How to harden your smartphone against stalkers—Android edition
Stalking via mobile phone has become a favorite activity of the mentally unhinged everywhere—jilted wives, jealous boyfriends, or any one person who cannot stop obsessing over another. Most smartphones today contain everything a stalker needs to keep solid tabs on their mark, and, in contrast to iPhones and iOS, the Android platform is much more open.
Android users can easily root their phones, sideload apps, and use all of Google's services to communicate reams of information. This flexibility is great when used for good, creative purposes. But it's also very easy to turn them around and use them against someone. A stalker can place an Android phone user in a compromised position simply by getting their Google account password or getting access to the phone itself, even for only a minute or two.
What follows is a guide to taking ownership of your Android phone aimed mostly at less savvy users, especially those who many have had their phone set up for them by someone else. Of course, it's a bad idea to let something as sensitive as a smartphone leave your sight for even a minute, as physical access gives malefactors a lot of leeway. Someone who is your friend now might not be your friend forever—according to a 2009 report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, nearly 75 percent of stalking victims know their stalker in some capacity. Most people with smartphones rarely give what the phone is doing or information that it is communicating a second thought beyond e-mails and texts, playing a game or two, and making phone calls. But given how powerful smartphones are, it's important for every user to take ownership of their device and monitor it carefully—stalking doesn't always mean direct harassment.
Virgin Media Faces Angry Pirate Bay Fans For Blocking Access To The Website
After Virgin Media was court ordered to block access to the file-sharing hub – The Pirate Bay – file-sharers have decided to take direct action against UK’s ISP.
The protesters plan to not only employ (D)DoS attacks on the internet provider, but also to launch a protest at its head office. The targets include Virgin’s worldwide health, airline, and festival brands, not all of which are owned by Virgin Group.
“Regardless of the high court judgement, Virgin Media have chosen to comply rather than appeal or fight the decision unlike British Telecom (BT). These Actions are utterly Reprehensible,” reads a Pirate Pad (http://goo.gl/zzvbE) statement.
Here are some comments regarding the measures taken by Virgin Media:
“Soo…f***ing up our net connections will help us…how? ffs.”
While another user says:
“Good luck with ddos’ing the UKs fastest provider whos servers are probably sat on the main trunk, that they own… roffle.”
Virgin is the first UK ISP to take action after court ordered on Monday to block access to The Pirate Bay. The internet provider is using site-blocking software that was originally designed to prevent access to child abuse websites.
“We have received an order from the Courts requiring us to prevent access to The Pirate Bay to protect against copyright infringement. Virgin Media, alongside other ISPs, comply with court orders but we strongly believe that tackling copyright infringement also needs compelling legal alternatives, such as our agreement with Spotify, to give consumers access to great content at the right price,” said a Virgin Media spokesperson.
Alongside with Virgin, BT, Sky, TalkTalk, O2 and Everything Everywhere (Orange and T-Mobile) were also ordered to follow BPI’s request to cut access to TPB. BT, however, asked for more time to consider their decision.
TPB’s reaction was to offer its users alternative routes – such as proxy sites.
Amnesty International malware attack: when bad things happen on good sites
Shattering the myth that only disreputable sites push malware, Amnesty International's UK website was recently compromised and used to install a notorious backdoor trojan that allows hackers to spy on political activists and government employees, security researchers said.
People visiting Amnesty.org.uk on Wednesday and Thursday were exposed to malicious code that exploited a now-patched vulnerability in Oracle's Java software framework, according to a blog post published Friday by Websense. End users who hadn't yet applied the patch were infected with Gh0stRat, a family of malware that siphons sensitive data from victims' machines and can also operate Web cams and microphones in real time. The trojan came to light in 2009 when researchers reported that it infiltrated government and private offices in 103 countries. That included computers belonging to the Dalai Lama.
The Java vulnerability targeted on the Amnesty International site has been used in the past to install malware on computers running both Microsoft Windows and Apple's OS X. Recently, similar espionage attacks have migrated to OS X, and the Flashback malware attack believed to have infected more than 500,000 Macs targeted the same bug. Based on the Websense post, however, it appears this week's attacks infected only Windows users.
Kim Dotcom Uses Music to Ridicule New Zealand MP
Last Sunday Megaupload’s founder, recently bailed by New Zealand’s authorities, released the “John Banks Song” on YouTube.
If you wonder who John Banks is and what is Kim’s quarrel with him you should know that he’s heading the ACT New Zealand political party, and is currently the minister for Small Business and Regulatory Reform. Kim Dotcom reportedly donated .000 (NZ.000) to the 2010 Banks campaign for mayor of the city of Auckland, a well hidden information until now. Dotcom is now to be questioned by local authorities over these claims.
The song’s chorus reads: “Nothing to fear / Nothing to hide / He’s the majority / So he’s all right. / He is John Banks / He got the vote / And that’s why Key keeps him afloat / On his cabbage boat.”
