Microsoft strong arm hardware vendors in social responsibility

After years of communication Microsoft a formal environmental sustainability policy, seem the shareholders have won: Microsoft will now be its hardware suppliers of the company's social responsibility requirements.

Hardware vendors will be prompted to go good environmental behaviour and to accept Microsoft's full code of conduct. This cover regulatory compliance, business ethics, the work and the human rights standards, respect of intellectual property and the environment. Before two years Microsoft has been started from the NASDAQ-sustainability index "due to insufficient disclosure of quantitative environmental metrics", in accordance with the Microsoft. For the last two annual general meetings, activist investors have tried Microsoft level to get measures for the improvement of sustainability.

While Microsoft's new effort "is directed in General in the right direction," environmental activists question, how much influence, it really have, says Casey Harrell, environment analyst at Greenpeace International.

In particular, will select hardware vendors in Microsoft's supply chain called upon to submit reports and tests. The results will be published in Microsoft's citizenship annual report. Microsoft not name but said that this directive will affect a dozen of his most important suppliers and contract manufacturers hardware. Microsoft calls vendors publish their own results.

Dell of suppliers could be? One of the policies in Microsoft's code of conduct is: "if applicable, the chemicals, or other materials identify published, that pose a threat to the environment and manage them accordingly, secure their handling, movement, storage, use, to ensure recycling or reuse and disposal."

Greenpeace was for years the dangerous chemicals from the production of electronics for Dell. It won a concession from Dell earlier this year when the company agreed to more environmentally friendly packaging, and working with Dell to eliminate plastic and brominated flame retardants (BFR) from its products toxic PVC. A document of the Dell progress to later in the year and Harrell says that it now expects that to displace more PVC/BFR reduced Dell and PVC/BFR-free models.

In its press release credited shareholder John C. Liu, New York City Comptroller work Microsoft's new policy for the New York City pension funds, with approximately $120 billion of assets under management.

The last two years shareholder activist John Harrington, the socially responsible investment firm Harrington investments, requests from shareholders to eco-friendly sustainability for a Board-level Committee questions presented. Both years Microsoft Board recommended a 'no' to the shareholders. The Board declared that already the responsibility of Microsoft's governance and Nominating Committee "verify it from Microsoft's policies and programmes, including on corporate responsibility in particular environmental sustainability," einbezogenen accordingly in the annual proxy statement. ERGO, no separate Committee level is required. Microsoft has services such as the "generation 4"-Rechenzentren, the energy consumption drastically.

Last year's shareholder resolution did not pass. With today's news, it is unlikely that "No," recommendation ignored shareholders of the Board and for the benefit of votes. Microsoft's annual general meeting will take place next month.

Note that Greenpeace Microsoft is a "C" on his clean cloud report card in April [PDF gave]. While Harrell is supported by Microsoft's new effort, it is not convinced.

"In General is gut-more data - in particular, if this with other checks cross-reference." "This reporting will work very much more useful if Microsoft really require suppliers to adhere to stricter standards than the law allows," she added, says that certain high standards are required, "If Microsoft wants to change his game." For example, refers them to an announcement from Sprint on Wednesday, in which also, now is a better reporting from hardware vendors, and wants too, that it aims to reduce emissions.

The rules that will promote Microsoft at the supply chain, go far beyond environmental standards. Microsoft will also ethical business practices and regulatory compliance. For example in the field of legal and regulatory compliance, Microsoft insists that their companies follow trade laws, engage not in antitrust behavior (Microsoft his lesson learned it?) and "bribes or kickbacks of any kind not participate." This is interesting from a company, the worldwide scandal in 2007 for allegedly bullying and bribery accelerated adoption of Office OpenXML caused members of the international standards organization.

The company of next list of illegal commercial practices such as insider trading, and offers a commendable list of a no no in working practices, including providers discrimination in hiring practices, to prohibit child labour or abuse.

"Microsoft has taken an important step to promote the sustainability and transparency between its global suppliers,", said Liu in the press release. "If more companies showed such leadership it would keep other suppliers responsible for the protection of human and labour rights and reduce the legal and reputational risks, the company and its shareholders face."

We look at Apple and Foxconn, on you.

Bort is the editor of Network World Microsoft subnet and open source subnet communities. She writes the Microsoft Update and source Finder to blogs. Follow bort on Twitter @ Julie188.

