Archive for 2011/08/17

TorrentFreak: The Internet is a great big copying machine and yes, when something exists only as data it is ridiculously easy to copy and yes, some people will do that if they can. Information does want to be free and unfortunately the costs of creating that information, for the purposes of this debate, are simply irrelevant. The cost to the downloader is virtually nil and in the majority of cases, rightly or wrongly, the financial implications study will end right there

Posted: 2011/08/17 in Education / Awareness

The MPAA obviously feel they have no choice but to try and stamp out piracy, and that is their prerogative, but they are facing a general public, as Mike Masnick points out, who feel that downloading movies and TV shows is socially acceptable.

The reality is that just about every movie and TV show, no matter how old or how new, is available to every internet user almost immediately and the studios don’t provide that service. Until they do piracy will continue, through this economic downturn and the next.

http://torrentfreak.com/economic-crisis-fuels-will-they-wont-they-file-sharing-piracy-debate-110817/

Pan European Licensing (PEDL) project aims to be the standardized European licensing model (‘one stop shop’) for copyright protected works in the EU

Posted: 2011/08/17 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models, Public Policy

Joined by SPA, PRS, SABAM, SACEM, SGAE, STIM, BUMA/STEMRA

http://www.futureofcopyright.com/nc/home/blog-post/2011/08/17/spa-joins-pan-european-digital-licensing-initiative.html

Amazon Is a Book Publisher For Reals Now – Book publishers should be scared

Posted: 2011/08/17 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models

http://gizmodo.com/5831785/amazon-is-a-book-publisher-for-reals-now

Organisations like the MPAA and RIAA want to protect copyright so media companies can sell more movies and music. But ISPs and consumer-electronics manufacturers have a financial interest in weaker protections that make the products they sell more valuable. Strip away the rhetoric and what bloggers call the “copyfight” is just a particularly brutal business conflict in activist drag

Posted: 2011/08/17 in Copyright, Education / Awareness

It would be foolish to let certain companies write laws to prop up their business models — even if those companies happen to be in the technology business.

http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2011/09/ideas-bank/robert-levine

Stanford: The common ISP practice of structuring tiered contracts according to the cost of carrying the traffic flows (e.g., offering a discount for traffic that is local) can be suboptimal

Posted: 2011/08/17 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models, Stats / reports

Tiered pricing comes to the Internet backbone

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/08/tiered-pricing-comes-to-the-internet-backbone.ars

It seems more likely that the US, upset with some of ICANN’s recent decisions, will exert greater control over the organisation

Posted: 2011/08/17 in Education / Awareness, Public Policy

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/17/icann_chief_quits/

Dutch State heading to Court to claim the domain www.ministerpresidentrutte.nl. The domain is currently redirecting to whistleblower website klokkenluideronline.nl

Posted: 2011/08/17 in Education / Awareness, Litigation, Public Policy

Dutch language news article:
http://www.nu.nl/internet/2591894/staat-rechter-webdomein-rutte.html 

Dubbed “Google Hacking,” hackers armed with a browser and specially crafted search queries (“Dorks”), are using botnets to generate more than 80,000 daily queries, identify potential attack targets and build an accurate picture of the resources within that server that are potentially exposed

Posted: 2011/08/17 in Cybercrime, Education / Awareness, Google, New Business Models, Tech Evolution

By automating the query and result parsing, the attacker can carry out a large number of search queries, examine the returned results and get a filtered list of potentially exploitable sites in a very short time and with minimal effort. Because searches are conducted using botnets, and not the hacker’s IP address, the attacker’s identity remains concealed.

“Hackers have become experts at using Google to create a map of hackable targets on the Web. This cyber reconnaissance allows hackers to be more productive when it comes to targeting attacks which may lead to contaminated web sites, data theft, data modification, or even a compromise of company servers,” explained Imperva’s CTO, Amachai Shulman. “These attacks highlight that search engine providers need to do more to prevent attackers from taking advantage of their platforms.”

More:
http://www.imperva.com/news/press/2011/08_16_Imperva_Research_Details_New_Search_Engine_Hack_Innovation.html 

Men who describe themselves as “not agreeable” in the workplace rake in 18 percent more annual income each year – no evidence found that this approach led to greater productivity of the individual or company

Posted: 2011/08/17 in Education / Awareness, Stats / reports

according to a 20-year survey of 10,000 employees by Professor Beth Livingston’s research team of human resource studies at Cornell University in New York

http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2011/08/17/2011081700793.html

After multiple recent botnet takedowns, cyber criminal groups remain resilient, clearly looking to build their botnets and distribute more fake AV in the process. It seems spammers have returned from a holiday break and are enthusiastically back to work

Posted: 2011/08/17 in Cybercrime, Education / Awareness, Stats / reports

http://labs.m86security.com/2011/08/massive-rise-in-malicious-spam/

What’s often called second generation Internet censorship or censorship 2.0, includes distributed denial of service attacks on critical sites, malicious patches that change content on the sites and armies of paid commenters who drown out each critical comment or blog post with a thousand opposing voices

