Tickets Please!!

I love my 13,000 toy buses

GEOFF Price has spent £130,000 amassing the world’s biggest collection of toy buses – but he’s not so keen on the real thing.

Geoff, 63, has more than 13,000 models filling his house, garage and garden sheds, though long-suffering wife Linda has declared their living room a bus-free zone.

His obsession has taken him round the world in search of unusual additions to his collection. But the events planner admits he hates public transport and goes everywhere by car. “I know it’s ironic because I love toy buses but I’d never get on one out of choice,” said father-of-two Geoff, of Walsall, West Midlands.

“They’re unreliable and not practical at all. The only time I ever catch the bus is when my car’s in for a service.”

Irish Logic?

Irish Politician against Open Source Browsers

Patrick O’Donovan, a politician from Limerick, called for crackdown on open source browsers that allowed anonymous browsing. Deputy O’Donovan asked the Oireachtas Communications Committee to investigate tougher controls on the use of open source browsers that allow people to remain anonymous in the unauthorized trade of drugs, weapons and porn.

The politician claimed there was a black market on the Internet that protects anonymity and operates across borders through open source browsers and payments systems, both of which allow users to remain anonymous. Such services encourage operation of online markets for illegal stuff like drugs, weapons and adult content, where it’s very difficult to trace the identity of the buyers.

O’Donovan said that if the Oireachtas Communications Committee doesn’t take him seriously he would go further and raise the matter with both the Ministers for Justice and Communications. He also claimed he wanted to get the European Union on his side. The politician pointed out that the US police have recently taken action to address the problem, but he missed the fact that it was fruitless, because replacement browsers quickly emerged to continue illegal trades. Perhaps, O’Donovan believes that the Irish shouldn’t pay attention to the fact that the Americans with their super surveillance gear failed to get it working, and is sure that enhanced international co-operation and engagement will successfully solve the problem. Well, let’s see.

Amazon Is Not Good All The Time!

Most Malware Found on Amazon

Security firm’s report revealed that Amazon online services are the biggest malware servers across the globe, followed by GoDaddy and Google. The reason is that malware producers take advantage of the cloud. The report claims that hackers are using cloud hosting platforms in order to quickly and effectively serve malware to oblivious users. This allows them to bypass detection and geographic blacklisting by serving from a trusted provider like Amazon.

Security experts found out that the intruders compromised legitimate websites for nefarious purposes, along with buying and hosting their own websites. Today’s ease of website creation, low cost and speed of deployment allows to infect millions of machines and lots of enterprise systems. Of course, cloud providers, including Amazon, GoDaddy and Google, have security policies against malicious activity and do their best to take down offenders once they are discovered. The problem is that a huge number of sites hosted on their cloud systems all make that discovery job difficult, while the malware producers are trying to seek safety in numbers. Security experts admitted that it’s still up to providers to do something to stop the proliferation of malware and hold responsibility for monitoring the activities on their properties.

Information from the report also demonstrated that in the last quarter of 2013, the United States was the most active malware hosting nation, accounting for 44% of the worldwide share of malware. This is 5 times more than Germany, which accounted for 9% of the global malware and followed the US in the list. As for the online services, Amazon appeared the top malware-hosting provider (16% of the global share), followed by GoDaddy (14% share).

Some may remember that a few months ago a Google-backed BitTorrent client was caught spreading malware to Windows PCs and Android users.

Now…Here’s A Surprise…NOT!!

Music Industry against Google

The IFPI and RIAA, music industry entities, have resumed their attacks on the search giant, accusing Google of breaking its promise to tone down piracy portals in its search rankings. The outfits have both published articles in a coordinated campaign in order to call for Google to adopt a 5-point plan to fight digital piracy.

This move is the latest in a fight between the entertainment industry and Google, even though the tech giant is an increasingly strong partner for various music labels and publishers via its YouTube and Google Play services. Nevertheless, the industry remains cross, claiming that their anger is justified, but the outfits don’t suggest any clear plan to resolve the argument.

