Efforts by The Weather Channel — thrown off DirecTV over a fee dispute — to suggest its replacement is inadequate may have taken a hit this morning when WeatherNation announced a significant expansion of its weather network.

WeatherNation is largely unknown outside of the 20 million DirecTV subscribers that found the Colorado-based weather network on their lineup instead of The Weather Channel in mid-January. Now the weather network has announced expanded weather services for DirecTV subscribers:

• Local Weather Now: Access customized local weather information at the zip code level. DirecTV subscribers can tune to Ch. 362, press the red button on their remote, and access local weather and forecasts. Local weather information will also be inserted into the live WeatherNation broadcast and run every 10 minutes;
• Severe Weather Mix: In early March, WeatherNation will activate Severe Weather Mix during major weather events showing up to six concurrent feeds of weather information, including coverage from local broadcast stations, where available, live remotes from meteorologists in affected areas, live radar with storm tracking information, NOAA weather alerts, and live coverage from top cable news channels including CNN and Fox News.

A prominent story airing last week on the NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams suggested visitors to the Sochi Olympic Games in Russia should expect their Android smartphone or laptop to be infiltrated by hackers moments after being switched on. A closer examination of the story suggests NBC News reporter Richard Engel had to go out of his way to get infected with malware.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/NBC News Hackers at the Olympics 2-4-14.flv[/flv]

Is it really too late to protect your electronic device if you power it on at the Sochi baggage claim facility at the airport, as NBC News’ Brian Williams claims? (3:35)

Trend Micro security expert Kyle Wilhoit, who helped design the experiment based on Engel’s usage habits, admitted security holes were left wide open on the tested devices:

On all of the devices, there was no security software of any type installed. These devices merely had standard operational programs such as Java, Flash, Adobe PDF Reader, Microsoft Office 2007, and a few additional productivity programs.

When considering this experiment, there were some basic things to be considered. First was mimicking the user behavior of Richard Engel. Since these were going to be machines with fake data, it was important to accurately imitate his normal activities. I had to investigate Richard’s user habits. In addition to other information, I needed to understand what he actually did on a daily basis, and sites he commonly visits. Also, I needed to understand where he posted. Did he post information on forums? Did he post on foreign language sites?

NBC’s story implied that three new devices, including an Apple MacBook Air, an Android phone, and a Lenovo laptop running Windows 7 were all hacked within minutes of being switched on for the first time, right out of their respective boxes.

A story about hacking at the Olympics in Sochi, Russia was recorded largely in Moscow, more than 1,000 miles away.

Careful observers will notice Wilhoit is wandering around Moscow, more than 1,000 miles away from Sochi. Wilhoit would later clarify in a tweet he never visited Sochi at all. A closer look at shots of computer screens show the reporter clicking on suspicious links and visiting obviously phony Olympics-oriented websites. With no virus or malware protection and Engel’s apparent willingness to click on anything suggests you should never loan him your laptop or phone.

NBC News went over the top getting their Android phone hacked. In fact, Engel not only had to manually find and download the infected app that let the hackers in, he had to navigate a set of menus to disable Android’s built-in security, turning on permission to download apps from unknown or third-party websites not affiliated with the Google Play store. Installing a security-compromised app also brings multiple additional warning messages advising users not to proceed. Under these circumstances, Aunt Sue can rest easy her Galaxy S4 is not accidentally open season for hackers while she watches the downhill skiing events.

Media sensationalism makes for good ratings but requires a lot of truth dodging to make the story real. This is an example.

At least 34 of Comcast’s email servers have been compromised by a well-known hacker group that posted evidence, the exploit, and certain administrative passwords online to embarrass the company and expose its poor security practices.

Using a “Local File Inclusion” vulnerability, the hacker crew accessed the Zimbra LDAP and MySQL passwords and publicly shared their findings earlier today. Use of this type of exploit can potentially allow hackers to execute code remotely on the web server, allow insertion of malware through JavaScript, open the door to a Denial of Service attack which would slow Comcast’s servers to a crawl, and could also allow hackers access to sensitive customer information.

The security breach affecting Comcast’s email servers remains open and available as of early this afternoon, and Comcast has yet to publicly respond to the security threat.

In one tweet, NullCrew thanked Comcast for putting all of their password information in one convenient spot, making the security intrusion easier.

