‘A 27-year-old man described as one of the world’s most prolific spammers was arrested Wednesday, and federal authorities said computer users across the Web could notice a decrease in the amount of junk e-mail.
Robert Alan Soloway is accused of using networks of compromised “zombie” computers to send out millions upon millions of spam e-mails.
“He’s one of the top 10 spammers in the world,” said Tim Cranton, a Microsoft Corp. lawyer who is senior director of the company’s Worldwide Internet Safety Programs. “He’s a huge problem for our customers. This is a very good day.”‘
‘Peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing networks, which let users trade movies, music and software online, are increasingly being used to trick PCs into attacking other machines, experts say.
Computer scientists have previously shown how P2P networks can be subverted so that several connected PCs gang up to attack a single machine, flooding it with enough traffic to make it crash. This can work even if the target is not part of the P2P network itself.
Now, security experts are warning that P2P networks are increasingly being used to do just this. “Until January of this year we had never seen a peer-to-peer network subverted and used for an attack,” says Darren Rennick of internet security company Prolexic in an advisory released recently. “We now see them constantly being subverted.”‘
‘Doom9, the forum that made headlines last year by extracting and publishing a “processing key” used to lock HD-DVD discs, has published a new key. [..]
The last processing key leak created an Internet firestorm when the AACS licensing authority sent hundreds of legal threats to sites that published the key. The strategy backfired: within days, more than a million pages had published the key, ensuring that more people knew how to break HD-DVD players than owned the devices.
AACS has the capacity to “revoke” a processing key. When they do this, all HD-DVD players are unable to play new discs unless they get an update (woe betide you if your DVD player is on your boat, in your cottage, or at your grandparents’ place where there is no Internet access). The big question is whether the AACS can revoke keys faster than hackers can extract them.
It’s a race. AACS is losing.’
‘The era of tax-free e-mail, Internet shopping and broadband connections could end this fall, if recent proposals in the U.S. Congress prove successful.
State and local governments this week resumed a push to lobby Congress for far-reaching changes on two different fronts: gaining the ability to impose sales taxes on Net shopping, and being able to levy new monthly taxes on DSL and other connections. One senator is even predicting taxes on e-mail.’
‘The Iraqi-born artist was speaking to a NEWSWEEK reporter 19 days into a grueling monthlong project that sounds, at first blush, suspiciously gimmicky: until June 4, Bilal is living his entire life inside one room at Chicago’s Flatfile Gallery, which anyone with a Web connection can log on to watch. Oh, and to shoot him. With “Domestic Tension” Bilal has turned his makeshift living quarters into a 24-hour-a-day war zone. Viewers can peep in on him anonymously at any time, and even chat with him online. On the installation’s Web site, his audience can fight for control of the camera and pan it around the room. Since the camera is affixed to a rifle-sized paintball gun — and the Web site has a button that allows viewers to fire the gun — they also have the opportunity to shoot at him, or anything else in his room. Which they have done an astonishing 40,000 times in the project’s first two and a half weeks.’
‘Record numbers of Australians are visiting pornographic websites, including sexually explicit dating sites – and one in three of them is a woman.
Surprising new figures show more than one-third of internet users visited an adult website at least once in the first three months of this year.
Almost one in five was under 18, and 5 per cent were 65 or over.’
‘A man once called one of the Internet’s most notorious pirates of music and movies was sentenced Wednesday to five years in prison for blowing up a portable toilet, prosecutors said.
Bruce Forest, 50, was charged last year with a series of toilet explosions in 2005 and 2006. But under a plea agreement, Forest admitted only to blowing up one toilet in Weston in February 2006. No one was injured in any of the blasts.
His defense attorney and his wife said the incident was completely out of character for Forest. They said he had been addicted to painkillers initially taken for migraine headaches caused by a severe fall about 10 years ago. A prescribed drug intended to wean him off the painkillers caused psychotic episodes, they said.’
‘A man in the US is suing IBM for $5m (£2.5m) in a wrongful dismissal case after he was fired for visiting adult internet chat rooms while at work.
