Apple has asked one of its more outspoken critics to investigate the security of the Mac OS. But the company may not be too happy with the results.
Apple is turning a blind eye to the security of its operating system, says Kaspersky Chief Technology Officer Nikolai Grebennikov, who said Apple recently asked his company to investigate the security of the Mac. Kaspersky has concluded that the company isn’t taking the security of its own platform seriously enough.
In an interview with computing.co.uk, Grebennikov said the Mac is “really vulnerable” to malware, pointing to the recent Flashback Trojan, which infected around 600,000 Macs around the world.
Flashback delivered its malicious payload by exploiting a known weakness in Oracle’s Java. Instead of giving Oracle the ability to patch the flaw on Macs, Apple insisted on running the updates itself. But it waited too long.
“Apple blocked Oracle from updating Java on Mac OS, and they perform all the updates themselves,” Grebennikov said. “They only released the patch a few weeks ago — two or three months after the Oracle patch. That’s far too long.”
Grebennikov believes the outbreak of Flashback is a sign that Apple needs outside help with its security. The choice of Kaspersky to probe the Mac OS is an atypical yet savvy move on Apple’s part. Kaspersky has been a harsh critic of Apple’s security, or lack thereof. CEO Eugene Kaspersky recently argued that Apple is around ten years behind Microsoft in security.
Asking one of your toughest critics to point out your own flaws may show that Apple is trying to get more serious about security. The company and its Mac users were bitten pretty heavily by Flashback, and Apple obviously doesn’t want any repeats of that incident.
Once off the radar of malware writers, the Mac OS has become a more inviting target as Macs have grown in popularity. Apple’s tight control over its operating system also means that third-party companies, such as Oracle, can’t just dive in with the latest patches and updates.
Apple is also trying to shore up security on its own.
The upcoming release of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion will include a new technology called Gatekeeper, which will tell the OS to run only applications that have been signed and approved by Apple.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57433761-37/kaspersky-probe-apple-doesnt-take-security-seriously-enough/?tag=mncol;editorPicks
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Courtesy of Nerd Approved
Narnia bedroom
Redditor kelseypolo knows a couple that used some extra space that was adjacent to their 9-year-old daughter’s bedroom to create a full-on Narnia wardrobe. Clearly these parents are awesome, but my guess is they will come to regret their decision. Having a place to hide is a valuable asset for a teenager.
Split bedroom
Mark Rodriguez has twin daughters with very different tastes – one is into flowers and butterflies while the other is a Superman fanatic. So how do you cater to both of their tastes when they share a room? Fortunately, Mark is an artist, and was able to create this fantastic split design. When I was a kid I shared a bedroom with my brother and we had a similar but less elegant set up. There was an invisible line running down the middle of the room and crossing it was considered an act of aggression. My action figures and his toy airplanes fought many battles.
Super Mario bedroom
Had this crazy dream last night where I was a tiny plumber with a thick, luxurious mustache that was trying to save a princess, but I was constantly being attacked by turtles and mushrooms. I should’ve known better than to eat pizza with cheeseburgers for crust before bedtime.
Star Wars bedroom with AT-AT loft bed
In the video above, you’ll learn how Instructables user BykManDan managed to build an AT-AT loft bed for his son. Of course, if you had a bed like this it would be smart to watch out for whoever had the bottom bunk. At night, they could secretly be plotting against you by tying a rope around the AT-ATs legs.
Courtesy of Nerd Approved
Pirate ship bedroom
Steve Kuhl’s son is lucky enough to have a father who’s handy with tools and possesses the imagination of a 9-year-old. In the boy’s bedroom he created a floating pirate ship complete with a rope bridge, jail cell and a spiral slide that descends two floors of the house where the Kracken awaits (otherwise known as the family dog).
source: http://www.gadgetbox.msnbc.msn.com/technology/gadgetbox/these-bedrooms-are-stuff-nerds-dreams-737398
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Actor Ashton Kutcher, who got his break on “That ’70s Show,” will go back to the 1970s to play tech visionary Steve Jobs in an indie film about Jobs’ early life and the founding of Apple.
Production on the film, “Jobs,” is scheduled to begin in May while Kutcher is on hiatus from his hit CBS series “Two and a Half Men,” reports Variety, the film-industry trade publication. It will be directed by Joshua Michael Stern (“Swing Vote”) and “will chronicle Steve Jobs from wayward hippie to co-founder of Apple,” according to Variety.
