quote:#OpStopG4S
G4S is the UK's biggest private security company, with its government contracts alone worth over £600 million. Responsible for security services, managing detention centers, prisons, and 675 court and police station holding cells, G4S have also just been granted the £100 million contract for providing 10,000 security guards for the upcoming Olympics.
Whilst G4S still seem to be government favorites, their record is far from spotless. The firm lost their previous 'forcible deportation' contract last September after receiving 773 complaints of abuse – both verbal and physical. The final straw came with the death of Jimmy Mubenga in October 2010, an Angolan asylum seeker who died as a result of his forced deportation by G4S guards. Two of the guards are on bail facing criminal charges, whilst G4S is still waiting to hear whether they are to face corporate manslaughter charges.
Now, asylum seekers in Yorkshire and Humberside are expected to accept this multinational, money-hungry, security company as their landlords.
MORE Information - http://notog4s.blogspot.co.uk/
Backup Data On - http://leakster.net/leaks/g4s
All possible Sub-Domains Of G4S hacked!
You Should Have Expected Us!
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twitter:th3j35t3r twitterde op maandag 25-06-2012 om 22:07:39#ugnazi @ug #5days or less - #ticktock http://t.co/wi4begDb (PS ya got beef with each other - why would that be? Pressure? SE? See u soon. reageer retweet
quote:US charges 24 people in massive hacking sting
Suspected hackers arrested in operation spanning four continents that targeted online financial fraud of stolen credit card information
US law enforcement have arrested 24 suspected hackers in a sting operation spanning four continents that targeted online financial fraud of stolen credit card and bank information.
The two-year investigation, in which FBI agents posed as hackers on internet forums, prevented more than $205 million in losses on over 411,000 compromised consumer credit and debit cards, US authorities in New York said.
Eleven people were arrested in the United States and thirteen others were arrested in countries spanning from Britain to Japan.
"Clever computer criminals operating behind the supposed veil of the internet are still subject to the long arm of the law," said Manhattan attorney Preet Bharara.
Two people were arrested in the New York area and were expected to appear in Manhattan federal court later on Tuesday.
One of the men, Mir Islam, known online as "JoshTheGod," was charged with trafficking in 50,000 stolen credit card numbers. Authorities said Islam had admitted to helping emerging hacker outfit UgNazi, which said it had launched a cyber attack against the microblogging platform Twitter last week. A lawyer for Islam did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the charges.
Joshua Hicks, also known as "OxideDox," was charged with one count of access device fraud.
The 24 people arrested were all men and ranged from 18 to 25-years old. Some face up to 40 years or more in prison if convicted on conspiracy to commit wire fraud charges and access device fraud charges.
The FBI operation centred around a "carding forum" that it had secretly created in June 2010, and was in charge of running unbeknownst to its participants, authorities said.
The forum, called "Carder Profit," was essentially an online market for registered users to exchange stolen account numbers. It was shut down in May.
Meanwhile, the US Federal Trade Commission filed a complaint against Wyndham Worldwide Corp and three subsidiaries, alleging that the hotel operator failed to secure customer data.
That failure resulted in the theft of hundreds of thousands of consumers payment card numbers, which were sent to an Internet address registered in Russia and $10.6 million in fraudulent charges, according to the complaint.
quote:Google traint computers om katten te herkennen
Een onderzoeksteam van Google heeft een netwerk van duizend computers getraind om - zonder hulp van buitenaf - afbeeldingen van katten te herkennen. In totaal 16 duizend processorkernen werden met elkaar verbonden op een manier die vergelijkbaar is met de bouw van een biologisch brein.
Dat schrijft de New York Times vandaag. De 'slimme computer' is gebouwd door medewerkers van Google's X-lab. Het team probeert computers zoveel mogelijk een menselijk brein te laten nabootsen. Die kennis kan bijvoorbeeld van pas komen bij het bouwen en verbeteren van indexeringssystemen voor de zoekmachine, of voor de vertaalmachine Google Translate.