James Pacenza, 58, says he was addicted to online chat rooms and that IBM should have offered him sympathy and treatment instead of firing him.
The Vietnam War veteran says he has suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder since 1969.
He argues that he used the internet to control his psychological problems.’
‘Here are the 20 largest social bookmarking sites (Updated: 5/19/2007) ranked by a combination of Compete and Quantcast data. For each site, we show unique U.S. monthly visitor data as well as respective rank. For entries where a wide range exists between the two data sets the highest numbers were used for ranking purposes. Although no traffic metrics are completely accurate we do believe the data below to be useful for gauging relative audience size.’
‘A 31-year-old man was sentenced Monday to more than 24 years in federal prison for posing online as a teenage boy dying of leukemia in an effort to coerce young girls into sending him sexually explicit images.
Joshua Kistler chatted regularly with at least nine girls nationwide who ranged in age from 12 to 14. He used the condition to gain the girls’ sympathy, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
He even sent them pictures of his stepson, an actual 15-year old, to further his story, authorities said.
He also posed as the stepfather of his online persona. In one case, a victim and her mother visited the “stepfather” during a family trip, believing the teenage boy was away receiving treatment.
Several victims said they loved and trusted Kistler, who asked them to send photos of them nude or perform sexual acts for him in front of Web cameras.’
‘The computer hardware business has razor-thin margins which means making a profit is tough. So the opportunity for Dell to get a recurring revenue stream from an existing customer long after the sale of the computer is more than just enticing, it’s huge. It also means a couple other things:
1. Dell and Google have an incentive to make it very hard for users to turn this off.
2. Because users can’t get rid of it, Dell and Google can get away with putting more ads on the page and pushing user-relevant content off the page.
They’re now doing both of these things.‘
‘What a day for Apple investors. The stock started off strong today on a lot of pre-market buying, despite news that Amazon will finally start competing on sales of DRM-free music.
Then, whoops, at 11:49 AM EST Engadget posted saying that the iPhone and Leopard operating system launches would be seriously delayed. They based the story on an internal Apple email that was forwarded to them. [..]
Apple’s stock promptly tanked on massive selling, going from $107.89 to $103.42 in six minutes (11:56 – 12:02). This wiped just over $4 billion off of Apple’s market capitalization. A lot of people lost a lot of money very quickly.
Well, it turns out that the email was a hoax. [..]’
‘A couple of weekends ago, Diana Getson took her nine-year-old son to a Child Find event in Charlottetown. Treat bags were on sale for $1.
In the bag she bought for her son was a bright yellow bracelet with the Child Find logo and an invitation to win great prizes by visiting a website called getrealfruitminis.com.
But the prize turned out to be a surprise when Getson’s son typed in the address. The site offered “hard-core nudity and dirty porn pictures,” Getson said. [..]
Coincidentally, Child Find PEI has an information session coming up soon to warn parents to keep watch over what their children find on the internet.’
‘That was evidenced by the 409 people who clicked on an ad that offers infection for those with virus-free PCs. The ad, run by a person who identifies himself as security professional Didier Stevens, reads like this:
Drive-By Download
Is your PC virus-free?
Get it infected here!
drive-by-download.info
Stevens, who says he works for Contraste Europe, a branch of the IT consultancy The Contraste Group, has been running his Google Adwords campaign for six months now and has received 409 hits. Stevens has done similar research in the past, such as finding out how easy it is to land on a drive-by download site when doing a Google search.’
‘A British judge admitted on Wednesday he was struggling to cope with basic terms like “Web site” in the trial of three men accused of inciting terrorism via the Internet.
Judge Peter Openshaw broke into the questioning of a witness about a Web forum used by alleged Islamist radicals.
“The trouble is I don’t understand the language. I don’t really understand what a Web site is,” he told a London court during the trial of three men charged under anti-terrorism laws.
Prosecutor Mark Ellison briefly set aside his questioning to explain the terms “Web site” and “forum.” An exchange followed in which the 59-year-old judge acknowledged: “I haven’t quite grasped the concepts.”
