IMarketing South Afica

22/04/2012

Thousands may lose internet in July

Washington - For computer users, a few mouse clicks could mean the difference between staying online and losing internet connections this summer.

Unknown to most of them, their problem began when international hackers ran an online advertising scam to take control of infected computers around the world. In a highly unusual response, the FBI set up a safety net months ago using government computers to prevent internet disruptions for those infected users. But that system is to be shut down.

The FBI is encouraging users to visit a website run by its security partner, http://www.dcwg.org , that will inform them whether they're infected and explain how to fix the problem. After July 9, infected users won't be able to connect to the internet.

Most victims don't even know their computers have been infected, although the malicious software probably has slowed their web surfing and disabled their antivirus software, making their machines more vulnerable to other problems.

Last November, the FBI and other authorities were preparing to take down a hacker ring that had been running an internet ad scam on a massive network of infected computers.

"We started to realise that we might have a little bit of a problem on our hands because ... if we just pulled the plug on their criminal infrastructure and threw everybody in jail, the victims of this were going to be without internet service," said Tom Grasso, an FBI supervisory special agent.

"The average user would open up Internet Explorer and get 'page not found' and think the internet is broken."

On the night of the arrests, the agency brought in Paul Vixie, chair and founder of Internet Systems Consortium, to install two internet servers to take the place of the truckload of impounded rogue servers that infected computers were using.

Federal officials planned to keep their servers online until March, giving everyone opportunity to clean their computers. But it wasn't enough time. A federal judge in New York extended the deadline until July.

Now, said Grasso, "the full court press is on to get people to address this problem." And it's up to computer users to check their PCs.

Modus operandi

This is what happened:

Hackers infected a network of probably more than 570 000 computers worldwide. They took advantage of vulnerabilities in the Microsoft Windows operating system to install malicious software on the victim computers. This turned off antivirus updates and changed the way the computers reconcile website addresses behind the scenes on the internet's domain name system.

The DNS system is a network of servers that translates a web address —-such as www.ap.org - into the numerical addresses that computers use. Victim computers were reprogrammed to use rogue DNS servers owned by the attackers. This allowed the attackers to redirect computers to fraudulent versions of any website.

The hackers earned profits from advertisements that appeared on websites that victims were tricked into visiting. The scam netted the hackers at least $14 million, according to the FBI. It also made thousands of computers reliant on the rogue servers for their internet browsing.

When the FBI and others arrested six Estonians last November, the agency replaced the rogue servers with Vixie's clean ones. Installing and running the two substitute servers for eight months is costing the federal government about $87 000.

The number of victims is hard to pinpoint, but the FBI believes that on the day of the arrests, at least 568 000 unique internet addresses were using the rogue servers.

Five months later, FBI estimates that the number is down to at least 360 000. The US has the most, about 85 000, federal authorities said. Other countries with more than 20 000 each include Italy, India, England and Germany. Smaller numbers are online in Spain, France, Canada, China and Mexico.

Vixie said most of the victims are probably individual home users, rather than corporations that have technology staffs who routinely check the computers.

FBI officials said they organised an unusual system to avoid any appearance of government intrusion into the internet or private computers. And while this is the first time the FBI used it, it won't be the last.

"This is the future of what we will be doing," said Eric Strom, a unit chief in the FBI's Cyber Division. "Until there is a change in legal system, both inside and outside the United States, to get up to speed with the cyber problem, we will have to go down these paths, trail-blazing if you will, on these types of investigations."

Now, he said, every time the agency gets near the end of a cyber case, "we get to the point where we say, how are we going to do this, how are we going to clean the system" without creating a bigger mess than before.

posted by news 24

On November 8, the FBI, the NASA-OIG and Estonian police arrested several cyber criminals in “Operation Ghost Click”. The criminals operated under the company name “Rove Digital”, and distributed DNS changing viruses, variously known as TDSS, Alureon, TidServ and TDL4 viruses. You can read more abou...

04/04/2012

Facebook focus guides Google CEO

posted by news 24 today

San Francisco - Google co-founder Larry Page has a Facebook fixation.

When he replaced his mentor Eric Schmidt as Google's CEO last April, Page insisted that the company had to be more aggressive about countering the threat posed by Facebook's ever-growing popularity.

Page responded with a social networking crusade that is still reshaping Google Inc as he marks his one-year anniversary as chief executive on Wednesday.

The Facebook obsession has already led to Google's creation of its own social network, Google+, and inspired changes in Google's privacy practices and internet search results. Those changes have raised questions about whether the internet's most powerful company has forsaken its "Don't Be Evil" motto in its zeal to protect its online advertising empire.

