YouTube Flooded with Fake Pirate Movies

YouTube is again under pressure from the copyright owners, but this time with a quite unexpected claim. The video streaming service is under attack for allowing its users to upload videos that send potential pirates to scammy websites.

In recent months, YouTube has become a battleground over the DMCA and the copyright owners’ war with Google. The record labels were the most active complainers, and the MPAA has just added pressure on YouTube, this time by linking to an article published by moviemaker and anti-piracy advocate Ellen Seidler, which criticizes the streaming service for allowing Internet users to upload fake movies leading others to scammy websites. Such fake movies can be found on YouTube by searching for the name of any mainstream movie adding “full movie”. Such videos usually instruct users to “click the link” below the video to access the full film, but instead lead to scammy websites.

The anti-piracy advocate noted that such fakes pollute YouTube’s results and make the anti-piracy work much harder, because the copyright owners now have to filter the fake movies. But consider for a moment the tremendous negative effect on pirates: earlier, people were able to search for a movie on YouTube, filter out all clips less than 20 minutes long and get a decent copy of the film. But now YouTube’s search results are a horrible place to do so.

If you think that Hollywood must be grateful for someone else infecting potential pirates with malware, which is piracy deterrence, then you are wrong – instead, they urge YouTube to clean up its site, suggesting to do so by detecting and removing these fakes with ContentID.

Thanks to TorrentFreak for providing the source of the article.

5% of UK Users Branded as “Hardcore Pirates”

The local Intellectual Property Office has revealed that about 25% of all UK media consumers pirated at least once during a recent 3-month period. The same report showed that infringement of video content was up this year, but music has shown a significant decrease.

In fact, the statistics showed that about 15% of Internet users consumed infringing content during the above said period, which is about 6.7 million people. But the study considered only users who had actually consumed content online rather than all Internet users, so the number of infringers increased to 25%.

The use of P2P networks has declined from 12% to 10% among all Internet users and from 26% to 23% among infringers. So far, uTorrent has been the most popular client used for infringing, but its usage has also declined from 17% of infringers in 2015 to 12% this year. 11% of them use The Pirate Bay for content downloading. As for infringement levels, they also vary across content formats, with the highest levels relating to music: 8% of all Internet users obtain it from unauthorized sources. 7% of users admit obtaining TV shows from illegal sources, 6% infringed movies. At the same time, consumption of legitimate content has gone up.

More interesting was people’s motivation to obtain illegal content: because it is free (49%), convenient (45%) and quick (42%). As a result, about 25% of infringers say that cheaper prices would make them pirate less, while 20% say that availability of legal sources would help.

Nevertheless, there are relatively few hardcore pirates in the United Kingdom: only 5% of all Internet users in the country admitted to exclusively obtaining content from illegal sources.

Thanks to TorrentFreak for providing the source of the article.

10m Android Devices Infected with New Malware@@

More than 10m devices running Google’s Android OS have been infected with HummingBad – a new piece of malware that is able to take over a smartphone or tablet, steal and sell on user data, including banking information and other data for identify theft. It is also able to download unauthorized apps and tap on advertising.

Security firms have been tracking the malware for the past few months. According to their statistics, after a spike in infections in May, HummingBad has now passed the 10 million mark. Security experts explain that it can infect an Android device if the user browses the infected website, in so-called “drive-by-download” attacks. After this, the malware tries to gain access to the underlying Android system by using “root access” to take full control. If it fails, it attempts to trick the user into giving almost full control via a fake update alert.

Once HummingBad has control of the Android smartphone or tablet, it can force it to download apps and tap on adverts in order to generate fraudulent advertising revenue without the device owner’s knowledge. Besides, the hackers could sell access to the device or the user’s data. Infected devices have been detected all over the world with 1.6m devices in China, 1.35m in India, 288,000 in the US and 100,000 in the UK and Australia. Google admits it has been aware of that malware and is constantly improving Android, actively blocking installations of infected apps.

Nowadays, smartphones are increasingly popular, so malware targeting both Android and iOS has increased in volume and effectiveness. In response, the platform developers made further moves to protect devices from such malware. However, in this case Apple has had more success in getting users to upgrade to the latest and most secure versions of its operating systems thanks to its control of both hardware and software. As for Android updates, it can take months if not years, because Google does not directly control most of the devices.

Google has recently separated security patches from the rest of the operating system, and now security updates are pushed out on a monthly basis for its own mobile devices. At the same time, other Android manufacturers like Samsung and LG promised to do the same. However, many other manufacturers are slow to release updates to user phones, which leaves users exposed.

If your device is infected with HummingBad, a factory reset might be the only recourse. Moreover, even then it could remain.