Leerproces
Het computernetwerk kreeg tien miljoen plaatjes uit Youtube-video's voorgeschoteld, en ontwikkelde binnen drie dagen zelf een methode om afbeeldingen van katten te herkennen, zonder dat de computers ooit op enigerlei wijze is uitgelegd wat een kat precies is. Het leerproces is vergelijkbaar met hoe een menselijk brein gezichten herkent, hoewel het natuurlijke systeem nog wel vele malen geavanceerder is.
De wetenschappers zijn naar eigen zeggen positief verrast door de resultaten van hun onderzoek. Ze hadden niet verwacht dat met zo weinig context en sturing toch resultaat geboekt zou kunnen worden. De computers leren ook om lichaamsvormen en menselijke gezichten te herkennen.
De duizenden processorkernen vormden een netwerk van een biljoen verbindingen, die signalen aan elkaar doorgeven in een patroon zoals men vermoedt dat neuronen dat doen in een menselijk brein. De onderzoekers durven evenwel niet te speculeren hoe dicht het computersysteem bij menselijke hersenen komt.
quote:Anonymous linked to Japan's government websites attacks
A series of cyber-attacks have led to a number of Japanese government websites being temporarily taken offline.
A Twitter feed, @op_japan, associated with hacking collective Anonymous claimed responsibility, reacting to the country's new anti-piracy bill.
The new law outlines jail terms for those who download copyrighted content.
This would "result in scores of unnecessary prison sentences to numerous innocent citizens", the Anonymous website stated on Monday.
The websites - of Japan's Finance Ministry, Supreme Court and political parties DPJ and LDP - are now back up.
The new law says "downloading of copyrighted works knowing that they are not free and that it is illegal" could result in a fine of up to two million yen ($25,300; £16,184) or a prison sentence of up to two years - or both.
Ministry official Takanari Horino said a number of the Finance Ministry's web pages had been defaced on Tuesday and an unauthorised link posted on the site.
Free society
"We are aware of the Anonymous statement referring to the new copyright law, but we don't know at this point if the cyber-attacks are linked to the group," he added.
A statement on the website believed to be run by members of Anonymous, anonpr.net, said anti-piracy bills passed last week in Japan would do "little to solve the underlying problem of legitimate copyright infringement".
"The content industry is now pushing ISPs [internet service providers] in Japan to implement surveillance technology that will spy on... every single internet user," it added.
"This would be an unprecedented approach and severely reduce the amount of privacy law abiding citizens should have in a free society."
Staged protests
According to the Recording Industry Association of Japan, 4.36 billion files were illegally downloaded in the country in 2010.
In early June, members of Anonymous staged protests in 16 cities in India, against what they said was internet censorship in the country.
India's Madras High Court has since changed its earlier censorship order, which centred on the issue of internet copyright, making it once again possible for web users to access video and file-sharing sites, including The Pirate Bay.
In April, Anonymous also claimed responsibility for defacing almost 500 websites in China, including government sites and those of official agencies and trade groups.
quote:About Anonymous Cleaning Service (ACS)
This operation is a cleanup activity in Japan.
We're planning an offline-meeting in suits and Guy Fawkes' masks. We will pick up garbage and hand out leaflets explaining what Anonymous is and why we are concerned: Anonymous is neither a group nor criminal. We are united citizens of the world who are concerned that our governments and the content industry are trying to take away our liberties on the Internet.
But Anonymous means more than DDoS. We prefer constructive and productive solutions. Very few Japanese know why our concerns about the new copyright laws are valid and sincere, and the media is not showing the entire truth. We want to make our fellow citizens aware of the problem with a productive message.
We are Anonymous. And in this op, we will be cleaning instead of clicking. Expect Us.
More Information upcoming.
quote:Peeking behind the curtain at Anonymous: Gabriella Coleman at TEDGlobal 2012
Anthropologist and academic Gabriella Coleman starts her talk with a simple-sounding question: “Who is Anonymous?” She promptly confesses that even after “exhilarating and extremely frustrating” years of studying the group, she still finds this question difficult to answer.
