Florida hit by "tsunami" of tax identity fraud


MIAMI (Reuters) - Bruce Parton was only a few weeks from retirement after 30 years as a mail carrier in sunny Florida.


He never lived to fulfill his retirement plan of moving back to a quiet life in the Catskill mountains of New York, not far from where he grew up on Long Island.


Instead, he was gunned down on his daily mail route in December 2010 by members of an identity theft ring who stole his master key as part of a scheme to claim fraudulent tax refunds.


Using stolen names and Social Security numbers, criminals are filing phony electronic tax forms to claim refunds, exploiting a slow-moving federal bureaucracy to collect the money before victims, or the Internal Revenue Service, discover the fraud.


Parton was a victim of what officials say has ballooned into a massive, and dangerous, illegal industry that could cost the nation $21 billion over the next five years, according to the U.S. Treasury Department.


While that is a relatively small sum compared to the $1.1 trillion collected from individual tax payers in the last fiscal year, the crime has been growing by leaps and bounds in the last three years.


"We are on the top of a national trend that is causing a hemorrhage of tax dollars," said Wifredo Ferrer, United States Attorney for south Florida. "It's a tsunami of fraud."


While the IRS says it has detected cases in every state except North Dakota and West Virginia, the fraud's epicenter is Florida, and it is mostly concentrated in Miami and Tampa.


Miami has 46 times the per-capita rate of false tax refund claims than the rest of the country, and 70 times the national average in dollar terms, Ferrer told Reuters.


"For whatever reason, we always tend to lead the nation when it comes to fraud," he said, noting that his office has been battling massive Medicare fraud in recent years that has since spread to other parts of the country.


Florida's high proportion of older residents, who can be more vulnerable to fraud, may be one reason for the high levels of fraud in the state.


Nationwide, the number of cases of tax identity theft detected by authorities sky-rocketed to more than 1.2 million cases in 2012 from only 48,000 in 2008, according to the Treasury Department.


The real number of phony tax filings is likely much higher as the fraud is hard to track, according to a November General Accountability Office report.


GANG LINKS


The tax ID theft problem is particularly troubling as, unlike Medicare fraud, it is associated with violent crime and armed gangs.


Tampa police first detected it in 2010 when officers discovered wanted street criminals engaged in tax fraud. "They were holed up in hotels with laptops churning out tax claims," said congresswoman Kathy Castor, who represents the area and is pressing the IRS to get tougher on the fraud.


When agents raided a Howard Johnson in East Tampa in late 2010, they found suspects smoking marijuana and four laptop computers being used to file fraudulent tax returns on Turbo Tax, the tax preparation software, according to police records.


The suspects had lists of personal information containing more than 1,000 names and confidential personal information, multiple re-loadable debit cards, and records of numerous financial transactions. The investigation revealed that the suspects had been camped out in the hotel room for more than a week filing claims.


Tax identity fraudsters are apparently drawn by the ease of the crime, officials say.


"The scheme is very basic, it works virtually the same in almost every case," said Ferrer. "All they need is your name and the tax ID number."


Armed with that information a refund claim can be filed electronically, making up other details on the form, including addresses, employer data, income and deductions.


Criminals obtain the vital numbers using various tactics, often by bribing office workers with access to personnel files inside companies, as well as large public institutions such as hospitals and schools, according to prosecutors.


Last summer a hacker stole 3.8 million unencrypted tax records from the South Carolina Department of Revenue in what is believed to be the largest security breach of a U.S. tax agency. Authorities say they do not know the hacker's motive.


One North Miami man, Rodney Saint Fleur, was charged last year with using the LexisNexis research service account at the law firm where he worked to access names and Social Security numbers of 26,000 people as part of an identity theft scheme, according to court documents.


Victims in Florida have varied from hospital patients, to Holocaust survivors at an elderly Jewish community center, as well as active duty military serving overseas.


