Fast News Info

Paypal backs down, donates to blog Regretsy's Secret Santa fund

2011-12-06T23:50:00.001Z

PayPal has backed off an online spat with humor blog Regretsy after getting withering Web feedback for shutting down a drive to buy holiday gifts for children in need. And the online payments service is even chipping in to help buy a few more gifts after temporarily shutting down the Secret Santa fund because the for-profit site was running it.

Run by actress-comedian April Winchell, Regretsy is a snarky blog created primarily to mock what it considers awkward, ugly or otherwise head-turning offerings on the arts-and-crafts site Etsy. But, perhaps in a bid for some good karma, the site maintains a charity fund that has given money to causes from breast-cancer research to Etsy community members in need.

On Monday, Winchell wrote that PayPal, which was processing the donations, shut down the drive because she had used a "Donate" button that she learned is only for nonprofit groups. She said she had a "very long and jaw-dropping conversation with an incredibly condescending representative," who told her she had to refund donations.

In a post Tuesday afternoon, Winchell thanked her supporters.

"I would also like to say that I did not expect this kind of global outpouring of support, and I truly believe that had you not all made your voices heard, no one from Paypal would have ever felt compelled to make this right," she wrote, noting that "Regretsy" had become a top trending topic on Twitter. "There is no real support or appreciation for the consumer anymore. The customer is always wrong.

Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2011/12/06/tech/web/regretsy-paypal-gifts/?hpt=hp_bn6

Google: Fear the filter bubble

2011-12-01T08:01:00.000Z

Collating information in a singular accessible place is Google’s essential philosophy but the search engine’s unbridled rise to the top of the greasy internet pole is also governed by its other lesser known principle — “Don’t be evil”.

Outlined in its code of conduct, this ethos is about “following the law, acting honourably and treating each other with respect” as well as providing “unbiased access to information”. But is the firm living up to this tenet? Or has it stepped on hundreds of layman toes in its quest to sideline any other competitor looking to make an impact on the world of search?

Although a gmail account is streamlined, effective and boasts a host of attractive features, it also has its problems. Fail to log out of your account and any Google searches you make thereon will be tailored and personalised to your previous searches. The variety, order and type of results that appear will be different from person to person and place to place. The results are circumscribed and bound by your opinions alone, creating a bubble of information that relates to your history.

Eli Pariser, President of the American political organisation MoveOn.org, brought this issue to light in his book The Filter Bubble: What the internet is hiding from you. He argued that “there is no standard Google anymore” and warned that “the race to know as much as possible about [internet users] has become the central battle of the era for internet giants like Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft.”

The key issue for Pariser was that these filtered searches, or ‘filter bubbles’, are not leading to ‘unbiased information’ — they are resulting in an information universe that is tainted by each individual user’s personality. People who like shoe shopping will find that their searches for ‘red heels’ only include brands that they already like instead of highlighting a mix of new suppliers and tradesmen. Web surfers who spend time reading about history may be faced with a chronology of Pakistani politics when they search for Imran Khan just because they have examined it days before. In a nutshell, the past will determine the future.

Source: http://tribune.com.pk/story/297554/google-fear-the-filter-bubble/

How Google–and everyone else–gets Wi-Fi location data

2011-11-17T00:04:00.000Z

When I wrote about Google making it possible to opt-out of their Wi-Fi access point mapping program, I made a mistake. I thought Google was still using its StreetView cars to pick up Wi-Fi locations. Nope, Eitan Bencuya, a Google spokesperson, tells me that Google no longer uses StreetView cars to collect location information. So, how does Google collect Wi-Fi location data? They use you. Or, to be more exact, they use your Android phone or tablet. But, it’s not just Google. Apple and Microsoft do the same thing with their smartphones and tablets. I’d missed this, but earlier this year Apple, Google and other companies got into hot-water because they’ve been collecting location data from your devices for some time now. These days, it seems, it’s the only way any of the big companies pick up Wi-Fi location data. How it works, according to Google, is that the Android Location Services periodically checks on your location using GPS, Cell-ID, and Wi-Fi to locate your device. When it does this, your Android phone will send back publicly broadcast Wi-Fi access points’ Service set identifier (SSID) and Media Access Control (MAC) data. Again, this isn’t just how Google does it; it’s how everyone does it. It’s Industry practice for location database vendors. Google tells me that the location checks are made periodically. You don’t need to be using Google Maps, Latitude or other geolocation-based application. It just happens. You can check on this yourself by going to your Android phone and then going to Settings/Location and check Google Location Services or Security/Use Wireless Network off and on. When you check it on you’ll get a location consent agreement. This reads: “Allow Google’s location service to collect anonymous location data. Collection will occur even when no applications are running.”