"Facebook awoke Google to its shortcomings in the social aspect of the internet. It wasn't something that could be ignored," said Steven Levy, whose book In The Plex provided an inside look at Google's origins and evolution over 14 years.

Competitive advantage

Fretting about Facebook may seem like overkill, given Google's dominance of the internet's lucrative search and advertising market. In 2011, Google's sold $36.5bn in advertising - 10 times more than Facebook's $3.2bn.

But Page realised Facebook has been carving out a competitive advantage that could be leveraged to topple Google.

Since its 2004 inception, Facebook has been stockpiling valuable information about people's social circles and interests. The volume of insightful data pouring into Facebook has mushroomed along with its service's popularity. That has provided Facebook with the means to target ads more precisely and deliver content tied to a user's hobbies and tastes.

Google couldn't use most of that data to refine its search engine and other products, which is why it developed its own social network.

Since its debut nine months ago, Google+ has attracted more than 100 million users. Although it lags Facebook's 845 million, the number is far greater than Facebook's tally at that stage in its history.

But Google+ hasn't proven it can hold users' attention. Visitors have been spending an average of just a few minutes per month on Google+ compared with six to seven hours on Facebook, according to the research firm comScore Inc.

Nevertheless, Google+ and other social networking features introduced since Page took over allow the company to learn more about its users' lives, just as Facebook has done for years on its online hangout. Now, Google can try to use some of that knowledge to sell more ads, the source of virtually all its revenue.

Stock offering

Facebook's threat figures to become even greater after the company emerges from an initial public offering of stock, likely to be completed in May.

The IPO is expected to raise $5bn and generate free publicity that could attract even more traffic to Facebook. The IPO will likely eclipse Google's 2004 stock market debut as the biggest for a US internet company.

Google said Page was too busy for interviews about his past year as CEO, a role he reclaimed after surrendering the helm to Schmidt in 2001. Page had been CEO during the company's first three years, but early investors demanded a more experienced leader.

Schmidt, now Google's executive chair, last year described his failure to mount a more serious challenge to Facebook as one of his biggest blunders.

When he took over as CEO, Page quickly made his top priority clear by moving Google's executive offices into the same building as the team working on Google+.

Page also tied a portion of employee bonuses to the success of Google+ and eliminated what he considered to be unnecessary distractions by closing more than 20 of the company's less popular services, including an initiative to digitise health records.

"Larry is driven by his paranoia about Facebook. Clearly, these are two companies at war with each other," said Ken Auletta, who got to know Page while writing his book about the company, Googled: The End of the World As We Know It.

Investigations

Page already has plenty of other challenges to confront as he enters the second year of his reign.

Google is also grappling with broad regulatory investigations in the US and Europe into its business and privacy practices. Its Android operating system for smartphones and tablet computers is clashing with Apple Inc. in the increasingly important mobile computing market.

And it is close to completing its biggest acquisition ever - a $12.5bn purchase of cellphone and tablet computer maker Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc, pending approval from the Chinese government after winning clearances elsewhere.

Page also is trying to win over Wall Street.

Although Google is more prosperous than ever, its stock price hasn't kept pace with the rest of the technology sector. Some investors have been turned off by Google's rising expenses under Page.

Others were alarmed by a drop in the prices paid for Google's search-driven ads late last year. The company's stock price has climbed by 9% since Page became CEO, but that trailed a 12% gain in the technology-laden Nasdaq composite index. The broader S&P 500 index, which includes Google, has increased by 6% over the same period.

Some of Google's tactics to fend off Facebook have been interpreted as signs that Google is turning into a ruthless company willing to go to any length to protect its core business.

Sincerity

That's something Page and co-founder Sergey Brin vowed would never happen when Google filed its plans to go public in 2004.

In a letter to investors, Page expounded on the reasons Google adopted "Don't Be Evil" as one its guiding principles. "We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served... by a company that does good things for the world even if we forego some short-term gains," Page wrote.

The sincerity of those commitments is being questioned as Google digs deeper for personal data.

A recent change to Google's privacy policy has triggered the loudest outcry. About a month ago, Google unified 60 different privacy policies so it could stitch together all the personal information it gathers while users are logged into most of its services.

Google explained the change as a simpler approach that would benefit its users, but the company also acknowledged that it would let it draw a more meaningful profile for advertisers looking to connect with prospective customers.

Another privacy backlash grew out of research a Stanford graduate student published in February. It showed that the company had been bypassing the security settings in Apple's Safari browser for iPhones and iPads to track web surfers' online activities.

Google called the intrusion an inadvertent offshoot of an effort to enable Safari users to press Google+'s version of Facebook's "Like" button. Google disabled the tracking after it was revealed.