In the meantime, the tech giant points at its 100 millionth takedown notice received from music copyright owners. The notices have been received within the last 2.5 years, at an accelerating pace: in December 2013 alone, the British music body the BPI sent 5.2 million notices, while the Recording Industry Association of America sent 2.3 million. The copyright owners consider Google the largest piracy discovery website in the world.

In response, Google published a report last September hitting back at the claims that it fails to address piracy and questioning whether the issue is as huge as the music industry claims. The report broke down Google’s activities, including such legitimate services as YouTube and Google Play, as well as Content ID system for helping copyright owners make money from uses of their music on someone’s videos. The company also emphasized its efforts within its advertising business – Google ensured that its adverts weren’t appearing on piracy websites.

Google pointed out that turnaround time on takedown notices was less than 6 hours, and keeps decreasing despite the rocketing volume of requests. Finally, the tech giant reminded that search was never a major driver of traffic to pirate sites. Indeed, all traffic from Yahoo, Bing, and Google combined accounts for only 15% of traffic to BitTorrent trackers.

Besides, Google questioned the methodology music industry used for the rightsholders’ research. The company provided its own statistics showing that people searched for a “song title” 16 times more often than “song title mp3” on Google and found lots of legal links at the top of the results.

Live To Fight Another Day!

Windows XP Will Live till July 2015

Microsoft has changed its mind over killing Windows XP entirely this April and announced it will continue providing updates to its security products (antimalware engine and signatures) until middle of July, 2015. Thus, XP will get another year’s life. Back in 2013, Microsoft said it would halt all updates on the same day as the end of support date for Windows XP this spring.

In other words, Microsoft Security Essentials will still get updates after full support ends for operating system. The same will go for System Centre Endpoint Protection, Forefront Client Security, Forefront Endpoint Protection, and Windows Intune used on XP. But it should be noted that Microsoft will still end full technical assistance for Windows XP this spring and you won’t be able to download Microsoft Security Essentials on Windows XP since that date.

Windows XP will still be alive thanks to updates to its security products for extra 15 months. Taking into account that the developing countries mostly use XP, it is good news that they will be at least partially protected until July 2015, though Windows XP will no longer be a supported operating system.

Everyone understands that Microsoft has been trying to get people away from Windows XP to “better” products. The company realized that the best way to do so is to stick to its end of support date, even despite the fact that there are still so many millions of Windows XP users out there. It looks like Microsoft finally realized that leaving all of them completely vulnerable could cause more harm than good.

Get A Life?

Britons Have Either a Tablet Or a Life

According to the latest research, half of the UK citizens are now using tablets - the statistics show that there were over 12 million tablets sold in the country last year. By comparing this number to the population, you can figure out that by the end of January, half of Britons will own or have access to a tablet, up from 36% last summer.

The industry observers believe the growth of popularity of keyboardless devices had been driven by the value end of the market, which had made the touchscreen items children's toys, popular among those who don’t want to pay for more expensive models.

The growth was helped by the rise of budget tablets - for example, Amazon’s Kindle Fire (its price starts at £199), Tesco's Hudl and Argos's £99 tablet. However, the last is now unavailable. Experts say that tablets had gained popularity with extraordinary speed, and their makers will have to work hard to stay on top of the evolution of the market.

It looks like people are now starting to listen to Bill Gates who claimed that there were shedloads of uses for tablets. Today there appear to be more users and use cases for tablets than many could imagine. The secret was to get the balance of form, function and price right.

Apparently, online retailers understand the situation and started slashing prices and promoting e-books to appeal to those who received tablets as Christmas gifts.

Help Australia Government? = Arrested!!

16-Year-Old Hacker Arrested for Helping Government

A teen hacker from Australia must be regretting reporting a security hole at the government website which allowed him to access a database with sensitive data about 600,000 public transport users.

Australian government portal was important as a primary website for information about public transport timetables. Its database featured full names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, dates of birth, and even a 9-digit extract of credit card numbers used there.

