Tor operator charged for child porn transmitted over his servers

Austrian man is latest to be held responsible for traffic passing through Tor.

An Austrian operator of Tor servers—that were used to anonymously route huge amounts of traffic over the Internet—has been charged with distributing child pornography. This comes after police detected illegal images traversing one of the nodes he maintains.

William Weber, a 20-year-old IT administrator in Graz, Austria, said nine officers searched his home on Wednesday after presenting him with a court order charging him with distribution and possible production of child pornography. The crimes carry penalties of as many as 10 years in prison. Police from the Styrian Landeskriminalamt, which has jurisdiction over the Austrian state of Styria, confiscated 20 computers as well as a game console, iPads, external hard drives, USB thumb drives, and other electronics. Evidence cited in the document showed that one of seven Tor Project exit nodes he operated transported illegal images.

"My storage cubes (HP MicroServers) were confiscated without any regard for the hardware—the power cords were simply ripped out instead of properly shutting them down," he wrote in a blog post published Thursday morning. "After finishing the search in my living room, they continued in my bedroom, where they confiscated my legal firearms, as well as my cable TV receiver and my Xbox 360. Despite my statement that all firearms and ammunition were legally owned and registered, having passed all background checks, this was doubted by one of the LKA officers due to the caliber."

Short for the onion router, Tor was designed by the US Naval Research Laboratory as a way to cloak the IP addresses and contents of people sending e-mail, browsing websites, and doing other online activities. It is regularly used by political dissidents, journalists, law enforcement officers, and criminals who want to keep their online activities private. Tor works by encrypting a user's Internet traffic multiple times and funneling it through a dedicated server with its own IP address. The data is then passed to a second server, which decrypts one layer of the encryption before passing it to a third server. At that point the data is converted to its original form and sent to its final destination. Tor's onion-like architecture makes it infeasible for the contents to be intercepted by third parties, except by those monitoring an exit node. Even then, it's hard to know where the traffic originated.

Weber isn't the first operator of a Tor node to land in hot water as a result of the traffic traversing his server. In 2007, German police raided the home of a Dusseldorf man after bomb threats allegedly passed through his Tor server. Last year, a separate Tor operator said police confiscated hardware and software after someone misused his exit node.

During interview with police later on Wednesday, Weber said there was a "more friendly environment" once investigators understood the Polish server that transmitted the illegal images was used by Tor participants rather than by Weber himself. But he said he still faces the possibility of serious criminal penalties and the possibility of a precedent that Tor operators can be held liable if he's convicted.

"Sadly we have nothing like the EFF here that could help me in this case by legal assistance, so I'm on my own and require a good lawyer," he wrote in a blog post seeking donations.

Weber told Ars he typically ran about five to 10 nodes at any one time, from locations in the Czech Republic, Poland, Ukraine, Austria, and Hong Kong. He estimated that in all they carried about 30 terabytes of data each day.

"The safest way is a middle node, as it cannot be seen from the Internet at all (it only routes internal traffic)," he told Ars. "Entry is pretty safe as well. Exit is very dangerous (as I've seen now...)"



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IMAGiNE BitTorrent Piracy Group "Sysop" Jailed 40 months

Following a tip from the MPAA the feds arrested four members of the prominent BitTorrent release group IMAGiNE in 2011. All pleaded guilty earlier this year and yesterday one of the group’s leaders was sentenced to a 40 month prison term, the largest file-sharing punishment in U.S. history. A fifth member of the IMAGiNE group, not included in the indictment, pleaded guilty on the same day and will be sentenced next year.

September last year IMAGiNE stopped distributing new films via their private BitTorrent tracker UnleashTheNet. As IMAGiNE was one of the Internet’s leading BitTorrent release groups, their absence quickly led to rumors that the group had been busted by the feds.

A few months later confirmation arrived when the group was indicted by the U.S. Government.

In April, Jeramiah Perkins of Portsmouth, Va., Gregory Cherwonik of New York, Willie Lambert of Pennsylvania, and Sean Lovelady of California, were all arrested and charged with several counts of criminal copyright infringement.

Earlier this month Lovelady and Lambert received 23 and 30 month prison sentences respectively, and yesterday 53-year old Cherwonik was jailed for 40 months by Virginia District Court Judge Arenda Allen.

In addition, Cherwonik was ordered to pay $15,000 in restitution to the MPAA.

After he serves his prison sentence, Cherwonik will be placed on probation for three years during which time he will be forbidden from possessing any electronic device with the capability of reproducing and distributing copies of copyrighted materials.
The 40 month jail term is the longest for a file-sharing related case in the United States. According to the U.S government Cherwonik deserved a higher sentence than the previously convicted defendants. As a “sysop” he was higher in rank than Lambert and Lovelady who were “administrator” and “moderator” respectively.

Despite having a clean slate when it comes to criminal encounters with the law, the prosecution called for Cherwonik to be harshly punished, not least because he continued his work at IMAGiNE for more than a year after his house was first searched.

“Rather than use the search of his residence as a reason to reconsider his participation in the IMAGiNE Group and to end his role in the conspiracy to commit copyright crime, Defendant Cherwonik and his co-conspirators continued and accelerated their illegal conduct in defiance of the law,” United States Attorney Neil MacBride wrote to the court.

MacBride further cited a report, prepared on behalf of the major movie studios, which states that IMAGiNE was responsible for 41% of all instances of English language theatrical audio piracy from September 2009 to September 2011, which amounted to almost five times more releases than the next leading English language release group.

The report claims that the release group was so successful because of the “short latency periods between the theatrical release and their pirated release, their consistently good quality of audio captures, their high volume of releases, and their connection to international suppliers.”

IMAGiNE started their activities in 2009 and the feds started looking into the group early 2010 after they were tipped off by the MPAA.

In May 2010 investigators searched the home of Cherwonik, but the group continued to operate after that and even launched their own private BitTorrent tracker “UnleashTheNet” in the same year. Aside from releasing copyrighted films on their private tracker they also “capped” films at local movie theaters.

On the same day as Cherwonik’s sentencing a fifth IMAGiNE member also pleaded guilty. Javier Ferrer, 41, of New Port Richey, Florida, was not included in the original indictment but was charged September this year. Ferrer admitted to camming the movie “Fright Night” at a local movie theater and he will be sentenced March 2013.

The fourth member from the indictment, Jeramiah Perkins, is also scheduled to be sentenced early next year.

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BPI To UK Pirate Party: Shut Down Your Pirate Bay Proxy

According to reports the BPI has sent a letter to the UK Pirate Party asking them to shut down their Pirate Bay proxy service. Speaking with TorrentFreak, Party Leader Loz Kaye says he is yet to receive anything other than an email and was only aware a letter had been sent when he received requests for comment. Kaye says issues such as censorship are at the core of why the Pirate Party exists and they will stand up and fight for Internet users.

As soon as the High Court ordered several UK ISPs to block subscriber access to The Pirate Bay earlier this year, the UK Pirate Party launched a proxy service to re-enable access to the site.

For millions of UK Internet users the service provided a much-needed lifeline for them to quickly and easily regain access to The Pirate Bay. As a result the Pirate Party’s website became one of the most popular sites in the whole of the UK.

During May, Google received more than 99,000 takedown notices against the proxy but as time passed the UK recording industry, led by the BPI, looked for a more comprehensive and sweeping solution.

Yesterday, TorrentFreak received a tip that the BPI would issue the Pirate Party with a demand to shut down their Pirate Bay proxy service.

Sure enough, an hour later a report appeared in MusicWeek and then a little later on the BBC, quoting from a letter apparently sent by the BPI’s Geoff Taylor to Pirate Party leader Loz Kaye.

Referencing the Party’s pro-freedom stance, Taylor apparently told Kaye, “Freedom of expression is not an absolute right. It comes with a duty to respect the rights of others, including those whose talent, hard work and investment help to create music and other entertainment.”

Speaking with TorrentFreak, Kaye says that while he has received an email from the BPI, he is yet to receive any letter.

“The first I was aware that such a letter had been sent was when I received requests for comment from journalists. The BPI have laid out their position and asked for our response, we intend to respond by the 6th of December,” Kaye explained.

