Intelligent Cyber War Is on the Way

Last week, NATO's Cyber Defense Center held its 4rth annual conference, where it provided security experts with the unique chance to scare the bejesus out of military experts.

According to cyber experts’ reports, the rapid advances in digital war technology might result in a new generation of “intelligent cyber weapons”. Meanwhile, these new weapons can appear all but unstoppable. Enn Tyugu, the NATO IT expert, thinks that such new weapons won’t only be hard to stop, but also hard to be controlled by the users. As such, they may start living their own lives and that’s where fiction becomes reality. Nevertheless, the expert is talking not about Skynet, but about virus attacks like Stuxnet.

The experts explained that such malware is quite autonomous, and is able to operate independently in an unfriendly environment and may sometimes become almost impossible to control. That can result in cyber conflict launched by these agents themselves.

Ilmar Tamm, the head of the NATO Cyber Defense Center, emphasized that Stuxnet and Flame have indicated another form of cyber threats that is expected to bring many challenges to all security experts. In addition, the number of cyber conflicts is currently increasing and it’s important to understand how to classify events and participants.

Nevertheless, American cyber defense expert Kenneth Geers claimed during the conference that the most powerful cyber weapon today is a little bit more down to earth. In fact, it’s just good old propaganda, which can ruin the world just as super new cyber weapons.

The Pirate Bay Responded to RIAA Search Censorship

The world’s largest BitTorrent tracker The Pirate Bay has graciously welcomed the recommendation of the Recording Industry Association of America that search engines ban websites like TPB. The tracker claimed that instead of deterring people, it would attract more traffic to the site.

Recently RIAA’s head Cary Sherman told the Congress that they need to do more to stop Internet piracy. Sherman took to the stage at the Future of Audio hearing and recommended that all search engines, including Google, took responsibility in curbing Internet piracy by censoring services like the Pirate Bay and IsoHunt, while offering legal music services to the users.

The Pirate Bay is of course against censorship, and reacted by releasing the statement saying that the RIAA was trying to ensure that the competing search engines have to stop linking back to the TPB, which is just wonderful. The Pirate Bay also pointed out that about 10% of its traffic comes from competing search engines.

In other words, after implementation of that ban, the TPB’s traffic numbers probably will increase, because users would go directly to The Pirate Bay and use its search instead. This will provide the service a chance to grow even more massive – although it’s undoubtedly hard to compete with Google, if they aren’t able to index media search engines like the TPB, the latter will become the dominant player in the end.

Nevertheless, users in the United Kingdom might be out of luck, depending on their Internet service provider, and some already have to adhere to orders from the British courts to block direct access to The Pirate Bay. The first ISP to do so was Virgin Media, whose users now face a page saying that the ISP has received an order to prevent access to The Pirate Bay in order to protect copyright.

Another ISP, Be Broadband (an O2 subsidiary), was also reported to block the website, but The Pirate Bay proved to be still accessible. Like other major ISPs, Be admitted it will have to bow down to pressure from the court and comply with the demand to block access to TPB. The broadband provider claimed that its hands were tied and it had no other choice but to comply. Meanwhile, despite the best efforts of the entertainment industry, mirror services and proxies are still available everywhere and easy enough to find.

Facebook Advertising Proved Useless

According to the recent poll, 80% of Facebook users have never bought anything advertised on the social network. In fact, the survey states the obvious: people aren’t using Facebook to buy something or get informed, they are rather killing time. There’s also another phenomenon revealed: Facebook fatigue. Around 34% of Facebook users admitted to spending, or wasting less time on Facebook than 6 months ago.

Meanwhile, Facebook’s controversial IPO didn’t go down well with its users either, because 44% claimed it made them less favorable toward the social network, says Reuters. So, all of this doesn’t bode well for the network, because it tries to find out how to translate its huge user base into actual profits. The fact is that people aren’t spending on Facebook, and don’t care about advertisements or comments, which means that Facebook has yet to develop a revenue generating model in the mobile space.

Moreover, the growth is slowing down and it has to, like mobile phone penetration in the developed world a decade ago. There are just not enough people to target with advertising, because more and more of them are now from the 3rd world. Meanwhile, the social network refused to comment on the poll results, but pointed to previous reports saying that Facebook advertising campaigns were successful earlier.

After the IPO, the company’s business model came under even more scrutiny, though it would have been a right way to scrutinize the model before small investors pour their retirement savings in Facebook stock, hoping that they are investing in the next Google or Apple. In the meantime, the notion that Facebook would eventually cash in on what actually amounts to the biggest information mining operation worldwide seems to be wearing off.

