firehose

A hacker has netted more than 2 million passwords for users of major services including Facebook, Gmail, Twitter, Yahoo, and LinkedIn, according to the security firm Trustwave.

The attacker installed keylogging software on users' computers in 92 countries, recording their logins and user passwords as they were typed.

The companies themselves were not breached, but ADP, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter have reset passwords and alerted compromised users, CNNMoney reports.

The keylogger tool was a version of the Pony botnet controller

The keylogger tool was a version of the Pony botnet controller, a malicious piece of software that has been proliferating since its source code was published. The botnet controller is mainly being used to steal passwords, according to Trustwave researchers.

This time, whoever was behind the attack got around 1.5 million website login credentials, 320,000 email account credentials, 41,000 FTP credentials, 3,000 remote desktop credentials, and more.

A look at the passwords shows a keylogger may have been overkill, however. Trustwave reports that the most common passwords were "123456," "123456789," "1234," and "password."

Inside the command and control channel of a point-of-sale botnet powered by StarDust.

IntelCrawler

Underscoring the growing sophistication of Internet crime, researchers have documented one of the first known botnets to target point-of-sale (PoS) terminals used by stores and restaurants to process customers' credit and debit card payments.

The botnet remained active at the time of writing and had compromised more than 20,000 payment cards since August, researchers from IntelCrawler, a Los Angeles-based security intelligence provider, told Ars. The researchers arrived at the findings after infiltrating one of the control servers used to send commands to infected machines and receive pilfered data from them. A recently captured screenshot (above) showed that it was controlling 31 machines that the researchers said belonged to US-based restaurants and retailers. Some of the infected machines are servers, so the number of affected PoS devices could be much higher. The researchers have reported their findings to law enforcement agencies that they declined to identify by name.

PoS-based hacking is nothing new. The best-known incident stole data for more than 146,000 cards after infecting 200 terminals used at Subway Sandwich shops and other small merchants. According to federal prosecutors, the criminals behind that intrusion infected one or more servers with "sniffing" software that logged payment card numbers and sent them to a remote server. Although the now-convicted crooks were able to install a backdoor on the computers they accessed so they could change configuration settings and install new programs, there is no evidence of a botnet that actively controlled the infected machines in lockstep.

The Washington Post is reporting new details on the NSA's massive phone-record collection efforts, with leaked documents that indicate the program caches five billion call records each day, tracking the locations of hundreds of millions of mobile devices. Previous Snowden leaks had detailed the NSA's extensive access to consumer phone records, but it was unclear before now whether that metadata included the location of each phone. The latest documents confirm that it does, as part of a much larger location-tracking effort.

One collection manager told the post the NSA was collecting "vast volumes" of location data from around the world, primarily by tapping into the cables that connect mobile networks globally, but insisted the collection is "incidental" rather than intentional and is focused on phones outside of the United States. Still, the result is unprecedented access to the movements of citizens on a global scale. "Analysts can find cellphones anywhere in the world, retrace their movements and expose hidden relationships among individuals using them," the article states.

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn hasn't exactly been quiet about his view on Apple's huge stockpile of cash — he's been pressuring CEO Tim Cook for a $150 billion stock buyback to put money back in the hands of shareholders for months now. Now, Icahn's taking his battle straight to the shareholders themselves. According to a report from Time, Icahn has filed a shareholder proposal for a stock buyback that will be voted on at the company's next annual shareholder meeting. His proposal is known as a "precatory proposal," which means that even if shareholders vote to approve it, Apple's management won't be bound to carry it out. While there aren't any details on what exactly his proposal calls for, it's safe to assume it's along the same lines as his previous pleas for a large stock buyback — something that would likely benefit Icahn's major holdings in Apple.

Still, it's definitely a new bit of pressure on Apple from Icahn — if he can get shareholders on his side, Apple will have to respond in some fashion. Despite Icahn's continued calls for the buyback, he still insists he thinks Apple is running its business properly — he just wants to see the company share its wealth. "Apple is not a bank," he told Time. "I'm not against the management of this company. But they've got too much money on their balance sheet." He also claims his relationship with Cook continues to be amicable, despite the fact that he's now enlisting shareholder help for getting his proposal pushed through. "Tim Cook is doing a good job with the business," Ichan said. "I think he's good whether he does what I want or not."

Bushmills Whiskey has partnered with Grado to produce a limited edition set of headphones partially made from whiskey barrels.  But the collaboration that resulted in the "Bushmills x Grado" headphones was even larger than that. Actor Elijah Wood and Mark Cowie — who perform together as DJ Wooden Wisdom — personally designed the headphones over a period of five months.

