According to the KrebsOnSecurity blog, the famous adultery website, AshleyMadison.com, has been hacked. Along with the hack they threatened to leak details including credit cards, sexual fantasies, and nude photos. There are as many as 37 million customers on the website.

The dating website AshleyMadison.com’s Canadian parent, Avid Life Media, confirmed the breach on its systems, and said it had since secured the site and was working with law enforcement agencies to trace those behind the attack.

It’s not too surprising a site like Ashley Madison would be targeted since the websites audience has a lot at stake.

At first it was thought that Obama’s Twitter account was hacked after a shortened link sent users to a Syrian account, however it was found to be the URL shortened software that was hijacked instead.  By hijacking the URL shortener, they were able to redirect user’s to the link of their choice!

Obama campaign group Organizers for Action: “An account with our link shortener was hacked. [But] at no point did they have access to the Twitter handle.” Twitter has also confirmed to us that there’s no evidence the Twitter account was hacked. The tweet was up for 19 hours before the redirect was noticed, making it possible that the change happened only recently. Not long after, the link was fixed; it now sends readers to Barack Obama’s site.

We accessed many Obama campaign emails accounts to assess his terrorism capabilities. They are quite high #SEA pic.twitter.com/ARgGLX8IjN

— SyrianElectronicArmy (@Official_SEA16) October 28, 2013

Apparently deeply frustrated by this brush off from the Facebook team, Khalil used the glitch to bring home the point pointedly, by hacking into Zuckerberg’s Facebook profile page. He also apparently send a post to Zuckerberg (deleted immediately), apologizing for breaking into the privacy of his FB account.

The Facebook team swung into action by suspending Khalil’s account, alarmed that Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook Page has been hacked. Facebook’s security engineer sent a mail to Khalil requesting him to provide details of his exploit. After receiving the details from Khalil, the security engineer mailed that the details provided were not enough to reproduce an issue, and thus effectively denied Khalil the credit for bringing this glitch to the notice of Facebook.

Facebook has a proven policy of paying money to any hacker who finds security flaws in the social network. The minimum bounty amounts to $500. But the company denied Khalil the money on the ground that Khalil had violated Facebook’s Terms of Service, through his actions.

Facebook’s security team have claimed to have fixed the bug, while admitting that the company should have asked Khalil for more details when he had first reported the glitch, instead of brushing him off.

Facebook has claimed to have paid over $1 million to hundreds of reporters who have brought glitches to the notice of the company. The company admits that most of the genuine glitches are reported by people who are not comfortable with English, but at the same time the company claimed to have received hundreds of reports which were nonsense or misguided, and thus Khalil’s report, could have been an error creeping into the system of scanning reports. This brings down the curtain on the sensational breaking news that a security expert hacks Mark Zuckerberg\s Facebook Page

The UDID is a unique 40-digit code assigned to each iOS device and is often used by developers to distribute beta apps to an iOS device. Besides the UDID, some records in the FBI database also contained names, addresses, mobile phone numbers and other identifying information. The group stripped out most of the personal information from the 1 million leaked records, but left the Unique Apple Device ID, Apple Push Notification Service DevToken, Device Name and Device Type, so users can search for their device.

Find out if your Apple ID has been hacked

First find your Apple UDID

To find your iPhone’s UDID, just plug it into your computer and wait until iTunes recognizes it. Select your phone from the Devices list in iTunes and click the “Summary” tab. To see your UDID, click on the word “serial number” beside the picture of the iPhone. You should see the word “identifer” and an alphanumeric string – this is your UDID.

Search for your Apple ID

Search through the leaked records using The Next Web tool.

So what if they have my email and password?

What do hackers do with millions of email addresses other than the potential embarrassment to these users?  The hackers can use these emails and passwords to try and access more sensitive accounts like Facebook, PayPal, etc…  Recently someone got a hold of my Gmail account, and let me tell you, it wasn’t pretty what they did.  I learned a valuable lesson: If you use one password across the web, a hacker can access almost anything.  For example:  if you use your “myname@gmail.com” account and password “1234” in your gmail, facebook, some random site, another random site, anther site you forgot about, then all it takes is for a hacker to gain access to one of those sites to get into all of your accounts.  They can even reset passwords so you can’t access accounts.  Soon I’ll explain how I got hacked and you’ll understand better!

