Archive for 2012/03/09

MPAA attempts Hotfile takedown: Online file-sharing is dead. The largest threat to the file-sharing industry is the law itself

Posted: 2012/03/09 in Blocking, Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, File Sharing, Illegal File Sharing, Jurisprudence, Legislation, Litigation, Public Policy

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/mpaa-attempts-hotfile-takedown-online-file-sharing-is-dead/71145

Previously:

Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.

We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always
speaks. I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral
right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear.

Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. You have neither solicited nor received ours. We did not invite you. You do not know us, nor do you know our world.

Much more:

http://w2.eff.org/Censorship/Internet_censorship_bills/barlow_0296.declaration

Hacker ‘Sabu’ worked tirelessly as FBI informant

Posted: 2012/03/09 in Cybercrime, Education / Awareness, Enforcement

Some government witnesses do only what they must to help. Others do everything they can. Hector Xavier Monsegur, who was known as “Sabu” in hacking circles, was the latter.

According to unsealed court documents released yesterday and obtained by the Wall Street Journal, Monsegur was “proactively” cooperating with theFBI, helping the government agency build its cases against alleged hackers. Monsegur’s work with the government became an around-the-clock job, as he stayed up all night at times coaxing alleged hackers into conversations that were recorded and eventually used against them by the FBI.

BBC is planning on launching a new download-to-own service, pitting itself against iTunes

Posted: 2012/03/09 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models

http://gizmodo.com/5891860/does-the-bbc-hope-to-rival-itunes

Anonymous leaks Symantec’s Norton anti-virus source code

Posted: 2012/03/09 in Cybercrime, Education / Awareness

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/anonymous-leaks-symantecs-norton-anti-virus-source-code/71183

When The Good Guys Are Bad Guys Too: Accused Irish LulzSec hacker worked in security

Posted: 2012/03/09 in Cybercrime, Education / Awareness, Enforcement

Omnipotent Punks Of Cyphers Omnipresent

Outside investigators working with the FBI have told Reuters that some employees of major security companies have been active in Anonymous

“all hackers have potential to do good as well as evil, it is just a matter of their choice”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46676642

http://www.wnd.com/2011/07/323473/

Why Sony Music Unlimited Offering Offline Playback Is So Awesome

Posted: 2012/03/09 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models

http://gizmodo.com/5891762/why-sony-music-unlimited-offering-offline-playback-is-so-awesome

The state of West Virginia has developed an app that will turn people into government informants: the Suspicious Activity Reporting Application

Posted: 2012/03/09 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models, Public Policy

http://gizmodo.com/5891682/the-app-that-turns-you-into-a-government-informant

NSA Opens $286 Million Cryptologic Facility in Georgia

Posted: 2012/03/09 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models, Public Policy, Tech Evolution

http://publicintelligence.net/nsa-opens-286-million-cryptologic-facility-in-georgia/

A 27 year old man, who claims to have links to Hacktivist group Anonymous, has been arrested for hacking into the British Pregnancy Advisory Service website

Posted: 2012/03/09 in Cybercrime, Education / Awareness, Enforcement

http://content.met.police.uk/News/Man-arrested-after-British-Pregnancy-Advisory-Service-website-is-hacked-into/1400007197124/1257246745756

Sure Thing: Freedom Of Speech & Freedom Information, But You’re Only Allowed To Use Our VOIP Service

Posted: 2012/03/09 in Blocking, Education / Awareness, Net Neutrality, Public Policy

Business ISP Entanet, a UK telecoms and internet supplier, has suggested that the national communications regulator (Ofcom) must “be prepared to step in” and force Mobile Network Operators (MNO) to stop their “anti-competitive practices” (e.g. blocking VoIP traffic) by protecting Net Neutrality (the principal of treating all internet traffic as equal).

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2012/03/isp-entanet-tells-ofcom-to-end-uk-mobile-operator-imposed-voip-blocks/

Swedish Police Plan To Raid The Pirate Bay, But Have Difficulty Keeping Plan Of Attack A Secret

Posted: 2012/03/09 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Illegal File Sharing, Public Policy

Omnipotent Punks Of Cyphers Omnipresent

Employing a little psychological warfare aimed at putting the investigators off-balance, the Pirate Bay team has chosen to make the news public to make the authorities aware that they are not the only ones being watched.

The reason that we get the leaks is usually that the whistleblowers do not agree with what is going on. Something that the governments should have in mind – even your own people do not agree.

We have a message to hollywood, the investigators and the prosecutors: LOL

http://torrentfreak.com/police-plans-to-raid-the-pirate-bay-120309/

 

Dutch developers Vlambeer fuel discussion on game cloning

Posted: 2012/03/09 in Education / Awareness

http://www.futureofcopyright.com/home/blog-post/2012/03/09/dutch-developers-vlambeer-fuel-discussion-on-game-cloning.html

How Anonymous plans to use DNS as a weapon

Posted: 2012/03/09 in Cybercrime, Education / Awareness, Stats / reports

If no one wants to listen, just shout louder

After engaging in a recent rash of attacks in retaliation for the takedown of file-sharing site Megaupload, the Anonymous denial of service “cannons” have been firing considerably fewer shells of late.

While Anonymous group members managed to take down Interpol’s website on February 28 (largely by using a Web version of their “Low Orbit Ion Cannon” denial of service tool) and have defaced a number of vulnerable sites (including, most recently, sites belonging to Panda Security), threats to take down bigger targets have failed to materialize. What some believed to be the group’s boldest plan yet—an effort to bring down the Internet’s entire Domain Name System (DNS)—is now being called a “troll” by members of the group.

