Iran Failed to Block VPNs

An outfit running a VPN service for Iranian clients announced that the attempts of the local authorities to block the service during the weekend have failed.

The country tried to block VPN ports all across the country in order to prevent citizens from visiting banned websites like Facebook and Skype, but the owner of a Brazilian VPN service claimed these attempts have largely been inefficient. According to Joshua Van Raalte, the users of the “Hide My Ass” free proxy haven’t been affected by the ban.

He believes that the latest attempt of the government at Internet restriction will most likely be fruitless. Van Raalte pointed that the block on VPNs was confirmed by a local protester on Facebook, which should have been banned in Iran.

In the meanwhile, the Chinese government has also spent many years and millions of dollars on technology which should have blocked VPNs, but yet they still get through regardless. In addition, the provision of proxy technology, instruments and software has so far managed to circumvent all attempts at censorship.

Over 1,200 Iranians make use of HMA’s free proxy service every week, despite that fact that it is officially blocked by the Iranian authorities. Joshua Van Raalte promised that “Hide My Ass” will keep supporting Iranian users as much as it can, because the company’s mission is to promote openness and the global freedom of expression provided by the worldwide web.

Jailed Hacker Cracked Prison Network

Nicholas Webber, jailed for 5 years for creating a hacker’s forum website, was accidentally invited into an IT class in prison. As you might guess, the consequences of this move appeared difficult.

Now the prison authorities are arguing about who let it happen, but it actually doesn’t matter any more. For some reason, Nicholas Webber was allowed into an IT class in his prison, despite the fact that he was serving 5 years for launching a website called GhostMarket. The latter allowed people interested in writing computer viruses to partake of stolen IDs and enjoy private credit card data to congregate.

The hacker was caught using hacked personal data to purchase everything from smart devices to hotel stays. Although one might have thought that an IT class would have been dull for such expert, in fact inviting him to an IT class encouraged him to enjoy a little mischief. In result, the computer network at Her Majesty’s Prison Isis, South London, was hacked.

The mistake which led to the hacking back in 2011 has only come to light after the teacher at the IT class in jail, Michael Fox, launched a lawsuit against the college which employed him for unfair dismissal. The teacher claims he wasn’t aware that Webber had been a hacker. However, Prison Isis banned him and sent notes to other prisons that his talents were allegedly imperfect. As a result, Kensington and Chelsea College also laid him off.

According to the representatives of the prison, at the time of this incident the educational computer system at Isis was a closed network, without access to personal data or wider access to the worldwide web or other prison systems. However, the press reports announced that a “major panic” ensued. Michael Fox told an employment tribunal that the perceived problem was there was a tutor who had consequently been excluded by the jail and charged with allowing a hacker to crack the jail’s network.

Of course, someone must have known that Nicholas Webber was charged for hacking before he went to the IT class – the individual was sometimes referred to as a “notorious cyber-criminal”. It is unclear who might it have been if not Fox.

Her Majesty’s Prison Isis specializes in criminals under 25 and is located next to Her Majesty’s Prison, Belmarsh. It is also considered to be a maximum security facility. In the meantime, after the accident the BBC reported that the prison had been “bedeviled” with faulty technology

PC Market Expected to Decline in 2013

The personal computer slump is here to stay. The industry observers predict that shipments of personal computers will decline by 1.3% this year, on top of a 3.7% decline last year. Talking about numbers, approximately 345 million computers will be shipped in 2013.

Unfortunately, Windows 8 failed to rekindle interest in personal computers and the industry experts think that the lukewarm reception of Microsoft’s new operating system will keep plaguing the market. In the meantime, the users are still going after tablets, while Microsoft has had little luck pushing Windows RT and Windows 8 in the tablet space.

According to the estimations of the market observers, sales of desktop computers are expected to slow down in all markets. However, sales of portable PCs might increase in emerging markets. In other words, it’s quite good news for the producers of mid range and entry level laptops, as well as to some extent AMD, slated to introduce some very competitive low-end APUs soon. Nevertheless, it is still sad news for both Intel and AMD, because they will not cash in on the tablet craze in 2013.