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TECHNOLOGY, A social component is missing Romanian anti-cybercrime effort

Romania has long time as a hotbed of Internet criminal activity, but in recent years law enforcement agencies have made significant efforts right, to combat online fraud gangs, to steal the millions of victims throughout the world each year.
Enforcement actions show a visible increase in the number of right media reports and two official statistics in this area. The Romanian Directorate for the investigation of organised crime and terrorism (DIICOT) reports 2010 977 new cases registered 1,157 Internet criminal investigations opened already in the first eight months of this year.
The fact that law enforcement can efforts to those responsible to justice only a good thing, but according to Bogdan Manolea, cyberlaw expert and executive Director of the Romanian Association for technology and Internet (ApTI), this is only treat of the symptoms and not the cause.
"As long as the Romanian authorities only this problem as individuals and not as a phenomenon are handled, I don't think that there are great strides achieved that long to medium term, be,", Manolea said.
Despite DIICOT of increasing efforts to stamp out cyber-crime are more and more young people always such activities involved, and Josiah, after serving prison time for associated offences. This is done through a combination of factors from, the poor state of the economy and the lack of job opportunities judgments, that some consider too indulgent. However, little is done is, to determine, to combat the causes.
"I'm talking about the need and the ability of the authorities work with the private sector to determine the factors that transformed them into a phenomenon, to adopt the motives of the parties, the prevalence of the problem and solutions at the national level, which discourage the involvement of young people in this type of activity." "So far we this are pretty bad," said Manolea.
Almost all forms of cyber-crime are in Romania, including fake online auctions, VoIP was, to clone credit card and slide the manufacture of devices. But is the most popular type of online fraud in Romania's Internet criminals, phishing.
The simplicity of phishing could explain why it is so attractive to Romanian fraudsters. Although a significant threat for years now, continue to phishing attacks a high success rate have since protection of user training is largely dependent on.
Phishing is in Romania, that it has become almost a national brand so prevalent and perceive colour as foreigners of the country, especially in cyberspace.
Another reason for the popularity of phishing is that it is not seriously punished. DIICOT announcements and news mention article sentences with a maximum of 20 years in prison, but are often the actual penalties far less than that.
Manolea analyzes public data on court judgements and found that the average phishing are sentences between two to four years in prison. Suspended sentences get defendants in some cases.
Each has attenuating or aggravating circumstances, and it is normal that the maximum sentence for rarely be handed down, note Manolea. But the big difference between the declared and actual penalties distorted public opinion, leading to feelings that the legal system does not work.
Manolea not believe that harsher penalties result in a solution, since such measures to a decrease in the crime. However, he feels that the social risks associated with these actions should be discussed more.
"This topic isn't enough, with only one or two events dedicated to cybercrime has been discussed every year." There are probably some judges, still no clear picture what these young people actually do, "he said."
Despite the increasing cooperation with foreign Partnern--DIICOT exchange information with law enforcement agencies in more than 50 countries, a spokesman for sagte-- there are still many hurdles that prosecutors face when their cases to create. Anonymity, by the Internet and the difficult task to identify and victims, interview, especially if most of them foreigners, transmitted are only some of them.
It is not only Romanian authorities, which are on Cybercrime cracks down. Other Eastern European countries with a long history of online fraud, including the Ukraine and also their efforts have strengthened Bulgaria. But not these Governments have even recognized that to bring awareness and education of young people as important as criminals behind bars.

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TECHNOLOGY, 5 Dirty Tricks: Social Engineers' Latest Pick-up Lines