In December, a former U.S. Marine from North Miami was sentenced to nearly five years in prison for stealing the identities of more than 40 fellow Marines stationed at Camp Leatherneck in Afghanistan as part of a plot to claim $54,000 in fraudulent income-tax refunds.


In Parton's case the criminals were after his master key that gives postal workers access to mail drop-off boxes and apartment mailboxes. He was shot twice in the chest by a gunman as part of a plot to steal identities in people's mail for tax refund fraud.


The gunman, Pikerson Mentor, 31, was sentenced last month to life plus 42 years.


More than 600 people turned up for Parton's funeral, including postal workers and people who got to know him on his route. "He had been doing that mail route for 10 years and he always had a smile for everyone," said his daughter, Nina Parton.


The criminals stay under the radar using identities of the elderly or the very young, who are unlikely to be filing for earned income, as well as the deceased. They typically claim small refunds, around $3,000, but use multiple identities, with payments often made to pre-paid debit cards.


FIGHTING BACK


The IRS said last week it is intensifying a crackdown on identify theft, with 3,000 agents devoted to tackling the problem, double the number assigned in 2011.


The number of IRS criminal investigations into identity theft more than tripled in the year to September 2012, and it was on pace to double again this year, acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller told reporters.


The tax collection agency prevented $20 billion in attempted tax refund fraud in fiscal year 2012, up from $14 billion a year earlier, he said.


"It's one of the biggest challenges that faces the IRS today," Miller said. "We're doing much better on all fronts but we have much more to do."


Despite the increase in investigations, the agency still had a backlog of 300,000 cases of people waiting for legitimate refunds after they were victims of fraud. It takes an average of six months to resolve a case, Miller said.


"The IRS have put a lot of resources on it, but they always seem to be behind the curve," said Keith Fogg, a tax professor at Villanova University School of Law.


Electronic filing, which now accounts for 80 percent of returns and was introduced to speed up delivery of refunds, has made the system more vulnerable to fraud.


The IRS is seeking to speed up the loading of data from W-2 payroll forms issued at the beginning of the tax season, a time lapse which gives fraudsters a window of opportunity to file using false data.


The IRS is also looking for ways to authenticate the identity of tax filers at the time of filing to pre-empt fraud, as well as working with the Social Security Administration to limit access to a registry of social security data of deceased tax payers, the so-called "Death Master File", a frequent target of fraud.


"We will not be prosecuting our way out of this. That's not going to be the answer. We're going to have to make it more and more difficult for criminals to profit from this behavior," said Miller. "If they're not successful they will move onto something else."


(Editing by Mary Milliken and Claudia Parsons)



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Pope, nearing retirement, says pray "for me and next pope"


VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict asked the faithful to pray for him and for the next pope, addressing a crowded St. Peter's Square in his penultimate Sunday address before becoming the first pontiff in centuries to resign.


The crowd chanted "Long live the pope!," waved banners and broke into sustained applause as he spoke from his window. The 85-year-old Benedict, who will resign on February 28, thanked them in several languages.


Speaking in Spanish, he told the crowd which the Vatican said numbered more than 50,000: "I beg you to continue praying for me and for the next pope".


It was not clear why the pope chose Spanish to make the only specific reference to his upcoming resignation in his Sunday address.


A number of cardinals have said they would be open to the possibility of a pope from the developing world, be it Latin America, Africa or Asia, as opposed to another from Europe, where the Church is crisis and polarized.


After his address, the pope retired into the Vatican's Apostolic Palace for a scheduled, week-long spiritual retreat and will not make any more public appearances until next Sunday.


Speaking in Italian in part of his address about Lent, the period when Christians reflect on their failings and seek guidance in prayer, the pope spoke of the difficulty of making important decisions.


"In decisive moments of life, or, on closer inspection, at every moment in life, we are at a crossroads: do we want to follow the ‘I' or God? The individual interest or the real good, that which is really good?" he said.