According to IDC vice president Loren Loverde, increase in emerging markets has also slowed considerably. He also pointed out that the consumers are still choosing more portable alternatives over personal computers (tablets). Despite the fact that the PC makers do not consider tablets – with limited local storage, file system, and lesser focus on traditional productivity as functional competitors to personal computers, they are still winning consumer dollars, offering mobility and consumer appeal nevertheless. The only good news is that sales are predicted to pick up in the end of 2013, with Microsoft cutting support for Windows XP.

বিনামূল্যে ওয়াইফাই কল সুবিধা আসছে ব্ল্যাকবেরিতে

কানাডিয়ান স্মার্টফোন নির্মাতা রিসার্চ ইন মোশন (রিম) তাদের বিবিএম মেসেজিং সার্ভিসে ওয়াইফাই নেটওয়ার্ক ব্যবহার করে ফ্রি ভয়েস সেবা চালুর কথা জানিয়েছে। খবর ইয়াহু নিউজ-এর।

রিম ব্ল্যাকবেরি ১০ বাজারে ছাড়ার আগেই নতুন এ সার্ভিস চালুর ঘোষণা দিলো। বুধবার নতুন সেবা চালুর কথা প্রকাশ করে ব্ল্যাকবেরি। উত্তর আমেরিকায় আইফোন ও অ্যান্ড্রয়েড ডিভাইসের প্রতিদ্বন্দ্বী হিসেবে ব্ল্যাকবেরির বাজার তৈরি করতে রিম এ সিদ্ধান্ত নিয়েছে।

ওয়াইফাই নেটওয়ার্কের মাধ্যমে ব্ল্যাকবেরি ৬ ভার্সন থেকে পরবর্তী ভার্সনগুলোতে জনপ্রিয় বিবিএম মেসেজিং সার্ভিসের মাধ্যমে কল করার এ সুবিধা পাওয়া যাবে বলে জানানো হয়। বিশ্বজুড়ে ৬ কোটি বিবিএম ব্যবহারকারী রয়েছে। সার্ভিসটিতে ফ্রি ভয়েস কল সিস্টেম চালু করায় উন্নয়নশীল দেশগুলোতে এর চাহিদা বাড়তে পারে বলে জানায় রিম।

ওয়াইফাই নেটওয়ার্কের মাধ্যমে সীমিত আকারে এ সেবা পাওয়া যাবে। নতুন এ সার্ভিসে স্প্লিট স্ক্রিন অপশনের মাধ্যমে ভয়েস কলের পাশাপাশি টেক্সট মেসেজও আদান-প্রদান করা যাবে।  বর্তমানে ব্ল্যাকবেরি অপারেটিং সিস্টেম ৬-এর পরের ভার্সনের ইউজাররা বিনামূল্যে সার্ভিসটি আপডেট করতে পারবেন।

রিম জানায়, বিবিএম ভয়েস ফিচারটি উন্নয়নশীল দেশের জন্য বেশ উপযোগী। এটি সাধারণ টেক্সট মেসেজের চেয়ে আলাদা। প্রতিটি টেক্সটের জন্য আলাদাভাবে চার্জ দেয়ার প্রয়োজন হবে না। দক্ষিণ আফ্রিকা, নাইজেরিয়া এবং ইন্দোনেশিয়ায় ব্ল্যাকবেরির ব্যাপক চাহিদা থাকলেও উত্তর আমেরিকায় ডিভাইসটির বাজার সৃষ্টির চেষ্টা চলছে বলে জানায় রিম। এছাড়া জানুয়ারির ৩০ তারিখে ব্ল্যাকবেরি ১০ অপারেটিং সিস্টেম বাজারে আসবে।

সার্ন সায়েন্টিস্টদের 'নয়া গুরু' কুংফু নান!