You may now be savvy enough to know that when a friend reaches out on Facebook and says they've been mugged in London and are in desperate need of cash, that it's a scam. But social engineers, the criminals that pull off these kinds of ploys by trying to trick you, are one step ahead.
Social engineering attacks are getting more specific, according to Chris Hadnagy author of Social Engineering: The Art of Human Hacking.
"Targeted attacks are earning social engineers better results," he said.
[Also read the original 9 dirty tricks: Social engineers' favorite pickup lines]
What that means is they may need to do more work to find out personal information, and it may take longer, but the payoff is often larger.
"Attacks now are not just a broad spam effort, sending out a million emails with an offer for Viagra," said Hadnagy. "These are now individual attacks where they are going after people one by one."
Here are five new scams circulating that employ much more individual involvement.
"This is Microsoft support --we want to help"
Hadnagy says a new kind of attack is hitting many people lately. It starts with a phone call from someone claiming to be from Microsoft support, calling because an abnormal number of errors have been originating from your computer.
"The person on the other end says they want to help fix it because there is a bug and they have been making calls to licensed Windows users," explained Hadnagy. "All of the pretext makes sense; you are a licensed Windows user, you own a machine with Windows on it and she wants to prove it to you."
The caller tells the victim to go to the event log and walks them through the steps to get to the system log.
"Every Windows user will have tons of errors in the event log, simply because little things happen; a service crashes, something doesn't start. There are always errors," said Hadnagy. "But when a non-experienced user opens it up and sees all these critical errors, it looks scary."
At that point, the victim is eagerly ready to do whatever the alleged "support" person wants them to do. The social engineer advises them to go to Teamviewer.com, a remote-access service that will give them control of the machine.
Once the social engineer has access to the machine through Teamviewer, they then install some kind of rootkit or other kind of malware that will allow them to have continual access, said Hadnagy.
"Donate to the hurricane recovery efforts!"
Charitable contribution scams have been a problem for years. Any time there is a high-profile incident, such as the devastating earthquake in Haiti or the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, criminals quickly get into the game and launch fake contribution sites. The best way to avoid this is to go to a reputable organization, such as the Red Cross, and initiate the contact yourself if you want to donate. However, Hadnagy says a particularly vile targeted social engineering ploy has cropped up recently that seeks specifically to target victims who may have lost loved ones in a disaster.
In this example, Hadnagy says about 8-10 hours after the incident occurs, web sites pop up claiming to help find those who may have been lost in the disaster. They claim to have access to government data bases and rescue effort information. They typically don't ask for financial information, but do require names, addresses and contact information, such as email and phone numbers.
"While you're waiting to hear back about the person you are seeking information on, you get a call from a charity," said Hadnagy. "The person from the charity will often strike up a conversation and claim to be collecting contributions because they feel passionate about the cause as they have lost a family member in a disaster. Secretly, they know the victim they've contacted has lost someone, too, and this helps build up a camaraderie."
Touched by the caller, the victim then offers up a credit card number over the phone to donate to the alleged charity.
"Now they have your address, your name, relative's name from the web site and also a credit card. It's basically every piece they need to commit identity theft," said Hadnagy.
Hadnagy has also heard of criminals who then go on to launch secondary attacks to obtain even more sensitive information, such as placing a call posing as a banking representative to verify the charity donation is legitimate and asking for the victim's social security number "for verification purposes."
"About your job application..."
Both job seekers and head-hunting organizations are being hit by social engineers who know they are looking for employment or seeking new employees.
"In both directions, this is a dangerous one," said Hadnagy. "Whether you are the person looking for work or the company posting new jobs, both parties are saying 'I'm willing to accept attachments and information from strangers.'"
According to a warning from the FBI, more than $150,000 was stolen from a U.S. business via unauthorized wire transfer as a result of an e-mail the business received that contained malware that resulted from a job posting.
"The malware was embedded in an e-mail response to a job posting the business placed on an employment website and allowed the attacker to obtain the online banking credentials of the person who was authorized to conduct financial transactions within the company," the FBI alert reads. "The malicious actor changed the account settings to allow the sending of wire transfers, one to the Ukraine and two to domestic accounts. The malware was identified as a Bredolab variant, svrwsc.exe. This malware was connected to the ZeuS/Zbot Trojan, which is commonly used by cyber criminals to defraud U.S. businesses."
Malicious attachments have become such a problem that many organizations now require job seekers to fill out an online form, rather than accept resumes and cover letters in attachment, said Hadnagy. And the threat for job seekers of receiving a malicious message from a social engineer is high, too, he said. Many people now used LinkedIn to broadcast that they are looking for work, a quick way for a social engineer to know who is a potential target.
"This is one of those cases of what do you do?" he said. "People need to look for jobs and companies need to hire. But this is a time when more critical thinking is required."
"@Twitterguy, what do you think about what Obama said on #cybersecurity? http://shar.es/HNGAt "
Social engineers are taking the time to observe what people tweet about and using that information to launch attacks that seem more believable. One way this happening is in the form of popular hashtags, according to security firm Sophos. In fact, earlier this month, the U.K. debut of the new season of 'Glee' prompted social engineers to hijack the hashtag #gleeonsky for several hours. British Sky Broadcasting paid to use the hashtag to promote the new season, but spammers got ahold of it quickly and began embedding malicious links into tweets with the popular term.
[Also read Mind games: How social engineers win your confidence]
"Of course, the spammers can choose to redirect you to any webpage they like once you have clicked on the link," said Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant at Sophos in their Naked Security blog. "It could be a phishing site designed to steal your Twitter credentials, it could be a fake pharmacy, it could be a porn site or it could be a website harboring malware."
Twitter mentions are another way to get someone's attention. If the social engineer knows enough about what you're interested in, all they have to do is tweet your handle and add some information in that makes the tweet seem legitimate. Say you're a political wonk who is tweeting quite a bit about the GOP primary race lately. A tweet that mentions you, and points you to a link asking you what you think about Mitt Romney's latest debate statements can appear perfectly legitimate.
"I would expect we will see even more attacks like this in social media because of the way people click through these links," said Hadnagy.
"Get more Twitter followers!"
Sophos has also warned of services claiming to get Twitter users more followers. According to Cluley, you'll see tweets all over Twitter that says something like : GET MORE FOLLOWERS MY BEST FRIENDS? I WILL FOLLOW YOU BACK IF YOU FOLLOW ME - [LINK]"
Clicking on the link takes the user to a web service that promises to get them many more new followers.
Cluley himself created a test account to try one out and see what would happen.
"The pages ask you to enter your Twitter username and password," reported Cluley in a blog post on the experiment. "That should instantly have you running for the hills - why should a third-party webpage require your Twitter credentials? What are the owners of these webpages planning to do with your username and password? Can they be trusted?"
Cluley also notes the service, in the bottom right hand corner, admits that they are not endorsed or affiliated with Twitter, and in order to use the service, you are required to grant an application access to your account. At that point, all assurances of security and ethical use are off, he said. Twitter itself even warns about these services on their help center information page.
"When you give out your username and password to another site or application, you are giving control of your account to someone else," the Twitter rules explain. "They may then post duplicated, spam, or malicious updates and links, send unwanted direct messages, aggressively follow, or violate other Twitter rules with your account. Some third-party applications have been implicated in spam behavior, fraud, the selling of usernames and passwords, and phishing. Please do not give your username and password out to any third-party application that you have not thoroughly researched."

