Archive for 2010/12/15

Remote ‘kill switch’ added to Intel’s newest processor

Posted: 2010/12/15 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models, Tech Evolution

Lauded as a security feature, Intel’s new Sandy Bridge processor can be remotely disabled by a hardware/software combination known at Anti-Theft 3.0. Systems can be disabled over 3G networks, even while the OS is not running. Even when the hard drive is replaced, the critical systems will still be terminated.

More: http://www.infowars.com/remote-kill-switch-added-to-intels-newest-processor/

See also:

Intel’s Sandy Bridge will debut at CES
http://www.itbusiness.ca/it/client/en/home/News.asp?id=60539&cid=6

Comcast Accused of Congestion By Choice – Keeping their links full may ensure that content providers must pay

Posted: 2010/12/15 in Education / Awareness

“A kind soul known as Backdoor Santa has posted graphs purportedly showing traffic through TATA, one of Comcast’s transit providers. The graphs of throughput for a day and month, respectively, show that Comcast chooses to run congested links rather than buy more capacity. Keeping their links full may ensure that content providers must pay to colocate within Comcast’s network. The graphs also show a traffic ratio far from 1:1, which has implications for the validity of its arguments with Level (3) last month.”

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/12/14/1335235/Comcast-Accused-of-Congestion-By-Choice

See also: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/12/14/1335235/Comcast-Accused-of-Congestion-By-Choice#commentlisting

EU Parliament wants to prohibit certain practices, including “robots” on Google’s Gmail service that are able to scan personal emails for keywords to automatically generate targeted advertisements

Posted: 2010/12/15 in Education / Awareness, Google, Privacy / Data Protection, Public Policy

“It is absolutely impossible to accept that advertisers could read the content of your personal emails to make advertising,” he said, without citing Google.

While personalised advertising is not in itself a problem, Juvin stresses that it must not lead to the development of intrusive advertising based on consumer tracking, “which breaches the principles of data protection and privacy”.

Much more: http://www.euractiv.com/en/specialweek-foodandresponsiblemarketing/parliament-seeks-rein-unfair-online-advertising-news-500155

Study: Web Browser Security – Comparative Test Results

Posted: 2010/12/15 in Education / Awareness, Stats / reports

http://www.nsslabs.com/assets/noreg-reports/NSS%20Labs_Q32010_Browser-SEM.pdf

Man illegally obtained the details of private and business internet accounts by hacking into customer modems via the internet

Posted: 2010/12/15 in Cybercrime, Education / Awareness, Enforcement

and used the accounts to download significant amounts of data as well as conduct other fraudulent activity

http://www.afp.gov.au/media-centre/news/afp/2010/december/alleged-computer-hacker-arrested.aspx

Watchdog Says Google Dominant in France

Posted: 2010/12/15 in Education / Awareness, Google, Public Policy

France’s antitrust watchdog said it found that Google Inc. had a dominant position in the local Internet-search-advertising market, a result that could make Google vulnerable to lawsuits in France and adds to the Silicon Valley company’s mounting problems in Europe.

The decision by Autorité de la Concurrence—which follows a request by the French government to investigate Google’s position in the country’s online-ad market—comes two weeks after the European Commission launched a separate antitrust inquiry into Google’s ad-andsearch business.

More: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704694004576019091823644126.html

Where Star Wars Got Its Pew-Pew

Posted: 2010/12/15 in Education / Awareness

More: http://gizmodo.com/5713441/where-star-wars-got-its-pew+pew

Putting an SSD in Your PS3 Cuts Gran Turismo 5 Loading Times in Half

Posted: 2010/12/15 in Education / Awareness, Tech Evolution

http://gizmodo.com/5713578/ssd-ps3-cuts-gran-turismo-5-loading-times-in-half

The iPhone’s Graphics are Set to Get Even Better

Posted: 2010/12/15 in Tech Evolution

http://gizmodo.com/5713696/the-iphones-graphics-are-set-to-get-even-better

How a Man Caught UPS Tampering With His Package

Posted: 2010/12/15 in Education / Awareness, Enforcement

http://gizmodo.com/5713709/how-a-man-caught-ups-tampering-with-his-package

How To Watch Streaming Video Anywhere in the World

Posted: 2010/12/15 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models, Tech Evolution