However, Kaye did confirm that the BPI has indeed requested that the Pirate Party take down their Pirate Bay proxy service which has been in place since April.

“As we said in May 2012, we provided the proxy (tpb.pirateparty.org.uk) as a tool for users on networks where the Pirate Bay is blocked through filtering, and in support of our sister party in the Netherlands,” Kaye explains.

Kaye says the proxy service continues to be a “legitimate route” to The Pirate Bay for those affected by court orders issued to some, but not all, ISPs in the UK.

“While some providers continue to allow access to the web in an unfiltered manner, others are limiting access to specific parts of the internet,” Kaye explained.

The fight for free access to information clearly goes to the very heart of the Pirate movement, so just how important is the anti-censorship battle in the UK?

“The battle against censorship and indeed the use of site blocking to deal with issues like copyright infringement is disproportionate and not productive. Issues like these are at the core of why we exist and why we want to change the current system and stand up for internet users,” Kaye told TorrentFreak.

“Equally, last year the British government said it was not planning to implement the parts of the Digital Economy Act to do with site blocking. This was widely interpreted as that the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition was against site blocking. But we have still ended up with sites being taken down. It’s time once and for all that the UK government makes its view clear on this issue.”

But when it comes down to the basics, just how far are the UK Pirate Party prepared to go? We asked Kaye, presuming the currently polite request from the BPI has a legal threat behind it, whether the Party would go all the way to the High Court if necessary.

“At this point, all I have is an email from the BPI with a request. We are not aware of any legal action being taken by anyone against us. We will of course stick to our principles,” Kaye concludes.

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Microsoft Security Essentials loses AV-Test certificate

German IT-security institute AV-Test regularly tests popular antivirus software. In their latest test, Microsoft's free antivirus solution was the only program which failed to receive certification


Every two months, AV-Test takes a look at popular antivirus software and security suites and tests them in several ways. In their latest test which was performed on Windows 7 during September and October, Microsoft Security Essentials didn't pass the test to achieve certification. Although that may not sound that impressive, Microsoft's program was the only one which didn't receive AV-Test's certificate. For comparison, the other free antivirus software, including Avast, AVG and Panda Cloud did.

There are three categories where the programs receive points: protection, repair and usability. When added all up, the software needs to have at least 11 out of 18 points to pass the test. Security Essentials only got 10,5 points, which brings up the question: What's the cause?

It seems that Security Essentials failed to recognize enough zero-day threats with detection rates of only 69% in September and 64% in October, where the average is 89%. The rest of the scores remain largely unchanged when compared to the previous test. It's only honest to mention though that most of the programs tested scored lower than in May and June.

Bitdefender Internet Security is the winner with 17 out of 18 points. F-Secure Internet Security and Kaspersky Internet Security came in second and third respectively with 15,5 and 15,0 points. Out of the free programs, ZoneAlarm Free Antivirus + Firewall got the highest score with 14,5 points. In the similar test for business protection software, Microsoft Forefront Endpoint only gathered 9,5 points.



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Pirate Bay Launches Dedicated "Promo Bay" Website to Plug Artists

The Pirate Bay has launched a new website, entirely dedicated to promoting the work of independent musicians, filmmakers and other content creators. The Promo Bay website was badly needed to archive the many promos and streamline the thousands of incoming artist submissions to the project. In addition, the idea is to provide artists with details on where their content is most downloaded.
Early 2012 The Pirate Bay rolled out The Promo Bay, a new promotion platform for filmmakers, musicians, writers and all other artists alike.

To help them reach an audience of tens of millions of people, The Pirate Bay started offering the artists a prime advertising spot on the site’s homepage, replacing the iconic pirate ship logo.



A good idea, it turns out, because more than 10,000 artists signed up in a few months. This overwhelming success has now resulted in a dedicated Promo Bay site where all promotions will be permanently featured.

“By having the Promo Bay as more than just a link on the home page, it becomes its own beast,” Promo Bay frontman Will Dayble tells TorrentFreak.

To some extent the idea to develop a separate website was born out of necessity. The core Pirate Bay team could no longer keep up with the thousands of submissions, and needed help.

“For The Pirate Bay it’s a chance to make better organized use of the thousands of submissions the original Promo Bay received. I think the only real difference between a riot and a revolution is the latter is better organized,” Dayble explains.

And that’s just the beginning. The Promo Bay also has plans to offer detailed statistics to artists so they can see where their content is most popular.

“We can collect tons of cool data and properly measure where the traffic goes. If we’re going to truly prove that the industry has changed, that the way we appreciate art has changed, we need to measure it,” Dayble says.

For these statistics The Promo Bay plans to partner with an Aussie startup that can do data analysis on promoted torrents.

According to The Pirate Bay folks more and more artists have begun to realize that less restricted channels, such as torrents, are a completely valid distribution method. Even more so, in several ways this free promotion works better than just putting content on iTunes or similar services.

“These artists are coming from the point of view that free, mass exposure – with smart measurement on who likes you where – is more valuable to an artist than trying to scrape money out of iTunes or Beatport or whatever,” Dayble says.

With the Promo Bay website The Pirate Bay can now accommodate even more artists, and give them a permanent feature.

The current site is still rather basic but will be expanded in the future. Besides statistics the Promo Bay team is also considering adding a voting mechanism where the public can pick which artists should be promoted on The Pirate Bay’s homepage.

Content creators, big and small, who are interested in becoming featured are encouraged to sign up.



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Father Of Raided 9-Year-Old Pirate Bay Girl Settles Case For 300 Euros

The story in Finland of a 9-year-old girl raided by the police over a single music download has come to a head-spinning end. Despite criticizing the heavy handedness of the authorities and describing an anti-piracy group’s demands for cash settlement as “mafia-like”, the father of the child has chosen to pay up to make possible legal action go away. Anti-piracy group CIAPC says it is happy with the 300 euro cash payment.
After being accused of illicit file-sharing earlier in the year a man from Finland was presented with an unsettling letter.

Anti-piracy group CIAPC (known locally as TTVK) said they’d tracked the man’s Internet account to the unlawful sharing of a single music album by local artist Chisu. To stop matters progressing further all he had to do was pay a settlement of 600 euros and sign a non-disclosure document.

However, he chose not to pay and true to their word, last Tuesday CIAPC escalated the matter. The police turned up at Aki Nylund’s house and upon discovering that the man’s 9-year-old daughter (now 10) had done the sharing, confiscated her Winnie the Pooh laptop.

“I got the feeling that there had been people from the MAFIA demanding money at the door,” Nylund explained.

There was outcry. Everyone from the girl’s father, the artist in question, the general public, and even Finland’s Minister of Culture had complaints to make about the heavy-handed and disproportionate action.

General feeling was that this mess could be an opportunity for a more sensible look at copyright enforcement, but today those hopes have been pushed aside.

The father of the now-10-year-old has agreed to pay a cash settlement to CIAPC of 300 euros, exactly half the original demand.

“We are very happy,” says CIAPC chief Antti Kotilainen. “In a way, we just continued the original negotiations from where we left off.”

In return CIAPC have withdrawn their request for a pre-trial investigation and the police have closed the file.

“We reversed the call for an investigation because we reached an agreement with the girl’s father,” Kotilainen said.

While Aki Nylund will be glad that the case is closed and his daughter’s property will soon be returned, the payment of a cash settlement effectively puts this case back to square one.

Little wonder that CIAPC are pleased with the outcome. Over a single instance of petty file-sharing their demand for cash has been satisfied, via the use of the police and public purse, and despite the outcry.

With this victory under their belt CIAPC will almost certainly be back with more cash demands in the future. Alternatively, we could see them insist that the government seriously considers a three-strikes style infringement system. This settlement has almost guaranteed that.

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Newzbin2 Calls it Quits

After a long battle with the international arm of the MPAA, Usenet indexing site Newzbin2 has called it quits. The site had been operating under adverse conditions, not least almost total censorship by a court-ordered ISP blockade in the UK. Add to this a climate of fear driving individuals providing vital services away from the site, plus legal action against PayPal aimed at Newzbin2′s UK-based payment provider, and the site’s operators have decided to shut down.
While the newsgroup system has been running for years, in some ways it was the original Newzbin site that put Usenet binary downloading on the map of the masses.

