Have you ever wondered if there is someone out there who looks just like you?  Probably everyone has entertained the thought at some point.   But the thought of it actually happening?  Well, if you’re really that curious, here’s your opportunity.

The Facial Profiler, a new facebook app, is actually an ad campaign launched by Coke Zero, its point being that the calorie-free version is so much like the real thing, they can prove it by showing that every single person on the planet has a doppelganger.  Here’s how it works: you upload a photo of yourself and you’re matched with a similar-looking Facial Profiler user.  The idea is that you can find your mirror image, just the way Coke has in Coke Zero.

I suppose it’s kind of a cool concept, if you can get past the high creepiness factor.  I don’t know if I want to know that there’s another person walking around out there with my face.  And what happens once I find that person?  Do we build an online bonding relationship and hope to meet in person one day so we can sit and stare at each other?

Coca-Cola is aware of the potential privacy concerns that a facial-matching app could raise, but it has been working with Facebook for months to ensure the app follows the site’s privacy rules.  Facial Profiler users will be able to send friend requests to their lookalikes, but Coke admits it doesn’t quite know how members will use it.  “Alex Burnard, a creative director for the ad firm that worked with Coca-Cola on this project, has watched members’ reactions when they find their matches, saying that it introduces “a new social dynamic” that people haven’t encountered before.

The software is based on the same kind of technology used by law-enforcement agencies to locate individuals within large pools of people.  Watching the ad on the Coke Zero website feels like watching a preview for a psychological thriller about doppelgangers, or a 20/20 special on identity theft.  It’s pretty intense.  As a big fan of Coca-Cola products and avid facebook-user, I’m not so sure about this one, but you just have to go to the website and see for yourself.

Source: gather.com

Ready for some more Apple news? Good. Say goodbye to the Mighty Mouse (for reasons beyond those legal entanglements) — the Magic Mouse has arrived. Hate buttons or moving parts? So does Apple, and nothing exemplifies the company’s march towards a buttonless future more than this “two button” laser mouse, which has one button and no scroll wheel — just a multitouch surface (a hard acrylic) across the top. With the Magic Mouse you’re able to do familiar gestures from the Mac trackpad playbook such as two-finger swipes, but you can also do single-finger horizontal and vertical scrolling, complete with a software-based inertia (see a video here). Sorry kids, no pinch zoom. The wireless device boasts a four-month battery life, and will be available today for $69. Full press release is after the break.

Source: engadget.com

Everybody’s worst online banking fears have come true — for some German banking customers. The rest of us can hold our collective breath and hope that we don’t have to deal with this, although it seems inevitable that some of us will.

A cyber-criminal gang in the Ukraine has developed a very elaborate system for not just stealing the money from bank accounts, but tricking the computer into displaying a fake online account — so that in August, several hundred German customers were looking at their online bank account and seeing money that wasn’t actually there.

Apparently, these fake online accounts aren’t static either — so if you transfer money from one account to another, it’ll play along. The only way you won’t realize you have no money is if you do banking from an uninfected computer or, say, go to your ATM. I can imagine the screams of horror emitting from some of these poor (literally) customers. I’m pretty sure if it had happened to me, I’d have had a stroke.
This lovely news was recently reported by the cyber-security firm, Finjan, based out of California, and now, of course, computer publications are over this, from PC World to Wired, which has posted the full Finjan report online, if you’d like to read it.

They call this computer virus the URLzone Trojan.

The way these customers became victims was by visiting a Web site, some fake and some real but compromised with a piece of computer code that once it gets into your own computer, can then get to all of the data on your machine — your passwords, your e-mails, everything.

And then, as Wired explains, “the malware grabs the consumer’s log in credentials to their bank account, then contacts a control center hosted on a machine in Ukraine for further instructions. The control center tells the Trojan how much money to wire transfer, and where to send it. To avoid tripping a bank’s automated anti-fraud detectors, the malware will withdraw random amounts, and check to make sure the withdrawal doesn’t exceed the victim’s balance.”

Well, hey, that’s helpful and nice of these cyber-thugs — no overdraft fees. Well, not until you start spending money you think you have but don’t.