Turntable Lab has exclusive retail rights on the $395 headphones, which are crafted from "recycled white oak bodies from the wood of old barrels" that come from a Bushmills distillery in Ireland. A leather headband was chosen because, according to Cowie, "it does have a huge shelf life, but it will also show its age" Of course, the headphones would be nothing without Grado's revered sound signature. "The expression of the music through the headphones was extraordinary," says Wood. Grado says these limited-run headphones have a vented back design, representing a first in the company's long history. Audiophiles looking to incorporate more whiskey into their sound setup can place an order now.

Two reel-to-reel master tapes of Built To Spill’s 1997 record Perfect From Now On have sold on Etsy, of all places. The tapes popped up for sale on the page of Pacific Northwest seller ElliottBayVintage, selling last night. It’s unclear how the seller got the items, but according to the listing, the tapes “contain the initial studio recordings without remaster, mixing, and overdubs,” and only some of the actual tracks from the final album. However, they do contain “Velvet Waltz,” so that’s all that really matters.

The seller says the tapes are “breathtaking,” and that “if you’re a fan of BTS or Northwest music, consider this, it’s like finding the 'Velvet Underground' of Idaho’s unreleased acetate.” That’s a little hyperbolic, but it’s still pretty neat—and entirely weird—that these just randomly showed up online. 

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The beta for Team Chucklefish's sandbox space game, Starbound, will be available Dec. 4, the developer recently announced.

Starbound tasks players with exploring the universe after their homeworld is destroyed. In addition to procedurally generated planets, the game also features story-driven missions, a customizable crew and more. According to the post, Steam keys will be send out to all pre-order backers via email.

Starbound will still be available for purchase through Steam Early Access once the beta launches.

The full game is expected to launch next year for Windows PC, Mac and Linux. When pre-orders opened in April, the game surpassed 10,000 backers in its first day.

A new trailer for Gazillion Entertainment's free-to-play, massively multiplayer online game, Marvel Heroes, offers a look at the game's latest addition, Gambit.

In Marvel Heroes, players choose from different heroes in the Marvel universe and team up with friends to take down enemies. Gambit's mutant power allows him to convert potential energy into a destructive kinetic force. You can watch the video above to see him quickly and effectively dispatch enemies with charged cards and his staff.

For more on Marvel Heroes and how the developer managed to adapt the Marvel universe into a free-to-play game, check out our interview with Gazillion president David Brevik.

Peter Kaplan (left) and Jared Kushner in a 2008 photo. (Credit: Stuart Ramson, New York Observer/Wikimedia Commons.)

Peter Kaplan, a longtime editor of the brash and influential local newspaper the New York Observer, died Friday evening from cancer, according to the The New York Times. He was 59 years old. In his fifteen years as editor-in-chief of The Observer, Kaplan had an enormous influence on not just the current New York City journalism landscape, but on online publishing overall. The snarky, sarcastic voice he cultivated in writers at the Observer when he started in 1994 went on to permeate many online publications of the early 2000s, including Gawker and The Awl, where top Observer alumni ended up working. Kaplan also famously hired Candace Bushnell to write the columns that would serve as the basis of Sex and the City, and oversaw Nikki Finke, who later left to create Deadline. His personality was lampooned in two popular parody twitter accounts, Cranky Kaplan and Wise Kaplan. After leaving the Observer in 2009, he was hired at Condé Nast and oversaw the Fairchild Fashion Group of publications.

OS X 10.9 has been out for just over a month, and earlier this week we gathered our thoughts and talked about some of our biggest gripes with the operating system (both new-to-Mavericks and those carried over from older versions of OS X).

We didn't nearly hit everything, though—a whole bunch of you took to the comments to let us know what was bugging you about Mavericks. So we've picked a few of the most compelling for you to read about in between eating leftovers and talking your family members out of ill-advised Black Friday purchases.

The dock

Andrew Cunningham

Most of the Mavericks complaints were functional rather than cosmetic, but one gripe that came up a couple of times involved the way the Dock looks when placed on the left or right side of the screen. Ars reader maccouch called the white, mostly opaque dock "hideous," while Erica-Jane lamented that it couldn't be made transparent (and that, when on the bottom of the screen, you're stuck with the "3D" dock look rather than a more traditional 2D look). Many of you don't seem to mind change, but you do mind when those changes are made irreversible. This is doubly true when changing long-standing OS X behaviors, as we'll see in our next complaint.