The timing of the story, which was published Sunday on Variety’s website, combined with Kutcher’s well-known love of pranks, led some to dismiss it as an April Fools’ joke. But CNN confirmed Monday through a representative for Kutcher that the actor has signed on for the role.
Jeff Sneider, the reporter who wrote the Variety article, said on Twitter on Sunday that the movie will follow Jobs from when he and Steve Wozniak founded Apple in 1976 to when Jobs returned to the company in the late 1990s after being forced out. It won’t cover Jobs’ later years, he said.
Jobs, who died in October after a struggle with cancer, dropped out of college and backpacked across India before launching the company that would make him one of the world’s most acclaimed entrepreneurs.
Kutcher, 34, is one of the more tech-savvy actors in Hollywood. He was an early and enthusiastic user of Twitter, where he has 10 million followers, and has invested in several Silicon Valley startups.
Kutcher’s movie will face competition from Sony Pictures, which is developing its own Jobs biopic based on the best-selling book by Walter Isaacson. A CNN.com report last fall speculated on which actor might play Jobs in that movie and threw out some names — James McAvoy, Crispin Glover, Stanley Tucci, Noah Wyle — but failed to mention Kutcher.
source: http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/02/tech/innovation/kutcher-steve-jobs-movie/index.html
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Announced Thursday at an event in San Francisco, PayPal Here is set to go head-to-head against mobile payment pioneer Square for part of the small business pie.
Much like Square, PayPal Here will have a card reader that plugs into your mobile phone via the headset jack on your handset. While Square’s reader comes in the form of a white square device, PayPal’s will instead be a blue triangle. The encrypted reader will be available for free to small business owners and can be used to accept credit card payments.
While the PayPal Here app is designed to be used hand in hand with the card reader, the app can also be used to accept checks, keep track of cash transactions, and accept credit card transactions in situations where you might not have your card reader present.
Credit card and check transactions can be accepted by capturing a photo of the check or card in question, and customers select a tip amount and sign for the transaction directly on the phone’s screen.
Started by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey in 2010, Square has set the standard for how small businesses accept payments using their mobile phones. The service recently announced it processes an astounding $4 billion in payments each year, and launched a new app that allows iPads to be used as cash registers.
Square is now used by NYC cabbies to collect fares, and by some campaign workers on the road trying to collect donations to support a presidential candidate.
PayPal Here charges users 2.7% compared to the 2.75% per transaction charged by Square. Each merchant that signs up for the service will also be given a PayPal Debit card which can be used to take cash out of your local ATM as soon as a sale is made, or can be used as a Mastercard to make purchases — purchases using the card will earn a merchant 1% back instantly, essentially taking that transaction fee down to 1.7%.
In addition to PayPal Here, PayPal also showed off an updated version of its mobile app today adding a Local section where you can browse for merchants in your area that currently use PayPal.
Much like Square’s register app, you can then notify a merchant you’re on your way to make a purchase. Your name and profile photo will show up for the merchant at its point of sale, allowing you to complete the transaction by simply asking for your purchase to be billed to your PayPal account.
This story originally posted on Mashable. http://mashable.com/2012/03/15/paypal-takes-on-square-launches-paypal-here-credit-card-reader/
]]>There will also possibly be a Windows 8 authoring tool as well as HTML add-ins too.
So what are we expecting to see in Office 15?
What will Office 15 be called?
Microsoft’s PR team refers to “Wave 15″ without giving any details (like “Wave 15 is currently under development, but we have nothing further to share at this time”). Several Microsoft job adverts and LinkedIn profiles for Microsoft employees use the name Office 15, and the Access team has referred to Access 15 – but Office 15 is unlikely to be the final name (Office 2010 had the Office 14 codename).
Although a discussion about SharePoint by what appears to be a Microsoft employee refers to Office 2013, the name is almost certainly going to be Office 2012. As usual, we’re expecting multiple Office 2012 versions from starter to home and small business versions as well as a full Office 2012 enterprise edition, with different combinations of apps.
When is the Office 2012 release date?
A job advert for Office Mobile testing in October 2010 referred to “Office 15 and Windows Phone 8 planning phase just getting under way”, rumours in March suggested the code had already reached Milestone 2 and what looks like a legitimate build leaked in May. The Office division takes two to three years to put out a new version and we saw the beta of Office 2010 in February 2010 followed by RTM in May.