FOR THE GOOD OF THE CHURCH


Since his shock announcement last Monday, the pope has said several times that he made the difficult decision to become the first pope in more than six centuries to resign for the good of the Church.


"In a funny way he is even more peaceful now with this decision, unlike the rest of us, he is not somebody who gets choked up really easily," said Greg Burke, a senior media advisor to the Vatican.


"I think that has a lot to do with his spiritual life and who he is and the fact he is such a prayerful man," Burke told Reuters Television.


The pope has said his physical and spiritual forces are no longer strong enough to sustain him in the job of leading the world's 1.2 billion Roman Catholics at a time of difficulties for the Church in a fast-changing world.


Benedict's papacy was rocked by crises over the sex abuse of children by priests in Europe and the United States, most of which preceded his time in office but came to light during it.


His reign also saw Muslim anger after he compared Islam to violence. Jews were upset over his rehabilitation of a Holocaust denier. During a scandal over the Church's business dealings, his butler was convicted of leaking his private papers.


People in the crowd said the pope was a shadow of the man he was when elected on April 19, 2005.


"Like always, recently, he seemed tired, moved, perplexed, uncertain and insecure," said Stefan Malabar, an Italian in St. Peter's Square.


"It's something that really has an effect on you because the pope should be a strong and authoritative figure but instead he seems very weak, and that really struck me," he said.


The Vatican has said the conclave to choose his successor could start earlier than originally expected, giving the Roman Catholic Church a new leader by mid-March.


Some 117 cardinals under the age of 80 will be eligible to enter the secretive conclave to elect Benedict's successor. Church rules say the conclave has to start between 15 and 20 days after the papacy becomes vacant, which it will on February 28.


But since the Church is now dealing with an announced resignation and not a sudden death, Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said the Vatican would be "interpreting" the law to see if it could start earlier.


CONSULTATIONS BEGUN


Cardinals around the world have already begun informal consultations by phone and email to construct a profile of the man they think would be best suited to lead the Church in a period of continuing crisis.


The Vatican appears to be aiming to have a new pope elected and then formally installed before Palm Sunday on March 24 so he can preside at Holy Week services leading to Easter.


New details emerged at the weekend about the state of Benedict's health in the months before his shock decision.


Peter Seewald, a German journalist who wrote a book with the pope in 2010 in which Benedict first floated the possibility of resigning, visited him again about 10 weeks ago and asked what else could be expected from his papacy.


According to excepts published in the German magazine Focus, the pope answered: "From me? Not much from me. I'm an old man and the strength is ebbing. I think what I've done is enough."


Asked if he was considering resigning, the pope said: "That depends on how much my physical strength will force me to that".


Seewald said he was alarmed about the pope's health.


"His hearing had deteriorated. He couldn't see with his left eye. His body had become so thin that the tailors had difficulty in keeping up with newly fitted clothes ... I'd never seen him so exhausted-looking, so worn down."


The pope will say one more Sunday noon prayer on February 24, hold a final general audience on February 27. The next day he will take a helicopter to the papal summer retreat at Castle Gandalf, south of Rome, flying into the history books.


Vatican officials said he would stay there for the two months or so needed to restore the convent inside the Vatican where he will live out his remaining years.


(Additional reporting by Hanna Rantala; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)



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Cuban dissident blogger prepares “victory” tour






HAVANA (Reuters) – Cuba‘s best-known dissident, blogger Yoani Sanchez, says she plans to make good use of “my victory” when she leaves on an 80-day-tour of more than a dozen countries on Sunday.


Sanchez, under Cuba’s sweeping migration reform that went into effect this year, was given her passport two weeks ago, after being denied permission to travel more than 20 times over the past five years.






Sanchez, considered Cuba’s pioneer in social networking, told Reuters on Thursday that she would visit the headquarters of Google, Twitter and Facebook, and travel to Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Mexico, the United States, Spain, Italy, Poland, the Czech Republic and other nations.


