Facebook, Twitter and Google flooded with Russia-Linked ads Asylum rwxr-xr-x 0 4:33 PM

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United States Lawmakers had released a trove of ads on Facebook which were linked to a Russian rubles to disrupt the 20016 American Presidential election.

The day after the revelation by the lawmakers, US Senators have raised a question against investigation team of the company. They have asked the company to clarify why they took so long and how much it knows about its 5 million advertisers.


Facebook is not the only company who had run Russian related ads, the list includes  Facebook, Google, and Twitter. All these companies had received flaks on for not able to combat Russian interference on their sites.

 Facebook had admitted that they identified more than $100,000 were paid for the advertisements by the Russian Internet Research Agency.

The Russia-linked advertisements were “an insidious attempt to drive people apart,” Colin Stretch, the general counsel for Facebook who will appear at the hearings, said in his prepared remarks. He called the posts “deeply disturbing,” and their main focus was race, religion, gun rights, and gay and transgender issues.

Mr. Stretch said that they are “determined to prevent it from happening again.”

While Twitter found more than 1.4 million Russia-linked election tweets.

Facebook has a broader impact has its reach is much more than that of the Twitter network and is more powerful than Google.

via E Hacking News - Latest Hacker News and IT Security News Facebook, Twitter and Google flooded with Russia-Linked ads http://ift.tt/2Ap4p72

Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat paying hackers to find technical glitches Asylum rwxr-xr-x 0 6:38 PM

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Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat have a found a unique way to find glitches.  It may surprise you, but it is true that they are paying hefty amounts to white hat hackers around the world to keep them updated about the glitches in their system.

 These technical giants are spending about around £156,000 every day, to keep their system hassle free.

One of the hackers known as Topiary online, Jake Davis, who was previously a black hat hacker,  and was arrested in 2011, but now works for the giant technical companies.

He explains his work to Newsbeat, he is now paid by the likes of Twitter to hack their website. "Twitter have paid me for disclosing bugs to them. It's very simple."

According to him, the hackers would be happy to do this work even if they are not paid, so the money is just a bonus for them. For them, the  main reward is "kudos from other hackers. They're good at hacking, and they want to be seen to be good at the thing."

The larger tech companies are more generous with their payouts. "Facebook are particularly good, they have got a £500 minimum for disclosing bugs to them,"  says Jake.

He says that till now Twitter has paid  $800,000 (£625,000) to nearly 642 hackers.

via E Hacking News - Latest Hacker News and IT Security News Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat paying hackers to find technical glitches http://ift.tt/2oUzo78

Snowden gets job offer from Russia's version of Facebook Asylum rwxr-xr-x 0 4:13 PM

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A man looks at a computer screen showing logos of Russian social network VKontakte in an office in Moscow. (Sergei Karpukhin, Reuters / May 24, 2013)

Reuters

1:22 p.m. CDT, August 1, 2013

MOSCOW (Reuters) - American fugitive Edward Snowden was offered a job by Russia's top social networking site on Thursday, hours after the former intelligence contractor received a year-long asylum in Russia.

"We invite Edward Snowden to Petersburg and will be happy if he decides to join the star team of programmers at VKontakte," Pavel Durov, one of the founders of the St. Petersburg-based VKontakte, Russia's answer to Facebook, said on his profile.

Snowden's temporary asylum papers allow him to work in Russia, according to Anatoly Kucherena, a lawyer close to the Russian authorities, who has been assisting the American.

Moscow has refused Washington's repeated requests to hand over the 30-year-old to face trial on espionage charges after he leaked details of secret U.S. surveillance programs involving phone and Internet data.

Seeking to avoid U.S. prosecution, Snowden arrived to Moscow from Hong Kong on June 23 has been stuck in the transit zone of the Sheremetyevo airport for more than a month before slipping out on Thursday with new refugee documents.

The spat over Snowden's fate has added to tensions between Russia and the United States, already at loggerheads over the conflict in Syria as well as other defense and human rights issues.

But Snowden is also a useful propaganda tool for Moscow, which often accuses Washington of preaching on human rights abroad what it does not practice at home.

Durov of VKontakte, or "InTouch", which says it has more than 210 million registered profiles and up to 47 million daily users, said he took pride in Russia's decision to harbor Snowden.

"Today Edward Snowden - the man who denounced U.S. security services' crimes against citizens of the whole world - received temporary asylum in Russia," Durov said.

"In such moments one feels pride with our country and regret over the course taken by United States - a country betraying the principles it was once built on," he added.