Q&A: Beyond Windows XP

The trial of the fallen Chinese official Bo Xilai highlights the urgent issue of whether China’s leaders will revive the disastrous tactics and policies of Chairman Mao.

Room for Debate asks: How should the next mayor shape criminal justice in New York City?

Bits: Sizing Up Big Data, Broadening Beyond the Internet

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Bits: Sizing Up Big Data, Broadening Beyond the Internet

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State of the Art: Android Cameras From Nikon and Samsung Go Beyond Cellphones - Review

But yes, that’s what it has come to. Ever since cellphone cameras got good enough for everyday snapshots, camera sales have been dropping. For millions of people, the ability to share a fresh photo wirelessly — Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, text message — is so tempting, they’re willing to sacrifice a lot of real-camera goodness.

That’s an awfully big convenience/photo-quality swap. A real camera teems with compelling features that most phones lack: optical zoom, big sensor, image stabilization, removable memory cards, removable batteries and decent ergonomics. (A four-inch, featureless glass slab is not exactly optimally shaped for a hand-held photographic instrument.)

But the camera makers aren’t taking the cellphone invasion lying down. New models from Nikon and Samsung are obvious graduates of the “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” school. The Nikon Coolpix S800C ($300) and Samsung’s Galaxy Camera ($500 from AT&T, $550 from Verizon) are fascinating hybrids. They merge elements of the cellphone and the camera into something entirely new and — if these flawed 1.0 versions are any indication — very promising.

From the back, you could mistake both of these cameras for Android phones. The big black multitouch screen is filled with app icons. Yes, app icons. These cameras can run Angry Birds, Flipboard, Instapaper, Pandora, Firefox, GPS navigation programs and so on. You download and run them exactly the same way. (That’s right, a GPS function. “What’s the address, honey? I’ll plug it into my camera.”)

But the real reason you’d want an Android camera is wirelessness. Now you can take a real photo with a real camera — and post it or send it online instantly. You eliminate the whole “get home and transfer it to the computer” step.

And as long as your camera can get online, why stop there? These cameras also do a fine job of handling Web surfing, e-mail, YouTube videos, Facebook feeds and other online tasks. Well, as fine a job as a phone could do, anyway.

You can even make Skype video calls, although you won’t be able to see your conversation partner; the lens has to be pointing toward you.

Both cameras get online using Wi-Fi hot spots. The Samsung model can also get online over the cellular networks, just like a phone, so you can upload almost anywhere.

Of course, there’s a price for that luxury. Verizon charges at least $30 a month if you don’t have a Verizon plan, or $5 if you have a Verizon Share Everything plan. AT&T charges $50 a month or more for the camera alone, or $10 more if you already have a Mobile Share plan.

If you have a choice, Verizon is the way to go. Not only is $5 a month much more realistic than $10 a month, but Verizon’s 4G LTE network is far faster than AT&T’s 4G network. That’s an important consideration, since what you’ll mostly be doing with your 4G cellular camera is uploading big photo files. (Wow. Did I just write “4G cellular camera?”)

These cameras offer a second big attraction, though: freedom of photo software. The Android store overflows with photography apps. Mix and match. Take a shot with one app, crop, degrade and post it with Instagram.

Just beware that most of them are intended for cellphones, so they don’t recognize these actual cameras’ optical zoom controls. Some of the photo-editing apps can’t handle these cameras’ big 16-megapixel files, either. Unfortunately, you won’t really know until you pay the $1.50 or $4 to download these apps.

Beyond Wall Street, Curbs on High-Speed Trading

Industry leaders and regulators in several countries including Canada, Australia and Germany have adopted or proposed limits on high-speed trading and other technological developments that have come to define United States markets.

The flurry of international activity is particularly striking because regulators have been slow to act in the United States, where trading firms and investors have been hardest hit by a series of market disruptions, including the flash crash of 2010 and the runaway trading in August by Knight Capital that cost it $440 million in just hours. While the Securities and Exchange Commission is hosting a round table on the topic on Tuesday, the agency has not proposed any major new rules this year.