This gang was pretty sophisticated in their heist. They hired people, who thought they were working for a reputable company, to accept the money from these bank accounts and then send the money onward, making its way to the Ukraine gang, and making it harder to track them down. According to PC World, the thieves “managed to infect about 7.5 percent of the 90,000 computers they attacked before Finjan got access to their command-and-control server.”

But in that time, the thieves were bringing in, in American dollars, $1,750 a day. That would have been over $630,000 a year, if they hadn’t been stopped. As it was, CNET is reporting that in 22 days of August, the criminals took in $438,000, or about 301,000 euros.

So what does this all mean for the rest of us? I wish I had an answer, but common sense still seems to be the order of the day — be very vigilant in making sure your computer is extremely well protected and, of course, try to avoid going to any really strange looking, unfamiliar Web sites that might have these Trojan codes lurking around in the first place.

Geoff Williams is a regular contributor to WalletPop, mostly writing about banking issues. He is also the author of the non-banking book, C.C. Pyle’s Amazing Foot Race: The True Story of the 1928 Coast-to-Coast Run Across America (Rodale).

Source

* Facebook, Twitter increasingly interesting for hackers

* Eight e-mails out of nine were spam in Q3

* Bank fraud software now cover tracks, use money mules

By Tarmo Virki, European technology correspondent

HELSINKI, Sept 30 (Reuters) – Cyber criminals are increasingly focusing their attacks on the hundreds of millions of users of social networks and on loopholes in bank security systems, security software vendors said on Wednesday.

At the same time, spam e-mail messages rose sharply in the third quarter, Symantec Corp (SYMC.O) said.

And as Facebook reached 300 million accounts in September, social networks and social media continued to attract criminals, smaller research firm F-Secure (FSC1V.HE) said in its quarterly virus report.

“As Twitter has grown in popularity, it has been increasingly targeted by worms, spam and account hijacking,” F-Secure said.

Cyber criminals choose targets that are widely used, allowing them to go after the largest number of potential victims.

“Cyber criminals continue to follow the money,” said Yuval Ben-Itzhak, technology chief at a small security software vendor Finjan, who on Wednesday revealed a new method criminals use to steal money from bank accounts and hide their tracks.

Finjan said it expects a growing trend of using new software that forges on-screen bank statements, concealing the true transaction amount to dupe account holders and their banks, and then sends the stolen money to money mules accounts.

“With the combination of using sophisticated Trojans for the theft and money mules to transfer stolen money to their accounts, they minimize their chances of being detected,” Ben-Itzhak said.

SPAM, SPAM AND SPAM

The amount of spam in all e-mail traffic rose to 88.1 percent in the third quarter from 81 percent a year ago, said Symantec’s MessageLabs in its quarterly report.

MessageLabs said botnets are now responsible for sending 87.9 percent of all spam.

Hackers take advantage of the PC vulnerability by booby- trapping websites with a malicious code that loads onto computers. Infected PCs are commandeered into a botnet, a network of hijacked computers. They are used for identity theft, spamming and other cyber crimes.

“Over the past year, we have seen a number of ISP’s (Internet service providers) taken offline for hosting botnet activity resulting in a case of sink or swim and an ensuing shift in botnet power,” MessageLabs analyst Paul Wood said in a statement.

“However, this won’t always be the case as botnet technology has also evolved since the end of 2008 and the most recent ISP closures now have less of an impact on resulting activity as downtime now only lasts a few hours rather than weeks or months as before,” Wood said. (Reporting by Tarmo Virki; editing by Andre Grenon)

Source: reuters.com

More than 40,000 websites worldwide have fallen under the spell of a sneaky piece of attack code that silently tries to install malware on the machines of people who visit them, security experts from Websense have warned.

The mass attack has been dubbed Beladen because beladen.net is one of the internet domains used to unleash a swarm of exploits that target unpatched vulnerabilities in the Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers and programs such as Apple’s QuickTime. It plants highly obfuscated javascript on the bottom of websites that’s slightly different each time, making it impossible to spot infected sites using search engines.

