The Servers of The Hartford Insurance Company Gets Hacked Too

According to a notice of warning, hackers have compromised the system of The Hartford insurance company and were able to put in a spywares which steal passwords on few of the company's network server. This was sent to almost three hundred employees, contractors, and only few customers. The insurance company claimed that it learned about the infection in late February and admitted that several servers of its system were hit, including Citrix servers, which is under employees use for remote access to IT systems. A copy of this letter published by The Hartford's letter was posted to its website of the Office of the New Hampshire Attorney General.

The spokeswomen of the company claimed that "It was a very small incident" and that the fortunately victims were only the company’s own employees. But it was also acknowledged that around 10 customers were also affected by this malware, which is reported of W32-Qakbot Trojan kind, she declared. This type of spyware ‘Qakbot’ was first discovered two years ago, and it functions after being planted, by spreading itself from one computer to the others within the network. According to the company necessary steps were taken to cover all of its tracks, as it attempted to record sensitive data while opening up back doors for the hackers, in order to breach the insurance company’s network.

Epsilon’s Parent Company ‘Alliance Data Systems’ Also Issues Apology and Promises to These Catch Sophisticated Cyber Thieves

The parent company of Epsilon, Alliance Data Systems Corp., also spoke publically after the apology from the president of Epsilon, Bryan Kennedy. It again gave the confirmation of the same statement claiming that nothing else but the names and email addresses of customers were among the compromised data and that nothing like credit card information or social security numbers are even slightly under danger.

Alliance Data declared that this theft, which seems to be one of the biggest cyber crimes of its time, was conducted by the "highly sophisticated cyber thieves" hence it claimed that Epsilon has been completely investigating the "unauthorized entry" into its email system. It announced that all relevant federal authorities along with forensics experts are working collaboratively now enhancing additional security protocols to the database of its subsidiary, Epsilon.

YouTube Plans To Revolutionize Itself and Produce Its Own Channels, Just Like TV Channels

The world widely acknowledged Internet giant, Google, which belongs to the U.S. has now announced it’s planned a major make over to its video sharing website, YouTube. The Wall Street Journal reported this Thursday that YouTube was planning a full scale revolution, as it works on produce "channels" which will be rivals to the ordinary broadcast and cable TV.

This make-over will cost YouTube as much as $100 million, as it is assumed that YouTube homepage will be turned in to show up with different channels which will fashionably focus on different interests like arts and sports. Just as in Pay-Per-View TV channels which have known audience sharing the same interest e.g. Sports, News, Cooking etc. It is aimed that YouTube will form almost around 20 of its own original channels which will exclusively present hours of unique programming produced only to be displayed on YouTube Channels. This production will assumable ably take place capably every week to keep up with the programs. Whereas, the channels will not only be limited to these 20, rest of the channels will also be allowed to hosted by the users, though they will perhaps include videos which are uploaded to the website already.

Epsilon Gives an Official Apology and States It Had “Minimal If Any Impact" On the Company

The company behind the massive data theft which almost involved all of the companies with huge cliental like Best Buy, Citigroup, and plenty other renowned brands gave an official statement this Wednesday. It said that this theft has undeniably leaked millions of names with e-mail addresses but it promised that this mishap shall not hinder the company’s email marketing audience.

Epsilon, which is actually a subsidiary of Alliance Data Systems Corp., fell victim to a very large scale hacking. This inevitably triggered a panic in general as all the companies, whose data was stolen, immediately published public warnings to warn their customer to be precautious, hence this week all major retailers, banks and plenty others were a part of this practice.

Livejournal Blog of the Russian President Medvedev, Falls Victim to a Cyberattack

Tech Savvy President Medvedev

The blog of the Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, was apparently attacked by the cyber criminals and regardless of being on one of the best blog hosting website; it was a victim to such blunder. Livejournal is much popular with government critics in Russia, who are now tending to believe that such attack may for one of the major bearer of news tightening up on the freedom of speech.

Medvedev's blog, which is located at the address of http://community.livejournal.com/blog_medvedev was unresponsive due to the cyber attack for almost a complete hour on this Wednesday, after which the service was restored finally. An anonymous Kremlin official did admitted and confirmed that an involuntary shutdown took place and the reason behind it were cyber attacks.

LinkedIn Releases Second Version of Their Developer Platform

LinkedIn has initiated its second new developer platform, this time it promisingly includes much faster JavaScript APIs and now offering better environment for developers such as customizable plug-ins.

Logo of the new srevice.

The first time when LinkedIn introduced its own original developer platform, back in 2009, it was ready for all the developers with tools like setting of APIs for the third-party applications intergradations. However, the platform still had lacked few very common tools; one such tool was OAuth 2.0 and secondly there was no support even for advanced Javascript API. Company has reportedly have been testing for advanced Javascript API in the previous few months.