THE NEWS WRAP: Kickstarter hacked

Crowdfunding site Kickstarter has posted a security notice revealing hackers gained access to its customer database and is urging all users to immediately change their passwords.

In a post on the company’s official blog, chief executive Yancey Strickler says the hackers did not gain access to credit card information and the vulnerability used by the hackers has since been closed.

“While no credit card data was accessed, some information about our customers was. Accessed information included usernames, email addresses, mailing addresses, phone numbers, and encrypted passwords.

“Actual passwords were not revealed; however, it is possible for a malicious person with enough computing power to guess and crack an encrypted password, particularly a weak or obvious one.

“We set a very high bar for how we serve our community, and this incident is frustrating and upsetting. We have since improved our security procedures and systems in numerous ways, and we will continue to do so in the weeks and months to come.”

Branson lobbies federal government not to financially assist Qantas

Virgin founder Richard Branson has taken out full-page advertisements in News Corp papers telling Prime Minister Tony Abbott to “think twice” about providing financial assistance to Qantas.

“Should the Australian taxpayer be forced by the Australian Government to prop up the Qantas Group, as Federal Treasurer Joe Hockey is suggesting, business people worldwide should think twice about investing in Australia for fear of such intervention in their sectors,” Branson says.

“Qantas has gone to its shareholders on numerous occasions over the last few years to wage its capacity war against us.

“Now that shareholders have turned that tap off, the company is turning to the Australian taxpayer to try and bail it out.”

Overseas quantitative easing might be boosting the Aussie dollar

Reserve Bank assistant governor Christopher Kent has warned the Australian dollar might be overvalued as a result of the money printing programs of major overseas central banks.

“The fact that these expansions have been occurring for some time suggests that they may have been placing some upward pressure on the Australian dollar in the years following the onset of the global financial crisis,” Kent says.

“The fact that they are still playing out may have continued to provide some support to the Australian dollar beyond the time at which the terms of trade and the interest rate differential had begun to decline.”

Overnight

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up to 16154.4. The Aussie dollar is up to US90.59 cents.