May 26 2012

Head Of Dutch High Tech Crime Unit Pim Takkenberg Is Pleased With The Close Coop Between His Team And The Dutch Forensic Lab, Fox-IT And Leaseweb In The Fight Against Hackers

Takkenberg argues that the cooperation was particularly successful when conducting the Bredolab botnet investigation, because foreign judges have been making use of the evidence produced by all Dutch parties mentioned.

To some the cooperation was controversial however because:

1. The Dutch Police had sent every internet user who owned an infected PC (and had become a facilitator of the botnet itself) a warning message;

2. The High Tech Crime Unit worked closely with hosting provider Leaseweb and security company Fox-IT, both commercial enterprises;

3. The evidence produced by these Dutch entities resulted in an arrest in Armenia.

Dutch language news article:
http://www.nu.nl/internet/2820042/politie-blij-met-privaat-publieke-samenwerking-hackers.html

Previously:

4 Years In Prison For Armenian Bredolab Botnet Operator
http://vrritti.com/2012/05/22/4-years-in-prison-for-armenian-bredolab-botnet-operator/

May 26 2012

Last Year Google Rejected 610,000 Websites And Disapproved 134 Million Ads

This is no censorship because Google itself can make money doing this

Ads that are in violation of our ads policies aren’t allowed to be shown on Google and our AdSense partner sites. For many repeat offenders, we ban not just ads but also advertisers who seek to abuse our advertising system to take advantage of people. In the case of ads that are promoting counterfeit goods, we typically ban the advertiser after only one violation. Here are some metrics that give some insight into the scale of the impact we have had over time, showing the numbers of actions we’ve taken against advertiser accounts, sites and ads. You can see that the numbers are growing—and growing faster over time.

We find that there are relatively few malicious players, who make multiple attempts to bypass our defenses to defraud users. As we get better and faster at catching these advertisers, they redouble their efforts and create more accounts at an even faster rate.

Even in this ever-escalating arms race, our efforts are working. One method we use to test the success of our efforts is to ask human raters to tell us how we’re doing. These human raters review a set of sites that are advertised on Google. We use a large set of sites in order to get an accurate statistical reading of our efforts. We also weight the sites in our statistical sample based on the number of times a particular site was displayed so that if a particular site is shown more often, it’s more likely to be in our sample set. By using human raters, we can calibrate our automated systems and ensure that we’re improving our efforts over time. In 2011, we reduced the percentage of bad ads by more than 50 percent compared with 2010. That means the proportion of bad ads that are showing on Google was halved in just a year.

Google’s long-term success is based on people trusting our products. We want to make sure that the ads on Google are safe and trustworthy, and we’re not satisfied until we do.

Posted by David W. Baker, Director of Engineering, Advertising

May 25 2012

‘Father of the Internet’ and Googler Vint Cerf calls out U.S. government on CISPA and called hacktivists groups like Anonymous “counterproductive”

Hacker collective becoming more and more ‘loosely-knit’

Oddly enough Cerf did not talk about Google’s silence on these new cybersecurity bills…

http://www.gamepolitics.com/2012/05/22/father-internet-calls-out-us-government-cispa

May 25 2012

Al-Qaida terrorists, are using Facebook to post the names, phone numbers and residential addresses of pro-Assad government supporters. At the end of these posts, the terrorists then leave a note of encouragement for other opposition members to “go and kill them”

http://www.infowars.com/al-qaida-now-deploying-facebook-terrorism-in-syria/

May 25 2012

The most successful internet trolling in parent-teacher interaction

The intent was for a Google search of the assistant principal’s name to return the massively embarrassing profile. And that’s what happened when another school offered him a job as head principal

Much more:
http://gizmodo.com/5913364/dad-creates-fake-porn-site-profile-of-principal-who-confiscated-sons-ipod

May 25 2012

Judges Are Not Idiots: Change Of Domain Name Or IP Address Will Not Change Illegality Of Websites

Dutch ISPs just lost one of many court cases against BREIN and will now have to block the additional IP addresses or domain names of The Pirate Bay too. Lawyers are nonetheless looking forward to the next ‘circumvention method’ The Pirate Bay will try and use, only to have that method formally declared useless too.

