World Oceans Day is June 8th, and we’ve never seen the community so active and excited! It’s amazing to see such a massive response – this year is sure to be the best yet. We appreciate all the hard work from event organizers worldwide, and hope that everyone attending will have a great time. Check out our bustling social stream!
Even if you can’t make it to a World Oceans Day event near you, you can spread the word online. I wanted to share with you some of the cool activities going on this year and invite everyone to participate.
Check them out.First of all, a big thank you to the community for buying World Oceans Day t-shirts. We’ve reached our goal and the shirts will be printed! You can still buy a t-shirt, and the more t-shirts we sell, the more money will be raised for our coordination efforts.
Can’t buy a shirt? No problemo, sharing online doesn’t cost a thing! Here are some ways you can support us from the comfort of your computer.
FrontFirst of all, a big thank you to the community for buying World Oceans Day t-shirts. We’ve reached our goal and the shirts will be printed! You can still buy a t-shirt, and the more t-shirts we sell, the more money will be raised for our coordination efforts.
Can’t buy a shirt? No problemo, sharing online doesn’t cost a thing! Here are some ways you can support us from the comfort of your computer.
Working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Microsoft on Wednesday moved to disrupt a massive cybercrime ring allegedly responsible for stealing online banking information and personal identities, leading to more than $500 million in losses.
In what the company described as its “most aggressive botnet operation to date,” Microsoft acted on a court ordered civil seizure warrant from the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina to take down 1,462 Citadel botnets. The company wasn’t able to shut down all of the botnets using the Citadel malware.
“However, we do expect that this action will significantly disrupt Citadel’s operation, helping quickly release victims from the threat and making it riskier and more costly for the cybercriminals to continue doing business,” Richard Domingues Boscovich, assistant general counsel in Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit, wrote in a blog post.
Botnet malware turns computers into robots that are slaves to servers run by cyber criminal. They can command PCs to send spam, spread viruses, and attack other servers. In this case, the Citadel malware monitored and recorded victims’ keystrokes, a tactic known as keylogging. When users accessed their bank accounts online, the criminals were able to swipe the information needed to access accounts, and learn details about personal identities. What’s more, Citadel blocked access to anti-virus sites, preventing users from removing the malware.
Microsoft said that the Citadel malware hit about 5 million people in more than 90 countries. The biggest infections are in the United States, Europe, Hong Kong, Singapore, India, and Australia.
Social-gaming company Zynga is hoping that further cost cuts will right its heeling ship, and said Monday that it would cut 18 percent of its workforce.
The layoffs, which number about 520 positions, will be accompanied by other reductions to infrastructure costs.
The San Francisco-based company has been struggling to revive the momentum that propelled it to the forefront of Web-basedsocial games, after newer titles have failed to get the same traction as digital-livestock diversion FarmVille did out of the gate. Mobile is a key component of its turnaround plan, as is expense crimping, which Zynga implemented last year. That has helped it protect profit but hasn’t stanched the flow of departing gamers.
The company’s stock has been struggling alongside its games since it went public at the end of 2011, when shares closed below its $10 IPO price and have yet to recover. They’re currently worth about $3.41 each.
Western Digital subsidiary WD, which specializes in hard drives and storage platforms for small and midsize businesses (SMBs) announced it is shipping what it claims to be the world’s thinnest 1 TB hard drive with the release of the 2.5-inch WD Blue 7 mm hard drive.
The storage solution is designed to fit into thin and light systems, slimmer notebooks, as well as offer compatibility with the industry-standard 9.5 mm drive slots of mainstream notebooks. The Blue hard drive family is available in capacities from 320 GB to 1 TB in the 7 mm height. Currently shipping through select distributors and resellers, the 1 TB Blue mobile hard drive is covered by a two-year limited warranty, and the suggested price for the 1 TB model is $139.00.
