Stratfor Hacked

Hacker group Anonymous have infiltrated the servers of Austin-based global intelligence service Stratfor. The group posted credit card numbers, names and addresses online; it says belongs to 4000 Stratfor's customers. The client list includes employees of Bank of America, the US Military and the Houston Police Department. Stratfor informed the media they will be contacting its subscribers and offering them a free identity protection service.

21,000 Domains Transferred From GoDaddy in 1 Day

An anti-Go Daddy thread on social site Reddit led to the creation of Godaddyboycott.org, a site set up to let people amass their disapproval with the company's support of SOPA. Yesterday, Go Daddy actually reversed course and dropped its support for the controversial legislation. "Go Daddy will support it when and if the Internet community supports it," Go Daddy CEO Warren Adelman announced in a statement. SOPA, introduced in Congress this fall, would make it easier for the Justice Department to shut down sites allegedly dedicated to piracy.

GoDaddy Boycott Launched By Anti-SOPA

Opponents of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) launch a boycott against domain name registrar GoDaddy, which expresses its strong support of the controversial legislation. The boycott movement basically asked their supporter to transfer their domains to another registrar. While Silicon Valley firms like Google, Facebook and Twitter overwhelmingly oppose SOPA on the grounds that it will usher in unprecedented censorship online, suffocate innovation, and endanger the domain name system (DNS) upon which the Internet is built, GoDaddy brushes aside all these arguments, and claims that the bill is needed to “identify and disable all types of illegal activity on the Internet.”

UK's New Cyber Crime Unit

UK government announces a new measure to tackle cyber crime as Britain's internet and electronic communications network comes under increased attack from hackers and foreign intelligence agencies. A Cyber Crime Unit will be formed alongside a team at the intelligence agency GCHQ which will fine-tune the country's military capabilities in the virtual world. According to the government, more than 20,000 malicious emails are sent to its networks each month, of which 1,000 are deliberately targeted. The GCHQ is expected to help by assisting private companies shore up their cyber defences.

Silent Update For Internet Explorer

Microsoft will begin pushing "silent" updates to its Internet Explorer (IE) browser to ensure users are deploying the newest versions of the browser. Users will no longer get a pop-up prompt to then update the browser with security patches and other updates.

Enterprises aren't bound by Microsoft's new automatic update feature. They can opt out of the silent updates if they prefer to time their own browser updates.  They can deploy the Internet Explorer 8 and Internet Explorer 9 Automatic Update Blocker toolkits, which stop automatic upgrades of IE. For those users who had already declined previous installations of IE8 or IE9 through Windows Update won't get pushed the silent updates.

Google 300000 Square Foot Hong Kong Data Center

Google announced on Thursday it will invest $300 million to build a new 300,000-square-foot data center in Hong Kong. The new data center, which will be located in the Tseung Kwan O Industrial Estate in Kowloon, will be fully operational in early 2013.

Google said the data center will be staffed by 25 full-time local employees, including electrical and mechanical engineers, computer technicians, security and catering staff. The company said the investment represents a new commitment to the region. The data center will help increase user access speed for the company's different online services in Asia.

Microsoft Issues Workaround for ‘Duqu’ Flaw

Microsoft has released an advisory and a workaround fix for the zero-day vulnerability exploited by the “Duqu” Trojan malware. The critical vulnerability resides in most supported versions of Windows, including Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7. The problem stems from the way Windows parses certain font types. Microsoft says it is aware of targeted attacks exploiting this flaw, but that it believes few users have been affected.