How are you supposed to enjoy paradise when copyright laws put the international hammer down on Netflix? Winter travelers, meet your new best friends: Proxy and VPN services

More: http://gizmodo.com/5713626/how-to-watch-streaming-us-programming-abroad

Stolen iPhone Provokes Aussie Police to Fire Up the Helicopter to Track it by GPS

Posted: 2010/12/15 in Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Tech Evolution

The iPhone was stolen from a hospital in Heidelberg, Melbourne, yesterday afternoon by a 16 year old kid who pedalled away furiously on his BMX. It was another successful result for Apple’s “Find My iPhone” service though, which allowed the police to track the kid using GPS from a helicopter.

http://gizmodo.com/5713734/stolen-iphone-provokes-aussie-police-to-fire-up-the-helicopter-to-track-it-by-gps

Google makes $5million code contribution to Eclipse, Open Source Community

Posted: 2010/12/15 in Education / Awareness, Google, New Business Models

Today we are announcing Google’s donation of the source code and IP for two of these products to the open source community through the Eclipse Foundation. This donation includes WindowBuilder, the leading Eclipse Java GUI Designer, and CodePro Profiler, which identifies Java code performance issues. Specifically, the WindowBuilder Engine and designers for SWT and Swing. All in all, this is a value of more than $5 million dollars worth of code and IP.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/burnette/google-makes-5million-code-contribution-to-eclipse/2156

By picking on Google, Washington (Post) shows why the U.S. is losing in 21st Century business

Posted: 2010/12/15 in Education / Awareness, Google, New Business Models, Public Policy

Here’s what really throws me: Every quarter, right around earnings season, we – pundits, analysts and the like – judge and ridicule companies that aren’t growing fast enough to meet Wall Street’s hunger for more more more. We mock companies that are losing races because of their own missteps or lack of foresight. (Microsoft, most recently.) We chastise and leave out to dry those companies who didn’t innovate fast enough to keep up with the changing competitive landscape (RIM, most recently). And we love to hate those that seem to have a Midas Touch and create high-demand, quality products – Apple, every quarter.

And yet, we cry and moan constantly that other countries are kicking our butts in the area of broadband, mobile and other technologies. It’s no wonder. We want companies to grow – but not too much, too fast. We want companies to expand – but only into some areas and not into others. We want companies to use their profits to build overnight growth – but lose patience when they invest in the slow churn of R&D and cry foul when they buy other companies that are already innovating.

What the hell? Can Washington and Wall Street make up their freakin’ minds already? Out here in Silicon Valley, we’re trying to push this country forward and 3,000 miles east of us, they’re trying to push us back. Granted. maybe I’m just some out-of-touch youngster (by Washington’s definition) or old geezer (by Silicon Valley’s definition) but I’ve been given this forum to sound off. So here goes: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/by-picking-on-google-washington-post-shows-why-the-us-is-losing-in-21st-century-business/42756

Oh Look, Digital Downloads Aren’t Saving The Music Industry

Posted: 2010/12/15 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models

There are lots of other opportunities to make money, but you have to think beyond just selling music.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101210/17301212243/oh-look-digital-downloads-arent-saving-music-industry.shtml

Iceland Considers Revoking Visa/MasterCard Licenses For Wikileaks Ban

Posted: 2010/12/15 in Education / Awareness, Public Policy

Apparently, the Icelandic Parliamentary General Committee has asked both companies to explain what legal grounds they used for cutting off Wikileaks and, without evidence of legitimate reasons, both companies could lose their operating licenses. We had already noted that Icelandic firm DataCell, which was handling the payments for Wikileaks, was planning to sue both companies but it appears that the Icelandic government may help out.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101214/11124912272/iceland-considers-revoking-visamastercard-licenses-wikileaks-ban.shtml

Why Are Rosetta Stone & Google Hiding Details In Court Case… And Why Is The Judge Allowing It?

