[ghosts in the machines]

Tracking GhostNet: Investigating a Cyber Espionage Network.

The report has now been covered in an exclusive story by the New York Times' John Markoff. Download the New York Times story here http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/technology/29spy.html

Researchers at the Information Warfare Monitor uncovered a suspected cyber espionage network of over 1,295 infected hosts in 103 countries. This finding comes at the close of a 10-month investigation of alleged Chinese cyber spying against Tibetan institutions that consisted of fieldwork, technical scouting, and laboratory analysis.

Close to 30% of the infected hosts are considered high-value and include computers located at ministries of foreign affairs, embassies, international organizations, news media, and NGOs. The investigation was able to conclude that Tibetan computer systems were compromised by multiple infections that gave attackers unprecedented access to potentially sensitive information, including documents from the private office of the Dalai Lama.

Who is ultimately in control of the GhostNet system? While our analysis reveals that numerous politically sensitive and high value computer systems were compromised in ways that circumstantially point to China as the culprit, we do not know the exact motivation or the identity of the attacker(s), or how to accurately characterize this network of infections as a whole. One of the characteristics of cyber- attacks of the sort we document here is the ease by which attribution can be obscured.

Regardless of who or what is ultimately in control of GhostNet, it is the capabilities of exploitation, and the strategic intelligence that can be harvested from it, which matters most. Indeed, although the Achilles' heel of the GhostNet system allowed us to monitor and document its far-reaching network of infiltration, we can safely hypothesize that it is neither the first nor the only one of its kind.

As Information Warfare Monitor principal investigators Ron Deibert and Rafal Rohozinski say in the foreword to the report, "This report serves as a wake-up call. At the very least, a large percentage of high-value targets compromised by this network demonstrate the relative ease with which a technically unsophisticated approach can quickly be harnessed to create a very effective spynet.These are major disruptive capabilities that the professional information security community, as well as policymakers, need to come to terms with rapidly."

Download the full report on 29 March 2009 at http://www.infowar-monitor.net/ghostnet/

[take a stand against Mugabe]

Visit avaaz.org - the world in action website. Fill in your name and country and a message will be sent to the leader of your country (in the UK that's Gordon Brown). The aim is to get 100,000 messages protesting Mugabe as leader. Right now there have been 49,609 messages sent.

[more on myspace being their space]

Hosting people's lives online has become big business: services like Flickr and Photobucket serve as a virtual shoe box for millions of photographs, while YouTube and MySpace Video regularly serve up a daily dose of video blogs, home videos, and crazy stunts. But what happens when some of those services depend on the others in order to grow, and the others don't like being used to help the competition?
That's a thorny issue that MySpace has found itself in the middle of, and they're not backing down. The latest: the Powers That Be™ behind MySpace made another move to block content hosted by competitors from being embedded on user profile pages within the site—this time, the popular photo and video hosting site Photobucket.
Photobucket now joins the list of several companies understandably displeased with such developments at MySpace, as they all stand to lose traffic and mindshare as a result. A post on the Photobucket blog points out MySpace's action and asks its 40+ million users to e-mail MySpace to tell them what they think. "We believe that by limiting your ability to personalize your pages with content from any source, MySpace is contradicting the very belief of personal and social media," writes Photobucket. "MySpace became successful because of the creativity of you, its users, and because it offered a forum for self-expression. By severely restricting this freedom, MySpace is showing that it considers you as a commodity which it can treat as it sees fit."
MySpace's pattern of blocking video and music widgets from competing sites over the last few months has worried Internet users that MySpace was moving toward a closed-content system. The move to block Photobucket videos comes about two months after MySpace's decision to block embedded widgets from Imeem, a music and video sharing site, and a month previous to that, video sharing site Revver.
MySpace maintains, however, that the company is not blocking content from competitors—they are merely blocking content that contains advertising. "Photobucket recently began running an ad-sponsored slideshow and encouraged users to post these ads in bulletins and profiles throughout the community," a MySpace spokesperson said in a statement to Ars Technica. "We spoke to the company about their actions, but they refused to respect our community's terms and we had no choice but to disable their service."
Photobucket, on the other hand, disagrees. "Photobucket was not contacted by MySpace about this issue," a Photobucket spokesperson told Ars in response to MySpace's statement. He went on to explain that Photobucket allows users to combine their own content with that of "brands" in order to create personalized slideshows and videos, which is what MySpace appears to take issue with. "Some of our users choose to share their slideshows with friends on blogs and social networks, of which MySpace is obviously one,." Photobucket said. This content is not clickable and does not generate revenue for Photobucket—only the branded content and environments on Photobucket do that."
Putting aside technicalities about what constitutes an advertisement, MySpace's claim might explain why content from the most popular video sharing site, YouTube, can still be embedded on MySpace pages. That, or MySpace could still simply be trying to figure out how much of a backlash there would be if they stopped allowing content from the only video sharing site bigger than their own. MySpace isn't stupid; they're aware that these other media hosting sites are gaining viewership because of MySpace, and even said so during September's Merrill Lynch Media & Entertainment Conference. There, News Corp. CEO Peter Chernin specifically named YouTube, Flickr, Photobucket, "or any of the next-generation Web applications" as being "driven off the back of MySpace."
This sends a major message out to services that are dependent upon larger sites to carry their numbers: don't push it, because MySpace is still in charge. Even if the company wants to hide behind the claim that they're only blocking content that contain advertisements, it's not hard to understand that MySpace prefer its users make use of its own a hosting services over the competition's. Whatever MySpace's true motivation is, it's clear that the company is doing its best to ensure that no one is making an actual profit off of MySpace's popularity except for MySpace.

