5 Million Online Passwords Leaked, Check Yours Now

Almost 5 million Gmail addresses and their passwords have been compromised and leaked on a Russian Bitcoin forum. Admins on the forum have removed the passwords from the text file, but the Internet is forever, so if your username is among those that have been hacked, you should change your password immediately.
Luckily, there’s a quick tool you can use to figure out if your account information was leaked. Just head to http://isleaked.com/en.php and input your email address. [Edit: If you're wary of inputting your email address on a site you're not familiar with, the best course of action is simply to change your password as a precaution. Update: For added assurance, we reached out to isleaked.com via email, and they pointed out again that you can substitute a few asterisks so as not to give up your full email address and assured us that they aren't collecting the email addresses entered.] It’ll tell you whether or not you need to change your password and then helpfully remind you that you probably should do that regularly anyway, which you totally do, right? (Yeah, neither do we.)
According to The Daily Dot, Google representatives told Russian media a lot of the data is outdated, and the user who posted it claims that around 60% of the passwords are current. Also leaked were accounts for Russian services Mail.ru and Yandex, and it appears the data was collected over years of phishing efforts and other hacks without actually compromising any of the companies’ databases.

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Sri Lanka Postal Code Finder Beta version has been released!

A simple mobile web site has been brought to light for finding a postal code in  Sri Lanka with some with some useful features.

Features

• Postal Code Lookup
• Reverse Postal Code Lookup
• Locate Requested  Postal Code on Map
• Get Directions to Requested  Postal Code
• Save and Bookmark 
• Find current  location
• Share on Social Networks
• Mobile Device Optimization
                 and MTC..................................
  
  
  Find it here.

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Microsoft buys Nokia

Microsoft has bought Nokia’s struggling mobile phone business for €5.44bn (£4.61bn) in an effort to “accelerate” its challenge to the dominance of Apple and Google.

The deal will see Nokia’s current chief executive, Stephen Elop, join Microsoft and makes him favourite to replace Steve Ballmer, who announced his retirement last month. Labrokes said he was now 4/6 favourite to take the role, with Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg 7/1 and former Microsoft executive Steve Sinofsky 12/1.

Nokia’s chairman, Risto Siilasmaa, admitted that the Finnish company’s effective exit from the mobile phone business it pioneered was an “emotional” decision but made financial and strategic sense.

He said it lacked the resources to properly promote its Lumia smartphones, which use Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system, in a sector dominated by the Apple iPhone and handsets running Google’s Android software, particularly Samsung’s Galaxy range.

He said: “The industry is becoming a duopoly with the leaders building significant financial momentum. Nokia alone doesn’t have the resources to fund the required acceleration.”

The struggles of Nokia’s mobile phone business, which accounted for around half the group’s revenues last year, have weighed heavily on profits. In the first half of this year underlying margin was 4pc, it said, but would have been 12pc without having to battle in the fiercely competitive sector.

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Facebook data leak affects six million members

Facebook has issued an apology for allowing the personal data of around six million users to be exposed.

The social network acted quickly to rectify a bug that was sharing email addresses, phone numbers and other details of its account holders, but admits it is "upset and embarrassed" by the incident.

"At Facebook, we take people's privacy seriously, and we strive to protect people's information to the very best of our ability," said Facebook in a statement.

"Even with a strong team, no company can ensure 100% prevention of bugs, and in rare cases we don't discover a problem until it has already affected a person's account.

"It's still something we're upset and embarrassed by."

The firm assured users whose data was breached that it was only shared with a small amount of people they know, and insisted that there is no evidence of it being used maliciously.

Facebook is adamant that the glitch will not be reoccurring.

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Anonymous hits US government site

The website of the US Sentencing Commission was shut down following a cyber attack on January 26, 2012. (File photo)

The hacker group Anonymous has briefly shut down a website belonging to the US Justice Department, following a warning by the Homeland Security about an imminent 9/11-style cyber attack.

The Saturday attack by the group against the US Sentencing Commission (USSC) website has been explained as a kind of revenge for the government’s prosecution against the deceased American dissident blogger Aaron Swart.

The group briefly replaced the USSC’s front page with a letter which claimed that they had accessed secret data at the US Justice Department and threatened to publicize the information unless the US reformed its sentencing laws to make them more proportionate to crimes.

The attack comes after Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano warned on Thursday against the looming threat of a major cyber attack and urged immediate action to prevent a “9/11 in the cyber world.”

According to FBI’s Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch, the bureau is investigating the cyber attack on the USSC website.

Also in a video posted online, the hackers slammed the government's prosecution of Swartz, who faced a maximum sentence of 31 years in prison and fines of up to USD one million on charges of using the computer networks of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to steal over four million articles from JSTOR, an online archive and journal distribution service.

On January 12, the 26-year-old prominent computer prodigy was found dead in his apartment in the New York borough of Brooklyn.

Brooklyn’s chief medical examiner ruled the death a suicide by hanging, but no further detail was available about the mysterious death.

Last year, Swartz openly criticized the US and the Israeli regime for launching joint cyber attacks against Iran.

The blogger was also vocal in criticizing Washington’s so-called targeted killing operations carried out by US assassination drones in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Swartz was critical of monopoly of information by corporate cartels and believed that information should be shared and available for the benefit of society.

In a memorial website, Swartz’s family described his death as “the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach.”

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