Posted: 2010/12/15 in Google, Litigation

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101214/17152312277/why-are-rosetta-stone-google-hiding-details-court-case-why-is-judge-allowing-it.shtml

Battling Wikileaks And The Art Of War

Posted: 2010/12/15 in Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Public Policy

Anyone who has studied tactics, for battle or otherwise, knows Sun Tzu’s legendary work, The Art Of War. Or at least they should. In reviewing what the first chapter of that work teaches about the five factors a battling faction must consider when endeavoring to battle, you have to scratch your head and wonder if the United States government might need a refresher course.

“The art of war, then, is governed by five constant factors…These are The Moral Law, Heaven, Earth, The Commander, and the Method and discipline.”

According to Sun Tzu, these five factors are everything in battle. He goes on to describe what he means by each of these.

More: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101209/10400912213/battling-wikileaks-art-war.shtml

Congressional Research Service Analysts Complaining About Blocked Access To Wikileaks

Posted: 2010/12/15 in Blocking, Education / Awareness

With the Library of Congress blocking access to Wikileaks over some misguided notion of what its legal responsibilities are, Copycense points us to a report about how librarians across the nation are now arguing over whether or not this was the right move, with many feeling that it was decidedly a bad move.

More: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101213/01240212254/congressional-research-service-analysts-complaining-about-blocked-access-to-wikileaks.shtml

MPAA and BREIN Shut Down 29 BitTorrent and NZB Sites

Posted: 2010/12/15 in Blocking, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Illegal File Sharing

The MPAA and their colleagues in The Netherlands appear to have shut down more than two dozen BitTorrent, Usenet and other file-sharing sites today. Accused of linking to movies, music, TV shows and games, the domains appear to be redirecting to the website of Dutch anti-piracy outfit, BREIN.

In an operation carried out by the MPAA and Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN, 29 BitTorrent and Usenet indexing sites are believed to have been closed down. The names of the sites, which appear to have been offering links to movies, music, TV shows, games and books, are currently unavailable but at least one appears to be identified as HD-UNiT3D.

As can be seen from its http://hd-united.com/ URL, it diverts straight to BREIN’s homepage.

Despite being hosted in the US the anti-piracy outfit cited Dutch law as the reason for the closures. “They are directed at the Dutch public” and “unlawful under Dutch law,” Kuik told TorrentFreak.

“This year we have made over 600 of these sites inaccessible. Some seek refuge in a foreign or hosting provider. These 29 apparently thought that in America they could go undisturbed. That is incorrect,” Kuik said in a statement.

More: http://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-shuts-down-29-bittorrent-and-nzb-sites-101215/

Wiki Leaks Anonymous

Posted: 2010/12/15 in Education / Awareness

http://www.p2pnet.net/story/46787 and http://xkcd.com/

Are cheap megahosters good for your business?

Posted: 2010/12/15 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models, Tech Evolution, The Cloud

The perception that the providers’ heritage and core activity is consumer focused also casts doubt on whether they really understand the needs of businesses.

Beyond these issues are other considerations, such as the need to know where your data is stored and being assured of data destruction on deletion for compliance reasons. There are then the practicalities of integrating online services with corporate policy management systems, especially for larger organisations. The last thing anyone needs is having to maintain multiple sets of access and security rights, or being forced to run separate set of tools to manage in-house systems and hosted services. This would only aggravate the fragmentation that is already at the root of so many inefficiencies and exposures in IT.

More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/15/hosted_intro/

FBI about McDonald’s databreach: “The breach is with Silverpop, an email service provider that has over 105 customers”

Posted: 2010/12/15 in Cybercrime, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Privacy / Data Protection

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/15/silverpop_breach_probe/

Appeals court: warrant required before Feds can read e-mail

Posted: 2010/12/15 in Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Jurisprudence, Privacy / Data Protection

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled once again: the government can’t storm your e-mail without a valid warrant. A simple court order just isn’t enough.

