Baidu, China’s largest search giant has been accused by the state run media that it is allowing unlicensed medical providers to buy high search rankings. Baidu dominates the Chinese market with about 60% of the market; as a result of the information Baidu’s stock tumbled on the Nasdaq.

Robin Li, Baidu’s chief executive officer, told the state run media that many employees had been fired because of the incident and more layoffs may occur. We have removed the keywords of all four clients mentioned in the report and have begun to double-check the licences of all other hospitals and pharmacies on our client list" he added.

Reports had risen that Baidu was posting results for medical care from facilities that were not licensed. Consumers that were steered toward the medical facilities were given medicine that they did not need and received services that were not required. Also, it was mentioned that legitimate medical facilites were omitted from results due to not paying for keyword searches, Baidu denied this claim.

One should always take into consideration when searching the internet for medical treatment that results may be skewed due to paid for searches and keywords. Always double check references and pay careful attention to any advice you may receive from any internet source.

We knew this day would eventually come, but somehow we’re still misting up a little — Linux has been ported to the iPhone and iPod touch. Dev Team member planetbeing is the mastermind in charge of bringing everyone’s favorite open-source OS to Apple’s handhelds, and while it’s a little rough around the edges (read: no touchscreen drivers, sound, or WiFi / cell radio support), it’s definitely the first step on the road to hacking nirvana. The team is hard at work, and it even sounds like they’re thinking about porting Android in the near future (!), so hit the read link to try it out and lend a hand if you can — or just head on past the break for a quick vid of the port in all its text-scrolling glory.

Link: Linux on iPhone
Download: iPhone Linux Demo
Video: iPhone Linux Demo video
News source: Engadget

Recently, there were concerns that a Gmail exploit may allow attackers to forward e-mail.
A proof of concept was posted online but Google has now denied there’s any evidence of a Gmail vulnerability.

Google security engineer Chris Evans explained in a blog post that Google "mounted an immediate investigation" after the recent speculation but "results indicate no evidence of a Gmail vulnerability". With help from Gmail users Google has determined that the cause was a phishing scheme, a common method used by malicious actors to trick people into sharing their sensitive information.

Evans explains "Attackers sent customized e-mails encouraging web domain owners to visit fraudulent websites such as "google-hosts.com" that they set up purely to harvest usernames and passwords. These fake sites had no affiliation with Google, and the ones we’ve seen are now offline. Once attackers gained the user credentials, they were free to modify the affected accounts as they desired. In this case, the attacker set up mail filters specifically designed to forward messages from web domain providers."

Phishing attacks are becoming increasingly popular and security researchers believe social networking sites like Facebook are ideal for phishing.