হিমালয়ের বৌদ্ধ সন্যাসিনীদের কাছ থেকে মহাজাগতিক শক্তির শিক্ষা নিচ্ছেন ইউরোপিয়ান অর্গানাইজেশন ফর নিউক্লিয়ার রিসার্চ বা সার্ন-এর বিজ্ঞানীরা! বৌদ্ধ সন্যাসিনীদের মার্শাল আর্ট প্রদর্শনী দেখে হতবুদ্ধি হয়ে যাওয়া বিজ্ঞানীদের, মহাজাগতিক শক্তির সঙ্গে সন্যাসিনীদের মধ্যে নিহিত শক্তির মিলের বিস্তারিত বুঝিয়ে দেন বৌদ্ধ ধর্মগুরু গায়েলইয়াং ড্রুকপা। খবর রয়টার্স-এর।

সার্নে ১২ জন বৌদ্ধ সন্যাসিনী আর  ৪৯ বছর বয়সি ড্রুকপার পরিদর্শন পুরোটাই বৈজ্ঞানিক খাতিরে নয় বলেই জানান ড্রুকপা। মহাবিশ্বের ভালোর জন্য নারী-পুরুষ উভয়ের মধ্যে নিহিত শক্তির সমান প্রয়োজন বলেই মন্তব্য করেন ড্রুকপা।

বৌদ্ধ সন্যাসিনীদের সঙ্গে নিয়ে পৃথিবী ভ্রমণ করে বিশ্বের বিভিন্ন দেশের মানুষের সামনে মার্শাল আর্টের প্রদর্শনীর মাধ্যমে নারী-পুরুষ বৈষম্য ঘোচাতে সাধারণ মানুষের মধ্যে সচেতনতা বৃদ্ধি এবং নারীর ক্ষমতায়নের প্রয়োজনীয়তা উপলব্ধি করানোর চেষ্টা করছেন বলে জানান ড্রুকপা।

কয়েক শতকেরও বেশি সময় ধরে তিব্বতে নারীদের মার্শাল আর্টে শিক্ষা নেয়ার ওপরে রয়েছে নিষেধাজ্ঞা। বছর তিনেক আগে এই প্রথা ভেঙ্গে নারীদেরও মার্শাল আর্টে প্রশিক্ষণ দেবার সিদ্ধান্ত নেন ড্রুকপা।

ড্রুকপার সিদ্ধান্তে সমর্থন জানিয়েছেন সার্ন সায়েন্টিস্ট পলিন গ্যাগনন। সাম্প্রতিক সময়ে বিজ্ঞানের জগতে নারীদের কম উপস্থিতি নিয়ে নিয়মিত ব্লগে লিখছিলেন সার্নের এই পদার্থবিজ্ঞানী।

Nasa to encrypt data after its latest laptop loss

US space agency Nasa has ordered that the data on all its laptops must be encrypted, after losing another one of its portable computers.Continue reading the main story

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Until the process is complete, it has forbidden staff from removing Nasa-issued laptops containing sensitive information from its facilities.

The order follows the loss of a device containing "sensitive personally identifiable information".

There have been several similar incidents over recent years.

Nasa said the latest incident had occurred on 31 October, when a laptop and documents were stolen from a locked vehicle of one of its employees at Nasa headquarters in Washington DC.

The machine was password protected, but the agency acknowledged that the information might still be accessible to hackers since it was not encrypted.

Encryption would have scrambled the data, requiring a complicated code to make it understandable again.

As a result, Nasa has warned its workers to watch out for bogus messages.

"All employees should be aware of any phone calls, emails, and other communications from individuals claiming to be from Nasa or other official sources that ask for personal information or verification of it," an agency-wide email published by news site Spaceref stated.

"Because of the amount of information that must be reviewed and validated electronically and manually, it may take up to 60 days for all individuals impacted by this breach to be identified and contacted."