The compromised websites are operated mostly by smaller businesses and government agencies, and so far Websense researchers have been unable to identify a common component that is being targeted. That leaves them guessing that the sites were penetrated by sneaking key-logging programs onto the PCs of people who maintain the sites, Stephan Chenette, manager for security research at Websense, told The Register.

“It’s all that we can assume because there is no common injection amongst all these 40,000″ sites, Chenette explained. “The only other possible explanation is the website owners have basically had their FTP credentials or account credentials compromised.”

(One website owner offers a PDF here containing details of the infection hitting his Linux system running the Apache webserver).

It remains unclear how many end users are being affected, however. Mary Landesman, a researcher at ScanSafe, said less than 0.03 percent of its customer base tried to visit a site infected by Beladen in the entire month of May. That compares with more than 37 percent of its customers trying to visit sites hit by another mass infection that goes by the name Gumblar. Like Beladen, it attempts to install malware on the PCs of people visiting affected sites.

But that doesn’t mean Beladen isn’t important. Beyond it’s demonstrated ability to sneak itself onto so many webservers, it’s also notable because the attack bears the hallmarks of Russian mobsters. Before users are redirected to beladen.net, they are taken to one or more other addresses such as googleanalytlcs.net (note that “analytlcs” is spelled with an l instead of an i), which are attack sites designed to appear connected to Google Analytics.

Those same sites have been used in the past by the cybercriminals known as the RBN, or Russian Business Network, Chenette said. The group is known for producing highly sophisticated malware and offering a network of highly reliable webservers and other infrastructure used to deliver potent attacks. It has largely stayed out of the public eye since being outed in a series of articles by The Washington Post. Beladen may be a sign that the RBN is taking a more active role again.

Beyond that, it’s clear the attackers have taken painstaking steps to ensure the stealth of Beladen. In addition to javascript that is put through multiple layers of obfuscation, the attackers have also covered their tracks by shunting victims through a series of intermediary servers before arriving finally at beladen.net. In an attempt to thwart researchers, the servers check the previous site visited to make sure visitors have been referred by compromised server.

Finally, when we last wrote about this infection Friday, it had hit about 30,000 sites. It’s ability to grow by a third in less than 72 hours is worth taking seriously.

Sadly, Websense has had little success reaching the owners of the compromised websites.

“Half of the websites that have email addresses listed don’t respond to any security notification,” Chenette said. “Many users think they can throw up a website and that’s the end of the day. They have to be more responsible in understanding that they have to protect the users of that site and the content.”

Website owners who suspect they have been hacked should inspect the source code on the site’s front page. If there’s a block of strange-looking code that mysteriously showed up recently, there’s a decent chance it’s Beladen.

Source: theregister.co.uk

(CNN) — Google Wave, a product that promises to revolutionize online communication, will go out to about 100,000 beta testers Wednesday.

The Web application from Google Inc. combines elements of e-mail, chat, Wiki documents, blogs and photo-sharing sites to create a form of Internet communication called a “hosted conversation,” or a “wave.”

Google demonstrated Wave at the Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco, California, in May. The closed group of beta testers will help Google fish bugs out of the application before a public release by the end of the year, according to the Google Wave Web site.

The app was created by Jens and Lars Rasmussen, the Australian brothers who developed Google Maps. The Rasmussen brothers said they hope Google Wave will eventually replace e-mail as the main way people converse on the Internet.

“This should be something everybody uses and something everybody knows,” Jens Rasmussen said.

In Wave, e-mail-like communications can be edited by several users simultaneously. And users can chat about certain sections of Wave documents in real time, where all users see what a person is typing as it is typed. If a person comes to the conversation late, they can replay everything they’ve missed.

The Rasmussens hope these functions will make online communication more efficient and collaborative.

Jens Rasmussen said e-mail is a computer version of snail mail. Wave will be something new, a real-time communication system designed specifically for today’s faster-paced, multitasking Internet, he said.

“We really have a much too strong tendency to just take things we know and just adapt them to the digital world,” he said.

Tech bloggers have largely cheered the release of the product. But there are some concerns that the app may be too complicated for mainstream Web users.

In a video demonstration, the Rasmussens spend an hour and 20 minutes explaining Wave.

Initial reviews of Wave also noted a number of glitches in the application.

