Swagg Security said that it was "considerably disappointed" with the inhuman working conditions at Foxconn, although that did not appear to be the main reason for the hack.

It said that it was a hacktivist group but was a Greyhat organisation.

SwaggSec alleged that it had bypassed Foxconn's firewall "almost flawlessly." They dumped "most of everything of significance," including usernames and passwords which "could allow individuals to make fraudulent orders under big companies like Microsoft, Apple, IBM, Intel, and Dell."

According to Apple Insider, Foxconn administrators took down services.foxconn.com. SwaggSec said on Twitter it guessed "you guys made one too many orders".

We had been expecting more hacks to target Foxconn after Apple fanboys the New York Times started to question if the company was an Apple sweatshop.

Today, protesters are expected to hold a demonstration outside of Apple's Grand Central Terminal store. They will hand out petitions calling for Apple, one of Foxconn's biggest clients, and Foxconn to improve working conditions. 

Instead, Microsoft thinks that its customers are having their accounts hijacked by cyber criminals.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the situation is being watched closely because insecurity experts have been waiting for another PlayStation Network security breach to happen. In that case, millions of customer accounts were made public and the network was shut down for a month.

While it might have been a bit tighter on security than Sony, Microsoft has been slow to publicly address hijacked Xbox Live accounts.

But Xbox Live users who have had their accounts compromised and facilitated to make unauthorised transactions have been moaning for months. They say Microsoft has been slow to assist customers and restore access to their accounts.

Last month, Redmond improved security on its Xbox.com website, which seems to have been how hackers got access to user account information.

The general manager of Xbox Live Alex Garden penned an open letter about security on Xbox Live that acknowledged "account hijacking across the internet continues to grow".

Garden described how there was a surge of personal information being compromised and sold but Microsoft said that there was no evidence of a security breach in the Xbox Live service.

Microsoft says the most common sources of security attack are social engineering, phishing, malware and using the same passwords. 

A report released yesterday showed that government agencies around the world are attending events and trade shows with the latest in surveillance technology.

From large scale organisations to the small, attendees at ISS World can buy up the latest surveillance and monitoring technology.  A joint report from the Wall Street Journal and Privacy International showed that even some rather surprising attendees, such as the Strathclyde Police and The US Fish and Wildlife Service, also turn up - paying over a thousand dollars per head for the privilege.

The Home Office has attended ISS World events in the past.  TechEye asked the Home Office to explain the purpose for the visits but were told that, for “operational reasons”, it could not comment.

The Home Office says that such visits are a matter of course, saying that “officials attend meetings like this and others as routine”.

Privacy advocates at Big Brother Watch questioned the necessity for the UK government to attend such events, and called for more transparency over attendance.

Deputy director of the group Emma Carr said, speaking to TechEye: "Questions need to be asked as to why individual police forces, such as Strathclyde Police, would need to attend a conference that features training sessions on ‘online social media and internet investigations’ and ‘exploiting computer and mobile vulnerabilities for electronic surveillance’".

Carr continued: “In the past ten years there have been millions of interceptions of communications, but only a tiny fraction are ever authorised by a court.”

Carr believes that with technology advancing at such a rate, the government needs to be clear about its surveillance powers. Big Brother Watch suggests the UK needs a "proper regulatory system in place to protect privacy and civil liberties".

“The public can’t have faith that these powers are being used properly if the government fails to be transparent in its attendance at such events,” Carr told us.

“The number of people attending these conferences demonstrates the enthusiasm for using more intrusive technology," she said. "It is far from certain that Britain has suitable regulation in place to ensure it is used proportionately and in appropriate situations.”

According to CIO Today, under a cunning plan being looked at by the US Senate, the DHS thinks that if it runs every corporate network in the Land of the Free the country will be much safer.

We guess it will also mean that the government can constantly monitor corporate emails for other threats.

Under the move, the same brains who have screwed up US tourism with their bizarre paranoia and obsessive desire to see you naked, the TSA would take over each company's security. We guess that means that you will not be able to turn on your computer without having your testicles fondled in the search for explosives.

To be fair Congress is only suggesting the nightmare scenario for outfits who run life-sustaining services, and if hackers got in could create catastrophic economic damage or severe degradation of national security capabilities.