First of all, it’s not an organization with one or even a few leaders at the helm. It’s a name adopted by various unrelated groups of hackers and technologists to describe a whole range of actions, from hacks against security firms to technical support for occupiers to those involved in national revolutions. Subgroups such as Antisec, meanwhile, scour servers to look for sensitive national, military or political information they can leak to the world. What links the groups is a spirit of irreverence and disdain for the law as it stands.
It all starts with Internet trolling, a long-established habit in Internet circles. ”Generally this contains a combination of four things: pranking, trickery, deceit and defilement,” says Coleman. Essentially a way to harm someone’s reputation, it often included the release of personal information, even the assault of an individual or company with unpaid-for pizzas. What’s the point? The laughs, or as Anonymous might put it, the “lulz.”
Declared the Internet Hate Machine by Fox News, a name Anonymous entirely embraced, the group has become more serious in recent years. What inspired them? Oddly, the church of Scientology. When they demanded that a leaked recruitment video be taken down, Anonymous got mad — and bombarded Scientology churches with free pizzas (and many other things besides). As an Anonymous member who taught Coleman’s class described it, it was “ultra coordinated motherfuckary.”
And it was at this point that a serious discussion began within Anonymous. Soon enough, it was clear that a political movement had been born. “Participants now saw themselves as bona fide activists–with an admittedly transgressive twist,” she says.
operation humiliated HBGary CEO Aaron Barr, after Barr had boasted that he had infiltrated Anonymous and was ready to hand over names to the FBI. Anonymous instead gutted HBGary’s servers of 70,000 corporate emails. Operation BART happened after the transport agency blocked cell phone reception to block a planned protest. “Just yesterday, there was an operation in Japan after the country passed anti-piracy laws,” Coleman says. “Anonymous is not proactive, it is reactive, event-driven. It rises up most forcefully when internet freedom is in jeopardy.”
3. They put on a good performance, obvious even to their detractors. The political art of Anonymous is spectacle, says Coleman. The group has a formidable PR machine, which becomes a PR nightmare for others. Yet here’s the thing: Spectacle alone won’t engender political change. Perhaps the greatest accomplishment of all the spectacle, Coleman posits, is that “they dramatize the importance of anonymity and privacy in an era when both are rapidly eroding. Given that vast databases track us, given the vast explosion of surveillance, there’s something enchanting, mesmerizing and at a minimum thought-provoking about Anonymous’ interventions.”
4. They are visible and invisible. Unlike criminal groups that stay hidden at all costs, Anonymous allegedly announces itself loud and proud. It has received enormous attention, fear and admiration — it won the People’s Choice award on Time magazine’s online poll and was voted the top cybersecurity threat by IT professionals. Yet they’re also evasive and shifty. “It is hard to know how many people are involved,” says Coleman, thanks in part to an internal culture of avoiding personal fame at all costs. Hackers who have risen in visibility are chastised, marginalized, even banned. It’s difficult to know who did what when or how. What’s clear is that even though Anonymous members are so paradoxical and contradictory, “they have tapped into a deep disenchantment with the status quo as concerns censorship privacy and surveillance.”
This is why it doesn’t really matter whether Anonymous as it exists even lasts. Roiled by arrests and paranoia, the group may well implode. But, says Coleman firmly, “irreverent dissent on the internet is not going to go away with Anonymous.” Many geeks and hackers care about protecting the Internet, and they both invent and manage these resources, so it’s not surprising that this movement is under way. It might be difficult to come up with a blanket moral assessment of Anonymous’ influence, but it’s clear that this is just one moment. And, concludes Coleman, “if you try to hurt what’s so valuable about the internet, be careful — because the internet may very well hurt you back.”
quote:'Black boxes' to monitor all internet and phone data
Internet and mobile phone companies are preparing to install "black boxes" to monitor all internet and phone traffic to and from the UK, and decode encrypted messages including bank transactions.
As part of the Home Office's Communications Data Bill, internet service providers (ISPs) and mobile phone companies will be obliged to collect communications records and keep them for a year.
The government has insisted that the actual content of messages won't be stored, but until now it has not been clear how communications companies will be able to separate content from "header data", such as the sender and recipient of a message, and the date it was sent.