Microsoft names products by the year after the financial year they come out in (so they don’t look out of date immediately), but Microsoft’s financial year ends in July – so anything that releases to manufacturing after July 2012 would have 2013 in the name. Office 2012 beta will probably show up early in the year again, with final code by the middle of 2012 and the actual Office 2012 release date would be before late summer.
Office 2012 features
“Office 15 is shaping up to be one of the most feature packed and exciting releases,” says a Microsoft job advert. There’s obviously noting official on the Office 2012 features at this stage but there are some hints, like Office president Kurt delBene saying at the Worldwide Partner Conference “We want to remain the leaders in productivity on the desktop. We need to push forward in new scenarios that we had not delivered before.”
CLEAN LOOK: The OneNote 15 interface is sparser and easier to navigate on a tablet
There’s going to be more video (both editing and using for meetings), more social network integration and maybe a whole new experience for meetings tying together the invitation you send in Outlook, the presentation you give in PowerPoint, the notes you take in OneNote and the Lync client you use for the online meeting.
Office 2012 interface
The Office 2012 interface is going to change from what we’ve seen in the leaked builds so far, but we’d bet anything you like that it’s not going to lose the Office ribbon. OneNote 15 already has a new look in the leaked build with a much cleaner interface that will work well on tablet PCs, and a quick thumbnail navigation to get to recent pages that also looks tablet friendly.
PowerPoint 15 doesn’t have any new themes, which reports from WPC mentioned, but it does preview themes straight from Office.com; it also has a new random transition option. A new M1 tab on the ribbon (probably a reference to new features in the Milestone 1 build) has a Data Grid tool that opens a redesigned version of the Chart picker with a new combo chart type. The same tab is in Word 15, along with an Extensions dropdown; there’s nothing on it but it’s where the new programming model we’ve been hearing about fits in.
CLOUD LINKS: No new transitions in the PowerPoint 15 leak but note how you can see themes directly from Office.com
Outlook shows the most interface differences, with a cleaner look that has more white space and resembles the Outlook Web App you get with Exchange and Office 365 – but again it keeps the ribbon. Instead of the vertical stack of buttons in the current interface there are Mail, Calendar and Contacts buttons at the bottom to switch to those views – and a menu with the familiar icons for Tasks, Folders and Shortcuts which lets you add them at the bottom as well.
METRO LOOK: More white space like Outlook Web App in Office 365, but the notifications and bottom buttons are very Windows 8
This has hints of the Metro style underlying the Windows Phone 7 and Windows 8 interfaces, especially with the notification icon for new messages and tasks. The M1 command here is for sorting subfolders alphabetically rather than keeping them in the hierarchy you created.
Office 2012 collaboration
The co-authoring features in Word and the Word Web App show up in small changes to the change tracking, making it easier to filter by who made changes or when changes were made. That’s part of what Word program manager Jonathan Bailor was promising when Office 2010 came out. ”
In Office 15, we’d love to take collaboration and communication to the next level. We’ve unlocked all of these new ways to work and a new set of expectations from users, and we’re like, “Put us back in the ring; we’re ready for round two.” Until coauthoring a document is as easy and ubiquitous as e-mail attachments, our job isn’t done.”
One hope is that Office 15 might deal with some long-standing issues in Office, thanks to an intern who worked on improving search features on Office.com and built a tool so the Office developers could look at what people are searching for and “leverage the data in Office ’15′ planning”.
Is there a new app in Office 2012?
Maybe but it isn’t Limestone; that’s the same internal testing tool we saw in Office 2010 builds. The leaked build includes a new program called Moorea (there isn’t a shortcut for it on the Start menu but you can run it anyway).
WINDOWS 8 LOOK: The new Moorea app lets you place images, text and links to Word documents on a tiled layout that’s very Metro
This lets you create layouts with images, text and links to Word documents, on a widescreen grid of tiles; it looks ideal for packaging up content into a Windows 8 tablet layout and we think it might be a tablet authoring tool – the files it saves are HTML…
source: http://www.techradar.com/news/software/applications/office-2012-what-we-re-expecting-to-see-990161
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The iPad 3 will be a substantial upgrade over the current model with a variety of “beefed up specs,” says Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu.
Based on information from supply chain sources, Wu says the new iPad will sport a much faster processor, a higher-resolution screen, 4G LTE wireless, and the addition of voice assistant Siri. The analyst believes a robust near-term refresh is due since the the iPad 2 is about to turn a year old.