Although targeted ads may sound like a good idea, they can also backfire, because Internet users aren’t that keen to see personalized advertisements on their page, in some cases with awkward or downright embarrassing material. Instead, it can be regarded as a tricky balancing act between delivering proper targeted advertising and bad taste. Thus far, the largest social network in the world doesn’t seem to be making this work. So, Zuckerberg has something to consider…

The Pirate Bay Responded to RIAA Search Censorship

The world’s largest BitTorrent tracker The Pirate Bay has graciously welcomed the recommendation of the Recording Industry Association of America that search engines ban websites like TPB. The tracker claimed that instead of deterring people, it would attract more traffic to the site.

Recently RIAA’s head Cary Sherman told the Congress that they need to do more to stop Internet piracy. Sherman took to the stage at the Future of Audio hearing and recommended that all search engines, including Google, took responsibility in curbing Internet piracy by censoring services like the Pirate Bay and IsoHunt, while offering legal music services to the users.

The Pirate Bay is of course against censorship, and reacted by releasing the statement saying that the RIAA was trying to ensure that the competing search engines have to stop linking back to the TPB, which is just wonderful. The Pirate Bay also pointed out that about 10% of its traffic comes from competing search engines.

In other words, after implementation of that ban, the TPB’s traffic numbers probably will increase, because users would go directly to The Pirate Bay and use its search instead. This will provide the service a chance to grow even more massive – although it’s undoubtedly hard to compete with Google, if they aren’t able to index media search engines like the TPB, the latter will become the dominant player in the end.

Nevertheless, users in the United Kingdom might be out of luck, depending on their Internet service provider, and some already have to adhere to orders from the British courts to block direct access to The Pirate Bay. The first ISP to do so was Virgin Media, whose users now face a page saying that the ISP has received an order to prevent access to The Pirate Bay in order to protect copyright.

Another ISP, Be Broadband (an O2 subsidiary), was also reported to block the website, but The Pirate Bay proved to be still accessible. Like other major ISPs, Be admitted it will have to bow down to pressure from the court and comply with the demand to block access to TPB. The broadband provider claimed that its hands were tied and it had no other choice but to comply. Meanwhile, despite the best efforts of the entertainment industry, mirror services and proxies are still available everywhere and easy enough to find.

Iran Enlisted Hackers and Blogger

Some cyber intelligence expert revealed that Iran is stepping up its use of the Internet propaganda, hacking and other sophisticated tools some use on the Internet. It was claimed that the authorities of the country are using a number of paramilitary outfits in the effort.

There are a few interesting facts revealed, one of them being that the efforts of the Iranian government aren’t intended to take on enemies of the regime by direct actions, but instead to promote the ideals of the Islamic revolution. Their main focus is believed to preserve the philosophic foundation of the revolution and to decrease western influences on their local culture.

The experts insisted that the Revolutionary Guard has been paying bloggers $7 per hour to promote their agenda on such online resources as Facebook and forums. That may seem a pretty sweet gig for many, because the official average monthly salary in the country was estimated at about $500. For instance, an Israeli think-tank claims the running rate is $4.3 per hour.

Three years ago, the Rand Corporation also published a report which said that the IRCG played a role in monitoring online communications in the country, trying to “mitigate the influx of corrupting foreign ideals”.

Despite the fact that local propaganda campaigns might seem crude, you shouldn’t forget the Soviet approach was both “subtle” and intelligent, while many still believe in conspiracy theories. Meanwhile, Western propagandists aren’t much better, because they would have people believe in things like Iranians’ intention to put a nuclear warhead and so on.

MegaUpload Battle Continues

MegaUpload’s founder Kim Dotcom and his attorneys keep fighting back the criminal charges brought against them by the American authorities.

Dotcom’s attorneys have recently asked the Virginia Federal Court to drop the charges against the company founder and his colleagues, because the US violated MegaUpload’s 5th amendment right to due process when the country’s authorities shut down the file-sharing service. In case the court agrees to drop the case, this decision would bring one of the largest criminal copyright cases filed by the United States to an end.

In their desperate attempts to shut down Dotcom’s multi-billion dollar business, the authorities of the United States didn’t just seize the website’s domain names and servers, but also took away Kim’s personal belongings. Then, trying to extradite Dotcom and his colleagues, the US law enforcement had asked help from foreign authorities.

Since the moment of their arrest, Kim Dotcom and his colleagues have battled American authorities in order to escape extradition, and their efforts seem to be successful, at least partly.

In addition, Dotcom’s attorney, Ira Rothken, continues insisting that the file-sharing service can’t be served outside the jurisdiction of the United States. That’s why, if the Virginia Federal Court decides to drop the case of MegaUpload, it would clearly represent a deadly blow to the American government, which would eventually be sued itself.

