Pirates and black hats both cowards when AFK. 4 Italian Anonymous members have been arrested after 10 homes were raided. 6 others under investigation
Dutch language news article:
http://webwereld.nl/beveiliging/77806-opgepakte-italiaanse-anonymous-leden-leidden-dubbel-leven
The German government will still recommend people to install ad-blocking applications…
Dutch language news article:
https://www.security.nl/artikel/46292/1/Duitse_overheid_adviseert_advertentie-blocker.html
German language news article:
http://blog.botfrei.de/2013/05/liebe-online-medien-wenn-schon-werbung-dann-bitte-sicher/
Google to become yet another unstoppable, all-knowing force governments will have to reckon with…
Thanks to data you’re voluntarily giving up to a private company based on your Web searches, photos, Gmail messages, and more.
After spending three days at I/O this week, it became more apparent than ever that unless millions (billions?) of people suddenly change their mind and start using alternative tech tools, or unless the government steps in waving the anti-trust banner, our lives, our history, and our personal wealth could be managed by one company –– Google.
(…)
Google Now scans your email and knows when your Amazon package is arriving. It knows what sports scores to show you based on the teams you’ve searched for. It knows what stock prices to show you based on the companies you search for. It scans your calendar and reminds you when to leave to make your appointment on time. And all that data is delivered to you without you having to ask.
(…)
The question to ask now is, are we OK with this? Does the benefit of faster search, better transportation, and automated news updates outweigh giving up so much of our lives to a computer run by a private company that mines our data?
They’re issues we’d have to tackle gradually, but hopefully not before Google advances faster than we can adapt.
More:
http://www.infowars.com/googles-plan-to-take-over-the-world/
A stellar example is the popular website Google. Since there is a long line of useful Google products available, they are able to collect all of your information and store it in one spot. Google also analyzes everything you do to determine what ads pertain to you specifically. Syncing Google chrome is an example of how your information is saved on the Internet: Google Syncing remembers history, bookmarks, and pretty much everything else you do on the Internet. In the event someone obtained your login they could scroll through your browser history very easily. When using Google to search the Internet, the search engine logs everything you search in order to give you the “best possible experience,” by targeted advertising. There is a link where Google will list all of your likes and dislikes. Any employee or person with the intent to get your private information can retrieve it. The popular company Windows logs every file that is ever on a computer for “security purposes.” Another instance of this type of blatant and public privacy invasion is Carrier IQ. During this scandal Android, Blackberry, and other companies pre-install programs on all devices that logs everything the devices do, essentially, built-in spyware. May it be noted that they still use this technology today.
Corporate enterprise can even justify releasing such information to private interest groups around the world, because the average American consumer is forced to sign a contract and play ball at a rigged game to use common gadgets and tools. Carrier IQ comes with the ability to log everything you type on a phone, even bank pins, passwords, and more information that is crucial to keep private. CISPA allows the legal transaction of anyone’s information, regardless of warrants, to the government or corporate enterprise. So, how does corporate enterprise get away with this? Ignorance, and because Uncle Sam only has the knack of following those with the most resources, voting power, and most importantly, money. So, what can a non-violent consumer do besides playing with an aristocratic government dominated by capitalistic enterprise? Adults have the voting power and can petition. Kids are sitting ducks to be abused by enterprise. An aristocracy runs the government via legal or illegal means such as lobbyists and bribes.
Security researchers from Trend Micro have uncovered an active cyberespionage operation that so far has compromised computers belonging to government ministries, technology companies, media outlets, academic research institutions and nongovernmental organizations from more than 100 countries.
The operation, which Trend Micro has dubbed SafeNet, targets potential victims using spear phishing emails with malicious attachments. The company’s researchers have investigated the operation and published a research paper with their findings Friday.
Previously:
Dutch Judge: ING Bank Cannot Be Forced To Hand Over Personal Details Of Pirate Site Operator To BREIN
http://vrritti.com/2013/05/17/dutch-judge-ing-bank-cannot-be-forced-to-hand-over-personal-details-of-pirate-site-operator-to-brein/
Dutch anti-piracy organization BREIN wanted to learn who is operating pirate platform FTD World. The organization tried to have a judge force ING Bank to hand over personal details related to an FTD bank account.
