Change has finally arrived in the United States of America, marking the dawn of a new era. The US Presidential campaign has shown the world how governments can leverage Web 2.0 to better understand and garner support from their citizens. However, this historically significant time is yet another opportunity to spread more malicious code, just a typical occasion for the malicious hackers behind the fake video codec social-engineering scams. We are tracking them and have previously alerted on them here, here, and here.
Websense Security Labs™ ThreatSeeker™ Network has detected that malicious hackers have registered multiple bogus user accounts on My.BarackObama.com ...................
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The fact that any communiqué sent by the commander-in-chief is public record led many to believe he would have to ditch the smartphone he used throughout his campaign. He was photographed yesterday fiddling with a device, but was it a BlackBerry?
Technology fiends are guessing that the president has started to use the Sectera Edge, a $3,350 (£2,342) smartphone made by defence contractor General Dynamics.
The phone is approved by the National Security Agency for sending and receiving classified emails and phone calls. It uses encrypted secure channels and is more rugged and durable than the BlackBerry. Unlike the BlackBerry, the Edge features Windows.
The NSA assures that it is secure despite concerns over the operating system’s security on personal computers.
All the excitement over the president’s Windows-operated James Bond super phone may soon pass, however. The mobile seen in yesterday’s White House photos is sleeker than the Edge and lacks its rubber shell. By that evidence, Mr Obama is merely using a BlackBerry 8830.
Whatever device it is, it will feature encryption to ensure it is secure but some acrobatic handling of the Presidential Records Act will be employed to keep some of his messages private. The White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, insisted there were provisions in the act’s wording that permitted “strictly personal communications”.
