computer industry

Over the weekend someone hacked a Fox News twitter feed and made some malicious posts:

A series of alarming Twitter posts about President Obama appeared on Fox News’s Twitter account for political news early Monday morning, and the Web site for the cable television network said it was a victim of hacking.

The Twitter account, @foxnewspolitics, one of many operated by Fox News, claimed that the president had been fatally shot while campaigning in Iowa, but gave no source for the news. On Monday morning, FoxNews.com first posted a brief statement saying that the reports were incorrect, and that it regretted “any distress the false Tweets may have created.”

First off, this is an absolutely horrible joke. I don't care who is in the White House, making false claims that the President of the United States has been assassinated is absolutely horrible and the Secret Service even thinks so, as they have now launched a full investigation.

Fox does seem set on blaming Twitter for the hack:

"We will be requesting a detailed investigation from Twitter about how this occurred, and measures to prevent future unauthorized access into FoxNews.com accounts," said Jeff Misenti, vice president and general manager of Fox News Digital.

This is turning into a daily event and makes one wonder if they aren't trying to say "hey computers aren't safe":

Equipment containing the names and Social Security numbers of about 1.3 million Texas Guaranteed Student Loan Corp. borrowers has disappeared, company officials said.

There was no evidence the information had been misused, but Texas Guaranteed said it said it would notify the affected borrowers by mail starting this week.

"It was not a security breach where someone hacked into our system," said Sue McMillin, Texas Guaranteed's president and chief executive.

Of course this isn't the only story popping up on the radar today:

The University of Kentucky inadvertently posted about 1,300 employee Social Security numbers on a Web site that was accessible to the public for several weeks last month.

"This is a regrettable incident, and the University considers any breach of privacy and confidentiality a serious matter," the school's general counsel wrote in a memo sent Wednesday to current and former employees who were affected.

The school learned late last week that a spreadsheet containing the personal data was available online. It immediately was removed from the school's server, the memo said.