Twitter's Role in OBL Coverage: Medium Shifts from Its "Inconsequential Information" Roots to Bearer of Significant World News

Stephanie Jordan — Fri, 06 May 2011 01:34:15 +0000

Twitter has accomplished a lot in the five years since its first public introduction in 2006 (and as its own company beginning in April 2007). With over 200 million users, the text-based posts have become the Western Union Telegram of the 21st century. It wasn’t that long ago that Jay Leno made fun of tweeting during an opening monologue for The Tonight Show. Indeed it began as just a fun way to communicate to a bunch of friends. Founder Jack Dorsey has been quoted as saying: “…we came across the word ‘twitter’, and it was just perfect. The definition was ‘a short burst of inconsequential information,’ and ‘chirps from birds’. And that’s exactly what the product was.”

When you look at the role the communication medium played in this week’s dissemination of news regarding the death of Osama bin Laden, it appears Twitter has outgrown its original lightness of being. The now-understood Twitter play-by-play of the events leading up to bin Laden’s death, more than six hours before it happened, has taken the significance of live-tweeting to new heights. With an amazing immediacy, the tweets and retweets of unconfirmed supposition were hours ahead of the official White House announcement. The wee-hour tweetings of Sohaib Athar (@ReallyVirtual) became a central point of contact for the world trying to get as much detail as possible in the short bursts that Tweeter allows.

The need for additional information on the event made for so much speculation around the world that it is not surprising given our reliance on social networking for news and information that it was not television, but rather these other mediums that broke the news first. While the president feverishly worked on the right wording for his speech to the nation, and the press corp waited as the scheduled public address time came and went, the “tweet heard ’round the world” went out at 10:25 p.m. EST. Keith Urbahn, the chief of staff for the former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, wrote at that time, “So I’m told by a reputable person they have killed Osama Bin Laden. Hot damn.”

Urbahn, covering himself, followed quickly with other Tweets: “Don’t know if it’s true, but let’s pray it is.” “Ladies, gents, let’s wait to see what the President says. Could be misinformation or pure rumor.”

Tweets on the reactions from around the world to the news of bin Laden’s death are being monitored by PeopleBrowsr, with examples from Indonesia, France, Pakistan, the U.S. and others.

The intense interest in the topic has not gone unnoticed by cybercriminals, always quick to cash in on current events. Websense Security Labs published a warning that Athar’s website had been compromised by hackers. Patrik Runald, senior manager for security research, for Websense says, “Cybercriminals are constantly exploiting where the masses go, and news on Osama bin Laden’s death is no exception. We want to warn everyone looking for news on bin Laden’s death to be cautious when clicking new links. Make no mistake—hackers are going after websites, like @ReallyVirtual’s (Athar’s), along with search engine results to prey on visitors looking for more information.”

Runald also states that organizations are at risk when employees search online using company computers potentially exposing the organization to exploits. In the quest to link to information on bin Laden, reputable sites like CNN have pointed to poisonous sites. “So the end result is that users trying to follow one of the most highly visible stories in the world on very legitimate sites were within two clicks of a malware-infected site,” observes Runald. “They were often brought there by the sites they trusted.”

It appears there is malware lurking everywhere from Facebook and YouTube to other poisonous sites showing up among first search results on the topic of bin Laden. “The bad guys know you far too well,” says Randy Abrams, director of technical education, Cyber Threat Analysis Center for ESET North America. “They know that all they have to do is say they have video footage of bin Laden and many people will mindlessly click. As is always the case with any big news headlines, there are fake videos being posted with the intent of infecting your computer…”

Abrams offers this advice, “Look carefully at your search results and stick to well-known sites. YouTube does not count as a well-known site because they have virtually no control over what gets posted, hence it is a common place for the bad guys to post videos. The folks at YouTube are quite good at removing the bad posts, but it takes time.”

Aryeh Goretsky, distinguished researcher for ESET North America, adds, “The sheer amount of search activity has unleashed a tidal wave of scams and malware. We were so taken aback by the volume that our last four posts to the ESET Threat Blog have been on this phenomenon.” Goretsky’s blog offers commentary on threats to Facebook and other social media services.

According to The New York Times writer Brian Stelter, even before the President spoke his address by 11 p.m. EST every single second “there were more than a dozen Facebook posts with the word ‘bin Laden.’” The viral nature of how we receive news through social media has forever changed our expectation for immediate knowledge of current events and world happenings.

ESET Mail Security for MS Exchange Designed for Enhanced Spam Detection

Melisa LaBancz-Bleasdale — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 00:47:06 +0000

ESET has released their business-ready ESET Mail Security for Microsoft Exchange Server 4.3. The update offers an advanced anti-spam engine with precision score dials, and spam and grey listing logs.

Out of the top twenty corporate endpoint security vendors worldwide, ESET is the fastest growing company in this category according to IDC. ESET Mail Security for Microsoft Exchange Server is built on the NOD32 Antivirus 4 ThreatSense® engine and provides customers with proactive technology for detecting viruses and other malware. In addition to stripping malware from messages, the integrated anti-spam and grey listing features keep unwanted spam from reaching end users.

“We are always focused on continuous improvement and with that mindset we enhanced the anti-spam capabilities and provided tools and logs for easy management,” said Pavel Luka, Chief Technology Officer, ESET. “Messaging security is the first line of defense against malware outbreaks, spam interruptions, and phishing attacks, and ESET Mail Security for Microsoft Exchange Server provides fast and accurate messaging security with minimal overhead for businesses of all sizes.”

ESET Mail Security for Microsoft Exchange Server was designed to offer proactive protection against emerging threats without having to wait hours or days for signature updates. Additionally, the company says the solution has a light system footprint that has minimal impact on mail server performance and is easy to deploy.

New features of ESET Mail Security for Microsoft Exchange Server 4.3 include:

New Anti-spam engine
Anti-spam score dials—Define anti-spam threshold scores at three levels with greater precision for more control.
Advanced setup tree—Redesigned advanced setup tree for more intuitive navigation.
Automatic exclusions—Automatically detects and excludes critical server files for smooth operation.
License merging—Automatically merges two or more licenses with the same customer name for easier license management.
Spam log—Displays sender, recipient, spam score, classification reason and action taken for actionable information.
Grey listing log—Displays grey listed sender, recipient, action taken and shows status until connection denial period ends for actionable information.