Ben Parr of the social-media blog Mashable writes that Wave still has bugs but that the product is improving over time.

“As an initial user of Wave, I have to tell you: things have gotten much more stable. It still has a slow response time in certain situations and it can still crash, but these things happen far less often than they used to,” he writes.

The blog TechCrunch wrote that Wave “drips with ambition” and will be “a new communication platform for a new Web.”

“Wave offers a very sleek and easy way to navigate and participate in communication on the Web that makes both email and instant messaging look stale,” TechCrunch’s MG Siegler wrote.

Source: cnn.com

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Nintendo said it is cutting the price of its popular Wii video-game console by $50 to $199.99.

The 20% price drop on the Wii, which features a motion-sensor remote, will take effect Sunday, according to a Nintendo statement released early Thursday.

The new price is the first reduction since the console launched in November 2006.

The interactive Wii immediately proved wildly popular across demographics — including rehabilitation centers, to aid patients’ recovery — and demand for the console outstripped supply more than a year after its initial release in November 2006.

Earlier this year, Nintendo Chief Executive Satoru Iwata said the company had sold 50 million Wii units.

The company said in a statement Thursday that it hoped the new price would attract consumers who were on the cusp of becoming gamers. According to its own research, Nintendo said there are about 50 million Americans who fall into that category.

Nintendo’s price cut mirrors recent moves by two rivals. In August, Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) slashed the price of its high-end Xbox 360 “Elite” model by $100 — just days after Sony (SNE) cut its console PlayStation 3 by the same amount.
‘It’s-a me, Mario’

In its statement, Nintendo also confirmed the release date of “the first truly multiplayer” game in its ever-popular “Mario Brothers” series.

The “New Super Mario Bros.” for Wii will hit stores Nov. 15. It’s the first title in the classic series that allows four users to play the game at the same time.

Customers can try this and other games at a “sampling tour” coming to three cities in October.

“Differentiating between thousands of [game] alternatives is nearly impossible,” said Nintendo in a statement, adding that the ideal solution is allowing consumers to test drive the games before they plunk down cash for a game or system.

Users will be able to try out one of several Wii games, including “Sports Resort” and “Wii Fit Plus,” as well as DS titles like “The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks.”

The tour will come to Long Beach, Calif., Oct. 2-4; to Philadelphia Oct. 9-11; and end in New York City Oct. 16-18.

Source: money.cnn.com

The microblogging site reportedly is planning to raise $100 million based on that valuation.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Twitter is planning to raise $100 million in its second round of funding this year, which would put the company’s valuation at $1 billion, according to media reports citing sources familiar with the deal.

The reports say that the investors include T. Rowe Price and Insight Venture Partners, who are new investors in Twitter, as well as venture-capital firms Spark Capital and Institutional Venture Partners, who had previously invested in the microblogging Web site.

Requests for comment from Twitter were not returned.

Twitter is not publicly traded, making it difficult to put a price tag on the social networking firm. The site, which allows users to post 140-character entries called “tweets,” has yet to announce a business model or revenue strategy.

That hasn’t stopped Twitter from actively raising capital. In February, co-founder Biz Stone posted on Twitter’s official blog about “an offer we couldn’t refuse” from Benchmark Capital and Institutional Venture Partners. While the post did not disclose financial details of the “very attractive offer,” it was widely reported that the firms gave approximately $35 million combined.

In July, Stone told Fortune that the company would reveal its money-making plans sometime this year. He has previously said publicly that Twitter does not need to generate revenue any time soon, since it has not yet exhausted the more than $50 million it has raised from venture capitalists.

Though Twitter has not revealed its business model, co-founder Stone announced earlier this week that the company would not raise money through advertising in 2009 as some experts had anticipated. At the 140: Twitter Conference in Los Angeles on Tuesday, Stone said it would be “awhile” before Twitter displays ads on its Web site.

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Twitter had raised more than $50 billion from venture capitalists. It is more than $50 million.

Source: money.cnn.com

(CNN) — Three-dimensional images are expected jump out of movie theaters and into living rooms by next year.

Sony and Panasonic say they will release home 3-D television systems in 2010; Mitsubishi and JVC are reported to be working on similar products.

