Video description: Prime Ministers Questions: Labour MP Tom Watson wants an investigation into a powerful paedophile ring in Parliament and people who worked in the past at Downing Street. Don’t forget, it were politicians who shelved “Operation Ore” when it was found politicians, police, and judges were on the list of those downloading child “porn”.
Recorded from BBC2′s The Daily Politics, PMQs, 24 October 2012.
Well known phenomenon of ‘provider hopping’ (thank you ‘safe harbor’, ‘mere conduit’, ‘don’t shoot the messenger’, ‘we’re just an intermediary’ doctrines) essentially circumvents and disqualifies justice system and creates a safe haven for criminals too.
A Dutch Court has determined that provider XS Networks was supposed to take down SumoTorrent immediately after BREIN had requested its takedown. It should have been clear to XS Networks that the sole purpose of SumoTorrent was copyright infringement. XS Networks has instead allowed SumoTorrent to go and look for a new provider.
Although the site has now already jumped to another provider in Ukraine, the Dutch judge did add that XS Networks will have to compensate for any damage caused, due to the fact that it decided to continue to host the website for a certain amount of time. It is not known just yet how large the fine for XS Networks will be and how that fine will be calculated.
More importantly, XS Networks has to hand over all relevant personal details of the SumoTorrent operator(s) to BREIN within three days. Previously, they have handed BREIN personal details of which it was quite obvious that they were fake.
SumoTorrent hosts 4.5 million torrent links, predominantly to pirated movies, books, games and software, BREIN has stated.
Dutch language news article:
http://www.nu.nl/internet/2941446/nederlandse-host-moet-torrentsite-offline-halen.html
Starting today, The Pirate Bay is no longer accessible for customers of the Irish Internet provider UPC. Subscribers who try to access the BitTorrent site get a notice informing them that it has been blocked following a court order in a case brought by Ireland’s equivalent of the RIAA. The block has come as a total surprise, as the court proceedings in question appear to have been progressing under the radar. Surprisingly, UPC – who have opposed blockades in the past – have announced nothing.
More:
http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-censored-in-ireland-after-mysterious-court-order-121024/
Sony is waking up to a new PlayStation 3 security nightmare after a day in which a brand new, PSN-enabled custom firmware was released for hacked consoles, swiftly followed up by publication of the console’s LV0 decryption keys – which some say blows the system wide open.
More:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-ps3-the-final-hack
Yes…there is such a thing as ‘good’ and ‘bad’ intermediaries…
•Even good ISPs tackle only a fraction of the bots in their network
•Evidence from recent study of the Dutch market suggests ISPs contact less than 10% of the customers that are infected at any point in time – this is after Dutch ISPs signed the Anti-Botnet Treaty
•This discrepancy is partially because ISPs do not widely collect data on infected machines in their networks
•This situation is similar or worse in many other countries
We developed the reputation metrics for the Dutch market independently, but in dialogue with the ISPs
•Government also asked us to not make the results public, but share them confidentially with the ISPs that were member of the ‘anti-botnet treaty’
In sum
•Reputation metrics can improve the functioning of ICT markets, reward “good” intermediaries and strengthen the incentives for cybersecurity
•Without the drawbacks of regulatory standards
•However, metrics need to become much more reliable and need to be extended to hosting, DNS, CAs, BGP, etc.
•Work towards including better data, better econometric methods and better collaboration with intermediaries
Much more:
http://iipvv.nl/sites/stw.demo.infi.nl/files/downloads/MvanEeten%20-%20ICT.OPEN%2022Oct2012.pdf
In our report Dissecting Operation High Roller, a joint publication from McAfee Labs and Guardian Analytics, we examined a global fraud ring’s efforts to steal money from wealthy businesses and individuals. The complexities of Operation High Roller left many questions unanswered as to the origins and actors responsible for attempting millions of fraudulent transactions. Now we want to revisit the details at a much deeper level to develop a clearer picture of the hidden details and to further map the campaigns and their connections.
