The Hacker News - Cybersecurity News and Analysis: VKontakte

Another day, another Data Breach! Now, Russia's biggest social networking site VK.com is the latest in the line of historical data breaches targeting social networking websites. The same hacker who previously sold data dumps from MySpace , Tumblr , LinkedIn , and Fling.com, is now selling more than 100 Million VK.com records for just 1 Bitcoin ( approx. US$580 ). The database contains information like full names ( first names and last names ), email addresses, plain-text passwords, location information, phone numbers and, in some cases, secondary email addresses. Yes, plain-text passwords. According to Peace, the passwords were already in plain text when the VK.com was hacked. So, if the site still stores passwords in cleartext today, this could be a real security risk for its users. The data breach has initially been reported by LeakedSource search engine, which received portions of the database from one of the people who bought it. The company has already analyzed t

Is Google or Facebook evil? Forget it! Russian nerds have developed a new Face Recognition technology based app called FindFace , which is a nightmare for privacy lovers and human right advocates. FindFace is a terrifyingly powerful facial recognition app that lets you photograph strangers in a crowd and find their real identity by connecting them to their social media accounts with 70% success rate, putting public anonymity at risk. The FindFace app was launched two months ago on Google Play and Apple's App Store and currently has 500,000 registered users and processed nearly 3 Million searches, according to its co-founders, 26-year-old Artem Kukharenko, and 29-year-old Alexander Kabakov. According to The Guardian , FindFace uses image recognition technology to compare faces against profile pictures on Vkontakte, a very popular social networking site in Russia that has over 200 Million users. Besides showing the social media account of the one you are searching for, FindF

Yesterday reports revealed that Pavel Durov , the 29-year-old founder of Russia's most popular social networking site VKontakte (VK) - Russia's Facebook, had been fired from his post of general director of Vkontakte. On monday, Durov said that the social networking site VK is now under the complete control of two close allies of President Vladimir Putin. Publicly announcing his firing on his VK page he said, " In this way, today VKontakte goes under the complete control of Igor Sechin and Alisher Usmanov. Probably, in the Russian context, something like this was inevitable, but I'm happy we lasted seven and a half years. We did a lot. And part of what's been done can't be turned back. " Last Month on 21st March, the 29-year-old entrepreneur announced submitted his resignation, but earlier this month that he had rescinded his resignation as the company's CEO because it was an April Fool Prank, but unfortunately he supposedly failed to properly withdraw befor