It has now emerged that the Home Office has held meetings with the UK's largest ISPs and mobile network operators, and has given them information about the hardware which companies will have to use to monitor traffic flowing through their systems.
When an individual uses a webmail service such as Gmail, for example, the entire webpage is encrypted before it is sent. This makes it impossible for ISPs to distinguish the content of the message. Under the Home Office proposals, once the Gmail is sent, the ISPs would have to route the data via a government-approved "black box" which will decrypt the message, separate the content from the "header data", and pass the latter back to the ISP for storage.
Dominic Raab, a Conservative MP who has criticised the Bill, said: "The use of data mining and black boxes to monitor everyone's phone, email and web-based communications is a sobering thought that would give Britain the most intrusive surveillance regime in the West. But, many technical experts are raising equally serious doubts about its feasibility and vulnerability to hacking and other abuse."
A representative of the ISPs Association said: "We understand that government wants to move with the times, and we want to work with them on that. But this is a massive project. We'd rather they told us what they want to achieve, then sit down with us to work out how."
"Our other main concern with this is speed. If you're having to route all traffic through one box, it's going to cut down on connection speeds. The hardware can only look at a certain amount of traffic per second - if lots of streams from the BBC iPlayer are going through it, for example, how is it going to handle the traffic?"
The Home Office had not commented at the time of publication.
quote:Anonymous Hackers Personified As A Clumsy Girl On Japanese Web
Anonymous, a hacker group known by several internet protest attacks against the recently passed Japanese anti-copyright bill which penalized music downloaders, who are being reported to be attacking Japanese government and political parties websites, gets a little troubles on its first contact with Japanese.
Until this attack began, Anonymous and its hacktivism were known as what happened oversea, nothing related to themselves by Japanese.
Their Twitter account on this time activity, @op_japan, tweeted 5 times in Japanese out of the total 100 tweets, but all of them are not natural Japanese, likely done by machine-translation. Though they are understandable enough, it seemed to make Japanese net users an impression that the person(s) inside is a bit dumb.
# like my Asiajin posts ;-)
As the account later admitted [J], on their first attack, they mistakenly attacked a local lake “Kasumigaura” management office website, instead of Japanese ministries, so-called “Kasumigaseki”.
Another one, attacking the opposition party, The Liberal Democratic Party(LDP) website first prior to the ruling party, The Democratic Party of Japan(DPJ), was not a mistake, they announced [J], which may be true as the both parties approved the bill. However, many Japanese web users thought that Anonymous chose targets without enough research.
On Twitter and 2-channel, some started saying that the Anonymous is like “Dojikko”, which is an Anime/Manga word means a clumsy girl whose mistakes are thought as attractive. Some drew personified character of Anonymous by following the line.
On the Japanese web, more people seem against the bill even before Anonymous’ attack, so this anthropomorphism may show that their positive feeling.
quote:"How am I supposed to go to a judge if the third party is gagged...?"
Greatest hits for your Friday afternoon: internet freedom activist Jake Appelbaum questions the FBI's deputy general counsel on secret Patriot Act subpoenas, called "National Security Letters" (NSLs). Appelbaum has been a target of the secret, gag-imposed orders.
He asks the FBI counsel if there is judicial oversight over the NSL process. Watch to hear what she says. Her answer should alarm us all and remind us that fights like the upcoming battle over the FISA amendments act reauthorization are really big deals. These aren't just arcane laws; they affect real people, in tangible ways.
If this is all a little meaningless to you, read this background on NSLs. Basically the secret subpoenas allow the government to force third party holders of our private information to hand over our data to the FBI. As we've written about here, the third party content holders that receive NSLs could include doctors and even mental health professionals like therapists and social workers.
Here's the full segment of the DemocracyNow! show during which the above clip was aired. It's well worth watching if you have some time.
Ben vooral een lurker hier maar vind het altijd wel interessant om te lezen, blijf zo doorgaanquote:Op maandag 11 juni 2012 21:05 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:
Ik bedank iedereen voor de maandelijkse kan-dit-topic-niet-dicht? dans. En dan vooral de Fok!Kers die wél plezier aan deze reeks beleven.
