1.5 million credit cards "exported" in hack of payments processor
The network intrusion that hit Global Payments was confined to its North American operations and "exported" data for about 1.5 million holders, the credit card payments processor said Sunday evening. Atlanta-based Global Payments didn't say what it meant by the term "export" nor did they say how many accounts were actually exposed by the breach.
The exported information included Track 2 data. Cardholder names, addresses, and social security numbers were out of reach of the attackers, the statement added. It went on to say the breach has been contained and investigators are "making rapid progress toward bringing this issue to a close."
"The company continues to work with industry third parties, regulators, and law enforcement to assist in the efforts to minimize potential cardholder impact," a Global Payments statement read. "It has engaged multiple information security and forensics firms to investigate and address this issue."
Executives have scheduled a conference call for Monday at 8 am EST. An Ars FAQ related to the Global Payments breach is here.
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The x86 PlayStation 4 could signal a sea-change in the console industry
The successor to the PlayStation 3, apparently codenamed "Orbis," will use an AMD x86 processor with an AMD "Southern Islands" GPU, according to rumors emerging last week. Xbox 360's replacement, purported to be named "Durango", is also rumored to use an AMD GPU—either a Southern Islands variant or an equivalent to a Radeon HD 6670—this time paired with a PowerPC CPU.
Though these rumors are thoroughly unconfirmed at the moment, they're all well within the realm of plausibility. But if they prove true, the Orbis and Durango will be decidedly mid-range at launch when compared to top-of-the-line PC hardware. The Xbox 360, launched November 2005, and the PlayStation 3, launched November 2006, were both cutting-edge systems at their release. Their capabilities were unmatched by PCs of the time. If these rumors are to be believed, the eighth console generation won't be a repeat of the seventh.
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Feature: Adobe Lightroom 4 reviewed
Version 4 of Adobe's popular Lightroom hit the streets a few weeks ago. While the feature list isn't extensive, it thankfully lacks padding (new yellow button somewhere!). The public beta took the wind out of any surprises but the release was highly anticipated for a number of new features: GPS tagging in the new Map module, book creation and export, video file support and basic clip editing.
Another big feature was the downgraded price tag: Lightroom 4 is now half the price of version 3; $149 is sweet for an application this powerful (the upgrade price is $79). The motivation for this change was clear. Apple, on a price-cutting binge of their Mac App Store professional apps, dropped the price of Aperture 3 down to $80. That's still almost half as cheap as Adobe's Lightroom but there is no longer a demo for Aperture, so you have more risk involved in making that purchase. Anyway, Apple's selling hardware, not apps, so I don't fault Adobe for failing to match Aperture's shareware-like price point.
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Hollywood's Selectable Output Control: has it gone from FUD to dud?
One year and eleven months ago, the Federal Communications Commission made a decision that Hollywood hailed as a huge breakthrough and reform groups called a setback for consumer rights. The FCC gave the studios and cooperating pay television companies permission to shut down the analog streams to HDTV home theaters. The technical term for this is "selectable output control"—until May of 2010 forbidden by the Commission; now available via waivers.
"This action is an important victory for consumers who will now have far greater access to see recent high definition movies in their homes," declared Bob Pisano, then President of the Motion Picture Association of America, shortly after the ruling. "And it is a major step forward in the development of new business models by the motion picture industry to respond to growing consumer demand."
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After the hack: FAQ for breach affecting up to 10 million credit cards
What happened?
According to published reports, Visa and MasterCard recently warned card-issuing banks that a third-party payments processor suffered a security breach. This breach may have exposed the Track 1 and Track 2 data needed to counterfeit cards. The compromise, according to both KrebsonSecurity and The Wall Street Journal, happened sometime between January 21 and February 25. It's not clear if attackers had access for that entire period.
After the reports were published, Global Payments Inc.—an Atlanta-based company that says on its website it handles "billions and billions of transactions per year for over a million points of service across North America"—issued an advisory confirming it had "identified and self-reported unauthorized access into a portion of its processing system." In early March, the statement added, company executives "determined card data may have been accessed" and promptly alerted Visa, MasterCard and the US Secret Service. Global Payments has scheduled a press conference for Monday morning at 8 am EST.
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Comics on the iPad: will the new iPad attract paper readers?
Comics have been around for centuries, but the iconic Action Comics #1 featuring Superman in 1938 is widely considered to be the beginning of the “Golden Age.” Other metalliferous ages followed: silver, bronze, iron. Now, comics are in the “Modern Age.” And the biggest question both today and going forward—will comic books largely remain on glossy paper or transition to backlit LED?
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French anti-P2P law cuts back pirating, but music sales still decline
France's three-strikes anti-piracy law is one of the strictest in the world. It employs private companies to scan file-sharing networks for copyright infringement and sends warnings to pirates if they're caught red-handed. The law, enforced by a French authority called Hadopi, was instated 17 months ago to the applause of music copyright holders and their representatives. Although an early study originally showed piracy had actually increased after the anti-P2P law passed, Hadopi released a report this March saying French ISP users had significantly decreased their illegal file sharing. Despite that announcement, the French music industry still saw a decline in revenue.