In a previous statement, Banks said that he “didn’t come up the river in a cabbage boat,” – New Zealand’s English expression that means he’s not stupid. Having his back is Prime Minister John Key who publicly defended Banks.
Banks denied that he broke any elections laws, and said that he couldn’t remember if he visited Dotcom’s mansion to meet him.
“He took that strategy to a level of absurdity,” said Bryce Edwards, an Otago University political scientist, in an interview with the New Zealand Herald.
“People don’t understand the whole case but they pick up on things like the helicopter. People just think the whole thing stinks.”
The newspaper also reported that his poll numbers dropped to 10% ever since the political scandal, and last week wrote that the “Crown lawyers acting for the United States knew before seizing Kim Dotcom’s fortune and property that they were using an unlawful court order.”
Furthermore, on Monday New Zealand Herald – which has been filling inquires through the Official Information Act, reported that “police officers who raided the mansion of Internet magnate Kim Dotcom put together a list of belongings for United States authorities to seize.”
Last Friday, Prime Minister John Key denied that he had any knowledge of Dotcom “until the day before the raids even though his senior ministers, a string of senior civil servants, and his own electorate staff were involved in matters relating to him. It has emerged that staff in the Prime Minister’s own department were aware of Dotcom and his bid through the Overseas Investment Office to buy the mansion in which he lived with his family.”
HP loses hundreds of thousands of CA social services records—on microfiche
The California office of In-Home Supportive Services, which provides health support to elderly and disabled people, reported on Friday that the personal records of some 700,000 caregivers and care recipients were either lost or stolen.
But this data loss was not due to a server breach, or some complex phishing attack—instead, the Social Services office said that Hewlett Packard, which manages the data controlled by the office, notified the IHSS of the breach after a physical package containing microfiche with thousands of entries of payroll data went missing from a damaged package that HP had shipped by U.S. Postal Service to the State Compensation Insurance Fund in Riverside, CA.
As the package arrived damaged and incomplete, it’s unclear whether the information was lost or stolen, but the state has launched an internal investigation and notified law enforcement in the hopes of resolving the issue, according to the Los Angeles Times. "The possibly compromised information, dating from October to December 2011, for 375,000 workers included names, Social Security numbers and wages. For 326,000 recipients, state identification numbers may be at risk,” the LA Times reports. The In-Home Supportive Services office is also sending out hundreds of thousands of letters to potentially affected parties.
Oceanside surfers pay tribute to Junior Seau
Why does a former NFL star and keen surfer decide to commit suicide at 43? Junior Seau went surfing in San Clemente on Monday, but two days later he decides to leave the world with a warning sign.
Seau has been considered one of the best linebackers in the US football history. He was adored by fans, looked great and lived a happy family life.
When his girlfriend Megan returned home, she found Junior Seau dead in his bed with a gun nearby. Depression? Health problems? Inner demons?
Hundreds of surfers have paid tribute to the USC Trojans star with a splendid paddle-out in front of Junior Seau's Southern California home. The linebacker really enjoyed surfing and he was frequently seen in the waves enjoying his free time.
A Three-Day File-Sharing Survey By The Pirate Bay
In an attempt to clarify RIAA’s file-sharing statistics, the notorious file-sharing site (The Pirate Bay) has issued public support for a Swedish University survey launched to establish file-sharing patterns across the world.
TPB’’s site has been temporarily “renamed” as The Research Bay in order to promote the three-day file-sharing survey that’s about to be conducted for the second time by the Cybernorms research group.
Stefan Larsson – researcher at Cybernorms – said that this year’s survey would put the magnifying glass on Australia’s file-sharing habits.
“We have enough respondents [from Oceania] for it to be interesting, and it would be interesting to see if the profile differs from other regions, on average,” Larsson told iTnews.
The previous year’s survey only focused on regions (Fiji, New Zealand, all Polynesian island nations, Papua New Guinea and Australia) leaving it with inconclusive data on economically, socially and technologically distinct nations in “Oceania”.
“This year we added individual countries to be able to be more precise in our analysis,” Larsson said.
Last year Cybernorms attracted 75.000 respondents during its three-day survey with Oceania countries, making up roughly 5% of those responses. According to Larsson, the initial view of the regional data from last year’s survey showed a larger number of females participating in file-sharing in Oceania, at 9.4% of respondents, compared to the global average of 6.2%. Furthermore, respondents from the region reported the same levels of usage of anonymous service (egg: VPNs), but “a slightly higher file sharing frequency than average”, according to Larsson.
A recent report by Cybernorms showed that more Swedes were taking up anonymity services in response to the increase of anti-piracy laws.
As for 2012, the survey has been launched just after ISPs from the UK and the Netherlands were ordered to block access to TPB, and will ask respondents whether TPB has been blocked by their country.
“We’re interested to know to what extent the site is being blocked, as well as how this is dealt with by users,” Larsson said.