Posted: 2011/08/17 in Blocking, Education / Awareness, Filtering, Public Policy

http://techinsider.nextgov.com/2011/08/white_house_website_may_be_blocked_in_iran_but_cia_isnt.php

The NZ MetService has confirmed visitors to its website in the past few days may have contracted a computer virus from malware hidden in online advertisements on the site

Posted: 2011/08/17 in Cybercrime, Education / Awareness

http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/5458448/Users-complain-of-virus-from-MetService-website

The MCP500 is an ideal rugged processing engine for netcentric applications such as packet processing, intrusion detection/deep packet inspection, unified threat management, network monitoring and forensics in tactical wireline and wireless environments

Posted: 2011/08/17 in Education / Awareness, Filtering, Tech Evolution

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/new-many-core-processor-platforms-from-ge-offer-outstanding-video-and-network-processing-performance-2011-08-16

iBoss Web Filters, providers of gateway security for large organizations, has joined the Internet Watch Foundation to combat online images of child sex abuse. The UK-based foundation battles online child sexual abuse images in partnership with police, government and the online industry worldwide

Posted: 2011/08/17 in Blocking, Education / Awareness, Filtering, New Business Models, Tech Evolution

With the iBoss Enterprise Web Filter, users can block access to Internet websites in categories including adult, violence, illegal, hacking, drugs, dating, forums, video, gambling, games, shopping, webmail and more. An industry leader, the iBoss Web Filter received a perfect score and best buy rating for 2011 from SC magazine. The filter earned five stars across all categories: ease of use, performance, features, documentation, support and value. The filter earned five stars across all categories: ease of use, performance, features, documentation, support and value.

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/iboss-web-filters-joins-internet-watch-foundation-in-effort-to-combat-online-child-sex-abuse-images-127822403.html

The launch of .xxx is concerning for trade mark owners because cyber squatters or other third parties could register their brand name as a .xxx TLD for use as an adult entertainment website, thus potentially registering a well known brand name known for clothing or food for adult entertainment

Posted: 2011/08/17 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models

The key point is that businesses could be embarrassed by such an association and it could be a PR disaster for a company to be seen to have the same brand name on the internet but for adult content to be present on the site.

http://www.mondaq.com/x/142942/Trademark/Launch+of+XXX+ndash+Flagging+Adult+Entertainment+On+The+Internet+A+Concern+For+Trade+Mark+Owners

Netflix Moving Into Piracy-Wracked Spain

Posted: 2011/08/17 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models

http://www.deadline.com/2011/08/netflix-moving-into-piracy-wracked-spain/

Movie goers in Thailand have been asked for their assistance to report to the police if they see anyone trying to videotape films during screenings

Posted: 2011/08/17 in Education / Awareness, Enforcement

A maximum fine of 800,000 THB and a jail term of no more than 4 years will be imposed on an offender of this crime.

http://www.pattayamail.com/news/movie-piracy-in-thailand-to-be-taken-seriously-5520 

Sierra Leone’s ever first film and acting school, IDF Film School, was recently established by the Director of Instittut de Francais, Ahmed K. Mansaray who also doubles as a movie executive producer and director

Posted: 2011/08/17 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models

http://www.thepatrioticvanguard.com/spip.php?article6120

Michigan Woman Sentenced to Two Years in Prison for Selling Counterfeit Software Online

Posted: 2011/08/17 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Illegal File Sharing, Jurisprudence

The Business Software Alliance (BSA) applauded the sentencing of the owner and operator of multiple rogue websites found to be illegally selling software that was stolen from BSA member companies Adobe, Autodesk, Microsoft, and Symantec with a retail value of approximately $2 million

http://www.ag-ip-news.com/news.aspx?id=27789&lang=en

NZ businesses: You may even want to include a term in your employment contracts which states that an employee must pay any sum awarded by the Copyright Tribunal as a result of the employee infringing copyright

Posted: 2011/08/17 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, New Business Models

http://www.nzbusiness.co.nz/afa.asp?idWebPage=13579&idAdrenalin_Articles=1474&SID=323346624

See also:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA1108/S00344/information-released-to-aid-compliance-with-copyright-laws.htm

Sitelinks will now be full-size links with a URL and one line of snippet text—similar to regular results—making it even easier to find the section of the site you want. We’re also increasing the maximum number of sitelinks per query from eight to 12

Posted: 2011/08/17 in Education / Awareness, Google

In addition, we’re making a significant improvement to our algorithms by combining sitelink ranking with regular result ranking to yield a higher-quality list of links. This reduces link duplication and creates a better organized search results page. Now, all results from the top-ranked site will be nested within the first result as sitelinks, and all results from other sites will appear below them.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/evolution-of-sitelinks-expanded-and.html

Samsung Mobile hired Steve “Cyanogen” Kondik, one of the homebrew market’s most “notorious and successful” Android hackers

Posted: 2011/08/17 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models

It said Kondik is best known as the creator of the CyanogenMod for Android, an after-market customized firmware that brings “new features and functionality” to Android such as native theming, Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC), an OpenVPN client, USB tethering, and claims increased performance and reliability over official firmware releases.