Bias

Google also tweaked its search results in January to give users the option to highlight results from Google+. Among other things, the search engine began to include suggestions on people to follow on Google+ while excluding recommendations for Facebook and Twitter's messaging service, both of which are used more widely than Google+.

Google says its search engine can't pull enough information from Facebook and Twitter to provide the same recommendations as it does for Google+.

Critics, though, scoff at that explanation and point to the bias as another example of how Google is abusing its dominance of internet search to steer more traffic toward its own services. Those complaints are a central part of the regulatory investigations under way in the US and Europe.

Both Auletta and Levy view what's been happening at Google as part of the inevitable maturation of the company and Page, who turned 39 last week.

"That idealistic flame still burns in Google," Auletta said. "But what happens, as time goes on, and you are no longer a young company, you have to make the compromises of adulthood... Facebook eventually is going to have to face a lot of the same questions."

03/04/2012

Web surfers to pay online social media
2012-04-02 22:32

Brussels - A one-click online payment system using Facebook and Twitter that could boost internet sales for newspapers, music vendors and other low-priced goods and services is being tested by a major European media company, according to its developer.

The internet poses an increasingly urgent problem for newspaper publishers who want to make money from the articles they put on their websites, but who are worried they will deter visitors by asking them to take out a full subscription.

The new system, developed by a start-up company in Belgium, means internet surfers can pay to read a single article or download a piece of music without having to fill out forms or enter their credit card details on the website.

The company, called Paycento, uses the fact that surfers are often logged in anyway with their profiles on social networking sites like Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter.

It means that visitors to a website can pay small amounts with a single click, much in the same way that they would click a 'Share' or 'Tweet' button to post an article on their social network profile.

"Those social identity networks also are really identity providers... so we piggyback on that," Pieter Dubois, the company's 41-year-old founder, said.

Dubois, a former IBM executive, set the company up in the middle of last year because he saw a need for easy-to-use online payments.

"The payment is really seamless... so it's like a one click payment on the internet," said Dubois, explaining that it is one click if the authorisation procedure is not used.

Any price point

The system works by a user having an online Paycento account, which they then link to their Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin accounts.

"We want to make it economical for the merchant, for the publisher to offer something at any price point, that means both at 10 cents, at 5 cents as at 1 euro," said Dubois.

For its small payments service, online firm PayPal in Britain charges 5 pence plus 5%.

Paycento is talking to venture capitalists to try to raise around €5m, which Dubois hopes will last the company for two to three years, when he hopes it will start covering its losses.

While the Paycento technology is not yet being used by online publishers, the company said a major European media company is testing a beta version, but declined to say which one because of a confidentiality agreement.

"We are going to make the full system, where you can really start doing commercial transactions, we would hope at the end of June... July at the latest," said Dubois.

Posted by News 24

01/04/2012

Thanks to everyone that attended Earth Hour although we didn't see much we know we helped a little bit, even if it meant just for an hour or so. The impact that Co2 im-missions are having on our planet is horrific and believe it or not but with global warming spiraling out of control, people don't really know what is happening with this. As the ice melts in the poles our water levels are rising drastically, resulting in toxic mine water pushing up to our drinking water level. This will soon make our water undrinkable and poisonous. so not only are we effecting the temperatures world wide we are actually setting ourselves up for disaster.

31/03/2012

1 000 arrests in China internet crackdown

Beijing - Beijing police have arrested 1 065 suspects and deleted more than 208,000 "harmful" online messages during a crackdown on internet-related crime since mid-February, a state news agency said Saturday.

The operators of more than 3 117 websites have received warnings after police targeted the smuggling of fi****ms, drugs and toxic chemicals, and the sale of human organs and personal information, Xinhua news agency said.

China has recently stepped up efforts to "cleanse" cyberspace, in what many see as a restriction on web freedom in the country, where a vast censorship system known as the "Great Firewall" blocks sites including Twitter and Facebook.

Late on Friday Xinhua cited the state internet information office saying the country had shut down websites, made six arrests and punished two popular microblogs after rumours of a coup in Beijing linked to a major scandal that brought down a top politician.

Authorities closed 16 websites for spreading rumours of "military vehicles entering Beijing and something wrong going on in Beijing", the agency said.

Beijing's police cyber security department said the arrests since February 14 had cut Internet-related crime by 50%, with 70 internet companies that did not heed warnings receiving "administrative punishments".

posted by news 24

30/03/2012

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AoptrnFo5Y

Derick Watts & The Sunday Blues are back with another typically South African-themed parody video. The "Braaiday" creators turn their attention to car guards...

30/03/2012

29/03/2012

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