More: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/12/appeals-court-warrant-required-before-feds-can-read-e-mail-mail.ars

FBI accused of planting backdoor in OpenBSD IPSEC stack

Posted: 2010/12/15 in Education / Awareness, Enforcement

the OpenBSD development community has begun conducting code audits

More: http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/12/fbi-accused-of-planting-backdoor-in-openbsd-ipsec-stack.ars

Court: You do not own that copy of WoW you bought

Posted: 2010/12/15 in Education / Awareness, Jurisprudence

The Ninth Circuit agrees with a previous ruling that World of Warcraft players do not own the game, but rules that breaking the licensing agreement does not lead to copyright infringement when it comes to third-party programs.

Moe: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/12/court-you-do-not-own-that-copy-of-wow-you-bought.ars

Imagine a world where every app has its own data plan

Posted: 2010/12/15 in Education / Awareness, Future Developments?, Tech Evolution

Wireless companies would love to charge each app a different fee to access the Internet. Facebook? That will cost you two cents per megabyte. YouTube? A couple bucks per month. Welcome to the brave new world of mobile pricing.

More: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/12/net-neutrality-nightmare-a-world-where-every-app-has-its-own-data-plan.ars

WikiLeaks: The practical effects already are being felt at U.S. embassies overseas

Posted: 2010/12/15 in Education / Awareness, Privacy / Data Protection, Public Policy

In foreign capitals, some countries are limiting the number of American diplomats who can attend meetings. Those who are invited are asked to leave their notebooks behind. Several foreign diplomats said this lingering distrust of American officials is likely to remain for some time. Few leaders, they said, will feel comfortable expressing honest views, fearing they will be quoted in cables that will be splashed across the internet.

American diplomats also have been burned by comments they made about world leaders.

The leaks also have been a cold shower for some U.S. allies who felt they had a warm embrace from Washington.

More damaging, however, are revelations about the views of America’s interlocutors about their own countries.

The ability to get insightful perspectives about third countries is likely to suffer as well.

Much more: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/12/15/sweep.wikileaks/

UK police investigate WikiLeaks supporters

Posted: 2010/12/15 in Cybercrime, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Organized Crime, Public Policy

The London Metropolitan Police is investigating recent web attacks by Anonymous, the pro-WikiLeaks activists who have taken revenge against perceived opponents of the whistleblowing site.

The Met has been examining alleged criminal offences by Anonymous – which has previously targeted the record industry and the Scientologists – for several months. “The Metropolitan Police Service is monitoring the situation relating to recent and ongoing denial of service attacks and will investigate where appropriate.”

An internet advisory group to the European Union also warned on Wednesday that the spate of leaks, attacks and counter-attacks raised “important implications for information security”. Prof Udo Helmbrecht, executive director of Enisa, called for global co-operation to tackle internet security threats such as the leakage of sensitive documents and DOS attacks.

“The freedom the internet allows in moving between jurisdictions and technologies makes cyber security an asymmetric challenge. But our economy and our governments are heavily reliant on functioning and resilient systems. Therefore it is a challenge which must be met through global co-operation to strengthen all aspects of cyber security.”

Much more at FT.com: http://tinyurl.com/25237y7

Wikileaks.org now hosted by Russian criminals

Posted: 2010/12/15 in Cybercrime, Education / Awareness, Organized Crime

Spam tracking outfit Spamhaus has warned that that the original WikiLeaks address, wikileaks.org, now redirects traffic to a site operated by what it calls ‘Russian cybercriminals’.

It says Webalta’s 92.241.160.0/19 IP address space has been listed on the Spamhaus Block List (SBL) since October 2008 due to nefarious activites associated with the address.

Spamhaus regards the Russian Webalta (also known as Wahome) host as being “blackhat” – a known cybercrime host from whose IP space Spamhaus only sees spamming, malware/virus hosting, phishing and other dodgy activities.

The outfit says it is concerned that any WikiLeaks archive posted on a site that is hosted in Webalta space might be infected with malware.

The main wikileaks.org web site now redirects visitors to mirror.wikileaks.info and thence directly into Webalta’s controlled IP address space, which means, Spamhaus says, that “there is substantial risk that any malware infection would spread widely.”