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TECHNOLOGY, Twitter Used for Social Good and to Incite Disorder

Twitter and other social media sites are sparking an international debate over whether the forums serve the public good or make it easier to incite disorder.
There are examples of both in recent months.
In Mexico, before the police or news reporters had even arrived at an underpass outside Veracruz where gunmen held up traffic and dumped 35 bodies at rush hour last week, Twitter users were warning others to avoid the area, reports The New York Times. The warnings on Twitter about the bodies arrived on the same day that Veracruz’s State Assembly made it a crime to use Twitter and other social networks to undermine public order.In China, Sina.com is warning microbloggers that it will penalize them for spreading false rumors on Weibo, which is Sina’s Twitter-like social media service that has 200 million registered users, reports CNN.In England, British police threatened to bring charges against those who used social media to incite the looting and violence that began after the police shooting of 29-year-old Mark Duggan in North London last month.Reflecting social media’s use in influencing political and societal change, in the United States police arrested scores of protesters Saturday in New York’s Financial District while onlookers uploaded video and commentary to a variety of social media sites almost instantly. And last month San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit came under fire for shutting down cellular service to hinder protesters from communicating and using social media to organize.
Twitter has probably been most famously used to organize political change in the Middle East, so much so that Google launched a “voice-to-Twitter” service specifically to assist Egyptian Twitter users in February when Internet service was blocked.
While governments increasingly acknowledge the power of social networks to influence citizen behavior, their attempts to control how people use them can at times seem somewhat ridiculous. Sites like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are public, free and open. For an outside entity to proclaim what can and cannot be done on them is like trying to discipline someone else’s unruly kid.
That said, the spreading of false rumors or the encouragement of looting is undeniably troublesome for everybody.
What are your thoughts? Is there a place for some amount of government regulation when it comes to social media? Should the dissemination of harmful or incorrect information be punishable?

