Miercoles 08/12/10 Obama causa la furia de la izquierda

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Ahora VISA ha sido atacada por hackers que apoyan a WikiLeaks.

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AIG logro un acuerdo con el Fed para pagar su linea de credito buscan su independencia del gobierno.

AIG usara el dinero proveniente de la venta de dos unidades no relacionadas con seguros.

AIG debia $21 billones la semana pasada.

AIG Agrees to Repay Fed Credit Line in Deal with U.S. Treasury
By Andrew Frye - Dec 8, 2010 4:00 PM ET

A flag flies outside 70 Pine Street, home to the headquarters of American International Group (AIG), in New York. Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg
American International Group Inc. struck a deal to repay its Federal Reserve credit line as the insurer seeks independence from the government.

AIG will use proceeds from the sales of two non-U.S. life insurance units, the New York-based company said today in a regulatory filing announcing the agreement with regulators including the U.S. Treasury Department.

AIG owed about $21 billion last week on the line, which was created in 2008 after regulators said a failure of the insurer would hobble the global economy. The insurer said in September that a $49 billion preferred stake held by Treasury would be converted to common stock for sale to investors.

Today’s agreement is an “important step forward in our progress toward completely repaying taxpayers,” AIG said in a statement. “We remain committed to executing the steps and meeting all conditions in the agreement as soon as possible.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Andrew Frye in New York at afrye@bloomberg.net

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Intel reanuda compra de acciones y fortalece su división

Por Shara Tibken

NUEVA YORK (Dow Jones)--El presidente ejecutivo de Intel Corp. dijo que el gigante de semiconductores reanudó la recompra de acciones y que está ganando fuerza en proveer chips para dispositivos móviles.

Paul Otellini, dijo durante una conferencia de tecnología de Barclays Capital en San Francisco, que la empresa había dejado de hacer compras por más de un año dado que no había claridad sobre lo profundo de la recesión y que luego usó ese efectivo para hacer un par de grandes adquisiciones.

"Estoy feliz de anunciar que Intel ha vuelto al mercado este trimestre", dijo. "Se reanudó la recompra".

En particular, las empresas de semiconductores se han beneficiado de un fuerte repunte de la demanda luego que producto de la recesión los clientes prácticamente dejaron de comprar chips.

En tanto, Otellini reiteró que las computadoras tipo tableta añadirán demanda al mercado en vez de dañar las ventas de computadoras personales y que son un competidor con los netbooks.

Otellini también dijo que Intel está trabajando en desarrollar chips para teléfonos inteligentes, un área donde había estado notablemente ausente.

"Durante el segundo semestre de 2011, se verán en el mercado teléfonos inteligentes de los principales productores con silicona de Intel en su interior", agregó.

[Victor VE]

Uhm, seria bueno poner información sobre los ataques que estan/han recibido VISA y Mastercard, lo cual podria influir (deberia) su cotización en la bolsa. Pero como aca hay que pedir permiso para todo mejor que otro se tome la molestia. Vigilan.

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Cuando has tenido que pedir permiso para poner informacion de alguna compania? Escribes por escribir.

[Victor VE]

Grupos de 'hackers' atacan a las empresas que marginan a Wikileaks

La red se revoluciona. Si los poderosos intentan ahogar a Wikileaks, los hackers acuden en su rescate. La encarcelación de Julian Assange y el progresivo estrangulamiento de la web de las filtraciones ha desencadenado en los últimos días un movimiento de respuesta en Internet, que tira de sus mejores armas para bloquear a los que han seguido las consignas y la presión de la Administración estadounidense. El ataque de los últimos días, que ayer se intensificó, tiene un nombre: Operación Payback (Venganza). Aunque, de momento, las únicas web que han logrado bloquear son la de la fiscalía sueca. También atacaron momentáneamente Visa y a la página de la gobenadora de Alaska, Sarah Palin, según ha confirmado ella a la cadena ABC.

El grupo de hackers Anonymous se postula como adalid de esta megaoperación que ha pillado por sorpresa a los grandes. Hoy, este grupo que cuenta con activistas en todo el mundo, desde Austria a Sierra Leona, se ha responsabilizado del ataque a PostFinance, el banco suizo que congeló las cuentas de Assange, y del que sufrió la empresa PayPal, que también canceló los servicios de transferencias monetarias que prestaba a Wikileaks. Anonymous es la misma organización que hace unos meses bloqueó la página de la Sociedad General de Autores (SGAE) y del Ministerio de Cultura español. En el foro de Anonymous, hoy se ha reclamado la incorporación de más voluntarios. En el chat de Anonops.net, activistas de varias nacionalidades reclamaban la necesidad de contar con al menos 5.000 voluntarios para tumbar del todo a Paypal.