Violent Islamist material posted on the Internet, including beheadings of Western hostages, is central to the case.’
‘Welcome to our side of the fence. The life of your average Tech Support person is one that is complex, fulfilling, and yet strangely sadomasichistic. Those that have escaped wonder why we ever turn up to work in the morning. Those that are still there know exactly what I’m talking about.
Here, you’ll find largely fictional, fake and phoney stories that just need to be told about the Tech Support business. Sure, it’s not as much of a downer as this intro makes it out to be, but that’s not the point. Sometimes, it’s just entertaining to think that it is this bad.’
‘A three-week wave of massive cyber-attacks on the small Baltic country of Estonia, the first known incidence of such an assault on a state, is causing alarm across the western alliance, with Nato urgently examining the offensive and its implications.
While Russia and Estonia are embroiled in their worst dispute since the collapse of the Soviet Union, a row that erupted at the end of last month over the Estonians’ removal of the Bronze Soldier Soviet war memorial in central Tallinn, the country has been subjected to a barrage of cyber warfare, disabling the websites of government ministries, political parties, newspapers, banks, and companies. [..]
While planning to raise the issue with the Russian authorities, EU and Nato officials have been careful not to accuse the Russians directly.
If it were established that Russia is behind the attacks, it would be the first known case of one state targeting another by cyber-warfare.’
‘If you hadn’t heard, TechCrunch20, the conference which alleges to put a sense of merit back into startup conferences, has declared MC Hammer a Web2.0 “expert” and put him on the panel of judges. These judges will select amongst the bajillions of entries the rarified few who will present their wares to VC’s and industries insiders over a two day period.
Who are the other judges?
* Mark Andreeson, founder of Netscape.
* Chris Anderson, Editor-In-Chief of Wired.
* Dave Winer, grandfather of RSS, and author of one of the first blogs ever.’
Also, stop! It’s hammer time..
(10meg Flash video)
see it here »
‘The internet giant Google has plans to compile psychological profiles of millions of web users by covertly monitoring the way they play online games.
The company thinks it can glean information about an individual’s preferences and personality type by tracking his or her online behaviour, which could then be sold to advertisers.
Details such as whether a person is more likely to be aggressive, hostile or dishonest could be stored for future use, it says.’
‘*Anony-X has joined #mac*
sometimes when im masturbating i look at pictures of dogs. not dogs having sex or anything, just dogs. like chasing frisbees and shit. just the way they move and their bark gets me so hot. i can fit 3 more fingers in my pussy when theres a dog around.
mac users, i swear to god…
*Anony-X has left #mac*’
‘Culture is a huge factor in determining whether we look someone in the eye or the kisser to interpret facial expressions, according to a new study.
For instance, in Japan, people tend to look to the eyes for emotional cues, whereas Americans tend to look to the mouth, says researcher Masaki Yuki, a behavioral scientist at Hokkaido University in Japan. [..]
So when Yuki entered graduate school and began communicating with American scholars over e-mail, he was often confused by their use of emoticons such as smiley faces 🙂 and sad faces, or :(.
“It took some time before I finally understood that they were faces,” he wrote in an e-mail. In Japan, emoticons tend to emphasize the eyes, such as the happy face (^_^) and the sad face (;_;). “After seeing the difference between American and Japanese emoticons, it dawned on me that the faces looked exactly like typical American and Japanese smiles,” he said.’
‘Microsoft’s Windows Update has a component called Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) that downloads updates while you’re busy doing other things with your computer. If you get disconnected, the update will pick up where it left off when you get back on the network.
Sounds great, right? Well, generally it is. But since BITS is part of your operating system, your firewall doesn’t really check to see what it’s downloading. And while there is pretty much no risk of automatically downloading a virus or trojan through Windows Update under normal circumstances, hackers are starting to use BITS to download code to computers that have already been affected.’
‘Second Life is being investigated by German police following allegations that some members are trading child abuse images in the online world.
The investigation follows a report by a German TV news programme which uncovered the trading group and members who pay for sex with virtual children.