Source: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/networking/how-google-8211and-everyone-else-8211gets-wi-fi-location-data/1664

Google Dabbles in Dream Tech in Hush-Hush X Lab

2011-11-15T00:16:00.000Z

Google is experimenting in some rather large-minded projects, if a recent report is to be believed. Somewhere in the San Francisco area, Google researchers are studying technologies that could lead to constructions such as a space elevator, according to the report. It's also apparently where Google's trying to make its driverless car suitable for mass use. Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) scientists are laboring away on futuristic projects in a top-secret lab somewhere in the San Francisco Bay Area, The New York Times claims. This lab, which is apparently so hush-hush that few Googlers even knew it existed prior to the report, is allegedly called "Google X." More than 100 futuristic projects are said to be under way there. These include a space elevator project, experiments working to connect home appliances and dinner dishes to the Internet, robots that can go to work instead of their owners, and the development of driverless cars for the mass market. Google Cofounders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who's also CEO, are reportedly involved in the lab, together with other top executives, including Chairman Eric Schmidt. Google didn't respond to requests for comment by press time.

Source: http://www.technewsworld.com/story/Google-Dabbles-in-Dream-Tech-in-Hush-Hush-X-Lab-73755.html

Businesses to be hit as Google starts charging for maps service

2011-11-03T22:58:00.001Z

Google's services have famously been built on the principle of offering something for nothing. But that approach is over - at least where Google maps is concerned. The 'API' - script that allows sites to build Google Maps into their sites or apps will no longer be free for heavy users from January 1, 2012. Google is keen to emphasise, though, that the changes won't hit sites or apps who are light users of Google Maps. Ordinary restaurants or hotels, say, won't be affected. To be charged, you have to hit 25,000 map loads per day. But a substantial number of sites could be affected. Worldwide, there are 1,115,421 different websites and apps using Google Maps into their site, according to site metric specialist Builtwith. Travel, shopping, business and news sites look likely to be the ones hit with Google's charges, as these sectors are the heaviest users of the service. Unless site owners agree to the charges, or do a deal with Google, they will be unable to use Google Maps.

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2056128/Google-Maps-start-charging--thousands-sites-apps-hit-fees.html#ixzz1cgc8Utug

Microsoft collects license fees on 50% of Android devices, tells Google to "wake up"

2011-10-24T23:08:00.001+01:00

Google’s complaints about patent-based attacks against Android don’t seem to be doing the company any good. We all know Steve Jobs pledged to destroy Android, claiming it stole its ideas from Apple’s iOS. Yet what is likely an even bigger threat comes from Microsoft, which claims that more than half of all Android devices are now subject to patent licensing agreements.

What does that mean? When you buy an Android phone, there’s a good chance either the vendor whose name is on the device or one of the manufacturers who contributed hardware to it is paying Microsoft a fee for each sale. Today, Microsoft announced an agreement with Compal, an original design manufacturer that produces smartphones and tablets for third parties and takes in $28 billion in annual revenue. This was the “tenth license agreement providing coverage under our patent portfolio for Android mobile phones and tablets,” and the ninth in the last four months, Microsoft lawyers Brad Smith and Horacio Gutierrez write in a blog post.

“More important, today’s announcement means that companies accounting for over half of all Android devices have now entered into patent license agreements with Microsoft,” they claim.

According to charts in the blog post, 55 percent of Android devices by worldwide revenue are subject to patent license agreements between Microsoft and original design manufacturers, such as Compal. Moreover, 53 percent of Android smartphones by unit share in the United States are subject to patent license agreements between Microsoft and original equipment manufacturers, such as Samsung and HTC.

