Cocoon

"BlackHole is a widely-used, web-based software package which includes a collection of tools to take advantage of security holes in web browsers to download viruses, botnet trojans, and other forms of nastiness to the computers of unsuspecting victims. The exploit kit is offered both as a "licensed" software product for the intrepid malware server operator and as malware-as-a-service by the author off his own server."

Australia: "The Cybercrime Legislation Amendement bill 2011 was passed by the Senate. If a law body wants to search your home they have to apply for a warrant to a judge ... make a good case based on the law and the judge decides. Today any government bureaucrat can search your online life anytime they want. But before you thinks that is bad, it is probably about to get even more invasive: "

"Mobile phone owners might have a reason to worry about their privacy, or at least they feel like they do. According to a new Pew Research study, nearly one-third of mobile phone owners have experienced losing their cellphone or having it stolen. And 12% said their phone has been accessed in a way that made them feel like their privacy was invaded. These privacy worries have caused more than h"

"A researcher at the University of Oslo in Norway says that page-less phishing and other untraceable attacks may be possible, using a tried and true internet communications standard: the uniform resource identifier, or URI. Henning Klevjer, an information security student at the University of Oslo in Norway, suggests in a just-released research paper that it may be possible for attackers to dispense with phishing sites altogether, embedding their entire scam webpage in an encoded data URI that can be passed around from victim to victim."

"A shortcoming in browsers including Firefox and Opera allows crooks to easily hide an entire malicious web page in a clickable link - ideal for fooling victims into handing over passwords and other sensitive info. Usually, so-called "phishing attacks" rely on tricking marks into visiting websites designed by criminals to masquerade as banks and online stores, thus snaffling punters' credentials and bank account details when they try to use the bogus pages. However this requires finding somewhere to host the counterfeit sites, which are often quickly taken down by hosting companies and the authorities or blocked by filters."

"FinFisher can turn on users' microphones or cameras without them knowing, take periodic screenshots and log keystrokes, she said. The FinSpy Mobile component carries a range of capabilities - including recording phone calls, tracking GPS locations, intercepting text messages and logging keystrokes."

"A researcher at the University of Oslo in Norway says that page-less phishing and other untraceable attacks may be possible, using a tried and true internet communications standard: the uniform resource identifier, or URI."

"In many ways, the Internet has finally evolved to a place where it is having just the type of transformational affect that we early e-mailers dreamed it might."

"new collaboration with child-safety advocate Marc Klaas' KlaasKids Foundation that aims to harness the power of social networking to protect children from predators and abusive marketers alike."

You already know that Facebook and privacy don't really get along, but many "improvements" to the service are making it easier and easier to share everything without even knowing. Avi Charkham rounded a bunch of these tricks up over at TechCrunch, and they're as subtle as they are sketchy.

Latest improvement is making you share more.

The company launched DNSCrypt, software that users can run which helps prevent man-in-the-middle attacks on domain names and can also help anonymize your web site requests from prying eyes.

They employed what's known as an SQL injection, manipulating the online forms where visitors enter information. The hope was to trick the underlying database into spitting out valuable corporate data. They were sophisticated and persistent hackers, but kept tripping over roadblocks. The site continually slowed to a crawl. Their automated tools were thwarted by CAPTCHAs, those online boxes that force users to translate squiggly letters.

Be sure to check out the report!  "Americans Reject Tailored Advertising." 66% of the respondents said they did not want websites to show them ads tailored to their interests. 49% said they didn't even want discount offers tailored to their interests. And young people were not much more interested in being targeted than old folks like me. What's more, when consumers are informed about common ways that marketers gather the data they use to tailor ads, between 73% and 86% say they would not want such advertising.

Society has an obligation to protect our children and online safety for children should be a priority. We need a three-pronged approach to address this issue: policy changes; industry self-regulation; and more parental tools, monitoring and education.

Occupy Privacy is about people taking back what belongs to them.

It seems like Google Plus is becoming more and more prepared for the imminent Google+ Brand Pages. Features like Ripples, Hangouts with extras, What's hot and the Google Apps availability will bring social conversion to the next level for Google Plus business pages and also more possibilities on Google+ to teach, learn, work, and play.

Spreadsheet of Google+ Shared Circles

The breach of Tor that will be revealed at Hackers to Hackers wasn't released with much in the way of real information; The blog at Torproject.org has a written response to the incident and is worth a read to try and separate sensationalism from fact. It seems clear that Tor isn't positive that a compromise has occurred, and in fact take the stance that this is a fact of life; it's what makes security better.

This is the fourth time Google has disclosed a six-month summary of government requests since the company started reporting the numbers last year following a high-profile showdown with China's communist government over online censorship. With Tuesday's update, Google included the total number of user accounts targeted, instead of just the number of requests made by police, prosecutors, courts and other agencies at all levels of government worldwide.

- We might want to send Cocoon to BoingBoing once the software is stable. ---If your employer or corrupt, undemocratic, dictator-based government uses a filtering service such as Secure Computing's SmartFilter to block access to BoingBoing.net -- or anything else online -- you can try the following workarounds