MegaUpload hosting service was closed this past January, and since then the case has been holding the attention of the industry observers all over the world, who are now waiting for the court decision to see what’s going to happen.

Methods to Circumvent American 6-Strikes Law

1st of July 2012 is when the largest effort of the US to fight piracy – the six-strike regime – will start. The system represents the collaboration between the largest country’s Internet service providers and the entertainment industry, represented by the MPAA and RIAA.

The list of participating ISPs includes Time Warner Cable, Comcast, AT&T, Cablevision, and Verizon. The 6-strike system mainly focuses on copyrighted content located on BitTorrent networks.

However, there’s something that raises not just morality questions, but also the legal ones. The matter is that the entertainment industry in cooperation with ISPs is planning to be the judge of all digital material without letting anyone to check on them.

In addition, they believe that the BitTorrent network is facilitating the infringement of copyrighted content, which seems to be one of the most ridiculous ideas to many. However, instead of pinning every drawback of the graduated response regime, we may offer you four convenient ways to circumvent it.

1. VPN services. When the entertainment industry is scanning open P2P networks, your IP address is both vulnerable and easy to track. You can mask your IP address by subscribing to a VPN (Virtual Private Network) – this will hide your real IP from all public view. Moreover, VPNs don’t keep logs, so there won’t be any trail to track.
2. Proxy services. They are quite similar to VPNs, but they do not re-route online traffic through a number of remote servers, which simply hide specific programs and protocols.
3. Seedbox services. In case you want to be 100% secure, check out a seedbox, which provides anonymity by downloading torrent files to some remote machine not attached to your IP address. When the download is ready, the content will be transferred to the user’s PC without BitTorrent’s involvement. Such seedboxes offer fast connection speeds.
4. Private networks. As it was said above, the entertainment industry will scan open P2P networks, including servicers like The Pirate Bay. However, aside from open networks, you can also find private trackers staying under the radar and keeping you safe.

Other alternatives include obsolete utilities like the Internet relay chat (IRC), Usenet, Freenet Project, and digital storage lockers.

স্পাই টেলিস্কোপ উপহার পেল নাসা

মার্কিন যুক্তরাষ্ট্রের গোপন স্পাই এজেন্সি ন্যাশনাল রিকনেইসেন্স অফিস (এনআরও)-এর কাছ থেকে দু’টি স্পেস টেলিস্কোপ উপহার পেয়েছে মহাকাশ গবেষণা প্রতিষ্ঠান নাসা। আদতে মহাকাশ থেকে পৃথিবীর ওপর গুপ্তচরবৃত্তির উদ্দেশ্যে তৈরি হলেও হঠাৎ করেই নাসাকে এই টেলিস্কোপ দুটি এনআরও উপহার দেয়ায় সৃষ্টি হয়েছে নানা প্রশ্নের। খবর ডেইলি মেইল-এর।

জানা গেছে, এনআরও-এর তৈরি টেলিস্কোপ দু’টি দেখতে নাসার হাবল টেলিস্কোপের মতো হলেও অনেক বেশি শক্তিশালী। এটি তৈরিতেও এনআরও ব্যবহার করেছে নাসার চেয়ে উন্নত প্রযুক্তি।

অন্যদিকে একসঙ্গে দুটি স্পেস টেলিস্কোপের মালিকানা পেলেও টেলিস্কোপ দু’টি মহাকাশে পাঠানোর মতো অর্থ নেই দীর্ঘদীন ধরে বাজেট সংকটে ভুগতে থাকা নাসার। শুধু তাই নয়, টেলিস্কোপ দু’টি মহাকাশে পাঠানোর মতো অর্থ নাসা জোগাড় করতে পারলেও এখনো মহাকাশ যাত্রার জন্য পুরোপুরি উপযুক্ত হয়নি টেলিস্কোপ দু’টি।

হাবল টেলিস্কোপের চেয়ে প্রায় ১শ’ গুণ শক্তিশালী নতুন এই টেলিস্কোপ দু’টি এনআরও তৈরি করেছিলো গুপ্তচরবৃত্তির উদ্দেশ্যে। তাই এতে নেই মহাকাশ গবেষণার উপযুক্ত যন্ত্রপাতি। ওয়াশিংটনের রচেস্টার-এ পড়ে থাকা এই টেলিস্কোপ দু’টি মহাকাশ যাত্রা এবং মহাকাশ গবেষণার জন্য আপগ্রেড করতে হলে নাসার খরচ হবে কমকরে ১ বিলিয়ন ডলার, যা কিনা বর্তমানে নাসার সাধ্যের বাইরে। এখন থেকেই টেলিস্কোপ দু’টি নিয়ে কাজ শুরু করলেও ২০২৪ সালের আগে এগুলোর মহাকাশে পৌঁছানোর কোনো সম্ভাবনাই নেই বলেই মনে করছেন নাসার অ্যাস্ট্রোফিজিক্স-এর একজন ডিরেক্টর পল হার্টজ।

