Fake Dalai Lama exiled from Twitter

Microblogging service Twitter has suspended an account that claimed to be run by the Dalai Lama, says CNet.

The account purporting to belong to the Tibetan spiritual leader was only a few days old, but had already attracted tens of thousands of followers. To date, it's probably the most high-profile case of a bogus Twitter account actually getting the boot from the service.

Fake accounts that spoofed media personality Ira Glass and comedian Stephen Colbert gained notable followings until they were unmasked. In both of those cases, the impersonators offered to give the accounts to the real Glass and Colbert, but do not appear to have transferred ownership.

The Bank of England wants to outsource elements of its IT security and is accelerating the search for a supplier due to the lack of in-house resources to run the systems 24/7 and a desire to reduce costs, reports Computing.co.uk.

The contract for the operation of the bank's intrusion detection system (IDS) could last up to three years and may be worth up to £500 000.

Key elements of the service will include round-the-clock monitoring and reporting of the IDS system, as well as security analysis and risk management related to the bank's network and system configuration.

Online payments site PayPal has been bitten by yet another cross-site scripting (XSS) bug that could be exploited by black hats to phish user passwords, or possibly steal authentication cookies, says The Register.

At time of writing, opening the link revealed a tainted page that opened a javascript window that read: "Fugitif was here another time." It worked flawlessly on Internet Explorer and Firefox. However, using the Firefox NoScript plug-in automatically blocks the page from loading.

XSS bugs remain one of the easier ways to subvert Web site security measures. They use manipulated URLs to inject unauthorised code or content into a trusted Web site to change its behaviour. XSS exploits are able to bypass the so-called same-origin policy, which prevents cookies and other types of content set by one domain from being accessed or manipulated by a different address.

A survey has suggested half of Europe's teenagers browse the Web with no parental oversight or supervision, reports The BBC.

The research into the Web habits of 20 000 14- to 19-year-olds across Europe found 51% enjoy unfettered access to any and every Web site.

The MSN research also found 29% of the teenagers it quizzed have suffered bullying while using the Web.