Encryption order

As a result of the security breach, Nasa's chief information officer, Linda Cureton, has said that with immediate effect laptops containing information about the following topics could only leave its buildings if the relevant data was encrypted:

• the international sale or transport of weapons, nuclear equipment or other materials that fall under the US's export administration regulations
• information about Nasa's human resources
• other "sensitive but unclassified" data

She said that she wanted the maximum possible number of laptops to be encrypted by Wednesday and a target of all laptops a month later. In addition employees have been banned from storing sensitive data on mobile phones, tablets and other portable devices.

The Nasa Watch blog, which comments on affairs at the agency, had previously criticized it for a series of other data losses.

It noted that the organisation had been warned in 2009 that it was not taking enough steps to sufficiently protect information and had reported the loss or theft of 48 of its mobile computing devices between April 2009 and April 2011.

This is not the first time Nasa has promised action to address the problem.

In March, Nasa administrator Charles Bolden told the House Appropriations Committee Subcommittee on Commerce that that he was going to sign a directive ordering all portable devices to use encryption, after acknowledging the agency was "woefully deficient" when compared to other government departments.

Rat heart cells help create walking 'bio-bots'

Each twitch of the rat cells helps the tiny bio-bot move

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Tiny biological robots that walk to the beat of a thin sheet of rat heart cells have been created by US scientists.

The "bio-bots" were fabricated using a 3D printer and then seeded with the cardiac cells.

The regular twitching motion of the heart cells makes the tiny structure flex and slowly inch along.

The project could lead to bio-bots with different shapes, seeded with all sorts of cells, that find a role in medicine or as sensors, said the researchers.

The 7mm long bio-bots were fabricated at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and resemble a diving board. They have one long leg supported towards one end by a broad stumpy foot.

A 3D printing process was used to build up layers to form the board and foot of the bio-bot from hydrogel - a biologically inert goo often used in tissue engineering work.

Cleaning up

A separate procedure was used to coat the underside of the long board with a single sheet of living rat cardiac cells. When the heart cells twitch in unison they make the long board curl and act as a lever to push the bio-bot a tiny distance forward. The bio-bot's top speed has been clocked at about 1mm every four seconds.

Prof Rashid Bashir, who led the research at the University of Illinois, said the team's tiny bio-bots could find a role as sensors or in environmental reclamation projects.

"Our goal is to see if we can get this thing to move toward chemical gradients, so we could eventually design something that can look for a specific toxin and then try to neutralise it," said Prof Bashir in a statement. "Now you can think about a sensor that's moving and constantly sampling and doing something useful, in medicine and the environment."

The research team is now making bio-bots of many shapes to find other ways for them to move and coating them with different types of cells to give them new abilities. They could be seeded with nerve cells or light-sensitive cells to give them more control over where they went.

"We have the design rules to make these millimetre-scale shapes and different physical architectures, which hasn't been done with this level of control," said Prof Bashir. "What we want to do now is add more functionality to it."

A paper describing the Illinois research appeared in Nature's Scientific Reports.

Anonymous hacker group attacks Israeli websites

Hacking group Anonymous has launched a series of cyber attacks against websites in Israel.Continue reading the main story

Data bombardments briefly knocked some sites offline and led to others being defaced with pro-Palestinian messages.

The OpIsrael campaign was launched by the hacking collective in retaliation for attacks on Gaza.

The cyber attacks come as the Israeli army updates its web campaign adding "achievements" and "badges" for regular visitors.

Anonymous said it had launched the OpIsrael campaign following threats by the Israeli government to cut all Gaza's telecommunication links. This, said the group in a statement posted to the AnonRelations website, "crossed a line in the sand".

"We are ANONYMOUS and NO ONE shuts down the Internet on our watch," it said.

The group warned the Israeli government not to cut off telecom and web links and urged it to end military operations in Gaza. If the attacks did not end, Israel would feel the group's "full and unbridled wrath".

Hours after the statement was launched, Anonymous posted a list of 87 sites it claimed had been defaced or attacked as part of OpIsrael. Many of the sites had their homepages replaced with messages in support of Hamas and the Palestinians.

