Major breach exposed customers of major brands

There's been a data breach (article 1, article 2) at one of the largest marketing services companies around and your email might have been exposed. The breach occurred at a company called Epsilon which handles email communications for many big brands such as Capital One, Citi, Disney, etc. Their website boasts over 2,500 clients including 7 Fortune 10 companies.

At this time the list includes about 15 companies but it's been growing, so even if you've not done business with one of the companies listed below, one that you have done business with might have been exposed.

Criminals are using the emails to send malicious software (in the form of PDFs or other documents) and/or links to websites that lead to malicious software and/or phishing scams. Be alert. Here's the list of companies confirmed to have been exposed at this time (some have links to notifications):

UPDATE 06-APR-2011 (LIST UPDATED):
1800-Flowers
Abe Books
AbeBooks
Air Miles CA
Ameriprise Financial
Barclays Bank
Beachbody
Bebe Stores Inc.
Benefit Cosmetics
BestBuy
Brookstone
Capital One
Charter Communications (Charter.com)
Citibank
City Market
Dillons
Disney
HSN (Home Shopping Network)
Eddie Bauer
Eurosport/Soccer.com
Food 4 Less
Fred Meyer
Fry's
Hilton Worldwide
JP Morgan Chase
Kroger
Jay C
King Soopers
Kroger
LL Bean Visa Card
Lacoste
Marriott International
Marriott Rewards
McKinsey & Company
Moneygram
New York & Company
QFC
Ralphs
Red Roof Inns Inc.
Ritz-Carlton
TiVo
Robert Half
Smith Brands
TD Ameritrade
TIAA-CREF
Target
The College Board
The Home Shopping Network
TiVo
US Bank
Verizon
Walgreens
World Financial Network National Bank

NSA to investigate NASDAQ hack

Several sources are reporting that the National Security Agency (NSA) is looking into the breach of the company that runs NASDAQ experienced back in October of 2010.

Bloomberg News interviewed former head of U.S. counterintelligence in the Bush and Obama administrations, Joel Brenner, who stated “By bringing in the NSA, that means they think they’re either dealing with a state-sponsored attack, or it’s an extraordinarily capable criminal organization.”

It's being reported that other U.S. Federal Govt agencies (FBI, Secret Service) are assisting as well.




Kim Zetter (@KimZetter) over at Wired Magazine has a good article on this topic:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/03/nsa-investigates-nasdaq-hack/

Happy Birthday Portable PC

April 3, 2011: On this day 30 years ago something occurred in the PC industry that started what I'll call a revolution: the portable PC was introduced. In 1981 journalist and book author Adam Osborne released the 24 pound Osborne 1 computer. The machine was state of the art back then with a 5-inch CRT, disk drives that stored 102KB of data, 64KB of RAM, and a full size keyboard. It could even fit under the seat on a plane. But it was heavy and could not be used without plugging into AC socket; it did not have a battery.

An interesting piece of history is that one of the co-designers, Lee Felsenstein, theorized that the concept might have been borrowed from a couple of Apple employees who failed to sell the idea to Steve Jobs.

More information about the Osborne 1 can be found here.

Happy Birthday Portable PC