In a chat today lasting over an hour, we got to talk to a person claiming to be the infamous hacker behind RockYou's latest data security woes.

While he claimed to have no animosity toward users, he had one clear message for websites: Take better care of your customers' data. RockYou isn't the only hacked site storing plain text login information, either.

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What Happened

To bring us all up to date, here's the gist of the story so far: The hacker, who we'll call Tom (not his real name) for brevity's sake, tells us that he used an SQL injection to gain direct access to RockYou's database, where he found login information for more than 32 million user accounts. The data was all in plain text and contained third-party site logins, as well.

Tom sat on this information for a while. Although he's posted about similar hacks in the past, he also claims to have exposed the same vulnerabilities and gained access to the same kind of data for many major U.S. sites. Tom wouldn't reveal which sites he'd hacked, but he did say that he has no intention of using or publishing the data he's unearthed.

But yesterday, incensed by this warning from an Internet security company and RockYou's claims that only some accounts had been compromised by the security breach, Tom posted about the hack on his blog.

We (along with several of our peers) were tipped off to the situation via Twitter, and TechCrunch has s/> [...]

Wed Dec 16, 2009 17:25 pm

If you're an adventure seeker with a penchant for storytelling you'll be happy to hear that Google is giving you the visuals you need to illustrate your tales of bravery. In a blog post written by Google Earth Product Manager Peter Birch, the company has updated its iPhone application. While we've always been big fans of the Google Earth desktop version, the company released its iPhone app in 2008 with a new attention to the mobile accelerometer and touch features of the iPhone. Users pinched, tapped and tilted their way to stunning satellite views of mountain ranges and far away terrain. The application update builds on these features but adds a touch of the personal.

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Google Earth for iPhone now offers users a chance to view their customized maps in the iPhone app. Rather than just offering standard maps, users save their pre-existing maps or favorites in the "My Maps" folder and the files are automatically synced to the device.

One great feature of this release is the fact that users can track their travels via a GPS device and save the results as a KML file to be viewed in the application at a later time. The example given is a look at the route taken to climb a mountain; however, the same tool can be used to track marathons, sailing regatas, road trips and basic travel. For information on how to convert GPS data into Google Earth, users can visit [...]

Mon Nov 16, 2009 15:30 pm