Anonymous also produced a package of information for people in Gaza detailing alternative ways for them to communicate if net and other telecommunication links were cut.

At the same time as the Anonymous attacks were being carried out, the Israeli Defence Force re-started tools on its blog that reward people for repeat visits and interacting with the site.

Called IDF Ranks, the tools add a "game" element to the blog and reward repeat visitors with points. When visitors have amassed enough points they get a virtual military rank.

A visitor who goes to the site 10 times gets a "consistent" badge and someone who does lots of searches gets rewarded with the "research officer" rank.

The army said the rank system was turned off briefly as its social media sites had received very heavy traffic. On Wednesday, it began a live feed about its military operation against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Similarly, Hamas has been giving running commentaries on its mortar and rocket attacks on Israeli targets via Twitter.

Parents Abandon Children to the Internet

Despite the fact that parents admit they are worried about the influence the Internet may have on their kids, the recent report issued by McAfee says that a lot of 5-year-olds already own or use Internet enabled electronic devices.

The study in question surveyed two thousand parents of kids between 5 and 15 years old. 60% of the respondents regularly let their children go to the Internet without their supervision. The results of the survey reveal that 25% of kids aged 5 have been left alone at the computer with Internet access, as well as 40% of 6-year-olds. More than 50% of 7-year-olds were also said to be left to their PCs.

In the meantime, the research found out that around 17% of parents were shocked to find their kids on inappropriate portals like those containing adult content, information about eating disorders, as well as on social networks. 14% of kids under 10 have admitted in a conversation with their parents that they accidentally ended up on pornographic images.

According to McAfee report, most of the parents agree that the worldwide web poses a threat, the bigger one than 5 years ago. Although having worries about the material available on the Internet, 50% of the surveyed adults didn’t bother to do anything to protect their children from this threat. Moreover, around 30% of respondents told McAfee that it’s the media’s responsibility to not let their children end up on porno sites.

Of course, it’s easy to imagine a teenager figuring out an iPad effortlessly, but the industry still takes such results with a pinch of salt. The matter is that with such kind of study it is very easy to make sure the results match the agenda, especially given the fact that McAfee offers everyone the Family Protection suite of software.

Google Wants to Privatize the Internet

Consumer Watchdog claimed that the authorities should keep track of what international corporations like Google and Amazon are doing online, as well as to reject their applications to purchase new top level domains in bulk.

The watchdog outfit has recently written an open letter to ICANN and other relevant authorities. In the letter, John M Simpson, the Consumer Watchdog privacy project director, explained that there were plans by such giants as Google and Amazon to purchase enormous amounts of new top level domains. According to Consumer Watchdog, it is one matter for a corporation to have an intention to purchase associated domains like .google, .youtube, or .amazon, but it‘s not what the companies are looking to do.

Consumer Watchdog pointed out that the search engine is using its subsidiary named Charlestone Road Registry to spend almost $19,000,000 on such domain names as .eat, .buy, .web, .book, .free, and .family. At the same time, Amazon wants to own .shop, .free, .like, and .game. All in all, the companies are expecting to purchase 101 and 76 domain strings accordingly.

In its letter, the watchdog pointed out that generic words can’t be the property of any entity, because when such words are used in a generic way they belong to everyone. However, according to Consumer Watchdog, in case the companies are allowed to purchase generic names, they will be closing off common words that they have no IP rights over, nor are they even associated with the brand. John M Simpson has warned that ICANN will be allowing the international giants to bypass nation-states’ entrenched legal processes in order to get legal and recognized trademark protections.

In this happens, some argue that corporations like Google and Amazon will be doing nothing else than effectively privatizing parts of the worldwide web, which could later turn into the walled gardens. Consumer Watchdog claims that both Google and Amazon already position themselves as dominant players on the market and in the online space. That’s why if the authorities allow them further control, this would pose a real threat to the free and open web that the Internet users rely upon.