Archive for 2012/03/11
Google to facilitate plotting, but for either good or bad purposes. Enter “Schemer”
Posted: 2012/03/11 in Education / Awareness, Google, New Business ModelsThe premise is fairly straightforward: Drum up anything you’ve ever wanted to do — ride a bike, climb Mount Everest, eat 50 hot dogs in 50 minutes — and they’ll appear in your list of “schemes” you’ve yet to do. Using Google+ integration, you’re able to share those schemes with others, potentially inspiring you and your friends to collaborate offline.
Over time, Schemer learns what sort of stuff you’re into, and will serve up activities based on your past preferences and locations. And it’s both web and mobile app-based (as evidenced by our devious little Android above), so location can follow your mobile check-ins.
More:
http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/03/google-schemer-social/
Netkups: World’s First BitTorrent / Cyberlocker Hybrid
Posted: 2012/03/11 in Education / Awareness, New Business Models, Tech EvolutionIn common with most cyberlockers, Netkups has no built-in search engine. Users can upload files up to 1 gigabyte for free, and share them with friends or co-workers, or keep them private. If users choose to share the files, these can be downloaded for free from Netkups’ servers with a speed limit of 300 kBs.
And there’s more. Since Netkups also creates a torrent file, people can also use that to download without speed restrictions. All free of charge. For the uploader there’s an added advantage that Netkups will always seed the torrent file in question, so they don’t have to.
Adding a torrent also means that the files will remain available even if the Netkups site ceases to exist. The torrent files created by Netkups use public trackers so they can be easily uploaded to external torrent sites as well.
Netkups’ founder told TorrentFreak that copyright holders have to file proper DMCA requests to take content down, and that they are wary of automated censorship requests with huge lists of allegedly infringing links.
“People might not like seeing some things published, but that doesn’t mean all files should be removed. We care about everyone’s rights – not just users, not just creators.”
More:
http://torrentfreak.com/netkups-worlds-first-bittorrent-cyberlocker-hybrid-120310/
The need for Ofcom to demand that water-tight standards of evidence are required for rights holders chasing alleged infringers through the Digital Economy Act
Posted: 2012/03/11 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Illegal File Sharing, Litigation, Privacy / Data Protection, Public Policy, Stats / reportsWithout stringent standards, there is a risk that people are wrongly placed on infringement lists and are subject to the civil action in the initial phases of the Act
http://torrentfreak.com/pay-up-or-else-bittorrent-scheme-resurrected-in-uk-high-court-120309/
At least 94 of all Fortune 500 companies and three out of 55 major government entities had at least one computer or router that was infected with DNSChanger as of 23 February, 2012
Posted: 2012/03/11 in Cybercrime, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Network Security, Privacy / Data ProtectionThis is a sharp drop from the 250 out of 500 Fortune 500 companies found to be infected a few weeks prior to its latest survey – providing evidence that the clean-up operation has finally clicked into gear
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/09/dnschanger_safety_net_extended/
Anonymous Hackers Replace Police Supplier Website With ‘Tribute to Jeremy Hammond’
Posted: 2012/03/11 in Cybercrime, Education / Awareness, EnforcementAnonymous hacktivists announced via Twitter that they had successfully hacked the website of New York Iron Works, a police-equipment supplier, and replaced the homepage with a tribute of love to arrested hacker and Chicagoan Jeremy Hammond. Anonymous also claimed responsibility for several other hacks on March 8, including knocking Peruvian government website
http://policiainformatica.gob.pe/
offline, and posting the personal information of FBI agents in a public online message board in what they called “Operation Piggy Bank.”
The cyber hacks were part of a weekly operation which Anonymous has named “F-ck FBI Friday,” refferred to on Twitter as #FFF. The formless international collective of computer programmers, geeks and social hacktivists, announced the successful attacks through several centralized Twitter accounts on Fri. morning.
Anonymous refers to themselves as “the knights of the Lulz,” and refers to former-Anonymous leader and FBI informant Sabu as a “lame-facebook-user-gangsta-wannabe assh-le blogger.”
Jeremy Hammond is charged with hacking Stratfor’s servers and stealing the credit card data of 60,000 Stratfor subscribers and account information on around 860,000. If convicted in court he would face up to 20 years in prison.
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