“This is a victory after fighting five years for my right to travel, using patience, energy, legal and journalistic tools, and most of all the solidarity of many people,” she said, as she left her home Thursday morning to pick up a visa at a local embassy.


“I feel like a runner who has run the 110 meter hurdle. Tired, exhausted but happy to have met the challenge,” she added.


Sanchez, a 37-year-old Havana resident, has earned the wrath of Cuba’s communist government for constantly criticizing the system in her “Generation Y” blog, and using Twitter to denounce repression.


Sanchez, one of the world’s best known bloggers, has tens of thousands of followers abroad, but few in Cuba where the Internet is severely restricted by the government.


Her blog is named after the penchant of Cuban parents during the Cold War era of Soviet backing for the island to choose names for their children starting with “Y,” in a nod to the many popular Russian names starting with that letter.


Cuba’s leaders consider dissidents traitorous mercenaries in the employ of the United States and other enemies, and official bloggers regularly charge Sanchez’s international renown has been stage-managed by western intelligence services.


Sanchez, who has won a number of international prizes for her blog but was denied permission to collect them, said she would now do so during her travels.


‘VARIOUS OBJECTIVES’


“I have various objectives. I am going to give conferences at various universities, present my book (a collection of her blogs), receive the prizes I wasn’t given permission to collect before and meet my readers, many of whom have followed me for six years,” Sanchez said.


Sanchez’ case is viewed as a test of the Cuban government‘s commitment to free travel under reforms that require only a passport, renewed every two years, to leave the country.


Other leading dissidents have also received passports, though two less well known government opponents, Angel Moya and Gisela Delgado, have been denied.


The old travel law was put in place in 1961 to slow the flight of Cubans after the island’s 1959 revolution.


The new law got rid of the much-hated need to obtain an exit visa and loosened other restrictions that had discouraged Cubans from leaving.


It was one of the wide-ranging reforms President Raul Castro has enacted since he succeeded his older brother, Fidel Castro, in 2008.


There are still travel restrictions, mainly for reasons of national security and for those with pending legal cases, which may affect a number of dissidents like Moya, who is on parole after being jailed in a 2003 crackdown on dissent.


“It’s sweet-and-sour news. Yoani will travel to Mexico, Spain, Germany, and visit New York and Washington, DC., and that’s ‘sweet’ for Cubans everywhere. But, as with most things emanating from official Cuba, it’s also ‘sour,’” said Marifeli Pérez-Stable, Interim Director at Florida International University’s Latin American and Caribbean Center in Miami.


“That she was given a passport and others have been denied underscores the arbitrariness of the migration reform,” she added.


Sanchez said the travel reform fell short of “granting to anyone born on this island the inherent right to come and go,” but nevertheless was a step forward that will have an “incalculable political and social impact,” including for the government.


“In a way I am the flag bearer of this new era that’s beginning, where civil society is going to have access to international spaces and an international microphone and return with more information, knowledge and contacts,” Sanchez said.


(Reporting by Marc Frank; Editing by David Adams and Vicki Allen)


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Fugitive Ex-Cop Christopher Dorner May Have Committed Suicide















02/16/2013 at 10:00 AM EST







Undated photo of Christopher Dorner


LAPD/AP


Ex-LAPD Officer Christopher Dorner pledged to kill a lot of cops in his revenge-fueled killing spree, but once he was surrounded on Tuesday, Dorner apparently turned one of his many weapons on himself – ending one of Southern California's largest-ever manhunts with a self-inflicted gunshot.

San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon told reporters Friday evening that Dorner died from "a single gunshot wound to the head."

This supports early media reports that officers in a shootout last week with Dorner (which left one deputy dead) said they stopped being fired upon after hearing a single gunshot from inside the house where Dorner sought refuge. However, McMahon stopped short of confirming Dorner committed suicide, saying the manner of death is "still under investigation."

