Time malware
link with others, it definitely makes for an interesting study
of moral scruples. The Popcorn Time malware is still only in
development and hasnt actually been used in the wild yet, but
its nonetheless a concerning one to keep an eye on.

Ransomware has become one of the most widespread forms of
malware used by cyber criminals and has taken a wide variety of
victims captive from small businesses to major health care
organizations. Just last month, ransomware attackers caused
several networked computers on the San Francisco Public
Transport System to be shut down, which lead to one day in
which all passengers rode the MUNI light-rail system for free
while the agency investigated the issue.



                                =~=~=~=




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