In contrast, the German government on Wednesday advanced legislation that would, among other things, force high-speed trading firms to register with the government and limit their ability to rapidly place and cancel orders, one of the central strategies used by the firms to take advantage of small changes in the price of stocks. A few hours later, a committee at the European Parliament agreed on similar but broader rules that would apply to all 27 member states of the European Union if governments also give their approval.

In Australia, the top securities regulator recently stated its intention of bringing computer-driven trading firms under stricter supervision and forcing them to conduct stress testing, to protect “against the type of disruption we have seen recently in other markets.”

The broadest and fastest changes have come out of Canada, where this spring regulators began increasing the fees charged to firms that flood the market with orders. The research and trading firm ITG found that the change had already made trading more efficient by reducing the crush of data burdening the market’s computer systems.

Now Canadian trading desks are preparing for rules that will come into effect on Oct. 15 and curtail the growth of the sophisticated trading venues known as dark pools that have proliferated in the United States. While the regulation has been hotly debated, many Canadian bankers and investors have said they don’t want to go any further down the road that has taken the United States from having one major exchange a decade ago to having 13 official exchanges and dozens of dark pools today.

“We don’t want to look like the U.S., but we have to do it better than we are now,” said Greg Mills, the head of stock trading at the nation’s largest bank, Royal Bank of Canada.

Canadian executives traveled to Washington last week to speak about what the United States may soon be able to learn from Canada about how to rein in the new high-speed markets.

“Because the U.S. had moved ahead so fast, we had the opportunity to watch and decide in some cases that there were extremes we didn’t want to go to,” Kevan Cowan, the president of the Toronto Stock Exchange, said at last week’s conference.

American regulators have faced a growing demand at home for some sort of market reform from traders and exchange executives. At a Senate hearing on computerized trading last Thursday, one market analyst called for a moratorium on the new trading venues that have popped up in recent years, while traders on the panel recommended mandatory kill switches that could be flipped in case of technology malfunctions. The senator who called the hearing, Jack Reed, Democrat from Rhode Island, said “our marketplace has been evolving very quickly and it is not clear that our rules have kept up.”

There are many explanations for the slower pace of reform in the United States, including the crush of work the S.E.C. has had to deal with in completing regulations under the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul law. In addition, many of the largest American market participants, including the big banks, have built high-speed trading desks and dark pools and as a result have a vested interest in protecting them against new regulations.

The soft-touch approach of American regulators has won praise from many industry participants around the world who say that the rush elsewhere to impose new rules could jeopardize the lower trading costs that have come with the automation of the American markets. Michael Aitken, the chief scientist at the Capital Markets Cooperative Research Center in Australia, said the push for regulation in Australia and much of the rest of the world has been driven by “hysteria” rather than “evidence based policy.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: September 27, 2012

An earlier version of this article incorrectly said that it was a European Union committee that agreed on high-speed trading rules; it was actually a European Parliament committee. In addition, the article said the rules would apply to the Continent; they would in fact apply to the 27 member states of the European Union if approved by the governments.

Bits Blog: The Patent Clues to the Apple iPhone Beyond '5'

Bigger screen, longer battery life, clever new features. It’s another version of the iPhone, waiting in the wings to be announced on Wednesday, as everyone expects.

But for a look at Apple’s longer-term ambitions for the iPhone, take a stroll through its patent portfolio. That is what the Thomson Reuters intellectual property group did for a report released on Tuesday, “Inside the iPhone Patent Portfolio.”

For example, Apple filed a patent application in 2010 for a miniature fuel-cell power supply that could power an iPhone or iPad for days or weeks without recharging. It’s the same hydrogen fuel-cell technology now used in some hybrid electric buses, especially in Europe, said Bob Stembridge, an analyst for Thomson Reuters.

“It’s just drastically scaled down for mobile devices,” he said.