McMahon primarily used the press appearance to explain how deputies – who searched door to door for Dorner in Big Bear Lake the previous Thursday – failed to find him when he was apparently in a condominium only a few hundred feet from where his burned truck was abandoned.

McMahon said his deputies searched the complex, but the unit where Dorner apparently hid was locked, and deputies were not authorized "to force entry into residences that did not show signs of being broken into."

Officials said that during his rampage, which left four people dead in three counties, Dorner used
"numerous canisters of CS gas and smoke; multiple assault rifles equipped with suppressors; semi-automatic hand guns; and a military-style Kevlar helmet," among other weapons and equipment.

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UN warns risk of hepatitis E in S. Sudan grows


GENEVA (AP) — The United Nations says an outbreak of hepatitis E has killed 111 refugees in camps in South Sudan since July, and has become endemic in the region.


U.N. refugee agency spokesman Adrian Edwards says the influx of people to the camps from neighboring Sudan is believed to be one of the factors in the rapid spread of the contagious, life-threatening inflammatory viral disease of the liver.


Edwards said Friday that the camps have been hit by 6,017 cases of hepatitis E, which is spread through contaminated food and water.


He says the largest number of cases and suspected cases is in the Yusuf Batil camp in Upper Nile state, which houses 37,229 refugees fleeing fighting between rebels and the Sudanese government.


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G20 steps back from currency brink, heat off Japan


MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Group of 20 nations declared on Saturday there would be no currency war and deferred plans to set new debt-cutting targets, underlining broad concern about the fragile state of the world economy.


Japan's expansive policies, which have driven down the yen, escaped direct criticism in a statement thrashed out in Moscow by policymakers from the G20, which spans developed and emerging markets and accounts for 90 percent of the world economy.


Analysts said the yen, which has dropped 20 percent as a result of aggressive monetary and fiscal policies to reflate the Japanese economy, may now continue to fall.


"The market will take the G20 statement as an approval for what it has been doing -- selling of the yen," said Neil Mellor, currency strategist at Bank of New York Mellon in London. "No censure of Japan means they will be off to the money printing presses."


After late-night talks, finance ministers and central bankers agreed on wording closer than expected to a joint statement issued last Tuesday by the Group of Seven rich nations backing market-determined exchange rates.


A draft communiqué on Friday had steered clear of the G7's call for economic policy not to be targeted at exchange rates. But the final version included a G20 commitment to refrain from competitive devaluations and stated monetary policy would be directed only at price stability and growth.


"The mood quite clearly early on was that we needed desperately to avoid protectionist measures ... that mood permeated quite quickly," Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty told reporters, adding that the wording of the G20 statement had been hardened up by the ministers.


As a result, it reflected a substantial, but not complete, endorsement of Tuesday's proclamation by the G7 nations - the United States, Japan, Britain, Canada, France, Germany and Italy.


As with the G7 intervention, Tokyo said it gave it a green light to pursue its policies unchecked.


"I have explained that (Prime Minister Shinzo) Abe's administration is doing its utmost to escape from deflation and we have gained a certain understanding," Finance Minister Taro Aso told reporters.


"We're confident that if Japan revives its own economy that would certainly affect the world economy as well. We gained understanding on this point."


Flaherty admitted it would be difficult to gauge if domestic policies were aimed at weakening currencies or not.


NO FISCAL TARGETS


The G20 also made a commitment to a credible medium-term fiscal strategy, but stopped short of setting specific goals as most delegations felt any economic recovery was too fragile.


The communiqué said risks to the world economy had receded but growth remained too weak and unemployment too high.


"A sustained effort is required to continue building a stronger economic and monetary union in the euro area and to resolve uncertainties related to the fiscal situation in the United States and Japan, as well as to boost domestic sources of growth in surplus economies," it said.