In any case, it’s a lot. Some have concluded that Microsoft makes more money from Android than from its own Windows Phones, and HTC reportedly pays Microsoft $5 for each Android phone it sells. Google, meanwhile, distributes Android (at least the smartphone version) as open source software.

Source: http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2011/10/microsoft-collects-license-fees-on-50-of-android-devices-tells-google-to-wake-up.ars

Google Encrypts Search to Thwart Wi-Fi Hackers

2011-10-18T23:52:00.000+01:00

Google radically expanded Tuesday its use of bank-level security that prevents Wi-Fi hackers and rogue ISPs from spying on your searches. Starting Tuesday, logged-in Google users searching from Google’s homepage will be using https://google.com, not http://google.com — even if they simply type google.com into their browsers. The change to encrypted search will happen over several weeks, the company said in a blog post Tuesday. The change means that the communication between a user’s browser and Google’s servers will be wrapped in encryption by default for those logged into their Google account. That means that hackers, school administrators and nosy corporate network admins won’t be able to see what search terms you are sending to the search giant. Google introduced an HTTPS search option in May 2010, but users had to decide to go to that page (https://google.com). Google made it harder to find after schools objected to the change, saying it prevented them from censoring and monitoring their charges. This go-round Google is providing a way for schools and network administrators to prevent the redirect to HTTPS, but Google will also make it clear to searchers on those networks that they are not sending data to Google via encryption.

Source: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/10/google-search-https/

Pirates set up domain seizure workaround

2011-10-14T23:54:00.001+01:00

A new service, BlockAid.me, launched an open beta at the end of September. It’s currently being promoted prominently on at least one major movie/music/games-sharing site. The site encourages internet users to reconfigure their computers to use BlockAid’s DNS servers. That way, if a domain name used by a piracy web site is seized by law enforcement, BlockAid will be able to direct surfers to the original owner’s IP address more or less transparently. This is exactly what the experts predicted would happen. Ever since the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency started seizing domain names associated with pirated content and US politicians have been discussing legislation to streamline the process, workarounds have been expected. In May, DNS experts including Paul Vixie, Dan Kaminsky and now-ICANN chair Steve Crocker said that the Protect-IP Act in the US would persuade many users to switch to offshore DNS servers. They warned that this would lead to a rise in cybercrime against consumers, as disreputable or insecure DNS providers send surfers to spoofs of banks and other sensitive sites. While there’s no reason to believe the BlockAid project has this kind of nefarious activity in mind, if the idea catches on it’s probably inevitable that a similar service operated by crooks will emerge eventually. Amusingly, BlockAid’s web site says that it may financially support itself in future by showing ad-laden web pages instead of returning NXDOMAIN errors, a much-criticized money-making tactic many ISPs already use. Note also that the .me registry is managed by Afilias, a heavily US-based company, which likely makes BlockAid.me just as vulnerable to seizure as any .com address.

Source: http://domainincite.com/pirates-set-up-domain-seizure-workaround/

Google Forced to Release WikiLeaks Volunteer's Gmail Info

2011-10-10T23:20:00.000+01:00

Google and Sonic.net, a small Internet service provider, have been forced to hand a WikiLeaks volunteer’s email information to the U.S. government under a secret and controversial court order. The type of information released includes login IPs of the volunteer and those with whom he communicated by email, as well as their email addresses. Sonic fought the order, dated January 4, 2011, but lost. Chief executive Dane Jasper told the Wall Street Journal that although the legal battle was expensive, “... it was the right thing to do.” It is unclear whether Google fought the order or willingly complied. jacob-appelbaumThe court order pertained to the emails of WikiLeaks volunteer Jacob Appelbaum (pictured at right) and span a period back to November 1, 2009. Google was ordered to produce the login IP addresses Applebaum used each time he signed in to his email account, as well as the email addresses and IP addresses of everyone he corresponded with during that time. The law under which this questionable seizure of private communications is permitted is called the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. It dates back to 1986, three years before the World Wide Web was born. Google and Microsoft are both members of a coalition fighting for reform, as this law allows law enforcement easier access to emails than postal mail. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has previously warned U.S. citizens that their Facebook, Yahoo, and Google account information is quite accessible to U.S. government officials.