OOPS!  NYT made a huge mistake sending out an email on Wednesday.  They mistakenly sent an email to over 8.6 million people rather than 300.  The email sent out told people they’d cancelled their print subscription, and urged them to reconsider by offering a special discount — 50% off for 16 weeks.

Many Twitter followers started thinking that New York Times was hacked or spammed.  They started to publish Tweet’s like, “Was New York Times Hacked?”, but this was not the case according to NYT.  This is a simple mistake if you’ve ever used newsletter software.  It’s very easy to have multiple lists checked off for a blast or get campaigns mixed up.  I guess it could’ve been worse though, what if it was something more personal?  This makes you realize what happens when a business is on a large scale.  It’s so much more detrimental to send off a newsletter than a website with 10,000 subscribers!  All I know is that I wouldn’t like to be the one who takes the blame for sending out that email, what about you?

“A while ago it was Charlie Sheen. And then it was Sarah Palin. And then it was Donald Trump,” said Richardson, who is a video producer for Make Magazine. “And after a while I realized there’s sort of always someone who I don’t really want to hear about.”

Richardson combined a couple of Arduino circuit boards with an infrared LED light — that little red bubble on the front of your TV remote — and programmed the whole thing to interact with a TV’s closed-captioning system.

As long as that person’s name keeps coming up, the remote keeps muting the TV. The first time he got it to work, Richardson said he “was in silent bliss for that 30 seconds I didn’t have to hear about Kim Kardashian.”

He explains the remote in detail in his blog post.  Although it’s not 100% accurate an may miss the first reference at times, user’s are already thinking about inventive ways to use Matt’s Enough Already Auto-Mute Remote.

“You could generate the list of key words dynamically. E.g., by monitoring Twitter’s trending topics or by parsing Google’s zeitgeist lists,” one reader suggests.

One user has a great idea for a college drinking game:

“Back in my college days we had a drinking game based on the Bob Newhart Show. Every time someone said his name (Bob) everyone had to take a shot and if they said Robert (usu. only his Dad) it was a 2 shots deal. You’d get rather toasted before first commercial so it tended to end there.

So monitor the feed for ‘Bob” and then sound off a buzzer or bell circuit instead of IR LED. Have simple box with bell/light or ????. “

Daniel Spitler, the 26 year old hacker that hacked into 114,000 of AT&T’s iPad 3G users personal information last year, could be facing up to 10 years in federal prison for his crime.

Spitler, who lives in San Francisco, was pleaded guilty to two crimes: conspiracy to gain unauthorized access to computers and identity theft – both crimes carry a 5 year sentence each.

“Computer hackers are exacting an increasing toll on our society, damaging individuals and organizations to gain notoriety for themselves,” said U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman in New Jersey. “Daniel Spitler’s guilty plea is a timely reminder of the consequences of treating criminal activity as a competitive sport.”

via BGR

I’ve written previously about How To Get Email Notifications for your Facebook Fan Pages, but this was sort of a hacked work around that worked, but was  bit cumbersome to stay up with.

Ironically, that post has been ranking between 1 and 3 in Google since mid-year 2010 for “facebook fan page email notifications“, and I’ve gotten a lot of feedback, insights, insults, etc… from people all over the world talking to me about the method I describe.

Luckily for you and I, there is a new “OFFICIAL” way to receive email notifications when someone comments on your Facebook Fan Page.

This does need to be setup in your Facebook account work properly, but I can testify to the effectiveness of the notifications because I’ve been getting emails of new comments pretty consistently since two days ago when I set it up.

Here’s how to setup your official email notifications for your Facebook Fan Pages

Let me make one quick note before the step – by – step… you’ll notice that you can also set up to receive email notifications for all of the pages you “admin” – which is a really great feature!

1) First you need to click “Account” in the upper right in corner of Facebook (you must be logged in)

2) Now you’ll see a drop down menu > go ahead and click “Account Settings”

3) Find the tab called “Notifications” and click that

4) The fourth section down is called “Pages” > you need to check the box called “Replies to your discussion board post” – this will allow you to receive email notifications for responses from people reacting to your comments

5) Next find the link at the bottom of the “Pages” section that says “Change email settings for individual Pages”

6) Finally, go through the list of Facebook Pages and check the box next to the Page you want to receive email notifications for. You can check them all, or hand pick the ones you want to actually show up in your inbox > now just click “Save” and you’re done.

Let me know if you have any questions in the comments below, or call 706-363-0335 (Robert).

This is a little bit scary, I must admit.