The site created the NZB format, in basic terms .torrent files for newsgroups, which massively simplified the downloading of files from Usenet. This new-found ease of use attracted many to the previously difficult and inaccessible system and helped to kick-start a wave of Usenet indexing sites.

The subsequent popularity of Newzbin was not appreciated by the MPA, who sued the site’s operators. The action proved ruinous and in May 2010 left the site with debts of anywhere between £500K and £700K, depending on whose estimates you believe.

But through all the misery came a ray of light for the site’s former users. Newzbin was to be resurrected by a team of hackers called Team R Dogs, of which Mr White was the most public-facing.

Although the site did come back as Newzbin2, things were not going to be easy. The MPA, who were stinging that the site they had killed had somehow reanimated, began legal action to have the site blocked at the ISP level in the UK.

After much wrangling, October 26 2011 Justice Arnold at the High Court handed down a written judgment to BT, one of the UK’s largest Internet service providers. It ordered the company to block subscriber access to Newzbin2 within two weeks.

Newzbin2 responded with an encrypted software client to circumvent the ban which did go some way to getting users back on the site, but the MPA still weren’t done and continued pressing for more ISP blocks.

In the end, all of the UK’s major Internet providers were blocking the site and with the growing threat of domain seizure, Newzbin2 took the decision to switch to a Spanish .es domain.

For months now the site has continued, albeit in a more subdued fashion, but behind the scenes things have not been running to plan.

“Our servers have been unstable and crashing on a regular basis meaning the NZBs & NFOs are unavailable for long periods and we don’t have the money to replace them,” the site said in a closure statement a few hours ago.

In addition to its computing power, Newzbin2 and its predecessor have always relied on human beings to find interesting files on Usenet and bring them to the attention of the site’s users. But perhaps understandably, the adverse news surrounding the site has driven these people away. After all, who wants to become shooting practice for the MPA?

When TorrentFreak spoke with Mr White after Team R Dogs first took over the site, he made something very clear to us – his team were reviving Newzbin, not for the fun of it, but for the money. But now, more than two years later, it appears that particular plan won’t come to fruition.

“The figures just don’t stack up. Newzbin1 was said to have had 700,000 registered users. In fact that was the total number of people who ever signed up in the history of Newzbin from 2000 onwards & only a fraction were active, loads of people dropped out & went to other sites,” Team R Dogs reveal.

“We reckon they had about 100,000 users and of those only a few 10′s of thousands paid premium topups. That still made good money for the Newzbin1 guys. We don’t have much more than about 40,000 active users and the number of premium users is in the small thousands. It costs much more to run than we bring in, it just doesn’t stack up,” they add.

Team R Dogs also say that bringing back Newzbin after it was taken down didn’t sit well with the conspiracy theorists who spread the rumor that the site was an MPA trap.

“That stung us bad and we never got the userbase back,” they say.

And the money woes don’t stop there. We’ve reported recently how all kinds of file-sharing sites and services have been experiencing problems with PayPal and other forms of payment processing, and apparently Newzbin2 have had extreme difficulties too. All of their payment providers have withdrawn their services and the site now reveals that there was also a fresh legal attack.

“The MPA sued Paypal and are going at our innocent payment provider Kthxbai Ltd in the UK. Our other payment provider has understandably lost their nerve. Result? We have no more payment providers to offer & no realistic means of taking money – no, Bitcoin isn’t credible as it’s just too hard for 90% of people,” Team R Dogs conclude.

In its farewell speech the site protests that it was always 100% DMCA compliant and has taken down content when asked to, but none of that would have been good enough for the MPA. They have spent a huge amount of money on both the current site and its predecessor and it was never likely they were simply going to forget about it.

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Six Strikes Anti-Piracy Plan Delayed Till 2013

The much debated “six strikes” anti-piracy scheme was supposed to kick off in the United States today, but this is not going to happen. The Center for Copyright Information has announced that the ISPs are not ready to send warnings just yet, citing Hurricane Sandy as one of the reasons for the delay. The scheme is now expected to take off early next year if everything goes according to the updated schedule.
During the summer of 2011 the MPAA and RIAA teamed up with five major Internet providers in the United States, announcing their a plan to warn and “punish” BitTorrent pirates.

The parties launched the Center for Copyright Information (CCI) and agreed on a system through which Internet account holders will be warned if their connections are used to commit copyright infringement. After five or six warnings ISPs may then take a variety of repressive measures.

Initially the first ISPs were expected to send out the first “copyright alerts” by the end of 2011, but for reasons unknown this deadline silently passed, as did the revised July 2012 start date.

When leaked AT&T documents cited November 28 as the planned start date CCI confirmed that the first alerts would indeed be sent out late 2012, but today the group announced yet another delay.

“Due to unexpected factors largely stemming from Hurricane Sandy which have seriously affected our final testing schedules, CCI anticipates that the participating ISPs will begin sending alerts under the Copyright Alert System in the early part of 2013, rather than by the end of the year,” CCI’s Executive Director Jill Lesser explains.

“We need to be sure that all of our ‘I’s are dotted and ‘T’s crossed before any company begins sending alerts, and we know that those who are following our progress will agree,” Lesser adds.

November 28?



It’s unclear how Hurricane Sandy affected the launch, but it’s unlikely to explain the delay of more than a month.

TorrentFreak has learned that the main problem is to get all actors, including the ISPs and the American Arbitration Association, lined up to move at once. This proved to be much more difficult than anticipated.

Three of the five U.S. ISPs participating in the copyright alerts plan have revealed what mitigation measures they will take after the fourth warning.

AT&T will block users’ access to some of the most frequently websites on the Internet, until they complete a copyright course. Verizon will slow down the connection speeds of repeated pirates, and Time Warner Cable will temporarily interrupt people’s ability to browse the Internet.

It’s expected that the two remaining providers, Cablevison and Comcast, will take similar measures. None of the ISPs will permanently disconnect repeat infringers as part of the plan.

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New worm is designed to attack Iran financial institutions

Stuxnet garnered a ton of media attention when it managed to cripple Iran's nuclear program but a new worm recently detailed by Symantec is attacking the country on a different and perhaps even more damaging level.

A new virus called Narilam started infiltrating the country's banking systems during the past week. As outlined by the security company, the worm works much like any other in that it copies itself to infected machines, adds registry keys and can be spread via removable drives and over networks.

The code is written in Delphi, a common language used to produce malware. What's not common about Narilam, however, is the fact that it can manipulate a Microsoft SQL database that is accessible by OLEDB. Symantec says it specifically goes after SQL databases that have one of three distinct names: alim, maliran or shahd.

Also unlike other malware, Narilam isn't designed to spy on a user or their data. Instead, the code simply works itself into systems that deal with money and does its best to screw up data. As you can imagine, this is bad news for banks as it could potentially permanently destroy valuable financial records.

At this hour, it seems that the best defense against the worm is a good backup strategy that an institution could resort to in the event they become infected. Even still, Symantec says an infected database could be difficult to restore. Service disruption and permanent loss would both be expected as part of a successful attack.

There's no word yet on who is responsible for creating the worm. For their part, Iran says the worm hasn't been a serious concern as of yet. Granted, they probably wouldn't admit it even if it was causing chaos in the financial sector.

@ http://www.symantec....tabase-sabotage

@ http://www.techspot....stitutions.html

BitTorrent Site Owners Fear European Domain Name Seizures

A new round of domain name seizures targeted at retailers of counterfeit goods has operators of BitTorrent sites worried. For the first time a large-scale operation has seized not only U.S. domains, but also several European-controlled domains too. The general belief among a group of BitTorrent site owners is that the takedowns are a test case for an international effort targeted at file-sharing and streaming related sites.
Over the past two years a series of domain name seizures by Homeland Security’s ICE unit have resulted in a mild panic among the owners of file-sharing and streaming sites.