MySpace to content providers: it's OurSpace, we're in charge
By Jacqui Cheng Published: April 12, 2007 - 01:25AM CT

[google...oooops we've done it again]

"Google has attempted to quell a dust-up over its new Pinyin Input Method Editor (IME), a tool that automatically converts Pinyin Roman entries to their Chinese character equivalents, by admitting that it used a database created by another company. Sohu.com, which offers a similar application, accused Google of lifting the database from its Sogou search engine after users discovered and began talking about the similarities.

In a post on the Google China blog, Google apologized for misappropriating the database. "We are willing to face up to our mistake, and offered an apology to users and to Sohu.com," said Google. According to the search giant, the database has since been replaced with a version culled from its own Chinese-language search engine.

The issue first surfaced on April 4, and on April 6, Google pulled the first version of its IME from its servers. However, the new edition failed to fix the issue, as users quickly discovered that the new version still relied on the troublesome database.

That same day, Sohu.com demanded that Google pull the dictionary offline and apologize for pilfering its database. Accusing Google of copyright violations, Sohu.com said it may proceed with legal action even if Google apologized.

A new version of the dictionary was uploaded to Google servers last night and Google does appear to have fixed the problem. According to the IDG News Service, Sohu.com says that Google's new dictionary now has a 79 percent similarity to its own dictionary, down from 96 percent in previous versions.

The issue is symptomatic of the problems Google has faced in China since deciding to set up shop behind the Great Firewall. Its core product, the google.cn search engine, significantly trails Baidu, a homegrown Chinese search engine. The company has also been the target of criticism for acceding to demands by the Chinese government to censor some search results, leading cofounder Sergey Brin to wonder if the company's decision to enter the Chinese market was the right thing to do."

Article from Ars Technica
By Eric Bangeman Published: April 09, 2007 - 11:49AM CT

[watch yo'mouf]

"Talking" CCTV cameras that tell off people dropping litter or committing anti-social behaviour are to be extended to 20 areas across England.
They are already used in Middlesbrough where people seen misbehaving can be told to stop via a loudspeaker, controlled by control centre staff.

About £500,000 will be spent adding speaker facilities to existing cameras.

Shadow home affairs minister James Brokenshire said the government should be "very careful" over the cameras.


Home Secretary John Reid told BBC News there would be some people, "in the minority who will be more concerned about what they claim are civil liberties intrusions."

"But the vast majority of people find that their life is more upset by people who make their life a misery in the inner cities because they can't go out and feel safe and secure in a healthy, clean environment because of a minority of people," he added.

The talking cameras did not constitute "secret surveillance", he said.

"It's very public, it's interactive."

Competitions would also be held at schools in many of the areas for children to become the voice of the cameras, Mr Reid said.

Downing Street's "respect tsar", Louise Casey, said the cameras "nipped problems in the bud" and reduced bureaucracy.

"It gets across the message, 'please don't litter our streets because someone else will have to pay to pick up that litter again'," she told BBC News.

"Half a billion pounds a year is spent picking up litter."

'Scarecrow policing'

Mr Brokenshire told the BBC he had a number of concerns about the use of the talking cameras.

"Whether this is moving down a track of almost 'scarecrow' policing rather than real policing - actually insuring that we have more bobbies on the beat - I think that's what we really want to see, albeit that an initiative like this may be an effective tool in certain circumstances.

"We need to be very careful about applying this more generally."

The talking cameras will be installed in Southwark, Barking and Dagenham, in London, Reading, Harlow, Norwich, Ipswich, Plymouth, Gloucester, Derby, Northampton, Mansfield, Nottingham, Coventry, Sandwell, Wirral, Blackpool, Salford, South Tyneside and Darlington.

In Middlesbrough, staff in a control centre monitor pictures from 12 talking cameras and can communicate directly with people on the street.

Local councillor Barry Coppinger says the scheme has prevented fights and criminal damage and cut litter levels.

"Generally, I think it has raised awareness that the town centre is a safe place to visit and also that we are keeping an eye open to make sure it is safe," he said.

But opponent and campaigner Steve Hills said: "Apart from being absurd, I think it's rather sad that we should have faceless cameras barking at us on orders from who? [hrm....shouldn't it be from "whom" tut tut Steve Hills....] Who sets these cameras up?"

There are an estimated 4.2 million CCTV cameras in Britain.

A recent study by the government's privacy watchdog, the Information Commissioner, warned that Britain was becoming a "surveillance society".

Click here to watch the talking cameras in action.

Article from the bbc.

[youtube banned in Thailand]

From the bbc:

Communications Minister Sitthichai Pookaiyaudom said the site was banned after a 44-second film showing graffiti over the king's face was aired.

King Bhumibol Adulyadej, 79, is revered and it is forbidden to insult him.

The minister said a ban came after the Thai government asked YouTube's owner Google to remove it and they declined.

The contentious film also shows feet being placed over the king's face - an offensive act to Thais, who consider feet dirty.

YouTube 'disappointed'

"It's a serious case of lese majeste," said Mr Sitthichai, referring to crimes of offending the country's monarchy. "We asked Google to remove it some days ago, but they refused to."

The minister said access within Thailand would be reinstated once the film had been removed.

YouTube's head of global communications, Julie Supan, said: "We are disappointed that YouTube has been blocked in Thailand, and we are currently looking into the matter.

"The internet is an international phenomenon and while technology can bring great opportunity and access to information globally, it can also present new and unique cultural challenges."

The profile of the YouTube user who uploaded the movie onto the site lists the US as his location.

The ban follows the jailing for 10 years of a Swiss man after he pleaded guilty to charges of insulting the Thai king.

Oliver Jufer, 57, was arrested last December after drunkenly spray-painting posters of King Bhumibol Adulyadej in the northern city of Chiang Mai.