According to the Wall Street Journal, hackers have successfully penetrated the computer systems of the NASDAQ over the past year.

And this has not been just a one time occurrence.

The NASDAQ computer systems have been successfully hacked and penetrated repeatedly over the past year, according to NASDAQ officials.

According to the WSJ, “So far, [the perpetrators] appear to have just been looking around,” said one person involved in the Nasdaq matter. Another person familiar with the case said the incidents were, for a computer network, the equivalent of someone sneaking into a house and walking around but—apparently, so far—not taking or tampering with anything.

An investigation is now being conducted by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Secret Service.

Google to pay hackers $1000 for successfully hacking the Android OS running on Google TV.

Google TV, and the Android OS running it, has been successfully hacked, and Google is actually excited about it.

According to Google developer Howard Harte, “this means we now have a complete Android development environment for the Google TV.”  And with a successful hack of the Android OS, Google TV now has the ability to run Android apps.

Harte actually put out a contest offering any hacker $1000 for the first successful jailbreak.

A group calling themselves GTVhacker dev team rose to the challenge, and released a 6-minute video of their process of hacking Google TV.

Here’s the video of the successful Google TV jailbreak hack:

via Switched

Facebook has just reported, via their Facebook status blog, that they are experiencing site-wide delays, slow response times, and error messages. Again, this is a site-wide report so the impact is more than likely global versus regional or isolated to a cluster of servers.

Here’s what Facebook is reporting as of 2:30 p.m. EST:

Current Status: Slow response times

We’re currently seeing slow response times site-wide. This issue may also be affecting Platform apps and sites using Platform. We’re working to resolve the root cause and will update here when the matter is resolved.

In previous articles on slow Facebook response issues, I’ve recommended people clear the cache of whatever browser they are using.

However, with this problem being server side to Facebook specific, really there isn’t anything you can do except wait for Facebook to resolve their issues.

So are you experiencing slow response times from Facebook today?

What type of error messages are you getting?

Previous articles on Facebook technical issues:

Cannot Connect To Facebook

Why Is Facebook Down

Facebook Login Problems

Was Facebook Hacked?

Can’t Login To Facebook

If you own a Mac 10.6 Snow Leopard, or an iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch running iOS 3.0 or above, then at 10:00 a.m. PST (1:00 p.m. EST) go to this URL to watch Apple’s conference via livestreaming:

www.apple.com/uk

Apple is hosting another one of their exciting conferences today where they will make major announcements about current and future product developments. Apple has decided to live stream the conference today, which is cool thing. But the live stream will only be available to compatible iOS devices and Macs running 10.4 Snow Leapard. The live event will kick off at 10:00 a.m. PDT today. And for those of you with a PC, I’m sure you’ll be able to find some hacked up version of the live stream somewhere on the web.

Apple compatible devices for the live stream:

• OX 10.6 Mac running Safari
• iPhone running iOS 3.0
• iPod touch running iOS 3.0
• iPad

Here’s Apple’s official announcement of the live streaming event:

Apple to Provide Live Video Streaming of Today’s Event

What: Live video stream of Apple’s October 20 event

When: Wednesday, October 20, 2010, 10:00 a.m. PDT

Where: www.apple.com/uk

Live Video Streaming

Apple® will broadcast its October 20 event online using Apple’s industry-leading HTTP Live Streaming, which is based on open standards. Viewing requires either a Mac® running Safari® on Mac OS® X version 10.6 Snow Leopard®, an iPhone® or iPod touch® running iOS 3.0 or higher, or an iPad. The live broadcast will begin at 10:00 a.m. PDT on October 20, 2010 at www.apple.com/uk.

This broadcast is the property of Apple and is protected by US copyright law and international treaties. Any reproduction or distribution is strictly prohibited without prior written approval from Apple. Please contact Apple Public Relations with any questions.

Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork, and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple is reinventing the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced its magical iPad which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices.

via CrunchGear

Yesterday, Facebook users were reporting widespread login problems. These users were reporting issues from all locations globally so it obviously isn’t isolated to a specific location or server.

With the Facebook login problems continue on today, and actually some reporting the issues are getting worse, there is not speculation that Facebook has actually been hacked.

Whether Facebook has been hacked, or servers are just down preventing users from logging in, one thing is for sure – people are not happy about the Facebook issues.

What message are you getting?

So are you trying to login to Facebook but having issues?

What are the errors you are receiving?

What messages, if any are you seeing?