“Users with large portfolios of content no longer need an Ultrabook or upgrading to a thin and light notebook,” Matt Rutledge, vice president and general manager for client storage products at WD, said in a statement. “This most compact 1TB hard drive to-date offers manufacturers of systems an upsell path for their customers who will now be able to choose systems offering both sleek design and high capacity.”
Features include WD’s ShockGuard technology, which protects the drive mechanics and platter surfaces from shocks, WhisperDrive technology that enables quiet performance and StableTrac, where the motor shaft is secured at both ends to compensate for system-induced vibration and stabilize platters for accurate tracking during read and write operations which enables consistently higher performance.
Google Maps is again expanding its bicycling directions services for travelers by adding six more European nations to its roster of countries where the popular feature is available.
“Back in 2012, we added biking directions to our maps for a number of countries in Europe,” wrote Kai Hansen, a Google product manager, in a May 27 post on the Google Europe Blog. “It proved to be a popular feature among cycling amateurs and enthusiasts. We’re now delighted to announce that we are now enabling biking directions in Google Maps for Germany, France, Poland, Ireland, Luxembourg and Liechtenstein.”
Google Maps first added biking directions to their maps for the United States and Canada in 2010. The 10 European nations added to the program in 2012 were Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the U.K. The directions are available using a desktop Web browser or through an Android mobile app that gives turn-by-turn and voice-guided directions in real time for travelers on the go.
By August 2012, more than 330,000 miles (equal to more than 530,000 kilometers, or half a gigameter) of bicycling routes were listed in Google Maps, according to Google. The dark-green lines on the maps show dedicated bike trails and paths where motor vehicles are not permitted, while light-green lines show streets with bike lanes. Dashed green lines show other streets recommended for cycling, and bicycling navigation services even help riders avoid steep hills.
The company has taken a tough stance against botnets and their operators in recent years. As the term suggests, botnets are Internet-connected networks of compromised computers—often running the Windows operating system—that can number in the thousands, or in the case of Rustock, more than a million.
Due to their sheer size, botnets are a formidable platform for flooding email inboxes with spam, launching denial-of-service attacks or acting as a springboard for more sophisticated and coordinated hacking attempts.
Microsoft teamed with Symantec earlier this year to shut down the Bamital botnet. The operation, part of the Microsoft Active Response for Security (MARS) project, involved raids at data centers in New Jersey and Virginia that led to the seizure of data and servers. In July 2012, the company identified and filed a lawsuit against two members of the Zeus botnet crime ring.
Now, Microsoft is upping the ante by mobilizing some massive computing resources of its own.
T.J. Campana, director of security for the Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit, announced May 28 that the company is leveraging its vast Windows Azure cloud infrastructure to add a real-time edge to Project MARS. Backed by the software behemoth’s cloud data centers, the company is “now able to share that information on known botnet malware infections with ISPs and CERTs in near real time,” he wrote in the Microsoft for Public Safety & National Security blog.
“The new Windows Azure-based Cyber Threat Intelligence Program (C-TIP) will allow these organizations to have better situational awareness of cyber-threats, and more quickly and efficiently notify people of potential security issues with their computers,” added Campana.
The new cloud-enabled C-TIP is tailored for ISPs and computer emergency response teams, or CERTs. Early participants include INTECO, the Spanish CERT, along with Luxemborg’s CIRCL and govCERT. Localized threat data is delivered to each organization’s private cloud via Azure roughly every 30 seconds, Capana said. “Participation in this system allows these organizations almost instant access to threat data generated from previous as well as future MARS operations,” he said.
The capability is expected to boost Microsoft’s efforts to sanitize networks and keep pace with a rapidly shifting computer security landscape, according to Campana. Plus, by taking infected systems out of play for cyber-criminals, “they’ll have to spend time and money trying to find new victims, thereby making these criminal enterprises less lucrative and appealing in the first place,” he stated.
Botnets can do more than spew unwanted spam and slow down the PCs of unwitting users. When it comes to stopping them, Microsoft argues that the stakes are high.