Knowing that they could lose their domain names without warning or due process, many have secured alternatives. Others have taken things a step further by moving their sites to non-U.S. controlled domains as a precaution.

The Pirate Bay, for example, traded in its .org domain for a Swedish .se TLD earlier this year. Others BitTorrent sites including Demonoid, Torrentz and KickassTorrents took similar measures, as did several file-hosting and streaming portals.

The operators of these sites chose domain names that don’t fall under the jurisdiction of the United States under the assumption that they are better protected against seizures. However, yesterday it became clear that this is not necessarily the case.

On ‘Cyber Monday’ ICE announced yet another round of seizures, this time with help from European law enforcement agencies and Europol and dubbed Project TransAtlantic.

Seized



“Recognizing the global nature of Internet crime, this year the IPR Center partnered with Europol, who, through its member countries, executed coordinated seizures of foreign-based top-level domains such as .eu, .be, .dk, .fr, .ro and .uk. This effort is titled Project Transatlantic and resulted in 31 domain name seizures,” ICE states.

The authorities haven’t released a list of the European targets but chaussuresfoot.be, chaussurevogue.eu and eshopreplica.eu are included. In Denmark Cardsharing.dk was seized but the site might not fall under the same operation as it displays a different banner. Also, the Cardsharing domain is more piracy than counterfeit-related as it allows users to share access to pay TV.

It comes as no surprise that operators of file-sharing and streaming sites are concerned about these new developments. While yesterday’s actions were mostly targeted at retailers of counterfeit goods, similar efforts could easily cross over to “pirate” sites.

TorrentFreak talked to several BitTorrent site owners, and all fear that this may be a test case for a new round of piracy-related seizures. The general opinion is that by including the European domain names, ICE and partners are signaling that no domain name is safe.

The Pirate Bay team, currently operating under a .se domain, shares the concerns of other site owners but don’t think they will be targeted soon.

Previously The Internet Infrastructure Foundation, responsible for operating the .se TLD, said it would consider its options in the event a court order was received. According to the foundation, domain names are not the source of the problem as they are easily traded in for new ones.

“We believe the problem in this type of situation is not the domain, but rather its contents. The domain name itself is not an accomplice in act of copyright infringement and if thepiratebay.se, for example, were to be shut down, the site would almost certainly reopen under another top-level domain,” the group wrote in a blog post recently.

Indeed, if The Pirate Bay domains were seized the site would simply return under a new one within minutes. And TPB is not the only site in this position. As we previously documented the vast majority of all the streaming and file-sharing sites that have been seized over the past two years quickly returned under a new domain name.

However, this doesn’t mean that seizures don’t do damage. Torrent-Finder, for example, lost its .com domain late 2010 and never fully recovered to the same traffic levels the site had before. The loss of Google juice appears to be the main worry in this regard.

The torrent site operators TorrentFreak talked to are not planning to switch domains anytime soon, but all have backup plans in case they become a target. Time will tell whether these are needed or not.

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Cracking and pirating Windows Store apps is now possible

An application has been created that bypasses the protection of the Windows Store, allowing anyone to turn a trial Store application into the full version with very little effort.


If you're feeling particularly dodgy today, perhaps an application to steal paid Windows Store applications is up your alley. Despite Microsoft's best efforts to make the Store secure, Betanews has discovered an application posted on My Digital Life that can be used to turn trial applications on the Store into fully paid applications with the press of a single button.

This app has been available for some time as well, with Wsservice_crk first being released on October 30, before receiving several updates. Once you've patched a few of your system files you can turn free trial applications available on the Store into full versions with little trouble, and there's also a program to sideload unsigned apps onto your computer if you want to bypass Microsoft's Store verification.

Naturally there are some drawbacks to using the cracking service; for example, the application you want to pirate must have a free trial available in the Store. Secondly, apps cannot be updated via the Windows Store, requiring you to uninstall the cracking service from your system if you want to update anything, before having to reinstall it to patch the app again. And of course patching system files could potentially cause issues down the track.

We imagine Microsoft is already on the case of looking for ways to patch out this issue and prevent piracy, as it could lead to developers withholding trial applications in fear that their paid applications will be stolen.

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Canada Set For Mass BitTorrent Lawsuits, Anti-Piracy Company Warns

Following an important court ruling last week, thousands of Canadians are now at risk of being exposed to mass BitTorrent lawsuits. That’s the message from the boss an anti-piracy outfit who says is company has been monitoring BitTorrent networks for infringements and has amassed data on millions of users. The court ruling involved just 50 Canadians but another case on the horizon involves thousands of alleged pirates.
As reported here on TorrentFreak every other week, copyright trolls are alive and well in the United States and Europe.
“Pay us a cash settlement,” the trolls advise, “or we’ll make your life a misery.”

While Canadians are known for their love of online file-sharing, in contrast they have engaged in their pastime largely unhindered for more than a decade. But a court ruling last week has the potential to change the landscape in the largely sharing-tolerant country.

The case involves NGN Prima Productions Inc, a Canadian company active in the US copyright troll scene gathering cash settlements from alleged sharers of its action movie “Recoil.”

Not content with trolling within the confines of the U.S., recently NGN filed a lawsuit in the Federal Court in Montreal.

The company claimed that data collected by anti-piracy company Canipre between September 1 and October 31 showed that 50 IP addresses allocated to four ISPs – 3 Web Corp., Access Communications Co-Operative Ltd., ACN Inc., and Distributel Communications Ltd – had engaged in copyright infringement of Recoil.

To this end, the ISPs should be ordered to hand over the names and addresses of the subscribers in question so that NGN could pursue them for damages, the company insisted.

On Monday November 19 the Federal Court in Montreal granted the request and ordered the four ISPs to hand over the data within two weeks, in Microsoft Excel format and encrypted on a CD.

Barry Logan, managing director of Canipre, says that this event marks the beginning of serious copyright enforcement in Canada. He claims that over the past five months his company has collected data on one million Canadians engaged in BitTorrent sharing and the decision of the Federal Court means that each one could face a damages claim in court.

Of course, what these individuals will actually receive is a letter from Logan’s paymasters at the movie and music studios asking them to settle the case for cash instead. It will come as no surprise that Canipre also works with the porn industry.

“I don’t think we have to limit this to just teenagers downloading Justin Bieber’s last record,” he said. “We represent a lot of mature titles that would be of interest to the 30/40/50 crowd.”

But while the United States has punishing statutory damages of $150,000 per item infringed, non-commercial statutory damages in Canada are capped at CAD$5000 ($5,038 US) meaning the fear factor will be considerably smaller.

Will Canadians feel compelled to pay? We may soon find out.

View: Original Article

BitSoup Hacked Over Hurricane Fundraiser, Announces New Domain

BitSoup, one of the Internet’s most established private BitTorrent trackers, has been under attack during the past two weeks. The site has been comprised and defaced, with the hackers gifting ratio credits to site users alongside unsubstantiated claims that money generated by a recent Hurricane Sandy fund-raiser might be misappropriated. BitSoup say the matter is being brought under control and that the new year will see the site shift to a new, less vulnerable domain.
Torrent sites are not only a magnet for people looking for content, they also attract enemies. While large copyright-dependent industries are obviously interested in their activities, opponents can take other forms.

In recent weeks some of the largest torrent sites on the Internet have been targeted, with The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, 1337x, BitSnoop, Fenopy and others all hit with DDoS attacks.

What.cd, one of the largest private trackers was also hit, but they are not the only invite-only site to be hit this month. Although not DDoS-related, recently the long-established BitSoup tracker has been suffering woes of its own.

“As many members now know BitSoup has been under attack over the past 2 weeks. We have taken the steps to harden the site from future attacks best we can,” the site’s operators said in an announcement before the weekend.

The initial attack on BitSoup came in a quite unusual form but to understand that we first need to explain a little about how the site works.

Like most private trackers BitSoup operates a ratio system in which users are expected to upload the same amount of data as they take from the site. Failure to do so leads to a sharing ratio of less than 1.0. For example, a ratio of 0.7 means that uploaded data is only 70% of that downloaded.