These campaigns, like many other attempts at fraud, originated in Eastern Europe, so it is not surprising that the actors had an extensive history of Zeus and SpyEye activity. These fraudsters planned these campaigns for some time and actively participated in other criminal activity long before Operation High Roller was conceived. We have found evidence that ties these actors to early automated transfer systems built to target users. These initial efforts were likely their test ground to gain knowledge of financial systems and their various fraud prevention practices.
These groups have evolved to using more sophisticated techniques, and many of them actively used automated transfer system code against numerous European banks in late 2011.
This analysis attempts to map the domain infrastructure used during Operation High Roller to determine its origins. As with the previous report, we have informed law enforcement of our findings.
Much more:
Sergey Magnitsky, a 37-year old Russian attorney representing a UK-based investment firm, died in November 2009 after being held for 358 days in a pre-trial detention centre. He was arrested after becoming a prime suspect in a 2008 tax-evasion investigation. However, the Hermitage Capital Management Fund claim the arrest came after the lawyer uncovered a multi-million-dollar corruption scheme involving high-ranking state officials.
Officials say Magnitsky failed to receive proper medical treatment while in pre-trail detention and died as a result of complications from untreated pancreatitis and a heart condition. He died eight days before he would have had to be released or brought to trial.
Several lawsuits were filed against Sony PlayStation Network in the wake of a major security breach of the personal data of more than 75 million customers in April 2011.
More:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57538716-93/sony-psn-hacking-lawsuit-dismissed-by-judge/
Curran has returned from a three week trip to the US which was funded by the US State Department to provide “the American perspective” on intellectual property matters.
“The Megaupload case is high on the agenda of all enforcement agencies, including Homeland Security, the FBI and the Department of Justice along with intellectual property content owners, such as the Motion Picture Association,” she said.
“It was made clear to me that the ‘New Zealand Government’s co-operation’ is essential for the successful extradition of New Zealand resident Kim Dotcom and his co-accused in Megaupload. This case is seen as an important test for the US enforcement agencies.”
Curran said she thought it “unthinkable” ministers including Prime Minister John Key would not have discussed the case and the extradition issues before the raid on Dotcom’s house on January 20. Key has maintained he only became aware of Dotcom the day before the raid.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/7851644/Dotcom-case-watched-closely-in-US-Curran
While some illegal activities ON the network (damaging third parties) are treated differently from illegal activities AGAINST the network (damaging internet service providers themselves), the Dutch government (Ministry of Economic Affairs) is now funding an anti-botnet initiative called Abuse IX (Information Exchange) launched by KPN, SOLCON, Tele2, UPC, XS4ALL, Zeelandnet and Ziggo. Dutch domain name registrar SIDN is also providing financial and technical support and the project is endorsed by ECP as well.
As the project involves the identification of contaminated PCs, one has to assume that the ISPs are planning on doing something against that whenever they come across those infected PCs. It is not clear whether any of the remedies considered will require a court order.
Dutch language news article:
http://www.nu.nl/internet/2940887/internetproviders-gaan-gezamenlijk-botnets-bestrijden.html
See also:
Perhaps this post should have commenced by indicating that the ‘research’ has been sponsored by a group of organizations and businesses that when put together, are widely being regarded as the foundation of the Dutch ‘freetard‘ (internet) economy, oftentimes influencing various policies of the Dutch government, typically resulting in non-intervention when it comes to online piracy, which in itself is a big money maker for Dutch access providers, Dutch hosting providers and ad brokers as well. The organizations and businesses are: XS4ALL, DELTA, CAIW, KPN, Ziggo, The Royal Association of the Book Trade and the Dutch Ministry of Culture and Education.
http://vrritti.com/2012/10/17/dutch-scientists-at-ivir-enforcement-which-has-never-taken-place-in-the-netherlands-is-not-the-answer-to-online-piracy/