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ICTs for a Sustainable World

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and targets will stimulate action over the next fifteen years in areas of critical importance for humanity and the planet. Please click on the icons at the bottom of the page to learn how ICTs can help achieve each of the SDGs:

• People: We are determined to end poverty and hunger, in all their forms and dimensions, and to ensure that all human beings can fulfil their potential in dignity and equality and in a healthy environment.
• Planet: We are determined to protect the planet from degradation, including through sustainable consumption and production, sustainably managing its natural resources and taking urgent action on climate change, so that it can support the needs of the present and future generations.
• Prosperity: We are determined to ensure that all human beings can enjoy prosperous and fulfilling lives and that economic, social and technological progress occurs in harmony with nature.
• Peace: We are determined to foster peaceful, just and inclusive societies which are free from fear and violence. There can be no sustainable development without peace and no peace without sustainable development.
• Partnership: We are determined to mobilize the means required to implement this Agenda through a revitalised Global Partnership for Sustainable Development, based on a spirit of strengthened global solidarity, focused in particular on the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable and with the participation of all countries, all stakeholders and all people.

 ​All three pillars of sustainable development – economic development, social inclusion and environmental protection – need ICTs as key catalysts, and ICTs will be absolutely crucial for achieving the SDGs. Please click on the icons below to learn more about how ICTs can help achieve each of the SDGs

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Google Offered Legal Help to YouTube Users

Google is helping to defend YouTube users who find themselves on the wrong side of a copyright claim, following a series of skirmishes with established media and others.

This was done after privacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) successfully defended a woman whose video of her son dancing to Prince’s Let’s Go Crazy had been removed from YouTube due to “copyright infringement”: the music label issued a DMCA notice ordering to take it down.

Google announced that with approval of the video creators, the company would keep such videos live on YouTube in the United States and feature them in the YouTube Copyright Center as examples of fair use. The company promised to cover the cost of any copyright lawsuits brought against them. Of course, Google won’t cover the court costs of every user on its streaming service, but the aim of the company is to demystify the process by which users could wield the law as effectively as representatives of the entertainment industry. Google has compiled a playlist of videos about which it has received complaints that it says it is going to defend in court.

Since tech firms rely on user-generated content and don’t want to deal with a potential flood of costly lawsuits from corporate rights holders, abuse of the DMCA is rampant and often used as a tool for political reprisal. The EFF can provide examples of creative uses of the takedown process – from a restaurant seeking to corner the market on a particular dessert recipe (by demanding to take down every recipe) to the Church of Scientology.

On the other hand, the industry observers say that tech firms were generally “evasive and unconcerned about even the most fundamental rights of Internet users”.

The well-known hacking collective Anonymous announced itself “at war” with the Islamic State following the attacks in Paris, expanding its “#OpISIS” online campaign. The continuation of operation was announced on 15 November via one of the major Anonymous twitter accounts, @GroupAnon.

The group has published a video (originally in French), where a figure wearing Anonymous’ iconic Guy Fawkes mask addressed the terror group and promised to hunt them down. In the meantime, a loosely related group of hackivists named BinarySec has also confirmed its online stance against Isis.

The industry watchers confirm that opposition to Isis is nothing new amongst hacktivist communities. For example, both BinarySec and Anonymous, more broadly, have been disrupting jihadi online communications for a while now. Their operation began early in 2015 as #OpCharlieHebdo, where Anonymous devoted themselves to rooting out the social media accounts of Isis supporters.

The hackers declared a partial victory in #OpISIS already in February, after they managed to seize control of about 100 Twitter accounts associated with the group. Since February, Anonymous have made use of various tools to hinder Isis on the Internet. They seized social media accounts by guessing passwords or abusing reset emails or flagged them to either Twitter or Facebook to be shut down.

Besides, the hacking group has been using such tools as DDoS attacks, which are designed to overwhelm a destination website with traffic, in order to bring down public Islamic State sites. According to statistics, the hackers have had success, bringing down almost 150 websites, flagging over 100,000 Twitter accounts and reporting about 5,000 propaganda videos.

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China Stocks Tumble; Other Asian Markets Start to Find Footing

Chinese stocks tumbled on Tuesday, bringing two-day losses to nearly 12%, but other markets in Asia rebounded after a big global selloff, a signal that China’s effect on stocks was waning.

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http://m.bdnews24.com/en/detail/tech/1010632

Kali Linux 2.0 Released — Most Powerful OS for #Security Researchers and Hackers

Offensive Security, the creators of Swiss army knife for Security researchers, Penetration testers and Hackers have finally released the much awaited and most powerful version of Kali Linux 2.0.