When a user’s ratio drops below a certain amount they are at risk of being banned from the site. This situation can be fixed by either uploading more data or making a cash donation which results in a so-called “ratio credit” that brings the account above the banning limit.

What the hackers did initially was to modify site users’ accounts so it looked like they had uploaded more data than they actually had, the idea being to reduce the number of people donating to the site.

However, while some people do indeed donate to fix ratio, many users do so because they love the site and the community. There can be little doubt that BitSoup has a large and enthusiastic following that will donate no matter what.

In any event, BitSoup immediately took steps to nullify the attack by making a goodwill gesture of their own.

“On December 1st all members will get 800GB added to their accounts as a [birthday] gift from BitSoup to our great members,” the site’s operators announced.

But then, just when it appeared that the problems were over, this weekend brought more misery. The attackers, who claim to be from Anonymous (but of course anyone can do that), came back with a new assault.

After obtaining access to the site’s SMTP server the attackers sent emails to BitSoup members claiming that a recent effort by the site to raise funds for Hurricane Sandy victims was made in bad faith.



“Bitsoup, you have abused charity for your own gain. You have lead your members to believe they gave to help storm victims only to satisfy your own desires. You have abused the freedom of the internet, the good faith of your members and the dire needs of disaster victims to raise money for yourself,” the mail began.

The message goes on state that PayPal and law enforcement have been tipped off about the site and that the attackers now hold the site’s database. The mail was signed off by Anonymous but despite its length offered no evidence to back up the allegations of charity fund misappropriation.

Round about the same time the site’s forums and tracker were defaced, with threads created claiming that the fundraiser was fake and torrents renamed to offer a warning.



Many users reported not being able to access the site over the weekend by now things appear to be getting back to normal.

“The MPAA has never since the day we opened our doors been a threat to us for many reasons we will not get into. We know the wankers that attacked us are nothing but brats and no matter what they do we will always come back stronger,” the site’s operators said in a statement.

“Starting in January 2013 we will be under taking some major upgrades to the site adding features and tweaking others. We will also stop using bitsoup.org as our domain in the new year to make it harder for any goverment in USA to take our domain. Our new domain will be bitsoup.me.”

View: Original Article

Firefox Beta gets IonMonkey

Kung fu movie fans might be tempted to call the new beta "the browser with the IonMonkey fists," as it gets a much faster, new Javascript engine, a smart security improvement, and other useful tweaks.

Firefox Javascript performance on Mozilla's own Kraken benchmark.

A Javascript engine called IonMonkey, Mac Retina compatibility, and better touch support move into the new Firefox Beta, released today.

Firefox 18 Beta (download for Windows, Mac, and Linux) arrives with a new "just-in-time" Javascript compiler called "IonMonkey" for faster site load times. While it doesn't appear to have been independently tested yet, Mozilla's own IonMonkey benchmarks from September indicate that it will make the stable version of Firefox 18 about 25 percent faster than the current Firefox 17. The features are expected to reach the Firefox stable channel around the first week of January.


Firefox Javascript performance on Google's V8 benchmark.

The new Firefox beta also allows you to disable insecure content at will on Web sites that have been secured with HTTPS. In the beta, the feature is only available through about:config.

The Mac version now works with high-definition Retina displays, and all Firefox Beta platforms support W3C touch screen-specific events, as well as MozTouch events.

Other changes include built-in viewing of PDFs, and early support for WebRTC, which eventually will let browsers run P2P apps, perform voice calls, and power video chats without plug-ins. Full notes on what's new in Firefox 18 beta can be read here.

View: Original Article

Hacked Go Daddy sites infecting users with ransomware

Users are getting infected with ransomware thanks to criminals managing to hack the DNS records of Go Daddy hosted websites.

That's not welcome news for the world's largest domain name registrar.

To understand how these attacks work, a short primer on DNS is required.

In a nutshell, DNS provides a system where computers on a network (the internet) can be referenced by a user-friendly name. These names are known as hostnames, and DNS translates them into what is known as an IP address.

A key feature of DNS is that changes can be made and applied very rapidly, allowing resources to be moved between machines/networks/locations without affecting end users. The hostnames remain constant, and DNS handles any changes in the IP address as the resources move.

In this current spate of attacks, criminals are exploiting DNS by hacking the DNS records of sites, adding one or more additional subdomains with corresponding DNS entries (A records) referencing malicious IP addresses. The legitimate hostname resolves to the legitimate IP address, but the added sub-domains resolve to rogue servers.

This enables the attackers to use legitimate-looking URLs in their attacks, which can help to evade security filtering and trick users into thinking the content must be safe.

In some cases, users have had several subdomains added, pointing to one or more malicious IP addresses.

owner.[redacted].com
move.[redacted].com
mouth.[redacted].com
much.[redacted].com
muscle.[redacted].info
music.[redacted].mobi

The rogue servers are running an exploit kit calling itself 'Cool EK'.

As noted last week, this is actually very similar to Blackhole exploit kit.

The Russian origin of the kit is evident from the login page for the admin panel.

Users hitting the malicious site are hit with various malicious files, exploiting several vulnerabilities, in order to infect them with ransomware.

snake.[redacted].info/r/l/certainly-devices.php (exploit landing page, Mal/ExpJS-AV)
snake.[redacted].info/r/32size_font.eot (CVE-2011-3402, Troj/DexFont-A)
snake.[redacted].info/r/media/file.jar (Mal/JavaGen-E)
snake.[redacted].info/r/f.php?k=1&e=0&f=0 (ransomware payload, Troj/Ransom-KM)

Once running, the ransomware displays the familiar payment page, with contents that vary based on the country of the victim.

Here is a British example, which uses the name of the Police Central E-Crime Unit:

And here is the type of lock page you would see if you lived in, say, Bulgaria:

Note the use of an animated GIF in this lock page to mimic the video from the user's webcam! This sort of attention to detail is what helps convince many users that the warning is legitimate.

At the time of writing, an important question remains to be answered. How were the attackers able to hack these Go Daddy DNS records?

One likely cause is compromised user credentials (stolen or weak passwords). To help confirm this I suggested one of the affected webmasters check his historical login activity. Sadly, this does not seem to be readily possible for users. Furthermore, the response from Go Daddy offers no help as well.

Thank you for contacting Online Support regarding your account. Please note we have security devices and protocols in place to protect our network and infrastructure. As stated previously, we can not release information regarding account logins or activity. If you feel that someone has logged into your account, you best defense is to change your password. Please see our previous response for instructions on how to do this.

Sigh. Enabling users to view historical login activity is a very simple way of helping to spot malicious activity early. Let's hope Go Daddy change their stance on this.

Given the prevalence of attacks against web sites for the purpose of malware distribution it is high time that associated services (Registrars, hosting providers etc) pay adequate consideration to security.

Users should not be allowed to use weak passwords. Two-factor authentication should be readily available, if not enforced.

With a little forethought and consideration to what happens when the keys to the kingdom get lost, malicious activity can be disrupted more quickly.

Go Daddy customers who wish to check they have not been affected by these attacks should check their DNS configuration according to the Go Daddy support page.

Aside from contacting some of the affected webmasters, we have contacted Go Daddy to alert them to these attacks.

Thanks to the webmasters who responded to my notifications about these attacks, whose input was very helpful in putting together the content for this post.

-- Update: November 26th, 2012 --

We have received a statement from Go Daddy concerning these attacks, a copy of which is included below:

Go Daddy has detected a very small number of accounts have malicious DNS entries placed on their domain names. We have been identifying affected customers and reversing the malicious entries as we find them. Also, we're expiring the passwords of affected customers so the threat actors cannot continue to use the accounts to spread malware.

We suspect that the affected customers have been phished or their home machines have been affected by Cool Exploit as we have confirmed that this is not a vulnerability in the My Account or DNS management systems.

Go Daddy highly recommends that US- and Canada-based customers enable 2-Step Authentication to help protect their accounts. Details on how to set up this feature are located at http://support.godad...authentication.

If a customer suspects their account may have an issue, we encourage them to contact Go Daddy Customer Care or fill out the form at the following link: https://support.goda...ection=support.

