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Hackers placed code in the comments section, under targeted videos, that would run when people watched the clip. In some cases, a pop-up screen appeared reporting that the Canadian singer, Justin Bieber, had died in a car crash.

Google, which owns YouTube, said that it had fixed the problem "about two hours" after it was discovered. "We took swift action to fix a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability on youtube.com," a spokesperson said. "Comments were temporarily hidden by default within an hour, and we released a complete fix for the issue in about two hours. Nasty attack

Cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities are relatively simple attacks that allow hackers to place code into web pages. In the YouTube incident, hackers used JavaScript code and HTML, both commonly used on web pages. Security experts said that although in most cases the code was relatively benign, it has been used for more malicious purposes.

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The Government Railway Police (GRP) want to build a cyber crime cell of their own, but are unable to commence the functioning of the cell in the GRP headquarters at Wadi Bunder because of lack of space and amenities. A network and computerisation project to connect all railway police stations under the Railway Police Commissionerate has also not started because of similar reasons.

The Central Railway is yet to accede to their request for more space. "Not a single case of cyber crime has been reported within our jurisdiction as it does not extend beyond railway tracks, stations and railway offices, and cyber crimes do not take place in these areas," said a GRP official. "Since the state government and Maharashtra police department has directed us to set up the cyber crime cell we will go ahead with the plan and be prepared to face any cyber crime in future."

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Google Inc.’s $700 million takeover of flight-information provider ITA Software Inc. is set to face regulatory scrutiny because of Google’s large market share in Internet search, UBS AG analyst Brian Pitz said. Google’s acquisitions of AdMob Inc. and DoubleClick Inc. took about nine months to get approval, New York-based Pitz said today in a research note. Google, owner of the world’s most popular search engine, announced the ITA acquisition yesterday.

The purchase will probably help Google compete against travel-information services from rivals including Microsoft Corp.’s Bing and Kayak.com, Pitz said. Though ITA has focused on airlines, it will probably expand to hotels and rental cars, said Pitz, who recommends investors buy Google shares.

Google had more than five times the online search share of Microsoft’s Bing in the U.S. in May, according to ComScore Inc., a Reston, Virginia-based researcher. Microsoft has lured users partly through travel-related tools including features that predict ticket-price changes.

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Nigeria is trying to salvage its reputation of being an axis for cyber crime and infamous scams by partnering with the U.S. government to take strides toward improving its image and bolstering its monitoring and investigations skills.

Bashir Gwandu, the acting executive vice chairman of the Nigeria Communications Commission, told NEXT how email scams claiming to be from Nigerian institutions have significantly hurt the country’s image internationally.

The partnership with the United States is an attempt to deal with the problems and combat the challenges cyber crimes present, Gwandu said. He added how the FBI and other U.S. top security agencies have leading expertise in tracing the origins of viruses, scam mails, and in identifying the physical locations of servers used to host terrorists’ websites.

“This wealth of experience, if acquired by Nigerians, will go a long way in reducing the impact of cyber crime committed in the name of Nigerians,” Gwandu said.

In a meeting last week where Nigerian and U.S. officials met to discuss the problems with cyber crime in Nigeria, Perry Ball, the counselor for economic affairs of the U.S. Embassy, offered to help the Nigerian government by providing training and capacity building so the country can better handle the challenges.

As the IT hub of the Indian state of Kerala, Thiruvananthapuram has seen its share of cyber crime and is now making strides to educate the public’s awareness by launching a website that will focus primarily Internet safety, New Kerala reports.

During today’s press conference in Thiruvananthapuram, Avanzo Charitable Trust Managing Trustee Pattathil Dhany said the initiative was the result of increasing incidents of cyber crime following the spread of broadband and the subsequent use of Internet as well as the extensive use of cellphones in Kerala.

The launch will be attended by local law-enforcement officials as well as experts in the IT field. Dhany said a toll-free number will be set up for cyber-crime victims, adding, ”the helpline is intended to create fundamental awareness and learn some basic precautions while using mobiles, Internet and computers.”

”Time is a crucial factor in such cases and it’s important that people know they preserve evidence and don’t panic by taking extreme steps like suicides when they face threats,” she said. “The knowledge that there is always help available is what is intended to be spread through the helpline.”

Google and Facebook are two giants in the internet world, but they are giants in different fields. However, there are rumors that the two giants may compete in one field because Google decides to add to its list of application one that would potentially go up against the giant social networking site.

According to the rumors, the social networking site that Google will create is called the Google “Me”. Facebook and Google have already been competing heavily, especially in the United States, for number of viewers visiting their pages. Facebook is the first to overtake Google in the United States in that category, but has a lot of catching up to do when the rest of the world is taken into consideration.

In other news, music streaming in your computer or mobile phone will be much better now with the MSpot, which has the support of Google, HP and there is also a possibility that Apple will pitch in. The unique characteristic of MSpot is that you can do streaming with your own library.

Furthermore, this streaming is unlimited and free, and on Monday, it finally opened up after a one month beta. In order to use the MSpot, you need to install a tiny software which will allow you to choose folders that should be in sync with you MSpot storage.

If your computer gets infected with a virus, the Internet service providers could cut off their connection and will resume only when the problem is solved.

Well, this plan has been proposed in Australia to fight cyber crime. Such recommendations have come from an inquiry that continued for a year on cyber crime. The House of Reprentatives Standing Committee on Communications did the inquiry.

According to the Committee’s results released last night, the cyber crime has turned into an underground economy. Head of the inquiry, Ms Neal says “In the past decade, cyber crime has grown from.

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Google warned about Apple's decision to prohibit some ad networks and ad data on its products, including iPod Touch, iPhone, and iPad, according to news reports on Friday. As quoted by Reuters, Apple's revised term and conditions stated ad collection is banned "unless it is provided to an independent advertising service provider whose primary business is serving mobile ads."

It indicates it would ban Google's ad company AdMob, which Google acquired in May for 750 million U.S. dollars. AdMob's founder Omar Hamoui said in a blog post that the change is not in the interests of customers, "Artificial barriers to competition hurt users and developers and, in the long run, stall technological progress."

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Porn surfers are likely to have out-of-date software that can be exploited, making those users an attractive target for cybecriminals, according to a study.The researchers believe their study is the first to look at the security risks of visiting online pornography Web sites rather than the economics of the online sex industry.

They studied thousands of adult Web sites and analyzed their security risks, finding that they pose more of a risk to surfers than the Web at large. "We found a relatively large number of Web sites that use questionable methods and techniques that can best be described as 'shady,'" the researchers wrote.

A major problem is that most adult Web sites are very low-margin businesses run by people unlikely to invest in technologies to properly defend their sites against hackers, said Gilbert Wondracek, a research fellow at the International Secure Systems Lab in Vienna and one of the study's authors.It's cut-throat competition," Wondracek said.

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Only two cyber-scammers were successfully prosecuted last year, despite the consumer watchdog receiving about 12,000 complaints. Tasked with investigating a range of cybercrimes, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission estimates one in 20 Australians are affected by scams each year, leading to losses of about $1 billion.

But enforcement operations general manager Scott Gregson said most cybercrime cases could not be pursued because they were outside Australia's jurisdiction. Both cases that were successfully prosecuted had some origin in Australia.

''For one of them there was clear activity within Australia,'' Gregson said. 'The other one had a combination of activity in Australia, China and elsewhere.'' But Gregson said both of the successful court actions relied on tip-offs from overseas ''one from the Fair Trade Commission in the US and the other from Washington State attorney-generals''.

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