Another patent filing in 2010 is for a sort of supersmart multimedia hypertext. It’s a feature for tapping on a word in text on a touch screen, and related information pops up. The extra information could be in most any form — text, pictures, audio or video. A drawing in the patent application shows a finger touching the word “apple,” as in a “big juicy red apple.” The software apparently both understands the context and fetches related content — a picture of an apple, according to the patent application drawing.

The Thomson Reuters report finds, as you might expect, a surge of innovation, patents filed and litigation at Apple since the iPhone was introduced in 2007. Thomson Reuters said that Apple filed 1,200 patent applications since then, and there are 479 lawsuits in which Apple is involved in one way or another, worldwide.

Though not in the report, Thomson Reuters has also done research on the smartphone-related patents held by Samsung, Apple’s main adversary in court and leading competitor in the marketplace. Samsung has filed about 4,000 patents, far more than Apple.

“Samsung has thrown everything into it,” Mr. Stembridge said. But patent disputes, as he noted, “play out in the courts ultimately.”

Bits Blog: The Patent Clues to the Apple iPhone Beyond '5'

Bigger screen, longer battery life, clever new features. It’s another version of the iPhone, waiting in the wings to be announced on Wednesday, as everyone expects.

But for a look at Apple’s longer-term ambitions for the iPhone, take a stroll through its patent portfolio. That is what the Thomson Reuters intellectual property group did for a report released on Tuesday, “Inside the iPhone Patent Portfolio.”

For example, Apple filed a patent application in 2010 for a miniature fuel-cell power supply that could power an iPhone or iPad for days or weeks without recharging. It’s the same hydrogen fuel-cell technology now used in some hybrid electric buses, especially in Europe, said Bob Stembridge, an analyst for Thomson Reuters.

“It’s just drastically scaled down for mobile devices,” he said.

Another patent filing in 2010 is sort of supersmart multimedia hypertext. It’s a feature for tapping on a word in text on a touch screen, and related information pops up. The extra information could be in most any form — text, pictures, audio or video. A drawing in the patent application shows a finger touching the word “apple,” as in a “big juicy red apple.” The software apparently both understands the context and fetches related content — a picture of an apple, according to the patent application drawing.

The Thomson Reuters report finds, as you might expect, a surge of innovation, patents filed and litigation at Apple since the iPhone was introduced in 2007. Thomson Reuters said that Apple filed 1,200 patent applications since then, and there are 479 lawsuits in which Apple is involved in one way or another, worldwide.

Though not in the report, Thomson Reuters has also done research on the smartphone-related patents held by Samsung, Apple’s main adversary in court and leading competitor in the marketplace. Samsung has filed about 4,000 patents, far more than Apple.

“Samsung has thrown everything into it,” Mr. Stembridge said. But patent disputes, as he noted, “play out in the courts ultimately.”

Disruptions: Disruptions: Looking Beyond Silicon Valley's Bubble

Jim Wilson/The New York TimesA party to celebrate AirBnB’s new headquarters. A select group of people in the Valley are oblivious to the rest of the world, ensconced in their own protective bubble.

It is still up for debate whether there is a bubble in Silicon Valley.

One thing I know for sure: much of Silicon Valley is enveloped in a bubble.

I moved to the center of the tech industry from New York City last year, and I have never experienced anywhere quite like the Valley.

The money here is obscene. The newly minted rich are obsessed with outperforming their rivals. One industry party I attended had a jungle theme. This included a real, 600-pound tiger in a cage and a monkey that would pose for Instagram photos. A prominent Googler’s Christmas party in Palo Alto had mounds of snow in the yard to round out the festive spirit. It was 70 degrees outside. Sean Parker, a founder of Airtime, threw a lavish, $1 million party that included models he hired to roam the room and a performance by Snoop Dogg.

Eat dinner with start-up founders and venture capitalists, and the conversation can quickly shift from industry banter about the latest billion-dollar acquisition to the type of private jet people own.

This is where a select group in the Valley are oblivious to the rest of the world, ensconced in their own protective bubble. In the rest of America, where the unemployment rate is stuck above 8 percent, people are struggling to cover their mortgages or to find jobs that won’t be replaced by technology or sent overseas. In Silicon Valley, some people are worrying about which multimillion-dollar home they can buy — there are only so many available, after all — or whether their handcrafted jeans subtly signal that the wearer is more attuned to aesthetics, like, say, Steve Jobs was.