The outfit also thinks the mirror site mirror.wikileaks.info is a bit dodgy and reckons the content of the site is not the same as other WikiLeaks mirrors. It suggests users head to the organisation’s ‘real’ site at wikileaks.is, wikileaks.nl, or one of many other mirror sites around the world.

Spamhaus says it “takes no political stand on the WikiLeaks affair”. A spokesman said he hopes “WikiLeaks staff will quickly address the hosting issue to remove the possibility of cybercriminals using WikiLeaks traffic for illicit purposes.”

On Sunday researcher Feike Hacquebord at Trend Micro issued a similar warning in the Trend Micro Malware Blog.

http://www.thinq.co.uk/2010/12/15/wikileaksorg-now-hosted-russian-criminials/

See also: http://serversiders.com/as41947 and http://sitevet.com/db/asn/AS41947

and:

WikiLeaks urged to stop hosting on Russian blackhat ISP
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/15/wikileaks_spamhaus_trend/

WikiLeaks hackers give Britain 48 hours to let Julian Assange go free

Posted: 2010/12/15 in Cybercrime, Education / Awareness, Organized Crime

Anonymous, the group behind attacks on several sites it perceives as enemies of WikiLeaks, announced the truce in a YouTube video, complete with a dramatic soundtrack of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture.

“We respect the law, we hope that justice will respect free speech. We will wait 48 hours,” it said. However, it then warned: “We do not forget, we do not forgive.”

More: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23906957-jailed-wikileaks-chief-julian-assange-in-new-bid-for-freedom.do

Crown Prosecution Service Delays Ruling on BT and Phorm UK Privacy Invasions

Posted: 2010/12/15 in Education / Awareness, Litigation

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has once again delayed plans to rule on whether or not to charge either Phorm and or BT over the broadband ISPs secret 2006/2007 trials of Phorm’s technology, which tracked customers private website visits (not unlike Spyware) for use in targeted advertising campaigns; this was done without end-users consent.

More: http://www.ispreview.co.uk/story/2010/12/15/crown-prosecution-service-delays-ruling-on-bt-and-phorm-uk-privacy-invasions.html

The case of WikiLeaks shows that traditional media has deviated from its true mission and instead of bringing the facts to the audience it relies heavily on official source, on the point of view of governments, while it should instead be less dependent on such

Posted: 2010/12/15 in Education / Awareness

thinks award-winning journalist John Pilger

More: http://www.ecommerce-journal.com/node/30628

ENISA REPORT: an informed assessment of the information security and privacy risks of using smartphones

Posted: 2010/12/15 in Education / Awareness, Mobile tech, Network Security, Privacy / Data Protection

http://www.enisa.europa.eu/act/it/oar/smartphones-information-security-risks-opportunities-and-recommendations-for-users/at_download/fullReport

Dutch Hosting Provider Digitalus takes down 30 websites possibly related to the Amsterdam child porn network

Posted: 2010/12/15 in Blocking, Cybercrime, Education / Awareness, Enforcement

In relation to the Child Porn Ring discovered in Amsterdam and affecting at least 50 abused children aging 0-4, Dutch hosting company Digitalus decided to take down approximately 30 websites which can be connected to the case and suspects in Amsterdam, Digitalus owner Martijn Koster confirmed. The websites may have served as file exchange platforms.

Though some sites resembled e-commerce sites, there was one particular site that offered only one product. It is believed that special access codes could have been used to access illicit material. It is not known if the sites allowed for payment processing or whether they indeed functioned as a portal to child abuse images.

Digitalus will offer full cooperation to the Department of Justice and the content on the servers will be analyzed by law enforcement.

(my summary and translation)

Full Dutch language article: http://tweakers.net/nieuws/71346/overheid-haalt-mogelijk-netwerk-kinderpornosites-uit-de-lucht.html

Previously:

“Pedo website” taken down following the discovery of a child porn ring in Amsterdam, The Netherlands
http://vrritti.com/2010/12/14/pedo-website-taken-down-following-the-discovery-of-a-child-porn-ring-in-amsterdam-the-netherlands/

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