Source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2116048/Google-Forced-to-Release-WikiLeaks-Volunteers-Gmail-Info

Civil Suit Filed, Involving the Time Zone Database

2011-10-06T19:24:00.000+01:00

"Arthur David Olson, the creator and maintainer of the timezone database used in about every unix/linux platform in use on the planet, just sent the message to the timezone mailing list: 'A civil suit was filed on September 30 in federal court in Boston; I'm a defendant; the case involves the time zone database. The ftp server at elsie.nci.nih.gov has been shut down. The mailing list will be shut down after this message. Electronic mail can be sent to me at @gmail.com. I hope there will be better news shortly. --ado' A Google search does not yet reveal anything about this; does someone know what is going on?"

http://slashdot.org/story/11/10/06/1743226/Civil-Suit-Filed-Involving-the-Time-Zone-Database

iPhone 4s out October 14, beefier specs, same body

2011-10-05T20:44:00.001+01:00

Apple announced the next iteration of its iPhone, the iPhone 4S, at an event today in Cupertino. The phone’s body and screen are virtually identical to the iPhone 4, though it receives some significant internal spec bumps and a virtual "intelligent assistant" named Siri. Like the iPad 2, the new iPhone 4S has a dual-core A5 chip clocked at 1GHz that is meant to deliver graphics up to seven times faster than the iPhone 4. Infinity Blade 2 was demonstrated on the handset; it's an iOS exclusive that will be available December 1. Another feature migrated from the iPad 2 is screen mirroring, which can be done with the iPhone 4S either via AirPlay on an Apple TV or through a wired connection. The new handset will carry the same retina display as its predecessor, and will no longer need separate GSM and CDMA models; instead, the handset will be a world phone, with both systems included. The camera on the iPhone 4S has been bumped up to 8 megapixels and now has an additional backside illuminated sensor that lets the phone gather 73 percent more light per pixel than the iPhone 4's version, which should help with low-light photos. Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior VP of worldwide product marketing, also noted that the camera will capture pictures 33 percent faster than before, with half a second between shots, and will be able to shoot 1080p video with image stabilization. A new software feature that may be exclusive to the iPhone 4S is Siri, an "intelligent assistant" that answers questions and responds to commands by pulling up the appropriate app (it's named for the similar app Apple bought in 2010). Scott Forstall, senior VP of iOS software, demonstrated the app by asking the phone "What is the weather like today?"—Siri pulled up the forecast. The command "wake me up tomorrow at 6AM" made the phone set an alarm for that time.

Source: http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/10/meet-the-new-iphone-identical-to-the-old-iphone-october-14.ars

Hackers break SSL encryption used by millions of sites

2011-09-24T00:09:00.000+01:00

Researchers have discovered a serious weakness in virtually all websites protected by the secure sockets layer protocol that allows attackers to silently decrypt data that's passing between a webserver and an end-user browser.

The vulnerability resides in versions 1.0 and earlier of TLS, or transport layer security, the successor to the secure sockets layer technology that serves as the internet's foundation of trust. Although versions 1.1 and 1.2 of TLS aren't susceptible, they remain almost entirely unsupported in browsers and websites alike, making encrypted transactions on PayPal, GMail, and just about every other website vulnerable to eavesdropping by hackers who are able to control the connection between the end user and the website he's visiting.

At the Ekoparty security conference in Buenos Aires later this week, researchers Thai Duong and Juliano Rizzo plan to demonstrate proof-of-concept code called BEAST, which is short for Browser Exploit Against SSL/TLS. The stealthy piece of JavaScript works with a network sniffer to decrypt encrypted cookies a targeted website uses to grant access to restricted user accounts. The exploit works even against sites that use HSTS, or HTTP Strict Transport Security, which prevents certain pages from loading unless they're protected by SSL.