A debt-cutting pact struck in Toronto in 2010 will expire this year if leaders fail to agree to extend it at a G20 summit of leaders in St Petersburg in September.


The United States says it is on track to meet its Toronto pledge but argues that the pace of future fiscal consolidation must not snuff out demand. Germany and others are pressing for another round of binding debt targets.


"We had a broad consensus in the G20 that we will stick to the commitment to fulfill the Toronto goals," German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said. "We do not have any interest in U.S.-bashing ... In St. Petersburg follow-up-goals will be decided."


The G20 put together a huge financial backstop to halt a market meltdown in 2009 but has failed to reach those heights since. At successive meetings, Germany has pressed the United States and others to do more to tackle their debts. Washington in turn has urged Berlin to do more to increase demand.


Backing in the communiqué for the use of domestic monetary policy to support economic recovery reflected the U.S. Federal Reserve's commitment to monetary stimulus through quantitative easing, or QE, to promote recovery and jobs.


QE entails large-scale bond buying -- $85 billion a month in the Fed's case -- that helps economic growth but has also unleashed destabilising capital flows into emerging markets.


A commitment to minimize such "negative spillovers" was an offsetting point in the text that China, fearful of asset bubbles and lost export competitiveness, highlighted.


"Major developed nations (should) pay attention to their monetary policy spillover," Vice Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao was quoted by state news agency Xinhua as saying in Moscow.


Russia, this year's chair of the G20, admitted the group had failed to reach agreement on medium-term budget deficit levels and expressed concern about ultra-loose policies that it and other emerging economies say could store up trouble for later.


On currencies, the G20 text reiterated its commitment last November, "to move more rapidly toward mores market-determined exchange rate systems and exchange rate flexibility to reflect underlying fundamentals, and avoid persistent exchange rate misalignments".


It said disorderly exchange rate movements and excess volatility in financial flows could harm economic and financial stability.


(Additional reporting by Gernot Heller, Lesley Wroughton, Maya Dyakina, Tetsushi Kajimoto, Jan Strupczewski, Lidia Kelly, Katya Golubkova, Jason Bush, Anirban Nag and Michael Martina. Writing by Douglas Busvine. Editing by Timothy Heritage/Mike Peacock)



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Pistorius, girlfriend were planning future: uncle


JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South African athlete Oscar Pistorius was planning a future with girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, who he is accused of shooting in cold blood this week, his uncle said on Saturday.


"We are in a state of total shock - firstly about the tragic death of Reeva who we had all got to know well and care for deeply over the last few months," Anthony Pistorius said in a statement released by his nephew's agent.


"They had plans together and Oscar was happier in his private life than he had been for a long time," he said.


Pistorius, 26, was charged on Friday with murdering Steenkamp in the early hours of the previous day. He broke down during a 40-minute bail hearing at a Pretoria court but was not asked to enter a plea.


Prosecutors alleged the shooting was premeditated - a charge that could put Pistorius behind bars for life if he is convicted.


Anthony Pistorius reiterated the family's belief that the track star - a double amputee who became one of the biggest names in world athletics - had not deliberately shot Steenkamp, a 30-year-old model. Initial reports suggested he may have mistaken Steenkamp for an intruder.


(Reporting by Ed Cropley; Editing by Angus MacSwan)



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Facebook says it was a target of sophisticated hacking






SAN FRANCISCO/LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Facebook Inc said on Friday hackers had infiltrated some of its employees’ laptops in recent weeks, making the world’s No.1 social network the latest victim of a wave of cyber attacks, many of which have been traced to China.


It said none of its users’ data was compromised in the attack, which occurred after a handful of employees visited a website last month that infected their machines with so-called malware, according to a post on Facebook’s official blog released just before the three-day U.S. President’s Day weekend.






“As soon as we discovered the presence of the malware, we remediated all infected machines, informed law enforcement, and began a significant investigation that continues to this day,” Facebook said.