This is a company town, like Los Angeles and the movies, or Washington and politics. Everything revolves around the tech industry; there is often nowhere to hide.

Like other tech reporters I have spoken with, I often hear pitches for people’s start-ups in the most bizarre places: waiting in line at coffee shops or on the beach. “Hey! You’re Nick Bilton from The Times!” I once heard someone yell when I was standing at a bathroom urinal. “I’m an entrepreneur — can I show you my new iPhone application?”

Everyone here introduces themselves as an “entrepreneur.” It’s as if they hand out the title at the airport when you arrive. “Welcome to San Francisco, you are now an entrepreneur! Which start-up T-shirt would you like?”

This belief that everyone is an entrepreneur has a stultifying effect. It can drive founders to seek an easy acquisition instead of a quest for true innovation and a sustainable, profitable business — a truly entrepreneurial challenge.

There is also a bizarre micro-celebrity culture here. People who are famous within the Valley but wouldn’t be noticed anywhere else in the world, even if they were spray-painted fluorescent yellow, create copycat start-ups, with only slight modifications on a previous success — a diminutive variation of Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.

But there is another side to the Valley. One where people are building truly innovative companies. Where founders aren’t driven by seeing their name on tech blogs or tweeting a picture of themselves with their new investors, M.C. Hammer or Ashton Kutcher.

There are truly excited inventors, designers and programmers here, some of the brightest people in the United States, who are trying to build something that will fix a problem in the world. This is why I love working in Silicon Valley.

Where else in the world would people try to make a better and more efficient taxi service, thermostat or tool for revolt? Where else would they reinvent education, the Boy Scouts and even government? And there are those who are helping the economy, creating services that enable people to find new forms of income.

Once you are able to navigate through the sludge of pandering and ostentation, you can see there is truly magical work taking place.

Luckily for people who live outside the bubble of Silicon Valley, there is a wonderful group of creators here who believe that everything is broken and that technology, creativity and guts can actually fix it.

Podcast Beyond: Final Fantasy Versus XIII's Un-cancellation

PlayStation. Does the word send a chill down your spine? Does it caress your senses with wave upon wave of irresistible pleasure? No? Do you like PlayStation? Then you're certainly in the right place. Welcome to Podcast Beyond, your link to the IGN crew that pushes news, opinions and utter hilarity straight to your ears (and subsequently, your brain).

Greg Miller's either dead or just away on vacation -- we're not entirely sure -- leaving Moriarty, Clements and Goldfarb to fend for themselves. The boys talk extensively about Final Fantasy Versus XIII and the state of Square Enix, and also touch on all other matter of PlayStation news, spanning from Vita's poor sales in Japan to the unfortunate words of Rhode Island's governor apparently leading to Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning 2 losing its publishing funding at the eleventh hour. And of course, there's plenty of your reader mail.

Oh, and Goldfarb eats an apple.

Podcast Beyond, Episode 251 (MP3) - 56 MB
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What are the best games on the PlayStation 3? Let IGN be you... Podcast Beyond: Final Fantasy Versus XIII's Un-cancellation Top 10 PS3 Games of 2011 The Most Exciting PlayStation 3 Games of 2012 The Top 25 PlayStation Network Gamesvar url = "http://widgets.ign.com/disqus/comment/comment/ign-articles/1225530.jsonp?category=ps3&url=http%3A%2F%2Fps3.ign.com%2Farticles%2F122%2F1225530p1.html&title=Podcast+Beyond%3A+Final+Fantasy+Versus+XIII%27s+Un-cancellation&callback=?"jQuery.getJSON(url,function(data){jQuery("#disqusCommentBox").html(data);});Connections for Final Fantasy Versus XIII (PS3)Popular games in this genre:
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Disruptions: Disruptions: Looking Beyond Silicon Valley's Bubble

Jim Wilson/The New York TimesA party to celebrate AirBnB’s new headquarters. A select group of people in the Valley are oblivious to the rest of the world, ensconced in their own protective bubble.

