The Year In Tech Law 2012

Tumblr Briefly Comes Tumbling Down During Cyberattack

December 11, 2012

Tumblr is a Website where users can share photos, music, videos, quotes and posts, all of which can be customized with different colors and themes.

On its "About" page, Tumblr boldly suggests that users "follow the world's creators." With only 128 employees, Tumblr boasts 83.7 million blogs, 37.4 billion posts and a whopping 18.1 billion monthly page views.

So, all is well and good in Tumblr land, right? Perhaps most of the time. However, last week a worm struck Tumblr and infected some of the most widely read blogs, including those of CNET, Reuters and USA Today, as reported by CNET.

A reported hacker group called GNAA took credit for the attack, and stated on its Twitter profile that 8,600 Tumblr users were impacted; however, Tumblr responded in a blog post that no accounts were actually compromised, according to CNET.

When the attack occurred, Tumblr promptly told its users to log out of browsers using Tumblr and stated that it was diligently seeking to fix things, as reported by CNET.

Tumblr was able to resolve the issue later the same day of the attack; but, according to CNET, before then, when users went to a compromised Tumblr site, they would view a nasty post with swear words that criticized the site and its users in very harsh terms.

Security provider Sophos noted in a blog post, as reported by CNET, that the worm capitalized on Tumblr's reblogging function, such that a user who was logged onto Tumblr would automatically reblog the infected post if she visited a compromised page. This caused malicious code to spread like a Web virus; mostly likely, Tumblr's filters were circumvented by the hijacking of a legitimate Tumblr maintenance message.

Tumblr obviously cured this particular problem relatively quickly. But this scenario shows why cybersecurity is a real worry for social media and other sites. Any and all technological steps that can reasonably prevent security breaches before they happen should be seriously considered and implemented when feasible.

San Francisco's Prop E Passes, Will Pay Off for Startups

November 13, 2012

Tax reform can and does happen at the ballot box. Indeed, startup companies in San Francisco should soon feel the benefit of the recent passage of the city's Proposition E.

Proposition E implements a tax on gross receipts, phasing out San Francisco's prior payroll tax. This will be very beneficial for startup companies that have paid staff but have yet to earn much revenue.

Furthermore, given that business tax trails only property tax for bringing in dollars to the city of San Francisco, by taxing gross receipts instead of payroll, there will likely be more regularity and less fluctuation in terms of dollars flowing into city coffers.

Proposition E passed with more than 70 percent of the vote, according to Business Insider -- an overwhelming victory. The proposition was backed by Ron Conway, a venture capitalist, and had broad-based, political, cross-party support.

San Francisco in recent times has become home to a new startup culture. However, when startups are taxed based on payroll and not gross receipts, there is a real possibility that the startups might go elsewhere. Now that the tax will focus instead on gross receipts, startups hopefully will remain in San Francisco and will pay their fair share as their revenues grow. In the humble opinion of your faithful blogger, San Francisco voters did the right thing by passing Proposition E!

Defense Secretary Panetta: Cyberspace Is the New Battlefield

November 6, 2012

We usually think of the Internet as a place where we can obtain information, communicate with others, and engage in various business and personal activities.

However, is it also a new battlefield?

Yes, according to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. Indeed, as reported by Reuters, he maintains that while hackers have already attacked financial institutions, they also have the capability to strike mission-critical domestic power grids and government systems.

Panetta made this comment to a business group in Virginia. One week before, he gave a policy speech to a New York business group, in which he indicated that the U.S. military has the capacity to take pre-emptive measures in the event of an imminent risk of online attacks. Secretary Panetta stated that domestic financial institutions have been experiencing sustained attacks recently. And he noted, without indicating the countries of origin, that Washington faces thousands of attacks every day.

He indicated that the United States has made real investments in cyber forensics to address the issue of identifying the sources of cyber-attacks.

Panetta further described that Congress needs to feel more pressure to act to avoid a round of automatic budget cuts due to go into effect in January. The cuts apparently would reduce $500 billion from defense spending during the next decade, in the aftermath of almost an equal cut in projected defense spending approved a year ago.

Plainly, if the Secretary of Defense is concerned based on sensitive information available to him, the threat of cyber warfare truly needs to be explored and countered before significant harm could be caused by online attacks.

Hackers Increasingly Target Colleges, Universities

October 18, 2012

All sorts of businesses and organizations are potentially vulnerable to hackers. Educational institutions are no exception, as highlighted by a recent example involving Northwest Florida State College.

One or more hackers accessed a folder on the school's main server from May through September, according to a memo from the College's President to all employees. The folder contained multiple files.

By working between the files, the hacker(s) apparently managed to assemble sufficient information to steal the identities of 50 employees, CNET reports. Names, social security numbers, dates of birth and direct deposit account numbers were accessed. Apparently, data relating to addresses, phone numbers, and college email addresses also was compromised. But there is more.

The President's memo indicates that current and past employees going back to 2002 who have utilized direct pay deposits potentially have been the subject of data compromise. The number of impacted employees could be as high as 2,200.

The College President opines that all of this was the result of "a professional, coordinated attack by one or more hackers." He also is concerned that student information such as birth dates and social security numbers may have been accessed, but he is not presently aware that such information has been taken.

In terms of technological solutions, the President points out that "the access pathway used to invade our main server has been sealed."

Plainly, educational institutions are not immune from hacker attacks and the potential for data security breaches. Accordingly, they would be smart now to implement needed technological measures on the front-end to prevent or mitigate possible attacks.

So, for example, if a school has some sort of access pathway to a server that could serve as an avenue for a hacker attack, that pathway needs to be addressed in order to prevent such an attack.

Switching to E-Books Would Save Our Children's Backs

October 3, 2012

It is amazing that in this day and age we still see students hauling around backpacks full of heavy school textbooks. This is true not only for college and high schools students, but also for much younger students in middle school and elementary school.

With the technology available such that many voluminous books can be loaded electronically onto an electronic book reader, a laptop, an iPad, or even a PDA, there seems no reason why kids should have to shoulder the heavy weight of books.

The electronic book readers allow for searching, highlighting, taking notes, and other features. It is true that some people like to physically hold and read a hard copy book, and for them, actual physical books can be available. This also should be the case for students who do not have the technology available to them for e-reading. And some books are not yet in electronic form, and hard copies are the only option.

But still, schools should move in the direction of the option of electronic reading for students. Some schools already are there, but others can make further progress in this regard.

Not only do electronic books lighten the physical load for students, it also is possible the some students will read more with the ease of electronic reading - many books will come alive right at their fingertips.

The Cost of Cybercrime: 1.5 Million Victims Every Day

September 19, 2012

Make no mistake, Cybercrime is real and its impact is huge. Indeed, a recent Norton Cybercrime report by Symantec provides some fairly startling statistics.

For example, there are 1.5 million Cybercrime victims on a daily basis - that is 18 victims per second. There are 556 million such victims per year - in excess of the European Union total population.

Two-thirds of online adults already have been Cybercrime victims at some point in their lives, and 46% of online adults have been victims within...