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/19/beast_exploits_paypal_ssl/

Android Survey Highlights Piracy Problem

2011-09-11T22:47:00.002+01:00

Android developers make less money from paid apps than iOS developers, a disparity that appears to be attributable to software piracy. The Yankee Group, a consultancy, and Skyhook Wireless, a mobile location data company that's currently suing Google for excluding its geolocation system from Android devices, have surveyed 75 Android developers and found that they don't earn as much revenue as iOS developers and that they blame the gap, at least in part, on piracy. Some 27% of those surveyed see piracy as a "huge problem" and 26% say it's "somewhat of a problem." And 53% believe Google isn't doing enough to mitigate the damage caused by unauthorized app copying. About a third of respondents characterized the damage done as more than $10,000 annually and about as many said that piracy increases their support costs. Some 25% reported increased server costs associated with pirated apps. Complaints about piracy in the Android Market aren't exactly unheard of. Last year, Android software marker KeyesLabs noted that the overall piracy rate for its app Screebl Pro was 67%. Google does provide a License Validation Library (LVL) that allows developers to determine whether an Android Market app has been acquired legitimately or not, but respondents complain that the LVL is easy to defeat without additional copy protection techniques and that such techniques generally alienate legitimate users. Source: http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/app-security/231601064

Turkish hacker group diverts users away from high-profile websites

2011-09-05T22:20:00.000+01:00

A Turkish hacker group diverted traffic to a number of high-profile websites including the Telegraph, UPS, Betfair, Vodafone, National Geographic, computer-maker Acer and technology news site the Register on Sunday night, putting unwary users at risk of having passwords, emails and other details stolen. Industry experts warned people not to log on to sites such as Betfair because their details could be stolen. Some people viewing the sites thought that they had been hacked directly, with the sites appearing to show a message in Turkish by a group called Turk Guvenligi, which last month carried out a similar attack on a Korean company. But in fact the sites themselves remained unaffected. The group had instead attacked the domain name system (DNS), which is used to route users to websites. A list of the sites affected by the hack, including Microsoft in Brazil and Dell in South Korea, was posted on the zone-h website, used by hackers to list their successes. Alex Norcliffe, a software engineer with Umbraco, said that the changes meant "the domain names are totally out of control of the owners until they can get the registrar to change them back to their own nameservers." Norcliffe also pointed out that email sent to the sites while the hack was live would be diverted to the hackers' site. When a user types an address, such as telegraph.co.uk, the request is first sent to a DNS server which translates the human-readable address into a computer-readable one known as a "dotted quad".In the case of the Telegraph, it would be 213.155.154.113 – controlled by Akamai, which spreads its content around the world. But the hackers changed the details recorded for the affected sites by hacking into the database for the DNS at the "domain name registrar" company which registered the site.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/sep/05/turkish-hacker-group-diverts-users

Fraudulent Google credential found in the wild

2011-08-29T23:25:00.001+01:00

Security researchers have discovered a counterfeit web certificate for Google.com circulating on the internet that gives attackers the encryption keys needed to impersonate Gmail and virtually every other digitally signed Google property. The forged certificate was issued on July 10 to digitally sign Google pages protected by SSL, or secure sockets layer. It was issued by Diginotar, a certificate authority located in the Netherlands. The forged certificate is valid for *.google.com, giving its unknown holders the means to mount transparent attacks on a wide range of Google users who access pages on networks controlled by the counterfeiters. It's at least the second time in five months that unauthorized parties have gotten hold of valid SSL certificates used to cryptographically prove that a sensitive website is authentic rather than a forgery. In March, hackers broke into the servers of a web-authentication authority and minted valid certificates for Google mail and six other domains. It took eight days for the counterfeit credentials to be fully blocked from all major browsers, and much longer to be blacklisted from email programs. The episode exposed serious vulnerabilities in the net's foundation of trust, because in the intervening time it was possible for attackers to create convincing forgeries of trusted services that were almost impossible for people on attacker-controlled networks to detect. The hack was carried out on a reseller of certificate reseller Comodo, and came from servers that used an Iranian IP address. Monday's attack is more of the same.