It is good news that out initial suspicions are confirmed - compromised user credentials are responsible for these hacks. Thanks to Go Daddy for their quick response confirming this to be the case. We would encourage all CA and US users to enable 2-factor authentication. Users elsewhere should ensure their passwords are strong and unique to Go Daddy.

@ http://nakedsecurity...ddy-ransomware/

Verizon Sued For Defending Alleged BitTorrent Pirates

A group of adult movie companies is suing Verizon for failing to hand over the personal details of alleged BitTorrent pirates. The provider systematically refuses to comply with court-ordered subpoenas and the copyright holders see these actions as more than just an attempt to protect its customers. According to the them, Verizon’s objections are in bad faith as the Internet provider is profiting from BitTorrent infringements at the expense of lower-tier ISPs.
The ongoing avalanche of mass-BitTorrent lawsuits reveal that IP-addresses can get people into a heap of trouble.
In many cases the person who pays for the account is not the person who shared the copyrighted material. However, this is the person who gets sued, something that can have all kinds of financial implications.

To shield their customers from this kind of outcome Verizon now objects to subpoenas granted by courts in these cases. Not in one case, but in dozens. One of the arguments cited by Verizon’s attorneys is that the requests breach the privacy rights of its customers.

“[The subpoena] seeks information that is protected from disclosure by third parties’ rights of privacy and protections guaranteed by the first amendment,” their counsel informed the copyright holders.

Verizon further cites arguments that have previously been successful in similar cases, including the notion that mass lawsuits are not proper as the defendants did not act in concert.

Three of the copyright holders, all makers of adult films, have had enough of Verizon’s refusals and have filed a lawsuit against the company at a federal court in Texas. Malibu Media, Patrick Collins and Third Degree Films ask the court to hold Verizon in contempt and compel Verizon to respond to the subpoenas.

“Verizon objects to the subpoenas on various grounds, all of which lack merit. Accordingly, Plaintiffs respectfully request that the Court overrule each of Verizon’s objections, compel immediate compliance with Plaintiffs’ subpoenas and hold Verizon in contempt for failing to obey the subpoenas,” they write.

Aside from countering Verizon’s arguments directly, the copyright holders claim that Verizon’s refusal to hand over customer details is in bad faith, as the ISP profits from the alleged copyright infringements.

The movie companies back up this claim by pointing to a study published last year, which concluded that large ISPs profit from BitTorrent at the expense of smaller ones.

“Verizon’s current Objections can only be seen as being asserted in bad faith, and with the expectation to continue to profit from BitTorrent infringement at the expense of other, lower-tier ISPs and the consuming public at large. There is seemingly no incentive for ISPs such as Verizon to aggressively identify infringers on their network,” they tell the court.

“Add to this the fact that Verizon and its cohorts enjoy virtual immunity from liability under the development of laws such as the DMCA, and this scenario presents multiple concerns of fairness and accountability.”

While it’s a novel argument, the movie studios omit to mention that Verizon is also one of the partners in the upcoming “six-strikes” scheme, which aims to decrease copyright infringements through BitTorrent.

The ISP previously told TorrentFreak that it sees more value in a system where users are warned and educated, as opposed to being sued in court.

“We believe this program offers the best approach to the problem of illegal file sharing and, importantly, is one that respects the privacy and rights of our subscribers. It also provides a mechanism for helping people to find many great sources of legal content,” Verizon told us.

The “six strikes” anti-piracy scheme, or copyright alerts system as it’s officially named, is expected to go live later this week. But since the adult film industry is not invited, mass-BitTorrent lawsuits are not going away anytime soon.

That said, the current case can make a huge impact according to Rob Cashman, a lawyer who represents many accused Does in these BitTorrent cases.

Cashman explains that if the ISP wins then copyright holders have no other way to identified the defendants, meaning that these and other Verizon defendants are off the hook.

“The hope and expectation on my end is that other ISPs will follow suit. This will be one more way we can shut down these trolling cases for good,” Cashman says.

“On the flip-side, if the judges grant the request to force the ISPs to comply with their subpoenas, then it will be “game on” for both of us. They will continue trying to extort money from the defendants, and attorneys such as myself and others will continue placing our “monkey wrenches” to break their operations,” Cashman adds.

Whatever happens, the case is going to be one to watch.

View: Original Article

Mozilla blocks Java 7 Update 7 for Firefox

Due to a vulnerability in Java 7 update 7 version that being currently exploited in wild Mozilla added it to its add-on blokclist and will be automatically disabled on users Firefox browsers. Earlier versions before this update have other vulnerabilities, that’s why they’re already blocklisted. If you’re using Java you’re advised to download and install latest version Java 7 Update 9 from Java website on your Computer.
Mozilla blocklists Java 7 Update 7 Plugin

“Affected versions of the Java plugin will be disabled unless a user makes an explicit choice to keep it enabled at the time they are notified of the block being applied.” says Jorge in Mozilla add-ons blog. Though Java plugin is disabled, user can enable it from Plugins pane in Add-ons manager but that’s not recommended.

@ http://blog.mozilla....date-7-blocked/

Windows 8 is hacked by security firm, details about the hack can be had… for a price

Some companies, and individuals, find and disclose vulnerabilities -- may those be on websites, operating systems, programs, whatever -- for the betterment of society. Others do it for a "finder's fee". VUPEN does it so they can sell the secrets to whomever wants them.

VUPEN is a security research firm that works a bit differently than other firms. Like traditional digital security firms, VUPEN does research on vulnerabilities on popular software packages (e.g. Windows). Unlike other firms, VUPEN does not disclose the vulnerabilities it finds. Rather, VUPEN offers the details of the vulnerabilities it finds to whomever is willing to pay the price. Yes, that is what it sounds like -- VUPEN sells vulnerabilities to the high bidders (so to speak).

Of course the idea behind VUPEN is to make parties pay to better protect themselves; ideally the exploit secrets VUPEN sell are used by the buyers to protect themselves against the vulnerabilities. In reality, however, it isn't hard to imagine VUPEN-discovered vulnerabilities being bought for use in less legitimate activities, including but not limited to malware creation.

The latest claim coming out VUPEN is that they have successfully found an exploit for Microsoft's Windows 8 and Internet Explorer 10:

We welcome #Windows8 with various 0Ds combined to pwn all new Win8/IE10 exploit mitigations. Congrats to our mitigation mitigator @n_joly

-VUPEN CEO Chaouki Bekrar on Twitter

Of course it is impossible to confirm VUPEN's claim without shelling out the money to grab the details about the exploit(s) they have found in Microsoft's latest creations. However, I doubt VUPEN would risk its reputation making false claims. Plus exploits are nothing new in the tech industry, and it was only a matter of time before somebody hacked Windows 8. Why not it be VUPEN, a company that has great financial motive for doing so?

Since Microsoft has not been informed about the vulnerability by VUPEN, Microsoft obviously cannot patch it. According to Microsoft's spokeperson:

We saw the tweet, but further details have not been shared with us. We continue to encourage researcher to participate in Microsoft’s Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure program to help ensure our customers’ protection.

Uh-oh. A vulnerability in Windows 8 that will not be patched? Another reason to not buy Windows 8, right? Hang on there, cowboy.

It should be noted that the Windows 8 and IE 10 vulnerability VUPEN claims to have found is unlikely to be exploited in the wild. This is because VUPEN utilized previously discovered but undisclosed vulnerabilities to come to this new vulnerability. So unless some scumbag purchases the vulnerability from VUPEN and releases it in the wild or someone figures out the vulnerability on their own (which is unlikely without them having access to the previous vulnerabilities), there is little risk to the average Joe from this particular vulnerability. Still, it has ramifications for Microsoft -- VUPEN discovered the vulnerability only a week after the release of Windows 8, and Microsoft has been advertising increased security in Windows 8 over previous Windows.

It's definitely an interesting business VUPEN are in. Ideally every company should report exploits directly to Microsoft so they can work together to patch tit, but the reality is VUPEN makes money by not disclosing. Business is business, after all. Hopefully for Windows 8 users, this exploit doesn't get into the wrong hands.