Or are you just getting a blank white screen, or Facebook not loading at all?

People who use the Cox.net webmail service are reporting to have received a potentially dangerous email requesting users to update their accounts by “reconfirming” personal information.

Here’s the email reported as being received by Cox.net webmail users:

> Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2010 05:36:15 +0700
> Subject: FINAL VERIFICATION OF YOUR EMAIL ACCOUNT
> from:
> Tο:
>
> dear Email Account Owner,
>
> Thіѕ message is from webmail messaging center tο аll webmail account
>
> owners. Wе are currently upgrading our data base аnd e-mail account
>
> center. Wе are terminating аll unused email accounts tο create interval fοr
>
> nеw accounts.
>
> Tο prevent уουr account from being terminated, you will have tο update
>
> іt by providing the information requested below:
>
> ****************************************…
>
> CONFIRM YOUR EMAIL IDENTITY NOW
>
> Email Username : ………. …..
> EMAIL Password : …………….
> Date of Birth : ……………..
> Country οr Territory : ……….
> ****************************************…
> Warning!!! Account owners that refuses tο update his οr hеr account
> within seven days of receiving thіѕ warning will lose his οr hеr account
> permanently.
>
> Webmail Administrator.

This is more than likely a hacked message from a milicious source.

If you use Cox.net webmail services, do not proceed with this request.

Legitimate companies would never ask for such information on wide broadcast basis.

via LindaJonesWork

The Boston Celtics took a 2-0 lead in the Eastern Conference Finals last night against the Orlando Magic. Although this is only game 2, with a lot more basketball to be played, some people might be thinking that the Orlando Magic could possibly get swept by the Boston Celtics.

And this theory might even be reinforced by the fact that the Boston Celtics are 32-0 in the playoffs – pretty strong numbers indeed.

Apparently that’s what Paul Pierce, Boston Celtics super star player, was thinking as well when the following tweet emerged from his Twitter profile:

“Anybody got a BROOM?”

That tweet came directly from PaulPierce34 – the “verified” Twitter profile of the Boston Celtics player.

But there’s only one problem with this tweet – based on the time stamp of the message, Paul Pierce was actually talking with reports when that tweet was posted. So what happened? Did Paul Pierce’s Twitter profile get hacked?

There is no question about the authenticity of Paul Pierce’s Twitter profile. His account has the official “Verified” Twitter logo that comes directly from Twitter, and is common for high profile Twitter accounts.

The “Anybody got a BROOM?” comment sent the media into a frenzy and the tweet even made it’s way into an interview with Orlando Magic star Dwight Howard. When asked about what he (Dwight Howard) thought about Paul Pierce’s tweet, Howard said, “Pride come before a fall.”

Paul Pierce’s representatives are now stating that without question, the Twitter account has been hacked and that Paul Pierce did not send out that message.

And of course, if you visit Paul Pierce’s Twitter profile now, you won’t find the update because obviously he deleted it.

According to Pro Basketball Talk, Paul Pierce’s Twitter updates mostly come from the web or via SMS (text messages from a mobile phone). However, the “anybody got a BROOM?” tweet was generated through the twitterific platform.

And as I mentioned earlier, support for the Paul Pierce Twitter hack theory is that other people saw Paul Pierce talking with reporters at the time of the “anybody got a BROOM?” update.

Here’s what some of the supporting tweets said about Paul Pierce:

“RT @taramanis @athleteint I saw [Paul Pierce] talking to other reporters when these were sent… no cell in hand.”

What do you think?

Do you think that Paul Pierce would actually say something like this through his Twitter profile?

Do you think that Paul Pierce’s Twitter account has been hacked?

And finally, will the Boston Celtics sweep the Orlando Magic in the Eastern Conference Finals?

Google Android OS Installed on iPhone (Video)

So much for Apple’s (Steve Jobs) goal of keeping the iPhone closed off to the world of open source, Flash, and other Android favorable attributes. The iPhone has gone far beyond just being jailbroken – someone has now figured out how to install, and successfully run, Android on the iPhone.

This is truly one of the craziest things I’ve seen in a long time. I mean, who would’ve thought that Android would have be running on an iPhone? Who ever thought that the iPhone would ever been running anything other than the iPhone OS?

According to ZDNet.com, iPhone Hacker and Dev Team member planetbeing has successfully installed Google’s Android operating system on the iPhone. He even set it up to dual boot Android and the iPhone OS.

