SOPA Activist and RSS author Aaron Swartz, co-founder of Reddit, has been found dead in his Brooklyn, NY apartment, from a hanging suicide. The 26 year-old was facing Federal prosecution for allegedly stealing 4.8 million documents from MIT’s computer networks, as well as from JSTOR, or Journal Storage, a nonprofit organization that offers journals and scholarly books to subsidized institutions. The death came as a shock to Swartz’s parents and girlfriend, who never expected him to hang himself, and they contend that the suicide was as a result of a “criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach.”

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security alerted users of Java to a serious and urgent security risk, recommending that users disable Java until a suitable fix has been released. In the statement, the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT), the branch of the federal government that manages computer security risks, warned that any system using Oracle Java 7 (1.7, 1.7.0) including Java Platform Standard Edition 7 (Java SE 7), Java SE Development Kit (JDK 7) and Java SE Runtime Environment (JRE 7) are at risk.

Iconic online community Criagslist is down, as of today, December 23, 2012. While some may think that Craigslist itself was hacked, our research suggests that there is a DNS issue. Regardless, many people can’t reach Craigslist right now.

Hunter Moore, the guy who invented revenge porn, is at it again and this time Internet hacktivist group Anonymous, specifically Kentucky Anonymous (@kyanonymous), has vowed to not let him get away with it in a campaign they’ve dubbed “Operation Hunt Hunter,” or, #OpHuntHunter. Despite the fact that he sold his original revenge porn website IsAnyoneUp.com, where users could submit naked pictures of others without consent, to an anti-bullying organization, and wrote what appeared to be a heartfelt letter apologizing for the mayhem his site caused, he told BetaBeat.com, “I literally had a half pound of cocaine on a fucking table with like 16 of my friends and we were busting up laughing taking turns writing this stupid letter.”

Update: We have just learned that Senator Leahy has withdrawn his support for the amendments to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA). He received resounding criticism from many groups and private citizens who felt that the revisions are unconstitutional and a gross invasion of privacy. In a series of tweets, below, Senator Leahy said that he did not support the bill amendments, and seems to deny that he ever did.

Bots generate at least 10% of all online traffic, according to data released today by Solve Media, a company that provides security authentication solutions through CAPTCHA-based advertising technology. Solve Media indicates that they have seen a 400% increase in what they term ‘aberrant’ traffic across web-based services such as commenting, voting, registration, contact and commenting.

Death by CAPTCHA is a company that has figured out a way to bypass security CAPTCHAs by offering their technology to solve CAPTCHA phrases. While this may sound like celebratory news for those who are tired of face-palming every time they try to read the twisted words provided by websites looking to make things secure for their users, in reality, it is a gateway to spam.

Are smart meters (or as some call them “smartmeters”) the next great energy saver, or are they a privacy risk for someone hacking your wifi, Internet, or electricity usage data? Maybe both. Some are calling them a great way to save energy and money on our monthly energy bills, some are saying they are a sign that big brother is tightening his grasp, but either way, smart meters are stirring up some serious controversy. From public meetings in Vermont, to gun-toting homeowners chasing utility company workers who are aiming to install smart meters off their property, these tiny little devices have not arrived quietly.

While Dropbox file-sharing service is intended to be a mostly consumer-based product, many companies use it as a means to share files between employees. The problem with using cloud-based services, such as Dropbox, for business purposes is that businesses don’t have proper controls over the data stored in the cloud. This was driven home this week when Dropbox announced that an employee’s password was stolen and the hackers made off with some sensitive information, including user email addresses which led to the spamming of Dropbox’s European user-base.

There are few things as comforting to hear as, “Our nuclear program has been compromised again” from an Iranian nuclear facility, but it appears that someone behind a cyber attack, or possibly some snickering 12 year old boys in their parent’s basement, have unleashed a cyberattack on Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization; hard rock-style. That’s right, the latest Iranian nuclear cyberattack has the nuclear physicists shaking all night long to AC/DC rock music; “Thunderstruck” to be exact.

Next time you use that iPad or iPhone, give a silent thanks to In-Q-Tel (pronounced “in q tel” or “incutel”), the CIA-run venture capital fund that has been integral in many technologies commonly used today, such as the touch screen. In q tel, also responsible for investing in what was the beginnings of the technology that became Google Earth, began in the late 90s and was born out of the CIA’s need to manage their huge mountain of data.

Google has found themselves in hot water over privacy issues yet again. As we previously reported, it was discovered that the Google Street View vehicles were collecting data illegally, while taking street pictures in the US, Australia and Europe. In fact, they were doing it for three years, between 2007 and 2010, by harvesting personal data through open wifi routers as the Street View car drove by. This data included entire emails, site visit history, passwords, and other private information that the average citizen probably does not want floating around.

It seems like every week brings news of a new hacking, which in turn means that usernames, email addresses, and passwords are constantly being posted online by hackers, and this inevitably leads to a simple question: when should you change your password? Or, to frame the question in a slightly different way, how often should you change your password? In general, you should change your password about as frequently as you can tolerate changing your password. As long as you can keep track of your various passwords, there isn’t any disadvantage associated with changing it (besides the fact that changing your password can be a bit of a pain). Now, however, there is at least one definite answer to the question posed above: you should change your password when ShouldIChangeMyPassword.com tells you to.

Here’s the skinny: LinkedIn experienced a password breach today – 6.5 million passwords were leaked. Now, according to reports, LinkedIn has 160 million users, so that’s not even 5% of the total number of LinkedIn passwords that could have been compromised, but its certainly enough that you should go to LinkedIn right now and change your password. Here’s how.

Starting early this morning, a rash of fake Kindle ebook orders hit the Internet. Sent out as part of the Sakura exploit malware, the email is designed to alarm the recipients into thinking that their Amazon accounts have been charged outrageous amounts for ebooks that they didn’t order, going to addresses they don’t recognize (including “Gahanna, United States”), but the links to “your account” actually take the unsuspecting recipients to malicious sites where the Sakura exploit will infect their computer, adding it to their botnet. The subject of the email is usually “Your Amazon.com Kindle e-book order confirmation” or “Your Amazon.com Kindle e-book order receipt” and appears to come from digital-no-reply@amazon.com “Thanks for your order (your email address)!” the email starts out, going on to say “Did you know you can view and edit your orders online, 24 hours a day? Visit Your Account.” Don’t fall for it!