Bank of America’s (BAC: 9.23, -0.07, -0.75%) website was experiencing sporadic outages on Tuesday related to a cyber attack that may be tied to an Islamic terrorist group, according to a source close to the matter.
The Charlotte, N.C.-based bank’s namesake site, bankofamerica.com, was not loading as of 4:15 p.m. ET and has been down for hours.
A source confirms to FOX Business that Bank of America’s website was in fact hit by a cyber attack. It was a “technical attack” that was focused on BofA’s domain name service (DNS) infrastructure.
A BofA spokesman said "some customers may experience occasional slowness" but the bank is "working to ensure full availability." BofA wouldn't comment on the attacks specifically, but the spokesman said, "I can tell you we continuously take proactive measures to secure our systems."
A group called “Izz ad-din Al qassam Brigades” has claimed responsibility on PasteBin, which is a forum commonly used by these types of groups, including Anonymous, to issue threats or to brag about cyber attacks. In addition to the BofA attack, Izz ad-din Al qassam also said it is targeting the website of the New York Stock Exchange.
The source believes the outage was related to the threats issued on PasteBin against Bank of America and said that while it could be “just a big coincidence” it's “not likely.”
"It appears that the Radical Islamists have found the Group Anonymous playbook," the source said.

Microsoft (MSFT: 31.18, -0.04, -0.11%) warned of a newly-discovered bug in its Internet Explorer 9 browser late Monday that could make computers vulnerable to hacking attempts and viruses.
The flaw impacts hundreds of millions of Internet Explorer users and as many PCs but does not impact Internet Explorer 10, Microsoft said.
“We have received reports of only a small number of targeted attacks and are working to develop a security update to address this issue,” Microsoft’s director of the Trustworthy Computing Group, Yunsun Wee, said on the company’s official corporate security response blog.
The maker of Windows software advised customers late Monday to install free security software as a precaution as it tries to fix the bug and develop a new, uncompromised version of Internet Explorer.
“We are monitoring the threat landscape very closely and if the situation changes, we will post updates here on the Microsoft Security Response Center blog and on Twitter at @MSFTSecResponse,” Wee said.
Installing the enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit may protect PCs from malicious websites that give hackers the ability to crack into and take over the computer system. Microsoft said the software should not affect the usability of websites

Read more: http://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/2012/09/18/microsoft-warns-new-internet-explorer-bug-that-could-hurt-pcs/#ixzz26rLMclB4

wow, crazy fast. very limited availability though. be interesting to see what this forces form the competition.
Google's unbelievably fast new 1000Mbps fiber is finally live in Kansas City today. The service has no bandwidth cap, no overage fees, and it'll come with 1TB (!!) of free cloud storage.
In addition to the blazing broader than broadband internet, Google's also got a new TV service called Google Fiber Television. The service is a lot like Google TV, but cleaner, and it can record up to 500 hours of HD programs. There will be remote apps for iOS and Android, both of which will have voice control, and at some point they'll get video streaming as well. The TV package will have all broadcast networks, along with hundreds of "Fiber channels".

READ MORE

information and page to fix.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2719662

Microsoft terminates Windows Gadgets with extreme prejudice.

Hey, Windows users! Microsoft has some bad, or possibly good, news.
It's recommending that all users disable the Windows Sidebar and Gadgets — immediately.
"Disabling the Windows Sidebar and Gadgets can help protect customers from vulnerabilities that involve the execution of arbitrary code by the Windows Sidebar when running insecure Gadgets," states a security advisory released Tuesday (July 10) by Microsoft.
"In addition, Gadgets installed from untrusted sources can harm your computer and can access your computer's files, show you objectionable content, or change their behavior at any time."

 

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- If you're considering an upgrade to Windows 8 this fall, Microsoft just made the option much cheaper.
The software giant announced Monday that anyone running Windows XP or a more recent version can upgrade to Windows 8 Pro for just $40.
That's significantly less than what Microsoft typically charges customers to update their operating systems. For instance, the cheapest "upgrade version" of Windows 7 for those running older editions of Windows costs $120 on Microsoft's online store. Even upgrading from one Windows 7 version to another will set you back at least $65.

read more:
http://money.cnn.com/2012/07/03/technology/windows-8-upgrade/index.htm?source=cnn_bin

Every wonder how we size up next to all things in the universe? Cary Huang has put together an easy to use tool that will allow you to drill down to the smallest known particle then zoom out to the biggest stars and celestial entities.

Check this out...
apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120312.html

Enjoy!

“this is more than just a data center,” says one senior intelligence official


the facility will consist of four 25,000-square-foot halls filled with servers, complete with raised floor space for cables and storage. In addition, there will be more than 900,000 square feet for technical support and administration. The entire site will be self-sustaining, with fuel tanks large enough to power the backup generators for three days in an emergency, water storage with the capability of pumping 1.7 million gallons of liquid per day, as well as a sewage system and massive air-conditioning system to keep all those servers cool. Electricity will come from the center’s own substation built by Rocky Mountain Power to satisfy the 65-megawatt power demand. Such a mammoth amount of energy comes with a mammoth price tag—about $40 million a year, according to one estimate.

Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.” It is, in some measure, the realization of the “total information awareness” program.

Once the communications are intercepted and stored, the data-mining begins. “You can watch everybody all the time with data- mining,” Binney says. Everything a person does becomes charted on a graph, “financial transactions or travel or anything,” he says. Thus, as data like bookstore receipts, bank statements, and commuter toll records flow in, the NSA is able to paint a more and more detailed picture of someone’s life.

The NSA also has the ability to eavesdrop on phone calls directly and in real time. According to Adrienne J. Kinne, who worked both before and after 9/11 as a voice interceptor at the NSA facility in Georgia, in the wake of the World Trade Center attacks “basically all rules were thrown out the window, and they would use any excuse to justify a waiver to spy on Americans.”


Given the facility’s scale and the fact that a terabyte of data can now be stored on a flash drive the size of a man’s pinky, the potential amount of information that could be housed in Bluffdale is truly staggering. But so is the exponential growth in the amount of intelligence data being produced every day by the eavesdropping sensors of the NSA and other intelligence agencies. As a result of this “expanding array of theater airborne and other sensor networks,” as a 2007 Department of Defense report puts it, the Pentagon is attempting to expand its worldwide communications network, known as the Global Information Grid, to handle yottabytes (10²⁴ bytes) of data. (A yottabyte is a septillion bytes—so large that no one has yet coined a term for the next higher magnitude.)

read on for the stuff of true nightmares:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/