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Tokyo Game Show to highlight the rise of social games

Visitors are seen at the Tokyo Game Show in Chiba, East of Tokyo, September 16, 2010.

Credit: Reuters/Yuriko NakaoBy Elizabeth Reynolds

TOKYO | Mon September 12, 2011 12:46 am EST

Tokyo (Reuters)-in a world of growing smartphones and tablets, providers of social games will be featured at the Tokyo Game Show this week, while the champion Nintendo, criticized for being too focused on hardware, fight to win back the fans.

As sales of conventional games sputter, mobile social games company Gree and DeNA rival views are well placed to qualify, given their success with the previous generation feature phones.

GREE marks his debut in the show of Japan annual game, which goes from 15 to 18 September of this year, with one of the biggest booths.

It is estimated that the social gaming market of Japan, usually involving simple games played on mobile devices with anonymous contacts online, grow to around 400 billion yen (US $ 5.1 billion) in 2013 of 106 billion yen in 2011, extending its rapid growth, Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley analyst Masato Araki said.

Nintendo, which does not participate in Tokyo Game Show, maintains its own event on 13 September.

The Kyoto company is expected to unveil new software 3DS with his character of 25 years, Mario, and there are also market conversations about a joystick, already sacked by analysts and bloggers like unlikely boost sales.

Software publishers from Japan are shifting resources to develop the new generation of social games, but Nintendo is effectively deleted, any attempt to make the leap to delivery of content to devices from other companies would further undermine already weak sales of its Wii and 3DS.

"Nintendo did some terrible things-no software, poor prices, poor PR, no sign of a sustainable turnaround, software support dropping like flies," said JP Morgan analyst Hiroshi Kamide 3DS announcement failed.

Konami software vendor, on the other hand, had done something relatively simple, but with great execution, said Kamide. "You can do serious returns with social games in Japan, if well done and that is exactly what they have done."

The change of fortunes is no less marked in stock prices, where Nintendo, which long dominated the industry, appealing to everyone from pre-school to pensioners with your Wii and DS, hardware has fallen 42 percent since April 1, hit by its shocking inability new gadget, the DS portable 3.

Gree's shares soared 84, DeNA's up 29 and Konami jumped 86 percent.

Looking to drive sales of videogames before the holiday season, Sony Corp cut the price of its PlayStation 3 gaming console base by almost a fifth in the United States.

CASUAL GAMERS

Many casual players are flocking to blockbuster devices such as Apple's iPhone and iPad, eat in Nintendo's market share, while Google and Facebook are also making a major push into games.

"Nintendo needs to be more social and digital and will strive to do it as he will not give up its strategy of combination of hardware and software, said David Gibson, head of research at Macquarie Capital Securities.

Highlighting the industry's downturn, physical sales of gaming hardware and software packages in the United States fell 23 percent in August from a year ago, according to research firm NPD.

Nintendo sold just 710,000 units of the 3DS in April-June, compared to 3.6 million in the month following its launch and a small fraction of its 16 million unit target for the year to March 2012. [ID: nL3E7IS1R8]

Reducing the price of 3DS for about a third have driven unit sales, analysts say, but it is not known how long it will last the effect, leading some to call on Nintendo hardware to completely remove.

But the example of Sega is increasingly being cited as a reason for Nintendo to maintain its current structure.

Once a force to be reckoned with in video games, and sporting the popular Sonic Hedgehog character, Sega fell out of the home consoles hardware market a decade ago.

Sega clung in as a software editor for other platforms, but two years later, his creative drive apparently fading, it was assumed by the company of Salon "pachinko" pinball Sammy.

The withdrawal did little to improve the financial situation of Sega and company employees had made it harder to recruit sayd output and retain talented employees.

Some industry experts say that Nintendo Games can successfully fight again as it has done in previous crises.

"Nintendo has fallen into a slump twice in the past," said Osamu Inoue, the author of a book on the giant secret. "He almost went bust after diversification in early 1970," he added, recalling that the launch of the Wii and DS has saved the company again after years of losing to Sony's PlayStation.

(US $ 1 = 77.45 Japanese yen)

(Editing by Anshuman Daga)

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