“We’ve also added some details to the question relating to the use of anonymity services, since we regard anonymity and traceability online as a key question for future debates on legal enforcement and integrity issues, which is central for us as sociologists of law, and goes well beyond the scope of copyright.”
“This research is first of all aiming at creating a better base of knowledge for policy makers. Without adequate information it is impossible to adapt the legal systems in a legitimate way,” Måns Svensson, PhD in Sociology of Law at Lund and study manager told TorrentFreak.
Bitcoins worth $87,000 plundered in brazen server breach
More than ,000 worth of the virtual currency known as Bitcoin was stolen after online bandits penetrated servers belonging to Bitcoinica, prompting its operators to temporarily shutter the trading platform to contain the damage.
Friday's theft came after hackers accessed Bitcoinica's production servers and depleted its online wallet of 18,547 BTC, as individual Bitcoin units are called, company officials said in a blog post published on Friday. It said the heist affected only a small fraction of Bitcoinica's overall bitcoin deposits and that all withdrawal requests will be honored once the platform reopens.
It was at least the second time in 10 weeks Bitcoinica has been stung by a computer intrusion that has cost it dearly. In early March, a security lapse at cloud services provider Linode allowed hackers to make off with about 0,000 worth of bitcoin after they gained unauthorized access to bitcoin wallets stored by Bitcoinica and seven other customers. Last June, an anonymous person claimed to have lost 0,000 worth of bitcoin to online thieves, but the claims were never independently verified.
Pirate Bay Criticizes Anonymous’ DDoS Attacks On Virgin Media
In a recent article we wrote about Virgin Media applying blocking measures against The Pirate Bay after a UK court of law ordered them to do so. As a result, TPB’s users threatened the ISP with DDoS attacks and protests at its HQ.
Two days ago The Pirate Bay criticized the hacktivist group Anonymous for taking down Virgin Media’s website, arguing that this action is a form of censorship.
“We do NOT encourage these actions. We believe in the open and free internets, where anyone can express their views. Even if we strongly disagree with them and even if they hate us,” The Pirate Bay wrote on its Facebook page.
The DDoS attack was launched on Tuesday, and Virgin Media confirmed the attack, saying that they took the site offline themselves.
“As a responsible ISP, Virgin Media complies with court orders but we strongly believe that tackling the issue of copyright infringement needs compelling legal alternatives, giving consumers access to great content at the right price, to help change consumer behavior,” they said.
On Tuesday @AnonUK Twitter feed tweeted that “#Anonymous have just taken down #VirginMedia website again because of their involvement in the #Censorship of The Pirate Bay #TPB #OpTPB.”
In response, TPB asked their supporters to stop “using their ugly methods”.
“DDOS and blocks are both forms of censorship,” the site said.
The Pirate Bay urged people to instead “start a tracker, arrange a manifestation, join or start a pirate party, teach your friends the art of bittorrent, set up a proxy, write your political representatives, develop a new p2p protocol, print some pro piracy posters and decorate your town with, support our promo bay artists or just be a nice person and give your mom a call to tell her you love her.”
Twitter users highlighted the fact that Virgin and other ISPs initially refused to block TPB and that they’re only following the law.
“Virgin Media aren’t ideal targets, I agree. But I’m not the leader of Anonymous. Cry more,” @AnonUK replied yesterday.
A faction of Anonymous that calls itself @AnonAteam on Twitter claimed responsibility and defended the move.
“The attacks are not simply about facilitating access to the Pirate Bay website but to stop the type of order used to block your website being used as a precedent for further censorship on the internet,” AnonAteam wrote on Tumblr.
“The entire reason for the protest is to protect freedom of expression from being blocked without any form of judicial process. ISPs are the gateways to democracy in this technology age, to censor access to websites with such an abuse of the legal process, outside parliament our a Humans Right court is unlaw and an abuse of power.”
Lastly, a group called the People Liberation Front said:
“We strongly condemn the attack on Virgin and UK ISPs as it violates the 2nd principle of Anonymous to NEVER attack infrastructure.”
My own private Internet: .secure TLD floated as bad-guy-free zone
A security researcher has won investments of more than million to incorporate a tightly policed section of the Internet reserved for banks, healthcare providers, and other groups that are regularly targeted in malware, phishing, and similar online attacks.
Alex Stamos, CTO of iSec Partners, said Internet addresses subscribing to the secure service would tentatively include the top-level-domain of .secure, which his new venture has applied to operate. Websites, mail servers, and other services using .secure addresses would first have to agree to abide by a stringent set of requirements, including offering end-to-end encryption of most traffic and to follow a strict code of conduct. Artemis Internet Inc., as the new venture is called, has received about .6 million in backing from its parent company, NCC Group, a UK-based provider of secure IT services.
Anonymity and the Internet's free-wheeling ways have been great for free speech and innovation, but they also open the door to impostors and website operators with poor security hygiene. With plans by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers to vastly expand the availability of top-level domains, security advocates have an opportunity to build the type of global network they've long dreamed of.