http://www.gmanews.tv/story/229714/technology/report-samsung-hires-android-hacker

Quebec newspaper says hacker posted false story about premier dying

Posted: 2011/08/17 in Cybercrime, Education / Awareness

http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/Quebec+newspaper+says+hacker+posted+false+story+about+premier+dying/5261499/story.html

Welcome to RankMyHack.Com, the worlds first elite hacker ranking system

Posted: 2011/08/17 in Cybercrime

Submit proof of your website hacks in exchange for Ranking Points that earn you a place on the leaderboard of legends. The bigger the site, the bigger the points. Then use your points to duel with other hackers and protect your legacy in one on one digital combat.

http://rankmyhack.com/

A hacker stole £35,000 from his neighbours’ online bank accounts after working out the answers to their security questions from information they posted on Facebook and Friends Reunited

Posted: 2011/08/17 in Cybercrime, Education / Awareness, Privacy / Data Protection

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/8700762/Fraudster-used-Facebook-to-hack-bank-accounts.html

In this paper, we examine the potential of using a thermal camera to recover codes typed into keypads. In large-scale attacks involving many unique codes, such as on ATM PINs, our success rate indicates that an adversary can correctly recover enough codes to make such an attack economically viable

Posted: 2011/08/17 in Education / Awareness, Stats / reports

As we will see, both human and automated attacks are by and large successful in recovering the keys present in the code, even a full minute after they have been pressed; both methods are also able to determine the exact code (i.e., including the order in which the keys were pressed) for a smaller fraction of codes.

http://www.usenix.org/events/woot11/tech/final_files/Mowery.pdf

How Researchers Fit a Blu-Ray of Data Onto a Millimeter of Glass

Posted: 2011/08/17 in Education / Awareness, Tech Evolution

http://gizmodo.com/5831590/how-researchers-fit-a-blu+ray-of-data-onto-a-millimeter-of-glass

Cops Use Wi-Fi Detector to Bust Kiddie Porn Pervs

Posted: 2011/08/17 in Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Tech Evolution

After powering on, the AirCheck immediately registers all of the wireless networks in the area and allows you to monitor signal strength, bandwidth, and the number of connected computers. AirCheck also comes with a wand-like antenna, which allows you to track any device connected to the network like a homing beacon.

http://gizmodo.com/5831472/cops-use-wi+fi-detector-to-bust-kiddie-porn-pervs

The Manhattan Project is among the most significant events in world history. Only one physicist quit for moral reasons: Józef Rotblat

Posted: 2011/08/17 in Education / Awareness

http://gizmodo.com/5831109/quitting-the-manhattan-project

A natural monopoly occurs when it’s so expensive to enter a market that it doesn’t make sense for a competitors to come in

Posted: 2011/08/17 in Education / Awareness

With cable TV, there’s a massive fixed cost to enter a new market—putting in new cable lines. So, basically, whoever showed up first—or the company that bought them—has the legacy right of being the local cable company. Ultimately what all of this means is that consumers are left with little recourse. Because there’s plenty of competition nationally, nobody is looking out for you locally.

http://gizmodo.com/5830956/why-the-government-wont-protect-you-from-getting-screwed-by-your-cable-company

The Big Lebowski Cast Celebrated the Blu-ray Release With a Livestreamed Reunion

Posted: 2011/08/17 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models

http://gizmodo.com/5831651/the-big-lebowski-cast-celebrated-the-blu+ray-release-with-a-livestreamed-reunion

It Takes a Village Person to Change Music Copyright Law

Posted: 2011/08/17 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Legislation

http://gizmodo.com/5831655/it-takes-a-village-person-to-change-music-copyright-law

Google+ invite links that have been shared with Facebook friends not showing up in the news feeds of other users, despite appearing to do so once posted

Posted: 2011/08/17 in Blocking, Education / Awareness, Filtering, Google

The problem, in this case, is that the link urges users to come try out Google’s  flashy new social network, which competes directly with Facebook, leading to  speculation that Facebook would somehow be hiding these links intentionally.

What is, perhaps, surprising is that some of the finger-pointing on this is  coming from Google, which itself uses similar filtering technology on its own  search results.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20093213-93/google-facebook-spar-over-google-invite-issue/

Cloud service provider Amazon Web Services today announced AWS GovCloud, a new AWS Region designed to allow U.S. government agencies and contractors to move more sensitive workloads into the cloud by addressing their specific regulatory and compliance requirements

Posted: 2011/08/17 in Education / Awareness, Network Security, New Business Models, Privacy / Data Protection, Public Policy, The Cloud

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13846_3-20093243-62/amazon-releases-secure-cloud-for-government/?tag=cnetRiver

Verizon Communications plans to suspend health-insurance coverage and medical benefits for any worker still on strike, applying further pressure on employees

Posted: 2011/08/17 in Education / Awareness

Increasingly, union workers are organizing  their protests through Facebook.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-20093206-94/verizon-may-suspend-health-benefits-for-strikers/

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