This week, Apple announced an event for March 7 at which the company is expected to unveil its latest iPad.
Other reports have pointed to some of the same features expected by Wu, including a higher-resolution Retina Display screen, a speedier processor, and support for LTE.
But among all the new features, 4G LTE will be the key, according to Wu.
Apple will not only implement LTE, but will do it in a way that preserves battery life, Wu said. Soaking up battery power has been a major hiccup with LTE on previous mobile devices, one reason why Apple waited so long to dive into the higher-speed wireless technology.
“Our industry checks indicate Apple has made notable progress in improving battery life that has plagued competitors,” the analyst said in a report released yesterday. “This is due to Apple’s ownership of core intellectual property including systems design, semiconductors, battery chemistry, and software.”
Apple’s more energy-efficient LTE will fuel higher demand for the new iPad and help combat the competition.
“We continue to believe this significant refresh will likely help drive higher iPad sales and help further differentiate from Amazon’s Kindle Fire and the myriad of Google Android offerings out there,” Wu added.
Based on the new features in the iPad 3, the analyst now believes Apple will sell 55 million tablets this year, up from his previous forecast of 51 million. The current quarter is expected to see sales of 10 million. And for those of you who own Apple stock or have been thinking of buying it, Wu sees the price shooting up to $620 sometime this year.
source:http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57388357-37/ipad-3-to-be-significant-refresh-with-lte-and-siri-says-analyst/?part=rss&subj=crave&tag=title
]]>The concept is a step beyond the not always successful efforts a few years ago by some airlines — including Air France, Virgin Atlantic and Lufthansa — to build “walled” social networks out of their existing frequent flier memberships.
“For at least 10 years, there has been this question about serendipity and whether you could improve the chances of meeting someone interesting onboard,” said Erik Varwijk, a managing director in charge of passenger business at KLM. “But the technology just wasn’t available.”
Relative latecomers to the social media party, airlines are quickly becoming sophisticated users of online networks, not only as marketing tools, but as a low-cost way to learn more about their customers and their preferences. With Facebook alone claiming nearly 500 million daily active users — more than 60 times the eight million people who fly each day — KLM and others are betting that many of them would be willing to share their profiles in exchange, say, for a chance to meet someone with a common interest or who might be going to the same event.
The idea is catching on. Last year, Malaysia Airlines introduced MHBuddy, an application that allows users who book and check in via the carrier’s Facebook page to see whether any of their “friends” will be on the same flight or in their destination city at the same time. The platform, which claims 3,000 monthly active users, also enables existing friends to select seats together.
And airlines are not the only ones betting on the concept.
Planely, a Danish start-up, allows registered users who submit their itineraries to view the Facebook and LinkedIn profiles of others who will be on flights with them. Since it began in late 2010, Planely has connected more than 1,500 travelers, according to its chief executive, Nick Martin.
Satisfly, based in Hong Kong, allows users to submit profile information as well as their flight “moods” — whether they would prefer to talk shop or chat casually — and other details like languages spoken and preferences about potential seatmates. The information is then shared with its airline partners, which incorporate the data into their own seat-assignment platforms.
KLM’s service is available only to travelers with confirmed reservations who are willing to connect their social profiles to their booking. After selecting the amount of personal information they wish to share, passengers are presented with seat maps that show where others who have also shared their profiles are seated. You can then reserve the seat next to anyone who seems interesting — provided it is available — and that person will receive a message with your profile details.
On a flight from Amsterdam to São Paulo this week, for example, you could have chosen the director of a British answering service, who has a passion for reggae and jazz; an Italian chemical engineer fluent in Dutch, English, Spanish and Portuguese; or a Norwegian alternative-rock fan en route to visit family in Argentina.
This month, the Dutch carrier KLM began testing a program it calls Meet and Seat, allowing ticket-holders to upload details from their Facebook or LinkedIn profiles and use the data to choose seatmates.
The concept is a step beyond the not always successful efforts a few years ago by some airlines — including Air France, Virgin Atlantic and Lufthansa — to build “walled” social networks out of their existing frequent flier memberships.
“For at least 10 years, there has been this question about serendipity and whether you could improve the chances of meeting someone interesting onboard,” said Erik Varwijk, a managing director in charge of passenger business at KLM. “But the technology just wasn’t available.”