The craziest part about the iPhone being hacked to run Android is that flash can run on the iPhone.

So in do time, when Adobe releases Flash 10.1 then the iPhone will ultimately be able to run flash.

Hmmm… I wonder if Adobe isn’t behind this whole iPhone hacked to run Android gig.

My only question here is this – if Android can run on the iPhone, then will the iPhone OS be able to run on Android powered phones?

Or better yet, would any Android OS owner even want to put the iPhone OS on their phone?

Probably not since the iPhone cannot run flash.

Here’s the Android running on iPhone video:

YouTube 500 Internal Server Error – some suspect that YouTube was hacked…?

It’s early Monday morning, those of us who get up especially early – like around 4:30 or so – usually like to head to the computer (or now your iPad) and fire up the web to check things out.

However, if one of the sites you frequent is YouTube, then you may have been one of the relatively few people who saw, and experienced YouTube’s 500 Internal Server Error.

When YouTube went down, most users saw either a “500 Internal Server Error” or an “Http/1.1 Service Unavailable” message.

According to Mashable, the downtime lasted about an hour and only the front page was affected. Videos were still served properly.

Google’s response to the downtime: “YouTube is temporarily unavailable. Our engineers are currently working to restore the site.”

Was YouTube Hacked?

The buzz on the web is building around the theory that YouTube might have actually been hacked. Some people are associating the 500 Internal Server Error with a hack job.

Yet other are claiming that this is simply a result of YouTube’s server vulnerabilities that are long standing with the video sharing site.

What do you think?

Was YouTube hacked this morning?

Or was this just a simple server error?

Is Google leaving China as soon as next month?

There is a rumor spreading on the web that Google will be exiting the China market as soon as April.  The meltdown started with Google’s servers were hacked from people in China, and that incident only fueled more anger over the fact that China would censor Google’s search results.

So because of these two major issues, Google has been speculating leaving the China market altogether.  Basically Google refuses to have a search engine with censored results – and I have to agree with Google, I wouldn’t want that either.

Engadget broke the news and you can read more about it here.

Google Hits Impasse in China

The efforts to find common ground in China over Google censoring their search results seems to be coming to an abrupt end.  China is simply unwilling to allow Google to display search results that are not censored. This decision by China is about to cost the country the use of Google altogether.

From eTaiwanNews.com:

Google, the US-based search giant, is “99.9%” sure to withdraw its service from China over the negotiation impasse concerning website censorship, according to a local report. The China government noted on Mar 12 that there is no concession over the censorship issue in order to retain the internationally-known company.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt noted on Mar 10 that Google’s negotiation with China over news censorship and hack attacks will be soon to come to an end despite lack of clear timetable at a media conference in Abudhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.

“We are no longer willing to censor our search results in China, and we are currently reviewing our options,” Google vice president and deputy general counsel Nicole Wong said in her testimony before the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee.

“If the option is that we’ll shutter our .cn operation and leave the country, we are prepared to do that,” said Wong

The image above shows the beginning phases of construction on the Google China headquarters.

However, construction on the facility has ceased due to Google getting hacked by people in China, and also directly over the issue of China demanding Google to censor their search results.

Google is nearly 99.9% sure they will be existing the China market.

According to Wired.com, “the giant California-based chip maker was rumored to have been among some 34 companies that were targeted, but said on Tuesday there was no evidence to tie its hack to the attack on Google and others.”

“As some people noticed, at approximately 10:30 pm PST on Monday evening the main site in the TechCrunch Network – techcrunch.com – was hacked and redirected. The site was back up briefly at 11:30 pm but shortly went down again. As of 2:00 am, the site is back up and appears to be stable.

At this point we’re still gathering information on how the site was compromised, and will update this post with additional information.”

The BBC is reporting that Graham Cluley of security firm Sophos said in a blog post: “There’s no such time as a ‘good time’ to be hacked of course, but one can only imagine that today is a better day for TechCrunch to be hacked than tomorrow when the site will, presumably, be expecting a large amount of traffic.”

Apple is expected to make an announcement about a new product on Wednesday – possibly a tablet computer – which TechCrunch will closely follow.

“This hack is a salutary warning to all website owners that everyone has to be on their guard against hacking, whether your site is big or small,” said Mr Cluley.

TechCrunch was founded by entrepreneur Michael Arrington and profiles Silicon Valley start-ups and technology firms across the US.