It is still up for debate whether there is a bubble in Silicon Valley.

One thing I know for sure: much of Silicon Valley is enveloped in a bubble.

I moved to the center of the tech industry from New York City last year, and I have never experienced anywhere quite like the Valley.

The money here is obscene. The newly minted rich are obsessed with outperforming their rivals. One industry party I attended had a jungle theme. This included a real, 600-pound tiger in a cage and a monkey that would pose for Instagram photos. A prominent Googler’s Christmas party in Palo Alto had mounds of snow in the yard to round out the festive spirit. It was 70 degrees outside. Sean Parker, a founder of Airtime, threw a lavish, $1 million party that included models he hired to roam the room and a performance by Snoop Dogg.

Eat dinner with start-up founders and venture capitalists, and the conversation can quickly shift from industry banter about the latest billion-dollar acquisition to the type of private jet people own.

This is where a select group in the Valley are oblivious to the rest of the world, ensconced in their own protective bubble. In the rest of America, where the unemployment rate is stuck above 8 percent, people are struggling to cover their mortgages or to find jobs that won’t be replaced by technology or sent overseas. In Silicon Valley, some people are worrying about which multimillion-dollar home they can buy — there are only so many available, after all — or whether their handcrafted jeans subtly signal that the wearer is more attuned to aesthetics, like, say, Steve Jobs was.

This is a company town, like Los Angeles and the movies, or Washington and politics. Everything revolves around the tech industry; there is often nowhere to hide.

Like other tech reporters I have spoken with, I often hear pitches for people’s start-ups in the most bizarre places: waiting in line at coffee shops or on the beach. “Hey! You’re Nick Bilton from The Times!” I once heard someone yell when I was standing at a bathroom urinal. “I’m an entrepreneur — can I show you my new iPhone application?”

Everyone here introduces themselves as an “entrepreneur.” It’s as if they hand out the title at the airport when you arrive. “Welcome to San Francisco, you are now an entrepreneur! Which start-up T-shirt would you like?”

This belief that everyone is an entrepreneur has a stultifying effect. It can drive founders to seek an easy acquisition instead of a quest for true innovation and a sustainable, profitable business — a truly entrepreneurial challenge.

There is also a bizarre micro-celebrity culture here. People who are famous within the Valley but wouldn’t be noticed anywhere else in the world, even if they were spray-painted fluorescent yellow, create copycat start-ups, with only slight modifications on a previous success — a diminutive variation of Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.

But there is another side to the Valley. One where people are building truly innovative companies. Where founders aren’t driven by seeing their name on tech blogs or tweeting a picture of themselves with their new investors, M.C. Hammer or Ashton Kutcher.

There are truly excited inventors, designers and programmers here, some of the brightest people in the United States, who are trying to build something that will fix a problem in the world. This is why I love working in Silicon Valley.

Where else in the world would people try to make a better and more efficient taxi service, thermostat or tool for revolt? Where else would they reinvent education, the Boy Scouts and even government? And there are those who are helping the economy, creating services that enable people to find new forms of income.

Once you are able to navigate through the sludge of pandering and ostentation, you can see there is truly magical work taking place.

Luckily for people who live outside the bubble of Silicon Valley, there is a wonderful group of creators here who believe that everything is broken and that technology, creativity and guts can actually fix it.

Disruptions: Disruptions: Looking Beyond Silicon Valley's Bubble

Jim Wilson/The New York TimesA party to celebrate AirBnB’s new headquarters. A select group of people in the Valley are oblivious to the rest of the world, ensconced in their own protective bubble.

It is still up for debate whether there is a bubble in Silicon Valley.

One thing I know for sure: much of Silicon Valley is enveloped in a bubble.

I moved to the center of the tech industry from New York City last year, and I have never experienced anywhere quite like the Valley.