Relative latecomers to the social media party, airlines are quickly becoming sophisticated users of online networks, not only as marketing tools, but as a low-cost way to learn more about their customers and their preferences. With Facebook alone claiming nearly 500 million daily active users — more than 60 times the eight million people who fly each day — KLM and others are betting that many of them would be willing to share their profiles in exchange, say, for a chance to meet someone with a common interest or who might be going to the same event.
The idea is catching on. Last year, Malaysia Airlines introduced MHBuddy, an application that allows users who book and check in via the carrier’s Facebook page to see whether any of their “friends” will be on the same flight or in their destination city at the same time. The platform, which claims 3,000 monthly active users, also enables existing friends to select seats together.
And airlines are not the only ones betting on the concept.
Planely, a Danish start-up, allows registered users who submit their itineraries to view the Facebook and LinkedIn profiles of others who will be on flights with them. Since it began in late 2010, Planely has connected more than 1,500 travelers, according to its chief executive, Nick Martin.
Satisfly, based in Hong Kong, allows users to submit profile information as well as their flight “moods” — whether they would prefer to talk shop or chat casually — and other details like languages spoken and preferences about potential seatmates. The information is then shared with its airline partners, which incorporate the data into their own seat-assignment platforms.
KLM’s service is available only to travelers with confirmed reservations who are willing to connect their social profiles to their booking. After selecting the amount of personal information they wish to share, passengers are presented with seat maps that show where others who have also shared their profiles are seated. You can then reserve the seat next to anyone who seems interesting — provided it is available — and that person will receive a message with your profile details.
On a flight from Amsterdam to São Paulo this week, for example, you could have chosen the director of a British answering service, who has a passion for reggae and jazz; an Italian chemical engineer fluent in Dutch, English, Spanish and Portuguese; or a Norwegian alternative-rock fan en route to visit family in Argentina.
This month, the Dutch carrier KLM began testing a program it calls Meet and Seat, allowing ticket-holders to upload details from their Facebook or LinkedIn profiles and use the data to choose seatmates.
The concept is a step beyond the not always successful efforts a few years ago by some airlines — including Air France, Virgin Atlantic and Lufthansa — to build “walled” social networks out of their existing frequent flier memberships.
“For at least 10 years, there has been this question about serendipity and whether you could improve the chances of meeting someone interesting onboard,” said Erik Varwijk, a managing director in charge of passenger business at KLM. “But the technology just wasn’t available.”
Relative latecomers to the social media party, airlines are quickly becoming sophisticated users of online networks, not only as marketing tools, but as a low-cost way to learn more about their customers and their preferences. With Facebook alone claiming nearly 500 million daily active users — more than 60 times the eight million people who fly each day — KLM and others are betting that many of them would be willing to share their profiles in exchange, say, for a chance to meet someone with a common interest or who might be going to the same event.
The idea is catching on. Last year, Malaysia Airlines introduced MHBuddy, an application that allows users who book and check in via the carrier’s Facebook page to see whether any of their “friends” will be on the same flight or in their destination city at the same time. The platform, which claims 3,000 monthly active users, also enables existing friends to select seats together.
And airlines are not the only ones betting on the concept.
Planely, a Danish start-up, allows registered users who submit their itineraries to view the Facebook and LinkedIn profiles of others who will be on flights with them. Since it began in late 2010, Planely has connected more than 1,500 travelers, according to its chief executive, Nick Martin.
Satisfly, based in Hong Kong, allows users to submit profile information as well as their flight “moods” — whether they would prefer to talk shop or chat casually — and other details like languages spoken and preferences about potential seatmates. The information is then shared with its airline partners, which incorporate the data into their own seat-assignment platforms.
KLM’s service is available only to travelers with confirmed reservations who are willing to connect their social profiles to their booking. After selecting the amount of personal information they wish to share, passengers are presented with seat maps that show where others who have also shared their profiles are seated. You can then reserve the seat next to anyone who seems interesting — provided it is available — and that person will receive a message with your profile details.
On a flight from Amsterdam to São Paulo this week, for example, you could have chosen the director of a British answering service, who has a passion for reggae and jazz; an Italian chemical engineer fluent in Dutch, English, Spanish and Portuguese; or a Norwegian alternative-rock fan en route to visit family in Argentina.
source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/24/business/global/selecting-a-seatmate-to-make-skies-friendlier.html?_r=1&ref=technology
]]>We would love to hear what yours were!
The researchers hid an 18 cm cylindrical tube from microwaves by putting it in a shell of plasmonic metamaterial.