The idea is being pushed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and is supported by the White House. However it has still got to go to consultation and we can't see the corporate interests which run the US allowing this one through. 

After being responsible for some true hilarity last week after listening in on FBI/Scotland Yard attempts to hunt the group down, another side of Anonymous was on show in what appeared to be negotiations to extort cash. Later the hacker said asking for money was an attempt to show up Symantec. Symantec claimed the emails were a fake.

A torrent has been posted on ThePirateBay, with a claim that Symantec had been misleading its customers over risks:

"Symantec has been lying to its customers. We exposed this point thus spreading the world that ppl need" - #AntiSec #Anonymous Spread and share!"

A copy of the email chain in which Symantec employee Sam Thomas allegedly tried to come to an arrangement to destroy the code - said to have been obtained back in 2006 - was also posted.

As you can see here, if true, demanding cash from a large company is slightly more laborious than you might imagine, with the mundane specifics of transferring the dough snagging the deal.

YamaTough demanded that $50,000 - the price Symantec allegedly put on its source code - was given to an offshore account, and quick. Symantec, for its part, was allegedly adamant that it would take a few days to get the deal signed off by all necessary and get it passed through its financial office.   A drip-feed pay plan was put forward, but YamaTough became impatient and it looks like negotiations broke down.

Just over a week ago, Symantec claimed it was safe to use a patched version of PCAnywhere. Clearly, everything has gone from bad to much, much worse. YamaTough says he is in possession of other source codes, too, and that they will appear on the black market at auction.

Security expert at Sophos, Graham Cluley, believes that it is a threat which faces all firms, and it is a constant battle to stay one step ahead of hackers.

“Any companies which believe they are totally,one hundred percent secure are losing the battle as there is no room for complacency,” he told TechEye.

“The good news for Symantec is that they have been very clear and upfront in telling users to stop using PCAnywhere, and released a patch.  They have been quite open about how users can protect themselves. It was a bold move and can’t have been comfortable, as it is certainly not a normal marketing message to be putting out there.”

As to whether Anonymous is able to claim the moral high-ground, Cluley believes it is just Symantec which has acted correctly: “If Anonymous are saying that Symantec has not been clear with its users then that is up to them to show some evidence.

“However," Clulely continued, "there is ultimately one group here which has committed a criminal act, and in accessing the source code, this is what Anonymous have done.”

According to a joint report released by Privacy international and the Wall Street Journal, government agencies in the UK - such as the Home Office and SOCA - have been attending the ISS World.

Other attendees include intelligence agency GCHQ, the Ministry of Defence and the Embassy of the UK. Even Strathclyde Police has been shelling out on the $1,295 per head fee to attend the shows.  TechEye has approached the Home Office but it is keeping quiet.

Privacy International points out it is not just the FBI that is looking at the latest in spyware, there are also small town police forces and even the US Fish and Wildlife Service, engaged as it is in the pursuit of underwater espionage.

At the events listed, going back to 2006, this means rubbing shoulders with some countries that have earned reputations for human rights abuses such as Libya and Egypt.

The sort of products on offer include devices and programs that can intercept mobile phone calls or text messages on a mass scale, or malware and spyware that can take over computers.

The events, held in Washington DC, Dubai and Prague from 2006 to 2009, also cover talks and seminars with titles such as “Wiretapping – understanding the basics”.

Quite why some police departments in the US with less than five staff, covering a rural area of roughly one thousand people would need to get their hand on such equipment is unclear.  It certainly illuminates an industry which is offering some heavy duty monitoring equipment to those willing to spend the cash.

There has been plenty of controversy over western firms readily supplying surveillance equipment to regimes with shady track records. Wikileaks most recently drummed up a storm when it said every country in the world is interested in grey area monitoring equipment.

While the ISS World might shy away from media contact – banning journalists from attending events – it seems that the surveillance industry is set to continue to grow.

The company has found a new premium-rate SMS Android trojan that modifies its code every time it gets downloaded. This means that it can bypass antivirus detection.

It uses a technique known as server-side polymorphism and it has existed peacefully in the world of desktop malware for many years. Now, it seems that something in the mobile world has woken it up and reversing the polarity of the neutron flow does not seem to work.

