Hackers automate malware on Facebook

Hackers have figured out how to create computer-generated Facebook profiles and are using them to trick unsuspecting users into installing malware, a security researcher warned, reports The Register.

The fraudulent profiles display the same picture of a blond-haired, blue-eyed woman, but with slightly different names and birthdates, says Roger Thompson, chief of research at security firm AVG Technologies. Each invites visitors to click on what purports to be a video link that ultimately tries to trick viewers into installing rogue anti-virus software.

AVG's LinkScanner product, which monitors Web pages in real-time to make sure they're not malicious, has encountered "hundreds" of separate pages. But because AVG only sees a page when one of its subscribers tries to click on one, Thompson suspects the total number of fake profiles is in the thousands.

Two months after a high school student sued Amazon for removing George Orwell's 1984 from his Kindle e-reader, along with all his notes, Amazon has settled the lawsuit, states PCWorld.

Amazon will give $150 000 to the plaintiff's lawyers, and lead law firm KamberEdelson LLC said it will donate its share to charity. It's not clear from Techflash's report how much money 17-year-old Justin Gawronski, of Michigan, and a co-plaintiff, Antoine Bruguier, will get.

In July, Amazon remotely wiped Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm from all Kindle e-readers, because the publisher of the e-books didn't have the rights to sell them in the US. The move was seen as Orwellian in itself, and raised questions of whether the consumer really owns digital content that is downloaded and paid for.

Research In Motion has issued a security patch that fixes a vulnerability that potentially leaves BlackBerry users open to phishing attacks, says InformationWeek.

The flaw enables a malicious coder to trick BlackBerry users into visiting a potentially malicious Web site by making the device think the site is a trusted one. To exploit this, attackers would need to create a site that uses null characters in the certificate's Common Name field.

The device detects the mismatch between the domain name and the certificate, but the warning screen doesn't display the hidden character, making the user think the site is trusted. "The updated BlackBerry device software is designed to depict null characters in the BlackBerry browser dialogue box that appears when the user visits a Web site with a certificate that does not match the site domain name," RIM said in a security note.

The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) reported this week that more colleges and universities than ever are offering degrees and certificate programmes in video game design, programming and art, reports CNet.

According to the organisation, 254 institutions currently offer programmes focused on video game creation. Notably, the University of Pennsylvania offers a master's degree in computer graphics and game technology.

The ESA said 54 programmes have been added since 2008, representing a 27% increase in the number of video game-related degree programmes across the US.