Security Octopus

Here is what can happen with you if you do not use SmartHide Service:

A Danish court has ruled that all Danish ISPs have to deny their users access to The Pirate Bay. Most broadband providers are not too happy with this unbalanced decision, and three of them have already announced that they will take it to the Supreme Court.

In a court case initiated by the IFPI, a Danish judge ruled last year that Tele2 had to block its users from accessing The Pirate Bay. IFPI argued that Tele2 was assisting in mass copyright infringement, and that access to the site therefore had to be blocked.

At the time, The Pirate Bay co-founder Brokep told TorrentFreak: “I hope the torrent community understands what this will do to Danish people. It will also act as a very bad precedent for the European Union, and I hope everybody will fight this.”

Unfortunately for the many Danish Pirate Bay users, it got even worse. Last month TDC, Denmark’s largest ISP and owner of most of the cables, decided to block access to The Pirate Bay as a preventive measure. And now, a Danish court has ruled that all ISPs will have to do the same, or else they will face a hefty fine.

The ISPs, however, are not planning to accept the court order without a fight. TDC, Telia and Telenor have announced that they are going to appeal the decision, and they will take the case to the Supreme Court. One of their arguments is that they are not responsible for the potential copyright infringement of their subscribers.

“Accessing The Pirate Bay is not in itself a violation of copyright,” Jens Ottosen of Telia told dn.se. “We make access possible for our subscribers, and they have to decide if it is illegal. It is not our task. If so, we also contribute to illegalities on YouTube, Myspace and Google. It is completely cluttered,” said Ottosen, who is also Chairman of the Danish telecom industry.

Indeed, this case is about more than just The Pirate Bay, it is about censoring the Internet. Will YouTube with all its copyright infringing content be next on the list? Despite the argument whether it is fair to block a BitTorrent site or not, it is completely ineffective. It is fairly easy to circumvent, and all the publicity will only drive the traffic figures up.

In an apparent crackdown on Internet gambling, federal authorities in New York have frozen or seized bank accounts worth $34 million belonging to 27,000 online poker players, according to representatives for the players and account holders.

In an operation that began last week, the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York froze or issued seizure orders for bank accounts in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Arizona held at Wells Fargo, Citibank, Goldwater Bank and Alliance Bank of Arizona.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office had no comment.

The accounts are managed by Allied Systems Inc., and Account Services, which handle cash for popular online poker sites, including Full Tilt Poker, Poker Stars, Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker. Though the money belongs to the poker players, it is held for them in accounts managed by the two service companies.

Account Services, which had an account worth $15 million frozen in its San Francisco bank, doesn’t accept deposits, but writes checks to players who are cashing out, said lawyer for the company, Jeff Ifrah. As a result, thousands of players receiving checks from the company won’t be able to cash them, he said.

The seizures come as a debate over Internet gambling heats up in Washington. Last month, U.S. House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D., Mass.) introduced a bill that would legalize and regulate Internet gambling.

Federal authorities say online gambling is illegal, but Internet-gambling advocates say it is a gray legal area. In 2006, Congress passed a law making it illegal for banks to processing payments for unlawful Internet gambling. Critics say the law is unclear.

Poker players don’t consider poker a game of chance, but a game of skill, and argue that poker shouldn’t be lumped in with sports betting, for example.

The government has prosecuted Internet gambling in the past, including sites that allow users to bet on sports and play poker. The massive seizure by the U.S. attorney is the first time federal authorities have targeted online poker accounts, according the Poker Players Alliance, a Washington-based lobbying group for online poker players.

The Alliance said there are 10 million Americans who play online poker for money, and estimated the market at $6 billion.

The Alliance “is disappointed that this unprecedented action has been commenced against law abiding poker players,” said former U.S. Senator and Alliance Chairman Alfonse D’Amato in a written statement.

Using public wi-fi hotspots has got much riskier as security experts unveil tools that nab login data over the air.

Security experts have gathered at Black Hat

Demonstrated at the Black Hat hacker conference in Las Vegas, the tools make it far easier to steal account details, said Robert Graham of Errata Security.

Identifying files called cookies are stolen in the attack which let hackers pose as their victim.

This gives attackers access to mail messages or the page someone maintains on sites such as MySpace or Facebook.

Hacker gathering

Prior to the demonstration, which involved the live hijacking of a Google mail account (GMail), many sites were thought to be safe because they encrypted the data swapped back and forth when people login.

However, Mr Graham carried out his attack on the unencrypted cookies, tiny text files, many sites use to identify people that regularly return.

The tools created by Mr Graham, called “Hamster” and “Ferret”, watch the traffic flowing in and out of public wi-fi hotspots and let attackers grab cookies as they are passed back to people logging in to their webmail or social network account.

Using the cookie an attacker could pose as a victim and enjoy almost the same level of access to an account as its rightful owner.

There were some defences against the attack, said Mr Graham.

Attackers would be unable to change a password and take over an account as most sites ask people to re-enter their old password before letting them make changes.

Also, said Mr Graham, some webmail services, such as GMail, let people encrypt all the data passed back and forth as they deal with their mail.

Malicious hackers are turning to popular video sites

Mr Graham revealed his findings during a presentation at the four-day Black Hat conference held in Las Vegas. The conference brings together security professionals around the world who swap information about the latest exploits and future vulnerabilities.He said Errata would make the attack tools publicly available via the company’s website for anyone to download.

Also at the conference David Thiel, of security firm iSec Partners, revealed that PC media players have significant vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hi-tech criminals.

The loopholes could be used to attach malicious programs to music or video downloads in order to hijack a PC.

He suggested that popular pages on social networking sites could be subverted by malicious hackers to add the booby-trapped media files.

“The potential for attack is pretty severe,” he said.

Mr Thiel said the makers of the media players had been told about the problems and were working on fixes for them.

Source: BBC.co.uk

In Germany internet censorship is introduced. The bill has already quietly passed. Over 130.000 people in Germany have signed a petition to protect the freedom of speech and information, but they have not been heard. Read details about the consequences, arguments and counter measures here.

Read more…