The Netherlands is widely regarded as a safe haven for the likes of pirates, hackers and other (cyber)criminals due to:
Dutch language news article:
http://www.nu.nl/tech/3476631/ing-hoeft-persoonsgegevens-ftd-niet-brein-geven.html
See also:
http://vrritti.com/?s=ftd+brein
and
BREIN Threat Of Criminal Prosecution Meaningless Because Dutch Government Issued Guideline Never To Criminally Prosecute Online Piracy
http://vrritti.com/2012/06/28/brein-threat-of-criminal-prosecution-meaningless-because-dutch-government-issued-guideline-never-to-criminally-prosecute-online-piracy/
Convicts: Ryan Cleary, Jake Davis, Mustafa al-Bassam and Ryan Ackroyd
Targets included the CIA, the U.S. Air Force, Sony Pictures, games maker EA, News International and the UK’s Serious Organised Crime Agency
Microsoft claims that this is done to combat spam, fraud and phishing, but German newspaper Heise thinks otherwise…
Dutch language news article:
https://www.security.nl/artikel/46247/1/%27Microsoft_leest_alle_Skype-berichten%27.html
Just the other day, the New York Post outed Bloomberg reporters for monitoring Bloomberg terminals to track Wall Street traders’ accounts. Now, the Financial Times has pointed out another egregious but unrelated security problem: apparently more than ten thousand confidential terminal records have been on the Internet—searchable by Google—probably for years.
More:
http://gizmodo.com/ft-thousands-of-confidential-bloomberg-terminal-messag-504868659
Bloomberg has blocked its journalists from eavesdropping on users of its financial data terminals after it emerged that reporters were obtaining stories through their snooping.
Financial services firms, including merchant banks, pay about $20,000 a year to rent each Bloomberg terminal. Thousands of traders in stock exchanges around the world use the terminals to obtain real-time data from multiple financial markets, as well as access to news and instant messaging features.
CNN reports that a Bloomberg reporter asked a Goldman executive if a partner at the bank had recently left, after noting that the partner hadn’t logged into his Bloomberg terminal in some time. Goldman insiders later discovered that journalists at Bloomberg could access login records for Bloomberg’s proprietary terminals, as well as seeing how many times individual users had used particular functions.
Surreptitious access to the terminals had been possible for years, as a hangover from the 1990s when Bloomberg’s reporters also formed part of its sales operation.
More:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/13/bloomberg_customer_data_access_snooping_blocked/
A West Side man suspected of helping crash Sony’s online game servers worldwide in 2008 will spend a year on house arrest. But not for the hacking.
Instead, Todd M. Miller, 23, was sentenced yesterday in federal court for obstructing a federal investigation because he smashed his computers, halting an FBI investigation into his hacking. U.S. District Judge Peter C. Economus said Miller was part of the KCUF clan, a group of hackers who organized an attack on Sony’s computer servers in San Diego in 2008 and beyond. After the FBI interviewed Miller in 2011, they returned with a search warrant and found that his hard drives were missing and he had smashed his computers.
Without the computers, the FBI did not have enough evidence to pursue hacking charges against Miller and another unnamed Columbus man, according to court records. Miller, who has a ninth-grade education, told the judge that he was “immature and ignorant and caught up with the wrong people at the wrong time” when he destroyed the computers. He said he has learned his lesson.
“You will not see me again,” he told Economus.
The judge also sentenced him to three years probation and ordered him to get his high-school equivalence certificate. Miller could have been sentenced to 20 years in prison and fined $250,000. Economus told Miller he could “see no purpose in sentencing you to prison” because Miller has a full-time job and some stability in his life after a tumultuous childhood.
The use of Internet Protocol (IP) address sharing technology will not prevent individuals from being identified as the perpetrators of illegal online activity, BT has claimed
The US Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for the Associated Press in what the news cooperative’s top executive called a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into how news organizations gather the news.
The records obtained by the Justice Department listed incoming and outgoing calls, and the duration of each call, for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Connecticut, and the main number for AP reporters in the House of Representatives press gallery, according to attorneys for the AP.
In all, the government seized those records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists in April and May of 2012. The exact number of journalists who used the phone lines during that period is unknown but more than 100 journalists work in the offices whose phone records were targeted on a wide array of stories about government and other matters.
In a letter of protest sent to attorney general Eric Holder on Monday, AP president and chief executive officer Gary Pruitt said the government sought and obtained information far beyond anything that could be justified by any specific investigation. He demanded the return of the phone records and destruction of all copies.
More:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/13/america-government-associated-press-phone-records
It involves age, gender, location and zip code of 27 million EE customers as well as their web surfing history, information as to when SMS text messages have been sent and when phone calls were being made.
Ipsos Mori stated that this is about ‘anonymized data’ but we all know by know how easy it is to “de-anonymize” those data sets using information from other parties.
Dutch language news article:
http://www.nu.nl/internet/3420864/britse-provider-wil-klantgegevens-doorverkopen.html