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/29/fraudulent_google_ssl_certificate/

Image searches 'poisoned' by cybercriminals

2011-08-28T19:49:00.000+01:00

ALL Pedro Bueno did was run a regular Google search for "iPhone with antenna" while trying to fix the Wi-Fi on his wife's cellphone. Moments later he was yet another victim of "search engine poisoning" - the latest battleground in the ongoing war between cybercriminals and Google. The Google results page offered Bueno several image hits as well as the regular results. "I decided to see one of the pictures and clicked on it. It then started to load and suddenly I was redirected to another page," he wrote in a posting on the Internet Storm Center website, a volunteer group that monitors computer crime. Claiming to be an antivirus program from the non-existent "Apple Security Center", this web page displayed a list of files that were supposedly trojans, spyware and other malware hidden on his computer. In fact, he had been sent to a fake antivirus website. At this point, the user may be tricked into paying for unnecessary antivirus protection or a virus is downloaded onto the unwitting user's computer. If you're unlucky and unwary, both. Search engine poisoning is booming. Internet security firm Trend Micro estimates that in May 2011, more than 113 million users were redirected to malicious pages due to search engine poisoning. Hijacking image searches rather than text-based web searches is the fraudsters' latest twist on a popular scam. "It's an arms race," says Christian Platzer of the cybersecurity lab at the Technical University of Vienna, Austria. Hackers write code to fool search engines into giving bogus results, and search-engine companies fight back by writing code to block their scams.

Source: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128276.500-image-searches-poisoned-by-cybercriminals.html

Samsung Cites Kubrick's '2001' Film as Prior Art Defense Against Apple's Injunction Request

2011-08-24T00:27:00.001+01:00

As we've noted in a number of reports in recent months, Apple and Samsung are currently engaged in a high-stakes intellectual property battle, with Apple seeking injunctions in a number of countries to prevent Samsung from selling its Galaxy Tab and other Android-based products. Apple claims that Samsung has infringed upon Apple's intellectual property rights by copying the designs of popular Apple devices such as the iPhone and iPad. In a curious turn of events noted by FOSS Patents, Samsung has turned to the film industry in its defense against Apple's request for an injunction in the United States. According to court filings, Samsung has presented a scene from Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey as evidence of prior art that should invalidate Apple's design claims on the iPad. From the filing:

Attached hereto as Exhibit D is a true and correct copy of a still image taken from Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film "2001: A Space Odyssey." In a clip from that film lasting about one minute, two astronauts are eating and at the same time using personal tablet computers. The clip can be downloaded online at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ8pQVDyaLo. As with the design claimed by the D’889 Patent, the tablet disclosed in the clip has an overall rectangular shape with a dominant display screen, narrow borders, a predominately flat front surface, a flat back surface (which is evident because the tablets are lying flat on the table's surface), and a thin form factor.

The patent in question is a design patent covering the ornamental design of the iPad, with Apple claiming that the Samsung Galaxy Tab is substantially identical to that design. By pointing to an example of a similar design made public in 1968, even if not an actual functioning tablet device, Samsung hopes to demonstrate that there is little variation possible when designing a tablet and show that the general concept used by Apple for the iPad has actually been circulating for decades.

Source: http://www.macrumors.com/2011/08/23/samsung-cites-kubricks-2001-film-as-prior-art-defense-against-apples-injunction-request/

Google takes on Amazon as Street View cameras head down mighty river

2011-08-18T23:23:00.003+01:00

Google has the Amazon in its sights. But this isn’t another takeover bid by the online search giant - it’s the company’s latest Street View project to map the world’s biggest rain forest in South America. With the infamous Google trike and its 360 degree cameras fixed on the roof, a boat is travelling down the Amazon capturing panoramic images of the isolated region and its communities. Local residents have also been enlisted to pedal the trike through villages running alongside the river. Street View already allows online viewers to virtually hike around Stonehenge or ski down the slopes of Whistler Mountain in Canada, but Google has confirmed that it is now opening up one of the most remote and biodiverse areas in the world. In the first phase of the project, Google teams are floating down a 30-mile section of the Rio Negro River tributary extending from the Tumbira community near Manaus - the capital of Amazonas - to Terra Preta. They will then continue down the second longest river in the world capturing images for armchair adventurers.