তবে নাসার বিজ্ঞানীরা আশা করছেন, দেরি করে হলেও মহাকাশের ডার্ক ম্যাটার নিয়ে গবেষণার কাজে গুরুত্বপূর্ণ ভূমিকা রাখতে পারবে নতুন এই টেলিস্কোপ দু’টি। কিন্তু তারপরেও এনআরও-র এই টেলিস্কোপ দু’টি তৈরির পেছনে মূল উদ্দেশ্য কি ছিল এবং কেনই বা হঠাৎ করে নাসাকে উপহার দেয়া হলো, এই প্রশ্নগুলো থেকেই যায় বলে মন্তব্য করেছে মেইল।

Farmers Won’t Get Internet

It seems that the Labour Party knows less about farming than about technology, as one of the MPs hit the headlines last week with his suggestions that rural broadband funding should be spent to other places – indeed, farming has existed without the web forever!

The MP suggested that public funding for faster broadband in rural Lancashire is better to be spent in industrial areas, because the benefits will be far greater. Meanwhile, Lancashire County Council and LEP were already spending around $50 million on faster rural broadband. However, it was still difficult to see how these investments would create jobs.

The MP claimed that demographics show that getting faster broadband won’t create jobs, the geography does too. Broadband is called to be only useful for new businesses, which are media intensive, don’t shift product and don’t meet customers. The only question is how many would fit that category.

In other words, rural people weren’t going to get better broadband. Both mobile devices and 4G were considered being of greater significance than landline fast rural broadband. Although the same argument could be applied to the government as well, few would answer the question of how many politicians have been sticking their paws up for free iPads. Instead, this is regarded by the MP as a class thing – as such, Lancashire’s rural population becomes a playground for the wealthy.

In response, the Countryside Alliance issued a statement, where it described the MP’s comments as “criminal”. In our digital era, fast and reliable broadband connection is as important as gas, electricity or water. For some reason, the MP didn’t understand how 2 decades ago farmers were among the first to get their businesses on the Internet and now they have about 90% of their administration online.

Twenty years ago, the National Farmers Union established an Internet service provider for farmers and spent a lot of efforts and money to make sure they realized that requiring 4 RAM to run wasn’t really a livestock requirement.

By the way, after the comments appeared in the news, the MP’s post has mysteriously disappeared. The suggestions are that the Labour Party Central office still hopes that the countryside voters could get hacked off that the Tory party is taking them out of the European Union, and away from their salary meal tickets.

Legitimate Alternative Won’t Stop Pirates

The entertainment industry disagrees with the studies saying that the more legitimate content there is available, at a reasonable price, the less likely people are to pirate.

AFACT (Australia’s Federation Against Copyright Theft) claimed that people won’t stop to illegally download copyrighted content even if they have local, legal access to the same content. The movie industry group claimed that piracy was inevitable and therefore the country needed to change the law to discourage it. The suggestions were that people may be drawn to piracy if films or TV shows screened later in the country than in the US. A good example to prove this was popular TV series Game of Thrones, which was heavily pirated in Australia.

The matter is that the consumers no longer want to wait for the show to air a week after the United States, and the anti-piracy outfit believed it unreasonable that pirates were unwilling to wait. It was claimed that there were legitimate services, and discussions around further availability; however, content pirates would be still engaged in unauthorized downloading as it’s free.

One of the unreleased researches commissioned by the Intellectual Property Awareness Foundation (IPAF) revealed that 86% of persistent infringers and 74% of casual infringers pirated because of cost. Over 75% of them knew about legitimate downloading services.

It seems that the cost of legal content is the main issue in places with low salaries where the cost of the product isn’t adjusted. Meanwhile, IPAF supports AFACT and the federation’s American sponsor, the MPAA, on its board of members among other copyright owners. That’s the people consistently overstating the cost of piracy to business.

Anti-piracy outfit argued that the legislation hadn’t kept up with the rapid cycle of technological change. Although a lot of people might agree with that, the argument of the entertainment industry that governments should lock up people on the flimsiest of evidence without making any changes to its business model is bogus as well.

However, the studios are recommended to release popular programs worldwide at the same time instead of releasing them in different places. If this is impossible, the industry should accept that the content will be pirated. In addition, instead of releasing material at a single price it needs to look at regional pricing and manage it with language dubbing.