The police are now trying to identify the Second Life members involved. [..]
Under Germany law possession of “virtual” child pornography is punishable by up to three years in jail.’
‘More than 7,000 – including rock star Pete Townshend – were said to have downloaded child-porn images from a U.S. website.
But an investigation has found that many of those charged as part of the police inquiry codenamed Operation Ore were innocent and their card details had been used illegally.
Simon Bunce, who was accused of using the Texas-based Landslide website, said he was certain his personal information had been used fraudulently. Police found no evidence on his computer but his credit card details were found on the site.
“Thirty-nine people committed suicide after being accused of what I was accused of,” he said. “I reacted in a different way. I investigated it diligently and I established I was the victim of credit card fraud.”‘
‘Before he was extradited to the United States, Hew Griffiths, from Berkeley Vale in NSW, had never even set foot in America. But he had pirated software produced by American companies.
Now, having been given up to the US by former justice minister Chris Ellison, Griffiths, 44, is in a Virginia cell, facing up to 10 years in an American prison after a guilty plea late last month.
Griffiths’ case — involving one of the first extraditions for intellectual property crime — has been a triumph for US authorities, demonstrating their ability to enforce US laws protecting US companies against Australians in Australia, with the co-operation of the Australian Government. [..]
In some corners of the Australian legal community, however, there is concern about Griffiths’ case. In a recent article for the Australian Law Journal, NSW Chief Judge in Equity, Peter Young, wrote: “International copyright violations are a great problem. However, there is also the consideration that a country must protect its nationals from being removed from their homeland to a foreign country merely because the commercial interests of that foreign country are claimed to have been affected by the person’s behaviour in Australia and the foreign country can exercise influence over Australia.”‘
‘Until this week, the only people who really hated the Jersey Guys were corrupt politicians. Now, corrupt state troopers hate them, too.
Craig Carton and Ray Rossi walked out in the middle of their popular afternoon talk radio show and took their families into hiding after learning of a press conference in which New Jersey state police union leader David Jones gave out their home addresses and threatened to “crush” the people who leaked anonymous Internet postings by state troopers in which they apparently were plotting a ticket-writing blitz. [..]
In an interview, Jones said, “I don’t believe in intimidating anyone.” [..]
“If guys, be they troopers or not troopers, choose to vent on a blog board, that’s their right, and that’s a board that’s supposed to be shared,” Jones said. “A couple of cowards obviously compromised it, and when I find out who those Girl Scouts are I’m going to crush ’em like bugs.”‘
‘A 13-year-old boy who lives with his gran has been exposed as one of Britain’s biggest internet conmen.
The boy earned more than £250,000 ($607,000) by posing as the boss of several multinational companies selling vacuum cleaners, stationery and office supplies.
Many goods weren’t sent, but he used the cash to revel in a luxury lifestyle way beyond his years: he wore designer suits, drank vintage champagne and travelled by chauffeur-driven limousine.
He even employed a personal bodyguard, flew abroad on business trips and claimed he was going to buy a private jet.’
‘When AACS was revealed as the encryption format of choice for HD DVD and Blu-ray, bets were placed on how long it would take for it to be cracked. Since the first HD DVD and Blu-ray discs began shipping, hackers have been hard at work figuring out how to break the encryption; DVD Jon even registered DeAACS.com. We’ve covered both crackers’ efforts and the attempts by the AACS Licensing Authority to keep those cracks from seeping into the public consciousness. Yesterday, all of that came to a head.’
‘The Internet’s blog sites have become overgrown with a variety of unpleasant content, including porn, offensive language, hate posting, and malware, a new threat analysis has suggested.
According to Scansafe’s Monthly Global Threat Report for March 2007, a surprisingly high percentage of the Internet’s blog sites — up to 80 percent — contain “offensive” content, with six percent hosting active malware.
To be added to the list of those deemed potentially offensive within a business context, a site merely had to contain a single post containing profanity, or worse.’
.. on an unrelated note, I’m now hosting a goatse image. 🙂