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2027553/Google-takes-Amazon-Street-View-cameras-head-mighty-river.html

Widespread Hijacking of Search Traffic in the United States

2011-08-07T14:16:00.001+01:00

Earlier this year, two research papers reported the observation of strange phenomena in the Domain Name System (DNS) at several US ISPs. On these ISPs' networks, some or all traffic to major search engines, including Bing, Yahoo! and (sometimes) Google, is being directed to mysterious third party proxies. A report in New Scientist today documents that the traffic is being rerouted through a company called Paxfire. This blog post, coauthored with one of the teams that discovered the phenomenon, will explain the situation in more detail.

Who is rerouting this search traffic?
The published research papers did not identify the controller of the proxy servers that were receiving the traffic, but parallel investigations by the ICSI Networking Group and EFF have since revealed a company called Paxfire as the main actor behind this interception. Paxfire's privacy policy says that it may retain copies of users' "queries", a vague term that could be construed to mean either the domain names that they look up or the searches they conduct, or both. The redirections mostly occur transparently to the user and few if any of the affected ISP customers are likely to have ever heard of Paxfire, let alone consented to this collection of their communications with search engines. The proxies in question are operated either directly by Paxfire, or by the ISPs using web proxies provided by Paxfire. Major users of the Paxfire system include Cavalier, Cogent, Frontier, Fuse, DirecPC, RCN, and Wide Open West. Charter also used Paxfire in the past, but appears to have discontinued this practice.

Source: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/07/widespread-search-hijacking-in-the-us

Power companies prepare as solar storms set to hit Earth

2011-08-07T14:07:00.001+01:00

Three large explosions from the Sun over the past few days have prompted U.S. government scientists to caution users of satellite, telecommunications and electric equipment to prepare for possible disruptions over the next few days. "The magnetic storm that is soon to develop probably will be in the moderate to strong level," said Joseph Kunches, a space weather scientist at the Space Weather Prediction Center, a division of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). He said solar storms this week could affect communications and global positioning system (GPS) satellites and might even produce an aurora visible as far south as Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/06/us-utilities-noaa-solarstorms

Vodafone Hacked - Root Password published

2011-07-15T10:40:00.001+01:00

The Hacker's Choice (http://www.thc.org) announced a security problem with Vodafone's Mobile Phone Network today. An attacker can listen to UK Vodafone mobile phone calls. An attacker can exploit a vulnerability in 3G/UMTS/WCDMA - the latest and most secure mobile phone standard in use today. The technical details are available at http://wiki.thc.org/vodafone. THC was not immediately available for comments but an associated member of the group commented that 'the problem lies within Vodafone's Sure Signal / Femto equipment'. A Femto Cell is a tiny little home router which boosts the 3G Phone signal. It's available from the Vodafone Store to any customer for 160 GBP. THC managed to reverse engineer - a process of revealing the secrets - of the equipment. THC is now able to turn this Femto Cell into a full blown 3G/UMTC/WCDMA interception device. Eduart Steiner, Senior Security Researcher, explains the details to us: "A Femto is linked to the Vodafone core network via your home Internet connection. The Femto uses this access to retrieve the secret key material of a Vodafone customer who wants to use the Femto." "The Femto can only be used by the person who purchased the femto. At least that is what Vodafone tells you." "THC found a way to circumvent this and to allow any subscriber - even those not registered with the Femto - to use the Femto. They turned it into an IMSI grabber. The attacker has to be within 50m range of the UK Vodafone customer to make the customer's phone use the attacker's femto." "The second vulnerability is that Vodafone grants the femto to the Vodafone Core Network HLR /AuC which store the secret subscriber information. This means an attacker with administrator access to the Femto can request the secret key material of a UK Vodafone Mobile Phone User". This is exactly what happened. The group gained administrator access to the Femto. An attacker can now retrieve the secret key material of other Vodafone customers.

Source: http://thcorg.blogspot.com/2011/07/vodafone-hacked-root-password-published.html

Apple Delaying Approval Of Google+ iPhone App

2011-07-14T00:33:00.001+01:00

Google has recently launched its Google+ social networking website, and is hoping to do the unthinkable by knocking Facebook off its perch. Having launched an app for the Android operating system, the search giant has developed a Google+ app especially for the iPhone, and is waiting for Apple to give the thumbs up. Apple seems to be taking its time however, before allowing it to enter the AppStore. Apple is known for the exhaustive testing procedures that it uses to discard apps that could damage iOS gadgets or aren't up to the required standard, but some Google employees suspect that Apple is delaying the acceptance of the Google+ iPhone app in its virtual store, for some other reasons. Perhaps Apple does indeed have a bone or two to pick with Google; for example, it was revealed that Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt was developing the Android OS while still working for Apple. Google sent the iPhone application to Apple for verification around two weeks ago, and some iOS users are understandably wondering why its taking so long.