Kali Linux 2.0 (Codename ‘Kali Sana’), an open-source penetration testing platform brings hundreds of Penetration Testing, Forensics, Hacking and Reverse Engineering tools together into a Debian-based Linux distribution.

Kali Linux 2.0 offers a redesigned user interface for streamlined work experience, along with a new multi-level menus and tool categories options.

Kali Linux 2.0 is now a rolling distribution, means users will receive tools and core system updates frequently.

Kali Linux 2.0 Features:

• Runs on Linux kernel 4.0, 
• use full Gnome 3 Desktop instead of gnome-fallback, 
• improved hardware and wireless driver coverage, 
• support for a variety of Desktop Environments, 
• updated desktop environment and tools, 
• Featuring new cutting-edge wireless penetration tools, 
• Kali Linux now added desktop notifications, so that you do not miss anything, 
• Support Ruby 2.0, which will make Metasploit will load much faster, 
• Kali 2.0 added inbuilt screencasting tool so that you can record desktop.

Sadly, Kali team has removed the Metasploit Community and Pro packages. Instead, now just offers open-source Metasploit-framework package pre-installed.

Video Teaser:

Upgrade to Kali 2.0

Kali Linux users can upgrade their Kali 1.x to Kali 2.0 without reinstalling whole operating system from scratch. To do this, you will need to edit your source.list entries, and run a dist-upgrade as shown below. 

cat << EOF > /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://http.kali.org/kali sana main non-free contrib
deb http://security.kali.org/kali-security/ sana/updates main contrib non-free
EOF

apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade # get a coffee, or 10.
reboot

Download Kali 2.0 Penetration Testing Platform

Kali Linux 2.0 is available to download in following flavors...

• Kali Linux 64 bit
• Kali Linux 32 bit
• Kali Linux VMWare or VirtualBox images
• Kali 2.0 for ARM architecture

…from the official website. You can download it either from direct download link or using Torrents.

A New Company Called Alphabet Now Owns Google; Sundar Pichai Becomes New CEO

Well, this was a very unexpected move by Google.

Google Co-Founder Larry Page announced a restructuring of the whole company, revealing the creation of the umbrella "Alphabet" corporation.

But, don’t worry… Google isn’t dead! Rather, Google will become part of Alphabet.

Why Google Rebrands As ‘Alphabet’

Over time, Google, the Mountain View company has become a lot more than just a Search Engine.

Google created and acquired a large number of other popular Internet services, including Android, YouTube and Gmail, that makes too much difficult for a single company to manage all of them effectively.

According to Google Founders, it’s time, when different projects require different leaders, different company cultures, and different types of resources.

"Our model is to have a strong CEO, who runs each business, with Sergey and me in service to them as needed," Page wrote.

So the founders decided to create an all new parental brand that will manage both Google as well as its other far-flung projects — called ‘Alphabet’, going to be the biggest tech company most people have never heard of.

As a part of the new structure, Alphabet will manage Google and all of its other products, including:

Google

• Calico, an anti-aging biotech Research Division
• Nest, Google's Smart-Home project
• Sidewalk, a company, focused on Smart Cities
• Fiber, Company for High-speed Internet services
• Investment arms, such as Google Capital and Google Ventures
• R&D unit, such as Google X, developing Self-driving cars and Drones.

Alphabet Inc. will replace Google Inc. as the publicly traded company on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange, and shareholders will get one Alphabet share for every Google share they previously owned.

G is for 'Google' and 'Sundar Pichai 'is New CEO

Google’s senior vice president Sundar Pichai (Pichai Sundararajan), currently senior vice president of products, will be the new CEO of the Search Engine.

Google is now a more coherent company than it was previous. Google will now include the company's core businesses, including:

• Search Engine
• Advertising, Adwords, and Adsense
• Google Maps
• YouTube, the Video Service
• Android, Mobile operating system
• Chrome operating system
• related technical infrastructure.

And the current CEO Larry Page will become Alphabet’s CEO. Co-founder Sergey Brin will be its president, and Eric Schmidt will be the executive chairman of Alphabet.

"It is clear to us and our board that it is time for Sundar to be CEO of Google," Larry Page wrote in the open letter announcing the creation of Alphabet.

"Google itself is also making all sorts of new products and I know Sundar will always be focused on innovation—continuing to stretch boundaries. I know he deeply cares that we can continue to make big strides on our core mission to organize the world's information."

The 43-year-old Sundar Pichai rose quickly at Google, from working with the Chrome team to lead both the team as well as Android as senior vice president of Products.

The Launch of Alphabet Inc. will not affect you at all, but Good news… the company’s shares jumped 6 percent after hours, adding tens of billions of dollars to its value.