January, 2010 Issue

This is the message hackers left on the pages of members of the U.S. House of Representatives after President Obama's State of the Union address Wednesday night.

After warning of strained U.S.-China relations, China's government has issued statements denying any state involvement in the cyberattacks on Google and defending its online censorship.

The European Commission has officially approved the Oracle-Sun merger, paving the way for Oracle to take over Sun Microsystems in a deal valued at more than $7 billion.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is preparing to deliver a major speech on Thursday elevating the importance of Internet freedom and placing the influence of the United States' diplomacy behind efforts to protect it, according to multiple people who have been briefed on the speech's contents.

The recent cyberattacks on Google and other U.S. companies became public because they prompted Google's dramatic showdown with China, but attempts to steal corporate secrets using the Internet happen under the radar on a daily basis. "Espionage has been going on for decades. The Internet has made it a lot easier to conduct espionage," said John Bumgarner, chief technology officer at the government-funded think tank U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit. "The targets are mostly defense contractors and high-tech companies that have some type of competitive advantage that someone wants to steal."

WiMax may be Clearwire's technology of choice today as it builds out its nationwide 4G wireless network, but the upstart carrier may eventually migrate to a competing technology that's expected to be used by most of the world's major wireless operators.

The China-based cyber attacks on Google and other companies were "a watershed moment in cybersecurity," according to an executive at computer security company McAfee.

Perhaps Google's announcement that Chinese cyber attackers went after human rights activists' Gmail accounts has made you skittish about just how private your own messages are on the Google e-mail service.

The U.S. government plans to ask China for a formal explanation regarding the cyberattacks against Google and other U.S. companies, according to a State Department spokesman. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had already hinted at such a move in a statement she released when Google first revealed the attacks. "We will be issuing a formal demarche to the Chinese government in Beijing on this issue in the coming days, probably early this week," AFP quoted State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley as saying during a briefing Friday. Google's disclosure of attacks that are thought to involve more than 30 U.S. companies set off a firestorm in the diplomatic and security communities this week, tapping into growing frustration over trade and China within the U.S. government, according to the report. Google is also considering leaving China altogether unless it is allowed to offer an uncensored search engine, which is not very likely. Secretary Clinton is expected to deliver "a major policy address on Internet freedom" next Thursday in Washington, D.C., which could be the setting for the introduction of a more comprehensive government policy on cyberattacks and censorship.

In a move to show its 350 million members that it's serious about their safety, Facebook has launched a partnership with security firm McAfee: six months of McAfee's Internet Security Suite software, a discount subscription after that, and custom security software and education materials on Facebook.

It once hoped to change China with its search engine, but Google may wind up effecting more change by closing it down. They are perhaps the most repeated, misunderstood, and beloved three words to ever be associated with Google: "don't be evil." Those words, highlighted in the company's initial public offering in 2004, underscored how differently Google wants to be thought of compared with the average corporation. This has always been a company with a moral pulse, one that in its early days attracted a certain sort of idealistic engineer who truly believed the world could be made a better place by a responsible corporation that efficiently spread information and technology around the world. Yet Google is also one of America's largest and richest public companies, and obsessed with growing even larger. Operating on a global scale can require even the nicest businesses and companies to rub shoulders with governments that don't share the values of Silicon Valley.

U.S. President Barack Obama unveiled a $2.3 billion tax credit on Friday to boost jobs by promoting clean energy, as new data showed the country's unemployment rate remained stuck in the double digits.

Microsoft will issue one bulletin on Patch Tuesday next week that is rated "critical" for Windows 2000. The patch is designed to address a vulnerability that could allow an attacker to take control of a computer by remotely executing code on it, according to an advisory released Thursday. It is rated "low" severity for

It's doubtful that they would admit it, but U.S. studio chiefs and music moguls must dream that their country will one day elect a president like Nicolas Sarkozy.

Google has asked the Federal Communications Commission to designate it as one of the administrators of a database for "white space" devices.

Stephen Colbert, the comedian, political satirist, and host of Comedy Central's "Colbert Report," is funny on his show. The animated characters on "South Park," created by Matt Stone and Trey Parker, are hilarious.

Sure, every blogger worth his salt has weighed in on the long-rumored Apple tablet that may or may not be--its possible size, shape, specs, debut date, and on and on. Now offering up a perspective on the matter is a high-profile tech industry executive, Kai-fu Lee, who until recently was the head of Google's China operations.

With toy store shelves and television commercials chock full of eye-popping video games and fancy tech playthings, it came as a surprise to many that some of the hottest toys this holiday season were inexpensive, relatively low-tech battery-powered hamsters imported from China called Zhu Zhu Pets. The fuzzy toy rodents manufactured by Cepia LLC, which came in models with names like "Num Nums" and "Mr. Squiggles," could barely stay on shelves for most of the end of 2009, and nobody really saw it coming.