Los objetivos del ataque de los hackers han sido las organizaciones que en los últimos días han cortado el grifo a Wikileaks: el gigante MasterCard, el servicio de pago online Paypal, que interrumpió el flujo de donaciones a la web comandada por Assange; Amazon, que retiró el alojamiento web a Wikileaks esta msima semana, y PostFinance, que cerró la cuenta de Assange alegando que había proporcionado información falsa sobre su lugar de residencia.

Fuente: http://www.elpais.com/articulo/internac ... uint_9/Tes

[Victor VE]

Hackers Strike Back to Support WikiLeaks

A growing list of organizations and individuals that have tangled with WikiLeaks and its detained founder, Julian Assange, have suffered online attacks, in what appears to be an effort by hackers bent on exacting revenge for the document-leaking website.

The attacks stepped up Wednesday, a day after Mr. Assange was arrested and denied bail in London in connection with sexual-misconduct accusations in Sweden. A range of organizations, including MasterCard Inc., Visa Inc., and the Swedish prosecutor's office, reported technical difficulties with their websites that appear to stem from so-called denial of service attacks, in which computers flood a server to prevent it from displaying a Web page.

The attacks in recent days have hit eBay Inc.'s PayPal as well as MasterCard, both of which have pulled services from WikiLeaks in recent days. Also affected: Swiss bank PostFinance. The unit of Swiss Post recently closed Mr. Assange's account, saying he provided a false address in Geneva, failing to meet the bank's requirement of Swiss residency for account holders. While the attacks caused some business disruption, they were mostly annoying rather than crippling.

The Swedish Prosecution Service said Wednesday that its website had been flooded overnight by denial of service attacks. The prosecutors' office said it reported the incident to Swedish police. The website for Claes Borgstrom, the lawyer representing the two women making the accusations against Mr. Assange, also crashed.

A WikiLeaks spokesman couldn't be reached to comment. In a television interview Wednesday, WikiLeaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson said moves by companies that have cut off WikiLeaks are "causing an outrage among the general public that actually might hurt their own business."

By Wednesday morning in Europe, MasterCard, also was suffering attacks on its website that slowed its function. At the same time, several Twitter posts claimed that the credit-card company's site was suffering.

"http://www.mastercard.com/ is DOWN! #ddos #wikileaks Operation:Payback," said one post under the name "Anon_Operation," whose Twitter page is identified as part of Operation Payback, a campaign against "anti-piracy & anti-freedom entities."

MasterCard confirmed its consumer website was experiencing heavy traffic, which appeared "to be the result of a concentrated effort to flood our corporate website with traffic and slow access." The Purchase, N.Y.,company added that it was working to restore normal service and that its "systems have not been compromised and there is no impact on our cardholders' ability to use their cards for secure transactions globally."

The company later said that it had made "significant progress" in restoring access to the site. MasterCard cardholders who had enrolled in a separate security program also experienced some disruptions when trying to use that service.

MasterCard had said on Monday that it was working to suspend payments to WikiLeaks "until the situation is resolved."

Fuente: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... TopStories

[Victor VE]

Pro-Wikileaks Vigilantes Down Visa.com

Visa and Mastercard might be competitors but they share at least two things in common – they both decided to cut off donations to Wikileaks through their services, and both of their websites have been knocked off the net in retaliation.

The group responsible is the self-named group Anonymous which has marshalled Wikileaks supporters into supporting a denial of service attack on the U.S.-based credit card companies. Visa.com stopped responding early in the afternoon Wednesday Pacific time, while Mastercard.com fell at least eight hours earlier and remains unresponsive.

Neither company’s backend credit processing systems are affected, though purchases that require a secondary web confirmation (e.g. Verified by Visa and Mastercard SecureCode) are reportedly not working, since they require online verification. ]

Visa sought to assure the public that everything was fine.

“Visa’s processing network, which handles cardholder transactions, is functioning normally and cardholders can continue to use their cards as they routinely would. Account data is not at risk,” the company said in a e-mailed statement.