NullCrew considers itself a hacktivist group that exposes poor security practices at corporations, government agencies, and schools. As exploits are publicized, most affected companies immediately take steps to strengthen security.

NullCrew alerted Comcast four hours before publicizing the breach, but Comcast’s social media team appeared to lack an understanding of the nature of the threat.

NullCrew posted complete documentation about executing the hack on pastebin.com (since removed), opening the door to more attacks by other parties. It also included its latest manifesto:

1. Hello there beautiful people of the internet, once again; we here at NullCrew have some fun information for you.

2. This time, our target is Comcast, yet another internet service provider who proclaims to be a secured one; shall we test these claims as well?

3. What is Comcast?

4. Comcast Corporation is the largest mass media and communications company in the world by revenue.

5. It is the largest cable company and home Internet service provider in the United States, and the nation’s third largest home telephone service provider.

6. Comcast provides cable television, broadband Internet, telephone service and in some areas home security (including burglar alarms, surveillance cameras, fire alarm systems and home automation) to both residential and commercial customers in 40 states and the District of Columbia.

7. Okay!

8. So, it’s the LARGEST mass media and communications company in the world? Sweeeeet.

9. Let’s take a look at it, and see if we should be impressed.

10. Below us, we have a list of Comcast mail servers; and each of these mail servers run on something called, “Zimbra.”

11. But each of these mail servers also are vulnerable to LFi, and you know what LFi can lead to, right?

David Raphael ran into trouble using his Verizon Internet connection last month, discovering major slowdowns when accessing Amazon’s cloud-server ‘AWS,’ which in addition to serving his employer also feeds Netflix video content to customers.

“One evening I also noticed a slowdown while using our service from my house,” Raphael writes on his blog. “I realized that the one thing in common between me and [my employer] was that we both had FiOS internet service from Verizon. Since we host all of our infrastructure on Amazon’s AWS – I decided to do a little test – I grabbed a URL from AWS S3 and loaded it. 40kB/s.”

Internet slowdowns while accessing different websites is nothing new. Just ask anyone trying to watch YouTube in the early evening.

But what was different this time is that a Verizon representative seemed to openly admit the company is purposefully throttling certain web traffic, as this chat screen capture suggests:

“Frankly, I was surprised he admitted to this,” Raphael writes. “I’ve since tested this almost every day for the last couple of weeks. During the day – the bandwidth is normal to AWS. However, after 4pm or so – things get slow. In my personal opinion, this is Verizon waging war against Netflix. Unfortunately, a lot of infrastructure is hosted on AWS. That means a lot of services are going to be impacted by this.”

That would certainly be the case as many large content distributors increasingly rely on cloud-based delivery services to reach subscribers over the shortest and fastest possible route. But broad-based interference with web traffic would also throw a major wrench in Verizon’s core marketing message for FiOS — its fiber-fast speed when compared against the cable competition. If subscribers notice their Netflix experience degraded to speeds that resemble dial-up, cable companies are going to get a lot of returning customers.

We reached out to Verizon for comment and it turns out the company has not declared war on Netflix after all.

“We treat all traffic equally, and that has not changed,” says Verizon spokesman Jarryd Gonzales. “Many factors can affect the speed a customer’s experiences for a specific site, including, that site’s servers, the way the traffic is routed over the Internet, and other considerations.  We are looking into this specific matter, but the company representative was mistaken. We we’re going to redouble our representative education efforts on this topic.”

While cable companies continue to point to growing subscriber numbers for premium movie channels as evidence cable cord-cutting is not taking its toll, the owner of the country’s largest pay movie channel has undercut their argument.

Time Warner (Entertainment), owner of HBO, disclosed to investors recently that although the network picked up nearly two million new subscriber in the United States, most of those were watching the network for free through temporary promotional offers.

Free or discounted offers for premium movie networks are not uncommon. Time Warner Cable frequently bundles a one-year subscription to Showtime/The Movie Channel in its promotions. HBO and Cinemax are often offered for 3-6 months at no charge by other pay television providers.

Many viewers drop the network(s) (or negotiate another free viewing promotion) when charges start appearing on their bill. For years, premium movie channels cost around $13 a month, and many cable operators sold extra premium channels at a discounted $7 a month. But prices have risen dramatically over the last five years. Time Warner Cable, for example, now charges $15.95/mo for HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, and/or Starz.

Because of higher prices, HBO’s subscription revenue of $1.3 billion during the fourth quarter was up 8% year over year.