Metamaterials are artificial materials engineered to have properties that may not occur in nature.
Plasmonic metamaterials are negative index metamaterials, meaning they are, in essence, invisible at a certain frequency range.
How You See It, How You Don’t
When light strikes an object, it bounces off the object’s surface. We see an object when the light bouncing off its surface reaches our eyes.
However, plasmonic metamaterials circumvent that process by scattering light at a frequency that cancels out the rays of light bouncing off them. That means the light from a surface covered with a plasmonic metamaterial won’t reach your eyes from any angle.
The researchers cloaked the tube used in the test with a shell of plasmonic metamaterial, then directed microwaves toward it and mapped the resulting scattered light both around the tube and further away.
The cloak was most effective when the microwaves were at a frequency of 3.1 GHz and issued over a moderately broad bandwidth.
In October, scientists from the University of Texas in Dallas demonstrated a cloaking device that works best underwater and has an on/off switch. They used sheets of carbon nanotubes — sheets of carbon one molecule thick shaped into cylindrical tubes.
Dreams of Hogwarts may be closer than we all think.
source: http://www.technewsworld.com/story/Scientists-Close-In-on-Invisibility-Cloak-74285.html
]]>Anonymous is a group that hacks into websites to bring the sites down, all in retaliation for SOPA and PIPA. This group has been very busy this week, taking down Universal Music Websites, DoJ, RIAA and MPAA.
Did you contribute? If you clicked a link distributed by Anonymous yesterday you may have unknowingly helped the online activist in their attacks against U.S. government and entertainment industry sites organized to protest proposed anti piracy legislation.
Anonymous has launched distributed denial-of-service attacks, designed to shut down Web sites, against government and corporate sites in the past. Typically, supporters download software called Low Orbit Ion Canon (LOIC) that directs their computer to repeatedly try to connect to a target Web site. So many digital knocks on the door, as it were, can shut a site down so no one can get in.
However, the source of the attack — the IP address for the individual computers attempting to access the site — can easily be traced when LOIC is used, putting participants at risk of prosecution. (Despite that threat, people were downloading LOIC like mad since Wednesday, including more than 19,000 downloads in the last day, according to a blog post by security firm Imperva.)
So, Anonymous has come up with a way to allow people to participate without risking arrest. In protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and yesterday’s government takedown of file hosting site Megaupload and indictment of its operators, Anonymous launched DDOS attacks on more than a dozen sites and used a new tactic.
The group distributed Web links yesterday during its attacks on the Department of Justice, FBI, Universal Music and a host of other sites, that made joining the attacks as easy as clicking the mouse. The links led to Web pages with special JavaScript instructions that automatically redirected the visiting computer to a Web site being targeted for attack. The computer continues attempting to access the target site until the Web page is closed.
Another version of the tool would direct computers to a Web page that a visitor could type in the IP address to target and the page would automatically refresh in the background so the computer would continually try to access the target.
The tool relies on JavaScript being enabled, and given how many Web sites require Java it’s likely most of the people who clicked the links were unwittingly drawn into the attacks.
It’s likely that the tricky links increased the effectiveness of the attacks, which appeared to have impacted overall Internet traffic patterns, at least for a while, according to a real-time Web monitoring site operated by content delivery company Akamai. The site registered 218 attacks yesterday hours after the attacks started. Attack-related traffic was up 24 percent over normal, while general network traffic was up 14 percent.
The links were distributed on Twitter, IRC, Facebook, Tumblr and other sites and there was no indication that they were potent. Some of the links led to sites similar to Pastebin, where Anonymous often posts its messages. Other links were obscured using Web address shorteners like Bitly.com. “From the looks of things, this is on a scale we haven’t seen before,” said Graham Clulely of Sophos security company. “We saw some Anonymous Twitter accounts gain hundreds of thousands of new fans overnight as word began to spread.”
If you did happen to click one of the links, you aren’t likely to get in trouble. For one, investigators might conclude that all the different IP addresses that hit the site during the attack were part of a botnet of compromised computers. And even if investigators suspected that the blasts from your IP address on the target site were conducted as part of the attack, it’s unlikely that you would be singled out for a visit from the authorities, said Jennifer Granick, an attorney who has represented defendants accused of computer crimes. “If you are an unwitting participant then technically you’re not liable under the law because all criminal statutes, with some narrow exceptions, require some criminal state of mind,” such as acting “knowingly” or “intentionally,” she said.