The money here is obscene. The newly minted rich are obsessed with outperforming their rivals. One industry party I attended had a jungle theme. This included a real, 600-pound tiger in a cage and a monkey that would pose for Instagram photos. A prominent Googler’s Christmas party in Palo Alto had mounds of snow in the yard to round out the festive spirit. It was 70 degrees outside. Sean Parker, a founder of Airtime, threw a lavish, $1 million party that included models he hired to roam the room and a performance by Snoop Dogg.

Eat dinner with start-up founders and venture capitalists, and the conversation can quickly shift from industry banter about the latest billion-dollar acquisition to the type of private jet people own.

This is where a select group in the Valley are oblivious to the rest of the world, ensconced in their own protective bubble. In the rest of America, where the unemployment rate is stuck above 8 percent, people are struggling to cover their mortgages or to find jobs that won’t be replaced by technology or sent overseas. In Silicon Valley, some people are worrying about which multimillion-dollar home they can buy — there are only so many available, after all — or whether their handcrafted jeans subtly signal that the wearer is more attuned to aesthetics, like, say, Steve Jobs was.

This is a company town, like Los Angeles and the movies, or Washington and politics. Everything revolves around the tech industry; there is often nowhere to hide.

Like other tech reporters I have spoken with, I often hear pitches for people’s start-ups in the most bizarre places: waiting in line at coffee shops or on the beach. “Hey! You’re Nick Bilton from The Times!” I once heard someone yell when I was standing at a bathroom urinal. “I’m an entrepreneur — can I show you my new iPhone application?”

Everyone here introduces themselves as an “entrepreneur.” It’s as if they hand out the title at the airport when you arrive. “Welcome to San Francisco, you are now an entrepreneur! Which start-up T-shirt would you like?”

This belief that everyone is an entrepreneur has a stultifying effect. It can drive founders to seek an easy acquisition instead of a quest for true innovation and a sustainable, profitable business — a truly entrepreneurial challenge.

There is also a bizarre micro-celebrity culture here. People who are famous within the Valley but wouldn’t be noticed anywhere else in the world, even if they were spray-painted fluorescent yellow, create copycat start-ups, with only slight modifications on a previous success — a diminutive variation of Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.

But there is another side to the Valley. One where people are building truly innovative companies. Where founders aren’t driven by seeing their name on tech blogs or tweeting a picture of themselves with their new investors, M.C. Hammer or Ashton Kutcher.

There are truly excited inventors, designers and programmers here, some of the brightest people in the United States, who are trying to build something that will fix a problem in the world. This is why I love working in Silicon Valley.

Where else in the world would people try to make a better and more efficient taxi service, thermostat or tool for revolt? Where else would they reinvent education, the Boy Scouts and even government? And there are those who are helping the economy, creating services that enable people to find new forms of income.

Once you are able to navigate through the sludge of pandering and ostentation, you can see there is truly magical work taking place.

Luckily for people who live outside the bubble of Silicon Valley, there is a wonderful group of creators here who believe that everything is broken and that technology, creativity and guts can actually fix it.

Bits Blog: Yahoo Breach Extends Beyond Yahoo to Gmail, Hotmail, AOL Users

SAN FRANCISCO — Another month, another major security breach.

Yahoo confirmed Thursday that about 400,000 user names and passwords to Yahoo and other companies were stolen on Wednesday.

A group of hackers, known as the D33D Company, posted online the user names and passwords for what appeared to be 453,492 accounts belonging to Yahoo, and also Gmail, AOL, Hotmail, Comcast, MSN, SBC Global, Verizon, BellSouth and Live.com users.

The hackers wrote a brief footnote to the data dump, which has since been taken offline: “We hope that the parties responsible for managing the security of this subdomain will take this as a wake-up call, and not as a threat.”

The breach comes just one month after millions of user passwords for LinkedIn, the online social network for professionals, were exposed by hackers who breached its systems. The breaches highlight the ease with which hackers are able to infiltrate systems, even at some of the most widely used and sophisticated technology companies.