Visa, however, dodged the question of why they blocked Wikileaks and seemed to be trying to pass off the takedown as if no attack were underway.

“Separately, Visa’s corporate website – Visa.com – is currently experiencing heavier than normal traffic. The company is taking steps to restore the site to full operations within the next few hours.”

The two companies, as well as PayPal, decided to cease allowing card holders to donate to Wikileaks, saying the site’s publication of secret U.S. diplomatic cables violated their Terms of Service. While the New York Times and other papers have been republishing a number of the cables, the card services have not stopped allowing people to subscribe to those publications using their cards.

3Crowd CEO Barrett Lyon, who was one of the early pioneers in fighting DDoS attacks from 2000 to 2006, calls the attacks historic in how well-organized the attackers are (the organizing site includes an FAQ, a propaganda operation and a radio station). It’s also remarkable, he adds, how the attackers have turned what’s largely been used as a tool for online crime into a tool being used to fight for the internet as a place for free information.

“Their IRCs (chat rooms) have more than 5,000 people, many of them from around the world,” Lyon said. “Prosecuting all these folks is not going to be possible.”

“It’s also interesting to think that Visa and MasterCard can be brutalized a loosely org group of people with a pice of software,” Lyon said, especially given the attack tool being used isn’t very sophisticated. “It is mediocre, at best. There is a lot they doing wrong, and yet they are still succeeding.”

Anonymous’s “Operation Payback” already attacked (and took down for several hours) a Swiss bank that froze an account belonging to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Anonymous is also aiming at PayPal.com, an attack which could, if successful, block financial transactions, but so far that site remains up.

Adding to the insult, Anonymous also posted publicly on Wednesday afternoon what looks to be more 10,000 credit card numbers along with expiration dates, though early analysis indicates the numbers are fake..

Wikileak’s credit card processor Datacell is planning to sue over the shutdown, according to Wikileaks’ Twitter feed.

Mastercard, Visa and PayPal have all cut off WikiLeaks in the past week, citing violations of their “terms of service” agreements, but no such action has been taken against The New York Times and other publications that are reprinting and reporting on the cables.

The U.S. State Department has called the ongoing publication of the 250,000 diplomatic cables “illegal,” but no charges have been filed against the site. Publishing government documents, even classified ones, is not explicitly illegal in the United States as it is in England.

An Anonymous member/sympathizer wrote to Wired.com to announce the attacks, passing along this statement from the chat channel being used to organize the attack:

We are the clear logic used to unveil wrongdoing. The general public, clouded by misleading information mostly by the media with a political agenda, fails to see and understand this wrongdoing. Because of this, those who do the wrongdoing escape unpunished. Anonymous is here to ensure punishment does not go unserved to those who deserve it.

WikiLeaks itself has suffered from denial of service attacks since last Sunday, including one from a “patriotic” hacker. That’s when the site began publishing cables provided to the site by Pfc. Bradley Manning (according to chat logs seen by Wired.com), who had access to them as part of his work as an intelligence analyst in Iraq. Manning is in jail in Quantico, awaiting trial.

Assange is also now in custody in London related to sex-crimes charges in Sweden, which has the organization scrambling to operate. Assange is likely to fight extradition.

Anonymous, which has its roots in the uncensored crook of the 4chan message boards, has a history of such attacks, including a recent campaign against the record industry for attacking file sharing sites, mass infiltrating an online game for kids to protest its stupidity and a long-running, earlier campaign against the Church of Scientology.

The Scientology attacks were investigated by the FBI and at least one Anonymous member was jailed for his part in clogging Scientology’s websites.

Few who are part of Anonymous are actual “hackers,” and instead join in the attacks by running specialized software provided by more technically adept members. Instruction for what sites to target and when are passed around dedicated online chat channels and websites, creating a sort of online insurgency.

However the software does not mask a user’s IP address, and has generated complaints from its users that it sucks up all their available bandwidth when its in attack mode.

Fuente: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/1 ... -visa-com/

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Los mercados de EE.UU. cierran con leves alzas, ayudados por las financieras

Dow Jones Newswires

NUEVA YORK (Dow Jones)--Los índices de acciones en Estados Unidos cerraron el miércoles con leves alzas luego que un repunte de las acciones financieras más que contrarrestara los descensos generalizados en el mercado.