“TV finally becomes real” in three dimensions, said Robert Perry, an executive vice president at Panasonic. “You’re in it. It’s the next frontier.”

Perry compared the 3-D transition to the switch from black-and-white to color television and the shift from standard- to high-definition images. See what 3-D TV demos look like »

ESPN is test-recording some sporting events in 3-D, using cameras with two sets of lenses, which would make football players appear to jump out of home television screens during live 3-D broadcasts.

And, although television makers haven’t released specifics, the price of 3-D TV — which requires a new television, broadcasting content and 3-D glasses — is not expected to be substantially higher than some high-definition televisions on the market now.

Still, there are skeptics who say that 3-D is not ready for prime-time home viewing.

There are concerns that 3-D broadcasts, which require twice the data, will gobble up an unworkable amount of television bandwidth. And some worry that 3-D glasses and graphics won’t make a smooth transition to American living rooms.

Shane Sturgeon, publisher of HDTV Magazine, said some of the glasses give him a headache and will block some people from buying the new technology.

“From what I’ve seen from most of the manufacturers, it’s just not there yet,” he said of 3-D TV technology. “I think right now, the technology — whether you’re talking about the refresh rate or the strobing or the glasses — there are too many things right now that get in the way of enjoyment of the film for it to kick off.”

All 3-D technology relies on the idea that if separate images are presented to the left and right eyes, the human brain will combine them and create the illusion of a third dimension.

TV makers go about this in different ways, though.

Panasonic and Sony, which demonstrated their products for CNN at a recent tech expo in Atlanta, Georgia, use “active glasses” and TVs with high refresh rates to achieve the effect.

Two images, one for the right eye and one for the left eye, alternate quickly on the TV. Shutters on the 3-D glasses swap the viewer’s vision from right eye to left eye at the same rate: 120 hertz, or 240 hertz for the images together. The TV connects with the glasses through a sensor that’s placed between the lenses on the glasses.

“It’s like a little Venetian blind: open, close, open, close, open, close,” John Wyckoff, a Sony content manager, said of the glasses.

The effect moves so quickly that it tricks the brain into merging the images and creates the perspective needed to see images in 3-D, he said.

Glance away from the TV, though, and you can see the lenses opening and closing, which irritates some people.

Those who saw the technology at the recent Custom Electronic Design and Installation Association Expo seemed wowed by Panasonic’s 3-D footage of Olympic events and skiers who appeared to send snow flying into the laps of the audience.

David Lesch fidgeted with his 3-D glasses during Panasonic’s demo but said the 3-D picture on the company’s 103-inch plasma screen was excellent.

However, it may not be effective for all TV programming, he said.

“I cannot imagine that I will watch CNN in 3-D,” said Lesch, sales director at AV Media, which sells electronics. “But for sports, yes. To watch soccer and ice hockey — anything — that would be great.”

These next-generation televisions would be able to play shows in 2-D or 3-D. They also would be able to show video games in 3-D, which Sony demonstrated at the expo in Atlanta.

Sturgeon, of HDTV Magazine, said JVC is working on a type of 3-D technology that’s different form the strobing glasses used by Panasonic and Sony.

JVC’s version uses polarized glasses to separate the right-eye image from the left-eye image and is more pleasing to the eye, he said.

Aside from the kooky glasses, people who want to watch television that jumps off the screen will need something to watch. The process of making live television work in 3-D probably would involve a major conversion of broadcast equipment.

Also, Blu-ray is said to be working on a product that would play three-dimensional movies at home.

Panasonic and Sony said they’re still working out some kinks in their 3-D entertainment systems. The TV makers hope to ride the wave of popularity of improved stereoscopic 3-D movies, such as recent hit “Up,” that are being shown in theaters.

Perry, of Panasonic, said he expects 3-D TV to be common in homes within five to 10 years. Technology that will make 3-D TV possible without glasses should be ready in 10 to 15 years, he said.

Michael Bridwell, spokesman for Digital Projection, a company that makes high-end 3-D home theaters, said 3-D is the biggest technology coming to television and home movies in the foreseeable future.

Well, at least “until we get to holograms,” he said.

Source: cnn.com