Joshua Rogers, 16, has contacted the website after Christmas and reported the flaw. After receiving no response, the teen called newspapers and that is when Transportation Department reported him to the police. Although it is unknown how Rogers accessed the database, it seems to be a doddle. Perhaps, it was an SQL injection flaw, because it’s the tool of choice to breach websites and access backend databases.

Local police have a record of arresting people revealing security holes. For example, three years ago, Patrick Webster suffered a similar consequence after reporting a website vulnerability to a national investment company which managed his pension fund. The individual was arrested for writing a script to download 500 account statements in attempt to prove that its account holders were at risk. The company reported him to police and demanded access to his machine in order to make sure he had deleted all stolen data.

The teenager admitted that the police haven’t even contacted him. In fact, he learned about what has happened from journalists. Anyway, he might be regretting doing the decent thing and reporting the flaw. Maybe selling his remarks to Russians would have had more sense.

Targeted!!!!!

70 Million People’s Data Leaked from US Retail Chain

Target chain had to admit that hackers stole personal data with details of about 70 million people. Phone numbers, email and home addresses leaked in the hack.

Target’s experts revealed that the extent of a pre-Christmas breach to its computer systems was greater than it had initially thought. The company hasn’t said until now how many people were affected. Security experts believe that it will affect more than 70 million and end up being the largest retail breach ever. The retail chain informed its customers that hackers stole their names, card numbers, expiration dates, PINs and the embedded code on the magnetic strip on the back. However, the company assured people that they will not be liable for any fraudulent charges resulting from the breach. It is known that PIN codes would have been encrypted, but other information might have been stored in a human-readable format.

When the breach was announced, a number of banks imposed daily spending limits on people with affected cards (this wasn’t a very pleasant thing ahead of the holiday shopping rush). Anyway, transactions at Target were down by 3-4% before Christmas, while other American retailers reported strong results.

Earlier, the security experts reported a huge electronic breaking at Adobe Systems, with 152 million usernames and passwords stolen. In that case, the passwords were encrypted, but some flaws in the system could allow hackers decrypt them.

The breach happened within a 19-day period since the end of November. The hack was brought to public attention by the security researcher on 18 December. It later appeared that the details of leaked cards were flooding into online underground criminal markets.

The retail chain has previously been the object of such hacking, paying a $9.75m settlement four years ago. But the extent of the latest breach suggests that the intruders could access its interfaces with banks and credit card companies. Target told its customers last week that its ongoing investigation has proved more personal data had leaked than it was estimated before. The company promised to contact customers and provide tips on how to safeguard against consumer scams. In addition, target offers a year of free credit monitoring and identity theft protection to people who shopped at its stores. You will have 3 months to enroll in the program.

Another Success?….NOT!

UK Online Filter a Disaster

 

British anti-porn filter program was enforced while everyone was on holiday, and it seems that Prime Minister’s attempts to impose it turned out to be an unmitigated disaster.

First of all, the filter is very easy for kids to get around. But now it appears that it blocks access to leading charity websites like ChildLine, the NSPCC and the Samaritans – thus harming kids instead of protecting them.

In other words, in the name of protecting kids, UK Prime Minister cut them off from their life-lines and would allow children to be sexual abused or commit suicide as they cannot get the help they need. Kids have been banned from seeing women’s charities, the British Library and the National Library of Scotland, which might be the first stop for children wanting to do their homework.

Cameron’s filter blocks access to the Parliament and government portals and the websites of politicians. Even if any politically aware children wanted to complain about this to their MP, they cannot. The only good news is that the filter also blocks access to Claire Perry, the MP who has campaigned for the introduction of those filters.

Harry Clapham, who offers guitar lessons on his site, complained that he was also being censored by Cameron’s filter. Thus, a parent who opts in will be safe from guitar lessons giving their children bad dreams. Other users complained that “parental control” is just ISP’s term for switching the whole Internet off. One of the largest British Internet service providers O2 claimed that it was changing its parental control filters in order to unlock access to some of the charities that had been blocked.