Dutch language news article:
http://webwereld.nl/nieuws/110629/brein-wint-ex-parte-verbod-op-nieuw-tpb-adres.html

Previously:

Does A Change Of IP Address Change The Illegallity Of A Website? KPN And Tele2 Seem To Think So
http://vrritti.com/2012/05/23/does-a-change-of-ip-address-change-the-illegallity-of-a-website-kpn-and-tele2-seem-to-think-so/

May 25 2012

The Dutch Are Helping Turkish Businesses In Dealing With EU Legislation And Policies Related To Privacy, Cyber Security And Copyright

Dutch Vice-prime Minister Maxime Verhagen:

“Since 2008, the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation and the EU have been supporting the Turkish Ministry of Justice with the harmonisation of Turkish law with the European E-commerce Directive and the European rules for privacy and data protection. This exchange of knowledge and experience contributed to a sound legal framework for e-commerce in Turkey (…) E-commerce in Turkey has great potential. To exploit the full potential of the Turkish online market, it is important to create a level playing field with the EU. Also, companies need to invest in creating trust in e-commerce by complying with the rules, respecting privacy of consumers and using adequate security measures. In our experience, sectors that invest in trust marks and dispute resolution mechanisms benefit most in the long run.”

Much more:
http://www.considerati.com/en/blog/blog-post/2012/05/25/stimulating-trust-in-turkish-e-commerce-through-eu-turkey-collaboration/

May 25 2012

BitTorrent traffic is now responsible for 11.3% of all U.S. Internet traffic during peak hours, compared to 17.3% last year

In Europe for example, BitTorrent traffic still accounts for 20.32% of all Internet traffic during peak hours, while eDonkey adds another 9.39% to the P2P total. During the last 18 months the share of P2P traffic nearly quadrupled, and this increase is even larger in absolute traffic.

According to Sandvine, the absence of legal alternatives is one of the reasons for these high P2P traffic shares.

“We see higher levels of P2P filesharing than in many other regions, at least partially due to geographical licensing challenges that restrict the availability of legitimate Real-Time Entertainment services.”

In the U.S. on the other hand, the availability of legal content has flourished in recent years. To illustrate this, Sandvine reports that one-third (32.9%) of all downstream traffic during peak hours is now generated by Netflix subscribers. In addition, Hulu has doubled its share in the last year to 1.8%.

The above seems to suggest that due to these alternatives, people are less inclined to pirate.

The MPAA is slowly starting to realize that consumers are not all out to steal content, they simply want to consume.

“I believe it’s critical to find solutions to the challenges facing both these consumers and the people who create the content. Because at the end of the day, this discussion is about consumers and by consumers who love TV shows and movies. They want to be able to access them quickly and safely online,” the MPAA’s Marc Miller wrote yesterday.

More:
http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-traffic-booms-due-to-licensing-challenges-120524/

May 25 2012

Doctors have been reporting more and more cases of little kids eating concentrated detergent pacs, with pretty serious results like needing to be put on a ventilator, or falling into a coma

Apparently, according to the American Association of Poison Control Centers (AAPCC), these pacs pose a serious poison risk for children. The enticing form factor and swirling colors of these pacs scream “candy” to the little ones, and they already want to put everything in their mouths as it is!

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/health/the-dark-side-of-those-bright-detergent-pacs-kids-being-poisoned/491

May 25 2012

Film company Gaumont says Hadopi eradicated illegal downloads of French films

According to the ALPA and Gaumont, illegal downloads of movies (presumably only international films) saw a 50 percent reduction in the last year.

More:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/05/film-company-gaumont-says-hadopi-eradicated-illegal-downloads-of-french-films/

May 24 2012

Apple design chief Jonathan Ive is knighted

The 45-year-old said the investiture in front of the Princess Royal was “really thrilling and particularly humbling”.

Now based in the US, Apple’s senior vice-president of industrial design flew in to the UK with his wife and eight-year-old twin sons for the event.

He was born in Chingford, east London, and studied at Newcastle Polytechnic.

Sir Jonathan had a brief chat with Princess Anne and later revealed they had talked about how often he comes back to the UK while she spoke of her iPad.

He was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) in the New Year Honours list for services to design and enterprise.

More:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18171093