Police gather evidence via social networking

Documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Federation show law enforcement is increasingly turning to social networking to gather evidence on suspects, says Computing.co.uk.

The documents show law enforcement officers are actively looking at social networking sites for information to research suspects, the relationships they have with others and to glean personal information.

A confidential US Department of Justice presentation on social networking details strategy with sites and the ease with which they will yield information, such as IP addresses, to law enforcement.

Researchers at RSA have identified the network framework that endows some of the world's most notorious botnets with always-on connections that are virtually immune from takedowns, reveals The Register.

At the network's heart are the servers that shepherd tens of thousands of infected PCs so they continue to send spam, spread malware, and stay updated with the latest bot software.

By maintaining multiple conduits between these master control channels and the outside world, malware gangs are able to create highly-redundant networks that are extremely difficult for authorities and white hats to shut down.

An industry report claims the growth of illegal file-sharing could cost European countries 1.2 million jobs and 240 billion euros by 2015, writes the BBC.

The study, commissioned by an industry body and endorsed by trade unions, studied the impact of Web piracy in Germany, UK, France, Italy and Spain.

It claims that without measures to curb piracy, the UK alone could lose up a quarter of a million jobs by 2015.

When Panda Security found malware on a brand new Android-based Vodafone HTC Magic earlier this month, Vodafone said it was an "isolated local incident".

Now, a second phone has been found harbouring malware, including a program that turns infected machines into zombies as part of the Mariposa credit card and bank log-in-stealing botnet, reports CNet.

After hearing about PandaLabs' discovery, an employee at another Spanish security company, S21Sec, checked his recently-acquired HTC Magic and found the Mariposa malware lurking on it, according to a PandaLabs blog post on Wednesday.