Source: http://www.itproportal.com/2011/07/13/apple-delaying-approval-google-plus-iphone-app/

Google dumps all 11+ million .co.cc sites from its results

2011-07-06T23:40:00.000+01:00

Google has removed over 11 million .co.cc websites from its search engine results pages on the basis that most of them are far too "spammy". The .co.cc space is not an officially authorised second-level domain like .co.uk or .com.au. Rather, it's offered independently by a Korean company (http://co.cc/) that just happens to own the domain name .co.cc. Google classes the firm as a "freehost", and has exercised its right to block the whole domain "if we see a very large fraction of sites on a specific freehost are spammy or low-quality", according to Matt Cutts, head of Google's web spam team. The company said in a recent blog post: "To help protect users we recently modified those [malware-scanning] systems to identify bulk subdomain services which are being abused. In some severe cases our systems may now flag the whole bulk domain." According to a recent report (29-page PDF/2MB) from the Anti-Phishing Working Group, the .cc top-level domain hosted 4,963 phishing attacks in the second half of 2010, almost twice the number found under any other extension.

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/07/06/google_cans_11m_dot_co_dot_cc_sites/

Google's bizarre bidding tactics from failed Nortel auction are revealed

2011-07-04T23:41:00.002+01:00

Google may have lost the Nortel auction patent battle with Apple, Microsoft, RIM and a host of other tech firms, but Sneak can't help applauding the way the search firm went about the bidding process, demonstrating its corporate personality as smart, funny and creative. According to sources who talked to Reuters, all of Google's bids during the auction for some 9,000 odd patents referred to famous mathematical numbers. The company bid $1,902,160,540 and $2,614,972,128 during the early round, which maths wizzes may recognise as Brun's constant and the Meissel-Mertens constant. Once bidding passed $3bn, Google offered $3,141,592.65, representing the first nine digits of Pi. The eventual winning bid was $4.5bn at which point Google dropped out, which is strange as it could have bid $6.66bn to really confuse those who argue that the company has lost its way from the 'Don't Be Evil' mantra. Other companies involved in the bidding were apparently utterly confused by the bids coming from Google, and the source told Reuters that the company was "either supremely confident or bored". However, Google has a track record of these kinds of shenanigans. When the firm went public in 2004 it looked to raise $2,718,281,828, the value of e multiplied by a billion. Sneak doesn't know what this means, but it sounds jolly smart.

Read more: http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/it-sneak-blog/2083803/googles-bizarre-bidding-tactics-failed-nortel-auction-revealed

Anonymous hacks Universal Music, Viacom

2011-07-02T00:08:00.000+01:00

Hacking group Anonymous promised Tuesday it would target two U.S. companies and share data from them "soon." The group followed through on that pledge within a day, releasing data files and user passwords obtained from Universal Music and Viacom. The information was shared, as some of it has been before, on PasteBin; while the more alarming hack, a second strike at data belonging to Arizona's law enforcement, was placed on another file-sharing site. On their Twitter account, one of the main tools the group uses to communicate, Anonymous tweeted that in at least one media report of the incident, " 'A spokesman for the Arizona Department of Public Safety declined to comment.' Learning from mistakes?" The Arizona, Universal Music and Viacom hacks reflect Anonymous' "Anti-Security" effort, or #AntiSec, as it's called on Twitter. "We provide material that is primarily against corrupt Governments (in our world this is all Governments) and corrupt companies," the group said on the PasteBin site. "And keep in mind: #AntiSec vessels have a very large cache of valuable goods aboard; the crews are currently working hard to sort the loot in a way that even the lousy media sailboats are able to just grab it and sail away for the horizon. You will hear from us very soon."

Source: http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/06/29/6976064-anonymous-hacks-universal-music-viacom