El Promedio Industrial Dow Jones subió 13,32 puntos, o el 0,12%, a 11372,48, mientras que el índice Standard & Poor's 500 avanzó 4,53 puntos, o el 0,37%, a 1228,28 y el Índice Compuesto Nasdaq trepó 10,67 puntos, o el 0,41%, a 2609,16.

El dólar también continuó sus alzas recientes, lo que hizo descender los precios de algunos bienes básicos, afectando a las compañías de materiales, energía e industriales.

Las acciones de consumo discrecional también cerraron a la baja, afectadas por un descenso de US$1,60, o el 2%, a US$78,74 en las acciones de McDonald's. La cadena de comidas rápidas encabezó los retrocesos entre los componentes del Dow tras informar que sus ventas en tiendas comparables crecieron un 4,8% en noviembre, impulsadas por su sándwich McRib, las cuales, sin embargo, se situaron por debajo de las expectativas de analistas.

Las acciones financieras hicieron subir el mercado gracias a los avances de los bancos regionales más pequeños. Lincoln National subió US$1,90, o un 7,5%, a US$27,24, Fifth Third Bancorp avanzó 85 centavos, o el 6,5%, a US$13,93, y Zions Bancorp sumó US$1,17, o el 5,5%, a US$22,45. Regions Financial, Keycorp y PNC Financial Services ascendieron entre un 2,9% y un 5,3%.

Morgan Stanley subió 81 centavos, o un 3,2%, a US$26,47, luego que el consorcio de inversionistas para comprar el 34,3% del banco de inversión en China International Capital obtuviera todos los permisos necesarios.

Bank of America trepó 43 centavos, o un 3,7%, a US$12,00 para encabezar las alzas dentro del Dow, mientras que JPMorgan sumó US$1,01, o un 2,6%, a US$40,26.

American International Group, sin embargo, cayó US$1,72, o el 3,9%, a US$42,23, luego que The Wall Street Journal informara que el gobierno de Estados Unidos está buscando vender al menos US$15.000 millones de sus acciones en la aseguradora en la primera de varias ofertas a inversionistas a inicios del 2011.

"Los bancos regionales están descontando realmente la probabilidad de un crecimiento económico mayor al esperado", dijo Kent Engelke, estratega de Capitol Securities Management. Una extensión de los recortes de impuestos de la era Bush ayudaría al crecimiento económico y estimularía el gasto de los consumidores gracias a los menores impuestos a las nóminas. "Todo eso reduce la probabilidad de que la gente no cancele sus préstamos, y sugiere que la propiedad comercial se recuperará".

La posibilidad de una extensión de las rebajas de impuestos también afectó fuertemente a los títulos del Tesoro. El rendimiento de la nota de referencia a 10 años subió durante el día al 3,3%, antes de cerrar en el 3,236%, el nivel de cierre más alto desde junio.

El dólar extendió sus avances frente a otras monedas importantes. El euro caía a US$1,3261, mientras que el dólar se apreciaba un frente al yen a Y84,02.

Con pocas noticias económicas, los inversionistas se enfocaron en el sector corporativo. Netflix se recuperó de descensos pronunciados para cerraron con un retroceso de US$1,58, o un 0,8%, a US$188,23 después de que el director general de finanzas, Barry McCarthy, indicara que se retirará de la compañía.

Fortune Brands ascendió 61 centavos, o un 1%, a US$61,76 tras informar que se dividirá en tres empresas. La compañía indicó que escindirá sus operaciones del hogar y de seguridad y que escindirá o venderá su división de golf, y que continuaría administrando su empresa de licores como una compañía que se cotiza en bolsa.

Home Depot avanzó 48 centavos, o un 1,4%, a US$34,03 luego que incrementara levemente sus proyecciones de ganancias y ventas para el 2010.

Safeway subió 48 centavos, o un 2,3%, a US$21,55 . La cadena de tiendas de alimentos agregó US$1.000 millones a su programa de recompra de acciones.

Costco Wholesale cayó 39 centavos, o un 0,6%, a US$69,25 después de que la compañía informara que las ganancias del primer trimestre de su año fiscal aumentaron un 18%, superando las expectativas de analistas, y las ventas crecieron un 11%.

Los mercados europeos registraron avances generalizados. El índice Stoxx Europe 600 ascendió 0,4%. El índice Nikkei de Japón cerró con un alza del 0,9%, a medida que la debilidad del yen daba un impulso a las acciones del sector exportador.

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Oil up 88.78

Australia y NZ al alza.

Los futures del Dow Jones 32 puntos al alza.