But this doesn’t mean the threat of more targeted denial of service attacks based on DNS attacks have gone away. Disappointed with the current denial of service tools at their disposal, members of Anonymous are working to develop a next-generation attack tool that will, among other options, use DNS itself as a weapon.

http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2012/03/how-anonymous-plans-to-use-dns-as-a-weapon.ars

Wikipedia parent finally ditching Godaddy over SOPA support

Posted: 2012/03/09 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Illegal File Sharing, Legislation

http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/wikipedia-parent-finally-ditching-godaddy-over-sopa-support

Stratfor email hackers were tricked into using Feds’ server…a bigger game might be in play

Posted: 2012/03/09 in Cybercrime, Education / Awareness, Enforcement

WikiLeaks – and Julian Assange – could get caught up in the investigation into the LulzSec takedown saga because it published the internal emails of Stratfor, the private global intelligence firm that was attacked by Anonymous hackers, it has emerged.

A warrant authorising the arrest of the prime suspect in the Stratfor raid revealed that an FBI supergrass persuaded hackers to use a server controlled by the feds to store the emails.

It’s unclear whether or not Monsegur and his FBI handlers knew about the Stratfor hack beforehand, but they were intimately involved in discussions about what to do with the stolen email and credit card data extracted during the hack soon afterwards. This discussion happened over Christmas – at the time the first tranche of leaked emails and credit card details were published and while the Anonymous strategy on what to do was still in flux.

Court documents reveal that Monsegur offered an FBI-supplied server as a repository for data extracted from Stratfor and that this offer was accepted. Hammond allegedly used multiple servers to store the leaked data. Chat transcript in the warrant reveals several discussions about using stolen credit card data to lease web servers to run as .onion domains from which Strafor emails could safely be reviewed. Eight unidentified co-conspirators in the Stratfor hack are listed in these various chat extracts included in Hammond’s warrant.

The extent of communication between WikiLeaks and Anonymous regarding the Stratfor leak remains unclear. Stratfor’s own assertion that “some of the emails may be forged or altered to include inaccuracies”, meanwhile, certainly seems much more plausible, especially if Monsegur (under the control of his FBI minders) had any say in deciding what was released.

It’s not too extravagant to think that a bigger game might be in play.

Much more:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/08/strafor_anon_arrest_analysis/page2.html

The Pirate Bay: 30 percent less bandwidth costs, having switched to magnet links

Posted: 2012/03/09 in Bandwidth Management, Copyright, Education / Awareness, Illegal File Sharing, Stats / reports

Advertising revenue most likely unaffected

“We now use 30 percent less bandwidth, but the number of visitors to the site remains the same”

The drop is even more impressive, approximately 60 percent, when the Pirate Bay’s RSS-feed is excluded. Of all bandwidth generated by the popular file-sharing site today nearly half comes from the RSS feed.

But there are not only upsides to a torrent-less Pirate Bay. Large groups of users have experienced problems when trying to overcome the minor annoyances that magnets bring with them.

http://torrentfreak.com/torrent-less-pirate-bay-sees-massive-drop-in-bandwith-120308/

Megaupload Shutdown Boosted TV and VOD Services By Nearly 26%

Posted: 2012/03/09 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Illegal File Sharing, Stats / reports

The French government agency responsible for administering the country’s ’3 strikes’ anti-piracy scheme is reporting that online TV and other VOD services have received a boost following the shutdown of Megaupload. According to Hadopi, these authorized outlets enjoyed an average growth of nearly 26% in the weeks immediately after the Hong Kong based site was shuttered.

http://torrentfreak.com/megaupload-shutdown-boosted-tv-and-vod-services-120308/

Nothing sacred for Anonymous

Posted: 2012/03/09 in Cybercrime, Education / Awareness

http://rt.com/news/anonymous-vatican-website-storm-105/

Not entirely true. There’s ‘independence’ and ‘freedom of thought’ as well as ‘freedom of information’, ‘privacy’ and ‘anonymity’. 

It’s just a different kind of Church

 

Remember When The Vatican Hailed The Hacker Culture? Sometimes There Can Be Too Much Of A Good Thing

Posted: 2012/03/09 in Cybercrime, Education / Awareness

Fake Vatican tweet announces … Pope’s death

A fake twitter message ascribed to a top cardinal on Thursday announced the death of the Pope, a report immediately denied by the Vatican spokesman.

The message, in Italian, said to have been tweeted by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, secretary of state and the number two at the Vatican, appeared at around 7pm (2am on Friday, Singapore time) announcing: ‘The Holy Father unexpectedly passed away this afternoon. We announce this with grief and consternation.’ It was followed by similar tweets in Spanish, English and French.

Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi immediately denied the reports, terming them ‘baseless’ and ‘unworthy of attention’.

Pope Benedict XVI will turn 85 in April.

http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/TechandScience/Story/STIStory_775668.html

Previously:

Vatican hails hacking culture, Wikis - We’re on a mission from God

A Vatican magazine argues hackers of the Linux coding and hardware modification type are on a mission from God.

Father Antonio Spadaro, writing in the fortnightly magazine Civilta Cattolica, seeks to rehabilitate the term and divorce it from its more common association with cybercrime-related activities.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/07/vatican_praises_hacking_culture/

Anonymous Now Attacking The Servants Of The Lord. That’s Generally A Bad Idea. Unless One Is Legion
http://vrritti.com/2012/03/07/anonymous-now-attacking-the-servants-of-the-lord-thats-generally-a-bad-idea-unless-one-is-legion/