The five defendants, arrested May 24, in Spain, Costa Rica and Brooklyn, N.Y., are charged with one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering and one count of the operation of an unlicensed money-transmitting business, each which carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison. Two remaining defendants are at large in Costa Rica, according to a statement issued by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York.
Liberty Reserve allegedly had at least 1 million customers worldwide and processed more than $6 billion in transfers. Approximately 55 million transactions were processed, transferring what were thought to be the proceeds of credit-card fraud, identity theft, investment fraud, computer hacking, child pornography and narcotics trafficking, according to the statement.
“As alleged, the only liberty that Liberty Reserve gave many of its users was the freedom to commit crimes—the coin of its realm was anonymity, and it became a popular hub for fraudsters, hackers and traffickers,” U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in the statement. “The global enforcement action we announce today is an important step toward reining in the ‘Wild West‘ of illicit Internet banking.”
Liberty Reserve did not check the identities of their customers, allowing them to have anonymity and required that users transfer money into the Liberty Reserve system through third party exchangers, further muddying the trail of any suspicious transactions. For that reason, the Treasury Department and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) classified Liberty Reserve on May 28 as a “primary money laundering concern” under Section 311 of the USA PATRIOT Act.
The investigation into Liberty Reserve and the resulting shutdown of the service involved law enforcement agencies in 17 different countries, including Australia, Canada, China, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Latvia, Luxembourg, Morocco, the Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc on Tuesday said it would pay nearly $81.63 million to the federal government as it pleaded guilty to charges that it improperly discarded hazardous waste such as bleach and fertilizer years ago.
The U.S. Department of Justice said that in cases filed by federal prosecutors in California, Wal-Mart pleaded guilty to six counts of violating the Clean Water Act by illegally handling and disposing of hazardous materials at U.S. stores.
The world’s largest retailer also pleaded guilty in Kansas City, Missouri to violating the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) by failing to properly handle pesticides that had been returned by customers, the Justice Department said in a statement.
Wal-Mart said its plea agreements with the U.S. Attorneys’ Offices in the Northern and Central Districts of California, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Missouri and an administrative resolution signed with the Environmental Protection Agency bring an end to compliance issues that took place years ago.
Wal-Mart previously agreed in 2010 to pay $27.6 million to the state of California to settle a related lawsuit and agreed in 2012 to pay more than $1.25 million to the state of Missouri.
The issues involve prior practices such as throwing out lawn products such as fertilizer and pesticides in the trash rather than through a certified hauler.
In one instance, according to an earlier court filing, investigators in April 2002 observed “piles of multicolored unknown fertilizer type substances and torn sacks of ammonium sulfate” at one of the company’s stores in California, after learning a child had been playing on a pile of “yellowish colored powder” near the store’s garden department.
Elon Musk is on a roll this year, and he’s got an extra $2.9 billion to show for it.
The serial entrepreneur currently heads electric-car maker Tesla Motors (TSLA) and chairs renewable energy firm SolarCity (SCTY), which was founded by his cousins, brothers Lyndon and Peter Rive.
Tesla shares have soared more than 180% this year, with the firm reporting its first-ever quarterly profit earlier this month. SolarCity shares debuted on the Nasdaq in December at an IPO price of $8 and are now worth six times that, closing Friday at $48.78.
As the largest shareholder in both companies, Musk has richly benefited from their rallies.
As of December 31, he owned 33.1 million Tesla shares, including 5.9 million issuable upon the exercise of options, according to securities filings. That stake is now worth $3.24 billion, an increase of $2.1 billion since the start of 2013.
As of mid-April, he owned 20.8 million SolarCity shares. They’re now worth $1.02 billion, an increase of nearly $767 million since the start of the year.
Tesla and SolarCity declined to comment on Musk’s holdings.
First of all, a big thank you to the community for buying World Oceans Day t-shirts. We’ve reached our goal and the shirts will be printed! You can still buy a t-shirt, and the more t-shirts we sell, the more money will be raised for our coordination efforts.