@ http://thenextweb.co...ows-8-and-ie10/

Warning: Proxtube extension injects ads

Proxtube is a highly popular extension for Google Chrome and Firefox that can bypass country related restrictions on YouTube. YouTube can block videos in some countries, for instance due to insufficient publication rights. People connecting from those countries get an error message when they try to access the YouTube video, while people from other countries can watch the video just fine.

Proxtube uses proxy servers in countries without restrictions to provide unlimited access to all YouTube videos.This was not that expensive until recently as the proxy server was only needed to establish the connection and not to stream the requested video. A change by Google and YouTube however changed that, which meant that Proxtube suddenly had to stream the videos as well.

Costs seem to have blown out of proportion, and a solution was implemented to cover the costs that is certainly going to irritate a lot of users. The functionality of FoxyDeal has been integrated into Proxtube. The new code displays a bar at the top of shopping sites, Amazon for instance, that checks the price of the item on the shopping site against a database to inform users if the item is available for a cheaper price on other shopping sites.

The problem here is that users had no say in the decision, and that they have not been informed about the change either. Users on Reddit noticed that all sites that you visit in the browser are submitted to a Foxydeal server. While that does not necessarily mean that all moves are tracked by the company, it most certainly raises questions as to why that is necessary.

It seems that only the latest Chrome extension is affected by the change, yet. It is however likely that the Firefox extension will make use of the system sooner than later as well.

If you do not like the ad injection or the change of being tracked, I’d suggest you uninstall the extension in your browser and switch to the equally capable ProxMate extension for Firefox or Google Chrome instead.

To uninstall the extension load chrome://extensions/ in the Chrome browser and click on the trashcan icon next to the Proxtube extension listing. You can alternatively click on the settings button at the top right, and select Tools > Extensions from the menu to get there.

Firefox users need to enter about:addons in the address bar and click on the remove button next to the Proxtube listing to remove it. It is alternatively possible to go to that page by clicking on Firefox > Addons in the menu.

@ http://stadt-bremerh... (Caschys Blog)

Microsoft reveals Windows 8 Product Lifecycle

When you buy software or hardware, you usually want to know how long the developer or manufacturer supports it. When it comes to Windows, the product lifecycle of each version of Windows is divided into mainstream support and extended support. Mainstream support is the first phase of the product support lifecycle. It covers both security and non-security updates for the operating system, as well as complimentary support that is included with the license and paid support. The extended support phase provides users of the operating system with security updates, and paid support is available as well.

The Windows XP and Windows Vista operating systems for instance are currently in the extended support phase, while Windows 7 and Windows 8 are in the mainstream support phase.

Microsoft has added Windows 8 and Windows RT to its product lifecycle search. Here is a list of Microsoft operating systems and their mainstream and extended support end dates:

Windows XP: Mainstream support ended, Extended support end date: 8.4.2014.
Windows Vista: Mainstream support ended, Extended support end date: 11.4.2017.
Windows 7: Mainstream support end date 13.1.2015, Extended support end date: 14.1.2020.
Windows 8: Mainstream support end date 9.1.2018, Extended support end date 10.1.2023.
Windows RT: Not yet communicated.
Surface with Windows RT: Mainstream support end date 11.4.2017, Extended support end date: not applicable as it is a consumer device.

Windows 8 mainstream support ends in 2018, while extended support will deliver security patches for the operating system for another 5 years afterwards. That’s the expected time frame as it follows the support lifecycles of previous versions of Windows.

It is interesting to note that Microsoft will support its Surface tablets until 2017. If you compare that to the product lifecycle of other tablet devices, you will notice that this is a rather difficult thing to do, as most manufacturers do not reveal the lifecycle of their products on the Internet.

Microsoft has yet to communicate the Windows RT end of support dates, and it is not really clear why the dates have not yet been communicated. What’s almost certain is that it won’t end before the Surface’s lifecycle ends.

@ http://www.ghacks.ne...duct-lifecycle/

Raided 9-Year-Old Pirate Bay Girl Came To Save Us All

This week, at the behest of an anti-piracy group, police executed a search warrant against an alleged file-sharer. Not only did the police feel it was measured and appropriate to take action against an individual who downloaded a single album worth a few euros, but even carried on once they knew their target was a 9-year-old child. Of course there has been outcry, but let’s look at this from a different angle for a moment. Isn’t this some of the best news all year?
The news this week that Finnish police had seen fit to raid the home of a 9-year-old file-sharer has turned into one of the biggest stories of the year so far.

Ok, the event was hardly comparable to the military-style raid at the Dotcom mansion, but it was still an example of a disproportionate show of force by the police at the behest of copyright holders.

Of course, while Dotcom’s children were undoubtedly affected by the action at their home in January, they weren’t the prime targets. In contrast and quite unbelievably, in this week’s debacle the unlucky daughter of Finland’s Aki Nylund was. But despite being a common-sense disaster, this week’s screw-up could be some of the best news we’ve had all year. And here’s why.

If the police targeted the admins of one of the biggest torrent sites in the world this week or rounded up some heavy pre-releasers or similar, people might complain but it would hardly come as a surprise. The writing has been on the wall for a long time in that respect and the backlash from the public would be almost non-existent.

But in what kind of parallel universe does a professional, western police force think it’s appropriate, proportionate and a good use of tax-payers’ money to send officers to a citizen’s home for a petty file-sharing issue, one involving the downloading of a single music album?

And worse still, Finland’s police were only called in to deal with the issue when the father of the child refused to pay a cash demand of 600 euros sent by anti-piracy outfit CIAPC on behalf of Warner Music for what amounts to, at most, a civil offense. Rightsholders should be able to protect their interests, but using the police – and the public purse – to enforce an unofficial ‘debt’? This just gets better.

But before we go any further, we should acknowledge the correct assumption by those attempting to protect the police that when the officers arrived at the house they had no idea that they would be targeting a child. Agreed, they had absolutely no clue. What they did have was ‘evidence’ collected by an anti-piracy group based on a simple IP address.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is a perfect example of just how useful this ‘evidence’ is.

If the evidence could actually identify an infringer it would seem likely that CIAPC would’ve seen the face of a 9-year-old child and thrown their 600 euro claim in the trash. Yes, anti-piracy groups do rely on a certain amount of public fear to make their strategies work, but we’ve spoken to CIAPC a number of times and they don’t seem evil. This is the kind of publicity they can do without.

And they’re not on their own.

Chisu, the artist cast into the middle of the scandal, has been forced to defend herself after she faced accusations that she was somehow involved in targeting the child. She wasn’t – and this has been confirmed by her label Warner Music – but she herself said that she doesn’t need this kind of attention and felt compelled to offer an apology to her young fans.
Of course, groups like CIAPC and others like them are trying to positively influence the younger generation. With their taste for popular music they are the customers of tomorrow, but scaring them into submission isn’t going to work.

Interestingly, one of the toughest companies in the world when it comes to IP enforcement is Disney and it was revealed this week that our 9-year-old pirate had a taste for their products. However, when her Winnie the Pooh laptop was taken away by police on Tuesday for analysis, the Disney imagery was associated not only with the joy of children, but with corporate (and by extension) state bullying.

So, all in all, especially considering the upset endured by the little girl and her family, this week’s events have been a disaster for the copyright lobby in Finland.

Almost universally the cash demands made to the girl’s father are being viewed as MAFIA-like extortion tactics. Furthermore, the fact that CIAPC can get the police to jump over a single album download has the Finnish public looking on in disbelief. Officers’ time could be spent on much more serious issues, surely?

Additionally, IP address evidence has been shown to be as flimsy as ever – unless of course CIAPC magically knew they were targeting a child and in which case they fully deserve the ‘bully’ label bandied around this week. One of these scenarios is true, and it’s a loss / loss situation for the copyright lobby whichever way you cut it.

Finally, the artist who was being ‘protected’ by this action has seen her reputation damaged by it instead. Aside from scaring little girls, and using the police for a small and private matter, this is perhaps the biggest travesty of all.

Add this all together and what you have here is a 9-year-old martyr who doesn’t know how important she is. She’s sad today because she doesn’t have a laptop, but tomorrow is another day and her suffering will not be in vain.