Marcus Carey, a researcher at Rapid7, a security company found that among the data were some 106,000 Gmail e-mail addresses, 55,000 Hotmail e-mail addresses and 25,000 AOL e-mail addresses. Those e-mail accounts were not hacked; instead people had used their e-mail address as user names for a Yahoo service.

Sucuri, a company that checks for malware, set up a Web site, labs.sucuri.net/?yahooleak, that lets concerned users check if their account details were compromised in the breach.

Dana Lengkeek, a spokeswoman for Yahoo, said the compromised accounts belonged to Yahoo’s Contributor Network, and that fewer than 5 percent of the passwords posted were still valid.

Chris Gaither, a spokesman for Google, said Google immediately reset passwords for vulnerable Gmail accounts.

The hackers claimed to have stolen the passwords using a hacking technique called an SQL injection, which exploits a software vulnerability.

“We are fixing the vulnerability that led to the disclosure of this data, changing the passwords of the affected Yahoo users and notifying companies whose user accounts may have been compromised,” Ms. Lengkeek said in the statement.

Mr. Carey said it was unclear whether Yahoo’s breach had been contained and noted that hackers could still be inside its systems.

Computer security experts recommended that Yahoo users consider changing their passwords to other sites, as hackers tend to test those passwords across multiple sites.

They were quick to chastise Yahoo for allowing hackers such an easy way into its systems. “Why haven’t organizations like Yahoo got it yet? SQL injection is a known attack,” said Mark Bower, a vice president at Voltage Security. “If what is stated is true, it’s utter negligence to store passwords in the clear.”

Bits Blog: Yahoo Breach Extends Beyond Yahoo to Gmail, Hotmail, AOL Users

SAN FRANCISCO — Another month, another major security breach.

Yahoo confirmed Thursday that about 400,000 user names and passwords to Yahoo and other companies were stolen on Wednesday.

A group of hackers, known as the D33D Company, posted online the user names and passwords for what appeared to be 453,492 accounts belonging to Yahoo, and also Gmail, AOL, Hotmail, Comcast, MSN, SBC Global, Verizon, BellSouth and Live.com users.

The hackers wrote a brief footnote to the data dump, which has since been taken offline: “We hope that the parties responsible for managing the security of this subdomain will take this as a wake-up call, and not as a threat.”

The breach comes just one month after millions of user passwords for LinkedIn, the online social network for professionals, were exposed by hackers who breached its systems. The breaches highlight the ease with which hackers are able to infiltrate systems, even at some of the most widely used and sophisticated technology companies.

Marcus Carey, a researcher at Rapid7, a security company found that among the data were some 106,000 Gmail e-mail addresses, 55,000 Hotmail e-mail addresses and 25,000 AOL e-mail addresses. Those e-mail accounts were not hacked; instead people had used their e-mail address as user names for a Yahoo service.

Sucuri, a company that checks for malware, set up a Web site, labs.sucuri.net/?yahooleak, that lets concerned users check if their account details were compromised in the breach.

Dana Lengkeek, a spokeswoman for Yahoo, said the compromised accounts belonged to Yahoo’s Contributor Network, and that fewer than 5 percent of the passwords posted were still valid.

Chris Gaither, a spokesman for Google, said Google immediately reset passwords for vulnerable Gmail accounts.

The hackers claimed to have stolen the passwords using a hacking technique called an SQL injection, which exploits a software vulnerability.

“We are fixing the vulnerability that led to the disclosure of this data, changing the passwords of the affected Yahoo users and notifying companies whose user accounts may have been compromised,” Ms. Lengkeek said in the statement.

Mr. Carey said it was unclear whether Yahoo’s breach had been contained and noted that hackers could still be inside its systems.

Computer security experts recommended that Yahoo users consider changing their passwords to other sites, as hackers tend to test those passwords across multiple sites.

They were quick to chastise Yahoo for allowing hackers such an easy way into its systems. “Why haven’t organizations like Yahoo got it yet? SQL injection is a known attack,” said Mark Bower, a vice president at Voltage Security. “If what is stated is true, it’s utter negligence to store passwords in the clear.”