TechCrunch is regarded as one of the most influential technology sites on the internet.

The famous Twitter Fail Whale is what you get when the Twitter servers are down, or Twitter is otherwise inaccessible:

Unless of course, Twitter got hacked by The Iranian Cyber Army – you’d then get this:

You see, when someone like Google gets hacked in a place like China, it sets off a whole string of diplomatic events – no wait… diplomatic grenades – on issues like data security, and even open trade agreements with China.  These issues of data security, open and free trade, and human rights issues in China are all brought to light when a company like Google gets hacked.  Obviously Google, nor the United States, appreciates events like this.

According to CNET.com,  the U.S. government plans to ask China for a formal explanation regarding the cyberattacks against Google and other U.S. companies, according to a State Department spokesman.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had already hinted at such a move in a statement she released when Google first revealed the attacks. “We will be issuing a formal demarche to the Chinese government in Beijing on this issue in the coming days, probably early this week,” AFP quoted State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley as saying during a briefing Friday.

This will be a very interesting story to follow indeed, with huge implications both for China, Google, and the United States – not to mention all the sub categories under those big three that will be affected, like trade, human rights, technology trading, etc… not to mention the least, the fact that the Chinese people aren’t going to benefit from the Google’s Android mobile OS.

And like I mentioned already, just today Google announced that they are postponing the release of two of their Android phones.  This is going to be really bad for the Chinese market place, and for the government.  Inevitably, the Chinese people will turn to the black market, just like they did and are doing with the iPhone.

So what’s more important to Twitter users right now besides the Iranian Cyber Army hacking Twitter?

Here’s the current trending list:

Trending Topics

Sure, nobody lost their lives over this attack (maybe a couple of jobs were lost though in Twitter’s web security department!)  But what the Iranian Cyber Army achieved, in most people’s eyes, is unprecedented – hacking Twitter and actually replacing the site with an entirely different image.

The Dangers of Cyber Terrorism

The issue here with “cyber terrorism”, and with Twitter getting hacked, is that we see the vulnerability of social networking sites.  Twitter has literally hundreds of millions of updates shared every day from people around the world.  And from what we just saw, these updates are clearly “hackable” and accessible to someone who is knowledgeable and determined enough to get to them.

All of the updates on Twitter are already searchable by keywords and other search queries at https://twitter.com/search-home.  But for all the searches that are available publicly, there is an entire world of Twitter that is “private”.  And it’s the Twitter profiles that are set to “private” that are obviously not as private as we may have thought.

There is definitely reason to be concerned over this blatant attack on Twitter.  It shows that even the most robust of websites can be hacked by unknown people, and once a site is hacked, then it’s pretty much a free for all for whoever has the access.

Just be careful what you’re sharing!

For a site as popular as Twitter, this is certainly a big shock to all the users, and probably an even bigger shock to Twitter themselves.

From the Twitter status update blog at 11:28pm on 12/18/09:

Update (11:28p): Twitter’s DNS records were temporarily compromised but have now been fixed. We are looking into the underlying cause and will update with more information soon.

And then another status update around 1:00am on 12/19/09:

We are working to recovery from an unplanned downtime and will update more as we learn the cause of this outage.

And like I said, not only did the hackers get into Twitter, they actually replaced the main site with their own image – and here it is:

Diddy reportedly had his Twitter account hacked into early morning today. Diddy who uses Twitter frequently, saw a fake tweet on his account that said  “Go cop your new phone from Verizon Wireless… in Tribeca.”

Diddy later noted the post within minutes and informed his followers – here’s his Tweet:

A recent blog post at Digits – The Wall Stree Journal’s technology blog – stated that:

The Marine ban formalizes an existing block on social-networking sites on its government computers, and it does not affect members’ personal use of the sites.

So Marines, or any other military member with a personal computer, can use the social networking sites – just not while on government computers.

And although I understand the public’s initial outrage at the steps taken by the Pentagon, if you sit back for a moment and think about it, I somewhat the like the idea.

If a soldier is on a government computer that has been hacked, and releases some unit sensitive data, then that information could literally affect the lives of the entire unit.

I would also think that a soldier – unless I absolutely had a death wish – would not release mission critical information through Facebook or Twitter.  But that’s not to say that mistakes don’t happen, and also what one soldier might not think is mission critical – it might be all the information the enemy needs.

It will be interesting to see how this unfolds and is very intriguing, at the very least, to see the impact that social media is having on our modern day military activities.