syria

This year's Cyber Monday was one for the record books.

Market analyst ComScore reported that spending in the U.S. on Monday reached $1.465 billion, up 17 percent from a year ago, "representing the heaviest [U.S.] online spending day in history and the second day this season (in addition to Black Friday) to surpass $1 billion in sales."

ComScore said that the top category for sales was digital content and subscriptions (up 28 percent), followed by consumer electronics (up 24 percent and "buoyed by gains in smartphone sales"), computer hardware (up 22 percent, … Read more

Google and Twitter have restarted their Speak2Tweet service to let people disseminate voice messages over Twitter as a way to sidestep Syria's Internet blackout.

The Speak2Tweet service got its start during Egypt's Internet blackout in February 2011 but has been largely dormant since then. Late yesterday, Google announced on Google+ that it's brought the service back online:

In the last day, Internet access has been completely cut off in Syria. Unfortunately we are hearing reports that mobile phones and landlines aren't working properly either. But those who might be lucky enough to have a voice connection … Read more

Concluding that the Syrian government was responsible for the country's Internet blackout, the online hacktivist group Anonymous has announced a campaign against Syrian government Web sites hosted outside the country.

The Middle Eastern country began experiencing an Internet outage earlier today, and many people on Twitter reported that phone lines are down as well. All 84 of Syria's IP address blocks have become unreachable, effectively removing the country from the Internet, according to Renesys, which operates a real-time grid that continuously monitors Internet routing data.

Anonymous said it had conducted an "exhaustive analysis" of the blackout … Read more

Early this morning, Syria went offline.

Some more scary news is coming out of Syria early this morning. Apparently the entire country has gone dark, completely vanishing from the Internet over the course of just a few minutes. According to Renesys, a company that operates a real-time Internet-monitoring grid, all of Syria's IP connectivity has become unreachable.

Today Google has announced the acquisition of Incentive Targeting, a maker of coupon programs that tailor to users' behaviors and likes. The company has worked with retailers to design trackable coupons that help gauge their performance and usefulness.

CNET has a review of the Jawbone Up … Read more

The Middle Eastern country has been experiencing an Internet outage for several hours, and many people on Twitter are reporting that phone lines are down as well. In addition, some airlines are canceling flights to Damascus.

According to Renesys, which operates a real-time grid that continuously monitors Internet routing data, all 84 of Syria's IP address blocks have become unreachable, effectively removing the country from the Internet. The outage started at 10:26 UTC (12:26 p.m. in Damascus or 5:26 a.… Read more

Al-Jazeera has become the second news agency in a little more than a month to be targeted by pro-Syrian government hackers.

The Qatar-based satellite TV station revealed in a tweet this morning that its short messaging service had been compromised and used to send false news reports, including a report that Qatar's prime minister had been assassinated:

"We'd like to inform our subscribers that Aljazeera SMS service is being compromised by pirates and they've sent fake news with no basis," the news organization said, according to a translation by The Hacker News.

A group calling … Read more

Someone must have it out for Reuters. For the second time in two weeks, the blogging platform for the news source's Web site has been hacked into and false stories have been illicitly published.

Today's sham article reported that Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal had died, according to Reuters. The first bogus story, posted earlier this month, was about the rebel Free Syrian Army suffering setbacks in their battle against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

"Reuters did not report the false story and the post was immediately deleted," Reuters News' director of … Read more

As the Syrian civil war continues to escalate, pro-government forces are allegedly carrying out a cyberwar against local dissidents.

Syrian activists, journalists, and government opposition groups are under a barrage of targeted malware attacks, according to the watchdog group Electronic Frontier Foundation. What this malware does is deceptively install surveillance software into a computer under the guise of protecting the computer from viruses. Its name is AntiHacker.

Once the malware is installed in the computer, with promises to "Auto-Protect & Auto-Detect & Security & Quick scan and analysing [sic]," it actually begins to spy on the user. Using … Read more

The 19th century military theorist Carl von Clausewitz famously asserted that war was an expression of politics by other means. A 21st century postscript: add cyber hacking to the list of means.

With Syria in the midst of a raging civil war, somebody hacked the Reuters.com Web site on Friday with a phony post purporting to carry an interview with Free Syrian Army head Riad al-Asaad.

"Our blogging platform was compromised and fabricated blog posts were falsely attributed to several Reuters journalists," the company said in a statement and later tweeted. "We are working to address … Read more