It was not immediately clear why Facebook waited until now to announce the incident. Facebook declined to comment on the reason or the origin of the attack.


A security expert at another company with knowledge of the matter said he was told the Facebook attack appeared to have originated in China.


The attack on Facebook, which says it has more than 1 billion members, underscores the growing threat of cyber attacks aimed at a broad variety of targets.


Twitter, the micro blogging social network, said earlier this month it had been hacked and that about 250,000 user accounts were potentially compromised, with attackers gaining access to information, including user names and email addresses.


Newspaper websites, including those of The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, have also been infiltrated. Those attacks were attributed by the news organizations to Chinese hackers targeting coverage of China.


Earlier this week, U.S. President Barack Obama issued an executive order seeking better protection of the country’s critical infrastructure from cyber attacks.


“INFILTRATED”


Facebook noted in its blog post that it was not alone in the attack, and that “others were attacked and infiltrated recently as well,” although it did not specify who.


The Federal Bureau of Investigation declined to comment, while the U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not immediately return a call seeking comment.


In its blog post, Facebook described the attack as a “zero-day” attack, considered to be among the most sophisticated and dangerous types of computer hacks. Zero-day attacks, which are rarely discovered or disclosed by their targets, are costly to launch and often suggest government involvement.


While Facebook said no user data was compromised, the incident could raise consumer concerns about privacy and the vulnerability of personal information stored within the social network.


Facebook has made several privacy missteps in the past because of the way it handled user data. It settled a privacy investigation with federal regulators in 2011.


According to one person familiar with the situation, the type of information on the employee laptops that were compromised included “snippets” of Facebook source code and employee emails.


Facebook said it spotted a suspicious file and traced it back to an employee’s laptop. After conducting a forensic examination of the laptop, Facebook said it identified a malicious file, then searched company-wide and identified “several other compromised employee laptops”.


Another person briefed on the matter said the first Facebook employee had been infected via a website where coding strategies were discussed.


The company also said it identified a previously unseen attempt to bypass its built-in cyber defenses and that new protections were added on February 1.


Because the attack used a third-party website, it might have been an early-stage attempt to penetrate as many companies as possible.


If they followed established patterns, the attackers would learn about the people and computer networks at all the infected companies. They could then use that data in more targeted attacks to steal source code and other intellectual property.


Another fear for such a popular website is that hackers could use central controls to infect wide swathes of its user base at once.


In January 2010, Google reported it had been penetrated via a “zero-day” flaw in an older version of the Internet Explorer Web browser. The attackers were seeking source code and were also interested in Chinese dissidents. Google reduced its operations in China as a result.


(Additional reporting by Alexei Oreskovic in San Francisco and Tim Reid in Los Angeles; Editing by Paul Tait)


Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Megyn Kelly Expecting a Baby




Celebrity Baby Blog





02/14/2013 at 03:00 PM ET



Jack Osbourne Respectfully Declines More Baby Gifts
Andy Kropa/Getty


News flash: Megyn Kelly is pregnant!


The America Live host, 42, and her husband Doug Brunt are expecting their third child together, she announced on air Thursday.


“Every Valentine’s Day we always struggle to find just the right gift, and yet this year I believe that we found the perfect solution. Happily, Doug and I are expecting another baby,” she told her viewers.


Moments after her big announcement, her coworkers lavished Kelly with a pink boa, balloons and a bouquet of roses.


The new baby will join big brother Edward Yates, 3, and sister Yardley Evans, 22 months.


– Anya Leon


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Wall Street opens flat with data on tap

Finola Hughes has called the upcoming 50th anniversary of "General Hospital" a "really sweet" moment."I think the fact that we, at 'GH,' are doing so well right now, and to enter into our 50th anniversary on such a high, it feels really sweet," the actress, who plays Port Charles Police Chief Anna Devane, told Access Hollywood, when asked about the daytime drama's impending anniversary.
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