Because the public are angry, politicians will be nervous too, and uncooperative politicians are bad news for tougher copyright law. But in the short term anyone sent a “pay-up-or-else” letter from CIAPC (if they even dare to send any more) will be thinking long and hard about paying. The chances of the police coming next time must be slimmer than last week.

And the fact that they will be able to thank a child for that is why this is some of the best news all year.

View: Original Article

Police Raid 9-Year-Old Pirate Bay Girl, Confiscate Winnie The Pooh Laptop

An anti-piracy company has found itself in the middle of a huge controversy. CIAPC, the company that had The Pirate Bay blocked by ISPs in Finland, tracked an alleged file-sharer and demanded a cash settlement. However, the Internet account holder refused to pay which escalated things to an unprecedented level. In response, this week police raided the home of the 9-year-old suspect and confiscated her Winnie the Pooh laptop.

Very soon in the United States, letters will be sent out to Internet account holders informing them that they should stop sharing copyrighted material on BitTorrent.

The message in the US from mainstream rightsholders is designed to be educational, but more aggressive companies carry out the same process but with a sting in the tail – a request for cash-settlement to make potential lawsuits go away.

One such request for cash landed on the doorstep of an Internet account holder in Finland during the spring. Known locally as TTVK, Finnish anti-piracy group CIAPC sent the man a letter informing him that his account had been traced back to an incidence of online file-sharing.

To stop matters progressing further the man was advised to pay a settlement of 600 euros, sign a non-disclosure document, and move on with his life. He chose not to give in to the demands of CIAPC and this week things escalated as promised.

Tuesday morning the doorbell of the family home rang around 8am and the man, who works in the hospitality sector, had quite a shock. Police were at his door with a search warrant authorizing the hunt for evidence connected to illicit file-sharing.

Surprisingly, the man isn’t a previously unknown Kim Dotcom-related “co-conspirator”, nor does he run a warez site or BitTorrent tracker. He is, however, guilty of having a 9-year-old daughter with a taste for pop music.

Having failed in her quest to put enough money in her piggy bank to buy the latest album from local multi-platinum-selling songstress Chisu, in 2011 she turned to the Internet, first via Google and then The Pirate Bay.

The girl’s father said the resulting downloads didn’t work so the following day they went to the store to buy music. Nevertheless, this week’s police visit shows that CIAPC mean business, no matter how young the targets or whether or not they also buy music.

In concluding their search, the police confiscated the girl’s file-sharing weapon of choice – her Winnie The Pooh laptop – and according to her father offered some final words.

“It would have been easier for all concerned if you had paid the compensation,” the police advised.

“I got the feeling that there had been people from the MAFIA demanding money at the door,” the girl’s father explained.

“At that point my jaw hit the floor and I wasn’t sure if I was awake or dreaming. So the investigator suggested, between the lines, that I empty my wallet and keep my family in hunger for the next two weeks so that they could get rid of the case? What the f––… is this how it goes? I could evade justice murder by skipping Christmas this year?”

“We have not done anything wrong with my daughter. If adults do not always know how to use a computer and the web, how can you assume that children or the elderly – or a 9-year-old girl – knows what they are doing at any given time online?

“This is the pinnacle of absurdity. I can see artists are in a position, but this requires education and information, not resource-consuming lawsuits,” he added.

Electronic Frontier Finland say that this week’s developments are an indication of just how far copyright enforcements issues have progressed in Finland.

“It is not in anyone’s interest, that in the name of the copyright, little girls are being harassed. This shows poor judgment, and consideration from TTVK and from the police,” vice chairman Ville Oksanen said in a statement.

However, there are signs that support might come from an unexpected corner. In a statement the artist in question – Chisu – said that she doesn’t want to sue anyone and that no artist needs this kind of media attention. Indeed, the criticism of the move on her Facebook page is fierce.

“I hope that the matter will be resolved soon and sorry to my 9-year-old girls,” Chisu wrote, pointing them to this free link to her music on Spotify.

Joonas Mäkinen of Finland’s Pirate Party welcomes Chisu’s comments but bemoans artists’ apparent lack of power to get anything done.

“It is sad to see how even the big artists have no idea what CIAPC / TTVK is doing in their name. And the worst part is that even after learning about this, like Chisu did just now and took part in the discussion on Facebook, they can’t stop it since all copyright protection and monitoring is centralized,” Mäkinen told TorrentFreak.

“I hope all musicians realize that the fan hunt that involves confiscating laptops and signing deals that require you to be silent about the payments are severely hurting the image of copyright and creators. Authors of works should actively rise up to say NO to what CIAPC/TTVK is doing if they wish to keep their fans,” he concludes.

CIAPC confirmed that the case against the 9-year-old is only the latest in a line of attempted settlements. Last fall a total of 28 Internet account holders settled with CIAPC, but of course we haven’t heard of the cases due to the confidentiality agreements recipients are required to sign.

View: Original Article

Megaupload Assisted FBI vs NinjaVideo, But Evidence Then Used Against Them

In 2010, individuals from the now-defunct NinjaVideo site stored copyright-infringing videos on the servers of Megaupload. These subsequently came to the attention of the FBI who were conducting an investigation into NinjaVideo and its operators. As a result Megaupload was served with a criminal search warrant requiring it to hand over information to the authorities, but in a cruel twist Megaupload’s cooperation and a desire not to destroy evidence is now being used as evidence against it.

The February 2012 “Superseding Indictment” document, which lays out the Grand Jury charges against Megaupload, runs to 90-pages long and contains dozens of allegations of illegal behavior against the operators of the now-shuttered file-hosting site.

As outlined in our discussions this week, Dotcom says that some of the allegations are misleading, particularly one claiming that Megaupload failed to delete infringing video files from its servers.

“A member of the Mega Conspiracy informed several of his co-conspirators [in 2010] that he located the named files using internal searches of the Mega Conspiracy’s systems,” the DoJ wrote.

“As of November, 18 2011, thirty-six or the thirty-nine infringing copies of the copyrighted motion pictures were still being stored on servers controlled by the Mega Conspiracy.”

Out of context the claim, that Megaupload ignores the DMCA, looks bad. However, when the full picture is put forward – that Megaupload found these files because a criminal search warrant from the FBI required them to do so – things start to look quite different.

And the plot thickens. Wired has discovered that the infringing files were put on Megaupload’s servers by individuals connected to the now-defunct streaming video site NinjaVideo.

The FBI were conducting a criminal investigation into NinjaVideo (which later resulted in several of its operators going to jail) and required Megaupload’s cooperation after serving the company with a search warrant in June 2010, just days before NinjaVideo was raided.

“Megaupload complied with the warrant and cooperated with the government’s request,” Megaupload lawyer Ira Rothken confirms.

According to Kim Dotcom, the FBI made it clear that the warrant should be kept quiet so as not to jeopardize the NinjaVideo inquiry.

“The agent was concerned that the target could be warned and that this needs to be handled confidentially,” Dotcom informs TorrentFreak.

The Megaupload founder says that this warning was taken seriously and that since the files were clearly evidence in the case none of them were interfered with.

“Obviously when the FBI contacted us they made this clear to us and therefore we did not touch the accounts or the files,” he says.

“We even emailed back to Carpathia [Megaupload's US server host] to ask the FBI (and the FBI had our emails before asking for the Mega domain seizure) if we should do anything about those files. We never got a response.”

But the criminal investigation against NinjaVideo and evidential issues in that respect were pushed aside when it came to building a case against Megaupload and seizing its domain.

“To use this against us and to tell a Judge that the Megaupload domain seizure is justified because we have not removed those 39 files is totally unethical and misleading,” Dotcom concludes.

The fact that the infringing files remained on Mega’s leased servers led the U.S. government to claim that Megaupload infringed copyright, despite the company having been served the original NinjaVideo search warrant as the site’s service provider, one that presumably should have received safe-harbor protection under the DMCA.

As previously reported, NinjaVideo founder Hana Beshara was eventually sentenced to 22 months in jail and ordered to repay almost $210,000.

View: Original Article