According to Symantec, a special mechanism runs on the distribution server which modifies certain parts of the trojan to ensure that every malicious app that gets downloaded is unique.

This is not the same as local polymorphism where the malware modifies its own code, nor is it the same as a polymorphic ring tone.

So far, Symantec has seen several variants of the trojan which it calls Android.Opfake. All of them have come from Russian websites and it is believed that they had slumbered in the Siberian ice only to be awoken when a meteorite plummeted to earth .

The malware contains instructions to automatically send SMS messages to premium-rate numbers from a large number of European and former Soviet Union countries.

Writing in his bog, Vikram Thakur, the principal security response manager at Symantec, said that more complicated polymorphism requires more intelligent countermeasures and, we guess, when you deal with them it is really important not to blink.

 *Update Camden Council has released a statement about the camera. It claims that all flash cameras have the ability to offer recorded messages and that this one was turned on by mistake.

Here is the full statement:

"Tackling antisocial behaviour is a top priority for Camden Council and we're committed to ensuring the safety and security of each and every one of our residents.

"The flash camera on Walker House estate was installed in September 2011 in response to an increasing number of concerns from residents on the estate and complaints of antisocial behaviour.

"All flash cameras have the capacity to deliver voice messages when activated but in this instance it appears that voice messages were inadvertently activated when the camera batteries were replaced four to five weeks ago.

"We do not want to stop residents from enjoying their open spaces and communal areas and under no circumstances would we want voice messages to be used in areas where they may be disturbed. The voice messages will be deactivated as soon as possible.

"Since the flash camera was installed, we have received various positive feedback from residents on the estate who have been pleased with the way it, along with increased housing patrols, has resulted in improvements to the place where they live.

"We have installed similar flash cameras as a temporary deterrent in a number of other locations across the borough. They have led to a number of antisocial behaviour orders being obtained as a direct result of evidence from the cameras.

"Flash cameras are only ever installed as a temporary measure and are always supported by deployment of other resources.

"We will only consider the use of technology as a deterrent when it can help tackle antisocial behaviour and offer value for money." 

The "DNSChanger Trojan" changes the host computer's web settings to hijack search results and to block victims from visiting security sites that might help scrub the infections.

Inspector Knacker of the Estonian Yard fingered the collar of six men suspected of using the Trojan to control more than 4 million computers in over 100 countries. At the same time there was a coordinated attack on the malware's infrastructure.

Companies were supposed to be cleaning up their systems before some bright spark figures out a way of reactivating the network.

But according to Krebs on Security,  that cleanup process has been slow-going.

Insecurity company Internet Identity found evidence of at least one DNSChanger infection in computers at half of all the Fortune 500 firms, and 27 out of 55 major government entities.

Rod Rasmussen, president and chief technology officer at Internet Identity, said that there were some difficulties with removing this malware, but you would think people would want to get it cleaned up.

The FBI has warned that although it has a court order to replace the Trojan's DNS infrastructure with surrogate, legitimate DNS servers, the order will expire on 8 March, 2012. When that expires the internet connection for infected servers will break completely.

In a security best practices guideline, Germany's Federal Office for Information Security, known by its German initials of BSI, said Chrome was the best browser.

In its published advice, the BSI said that since the browser is the key component for the use of services on the Web, it is the main target for cyber-attacks.

It said that using Google Chrome in conjunction with other measures you can significantly reduce the risk of a successful IT attack.

The report cited Chrome's anti-exploit sandbox technology for special praise. This technology isolates the browser from the operating system and the rest of the computer. It also liked Chrome's update mechanism and method of bundling Adobe Flash,

The BSI has a lot of clout. Two years ago it told Germans to stop using Internet Exploder and switch to Firefox. That move was credited with wiping out IE's dominence in the EU.

BSI also recommended Adobe Reader X because of its sandbox system and urged citizens to use Windows' Auto Update feature to keep their PCs up to date with OS security fixes.

It also gave the nod to Secunia's Personal Software Inspector (PSI), a free utility that scan a computer for outdated software and points users to appropriate downloads.

At the moment Chrome has only 14.3 percent of all browsers used in Germany, while Firefox has 51 percent and IE accounts for 24.8 percent.