Hadopi used the reports of two different companies to ascertain the decrease in pirated traffic. One metric said illegal data sharing on peer-to-peer networks decreased by 43 percent, another survey used a different methodology and saw a 66 percent decrease in illegal P2P traffic. While Hadopi only monitors peer-to-peer networks, its recent study noted there's "no indication that there has been a massive transfer in forms of use to streaming technologies or direct downloads."
For all the fanfare in Hadopi's 14-page report celebrating the crackdown on music and video piracy, the music and video industries in France did not see increased profit in 2011 compared to the year before. The overall recorded music industry saw a 3.9 percent loss, and France's video market dropped 2.7 percent overall.
The depressed sales likely won't take copyright holders off the warpath. In fact, both music and video industries saw significant increases in purchases of digital media. In music, download revenues increased by 18.4 percent. Streaming and subscriptions revenue grew by 73 percent, largely due to the rising popularity of Spotify and Deezer. According to a domestic video publisher's group, video-on-demand sales increased 50 percent.
An article on the French website Numerama also noted that streaming music played a large part in increasing sales of digital music downloads, and surprisingly, concert tickets. Streaming music did not, however, influence a user's impetus to buy CDs.
These numbers show that despite the hemming and hawing about piracy eating up entertainment industry revenue, the transition from physical discs to digital files is a huge factor in negative growth. No matter what, music industry officials are unlikely to let up on piracy. More than likely, they will adopt the argument that media sales would be even lower without ISP monitoring.
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White House IP czar: anti-piracy laws should not block free speech
The White House's Annual Report on Intellectual Property Enforcement is out, and there are some encouraging words in the 130-page document. The policy compendium reiterates what the Obama Administration declared in mid-January when pressed to take a position on the Stop Online Privacy Act.
Back then, the White House announced itself a SOPA skeptic. Apparently, it still is. "Online piracy is a serious problem," says US Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator Victoria A. Espinel, but the administration "will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk (including authority to tamper with the DNS system), or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet."
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Judge rejects copyright trolls' BitTorrent conspiracy theory
A federal judge has rejected attempts by several copyright holders to compel ISPs to hand over the identifying information of numerous customers without actually filing copyright lawsuits against them. The Friday opinion by James F. Holderman of the Northern District of Illinois is the latest sign of growing judicial skepticism toward the new wave of copyright trolling campaigns.
While mass litigation against illicit file sharing was pioneered by the recording industry, recent lawsuits have often focused on the sharing of pornography rather than music. Many would-be defendants, regardless of their actual guilt, are anxious to settle to spare themselves the embarrassment of having their names publicly associated with online porn.
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Hands-on: GNOME 3.4 arrives, introducing significant design changes
The developers behind the GNOME project have announced GNOME 3.4, a new version of the desktop environment. The update brings several significant new features and a number of design and usability improvements.
GNOME is an open source software stack that provides a desktop shell, applications, and development frameworks that are commonly used on the Linux platform. It is the default desktop environment in Fedora and several other Linux distributions. It's released every six months on a time-based development cycle.
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Hackers politely deface security firm website, suggest fixes
A Cayman Islands security firm got a bit of unsolicited web security advice on March 30 from MalSec, a group of "malicious security" hackers who recently broke into a server belonging to the Nigerian Senate. But unlike some of the nastier site defacements done recently by members of Anonymous' #AntiSec collective—including takedowns of two Federal Trade Commission sites—the MalSec hackers left the site itself intact, posting only a replacement home page to advise the company, The Security Centre Ltd., of their vulnerability.
The hackers posted a new index.htm home page on Security Centre's site to override their PHP-powered site maintained by web design firm NetClues, which proclaims Security Centre "Cayman's premeir full-service provider of security services and systems."
"Whilst no harm was done to the original site," the hackers wrote on their replacement home page, "we urge you to secure your site before claiming to be 'the best of the best' in any kind of security. We were not first—traces of previous security breaches were found." The page gave instructions on how to return the site to normal, and advised the company to "please oversee your security before somebody else with more harmful intent does. You can thank us later <3."
In a Twitter post attributed to MalSec, the group pointed to the defacement, and wrote "We aren't just madhakkars with no souls! That's for the gingerhackers. We see a hole we fix it. unless urlame." After claiming responsibility for a hack of a server belonging to the Nigerian Senate, the group posted a file alleged to include the hashed passwords of senators and cracked passwords of the lawyers that work with them.
Ars Technica attempted to contact Security Centre about the defacement on Saturday by e-mail, alerting them to the fact that the site was still defaced. There was no response from the company, but the site was restored about an hour after the email was sent.
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