Bedanktquote:Op zaterdag 30 juni 2012 13:56 schreef Tukker87 het volgende:
[..]
Ben vooral een lurker hier maar vind het altijd wel interessant om te lezen, blijf zo doorgaan
http://www.downwiththe.or(...)-megaraid/livestreamtwitter:HHAnonymous twitterde op zaterdag 30-06-2012 om 12:15:04I'm at the #Anonymous #chanology #Megaraid in Dublin - conference Live stream: http://t.co/TMPh6zSm reageer retweet
quote:
quote:" The energy companies that caused the Arctic to melt in the first place are looking to profit from the disappearing ice. They want to open up a new oil frontier to get at a potential 90 billion barrels of oil. That’s a lot of money to them, but it’s only three years’ worth of oil to the world.Previously classified government documents say dealing with oil spills in the freezing waters is “almost impossible” and inevitable mistakes would shatter the fragile Arctic environment.We’ve seen the extreme damage caused by the Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon disasters - we cannot let this happen in the Arctic.
To drill in the Arctic, oil companies have to drag icebergs out the way of their rigs and use giant hoses to melt floating ice with warm water. If we let them do this, a catastrophic oil spill is just a matter of time. "
This gave rise to #OpSaveTheArctic put forward by Anonymous.
Listed Targets :
1). Exxon Mobil Corporation
2). Shell Petrochemical Corp.
3). BP Global - British multinational oil and gas company
4). Gazprom Corporation
5). Rosneft Petroleum Corp. - Russia
• Phase-1 of #OpSaveTheArctic has been carried out.
Target - Exxon Mobil Corporation
To show our support to the cause, after the employees of Exxon where hacked, we used their email ids to to sign the petition at - http://www.savethearctic.org/
We suggest you to do the same!
SPOILEROm spoilers te kunnen lezen moet je zijn ingelogd. Je moet je daarvoor eerst gratis Registreren. Ook kun je spoilers niet lezen als je een ban hebt.Free Assange! Hack the Planet
[b]Op dinsdag 6 januari 2009 19:59 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:[/b]
De gevolgen van de argumenten van de anti-rook maffia
quote:Anonymous strikes UAE
A group of “hacktivists” allegedly affiliated with the Anonymous activist organization appears to have infiltrated the United Arab Emirates government computer system.
The group claims to have accessed the servers in charge of filtering internet traffic before it reaches the population within the UAE's borders and posted the information Saturday.
The action seems to have been initiated on what the group referred to as “Operation GodFather” as part of an effort to expose official internet censorship and oppression in the UAE.
“Hello citizens of the world. Here comes another leak. This time our target was UAE and its oppressive Netfilers,” they stated.
“As many of you might already know UAE's internet is fully run and monitored by government run ISP's. We decided to ‘take a look’we managed to get into the Netfilter server and are leaking this data we extracted from their DB.”
The leak appears to contain a list of blockades set in place with the use of “wildcards” and, according to the hackers, a list of website URLs filtered by the UAE’s Internet service providers.
Including websites that host adult content, the list includes VPN providers and any other site that could help users bypass censorship mechanisms, social media networks and dating sites, and sites that promote religious views different than Islam.
The most “shocking” discovery, as described by the hackers, is the fact that many websites that offer Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) services are also on the list.
“A large part of UAE's population is made of migrant workers and the telecom industry made a lot of profit by overcharging them for international phone calls. But with the raise of VOIP and internet communication they were afraid that this would take away their profits and thus went ahead to block VOIP,” they explained.
Anonymous-affiliated hackers were also responsible for the recent Euro 2012 website attack, protesting Ukraine's rounding up and slaughter of stray dogs in advance of a soccer championship held earlier this month.
quote:Press Releases :: 2012 WhiteHat Security Announcements
WhiteHat Security Marks 2011 as the Year of Radical Reduction in Online Vulnerabilities In Twelfth Edition of Website Security Statistics Report
SANTA CLARA, Calif. – June 27, 2012 – WhiteHat Security, the Web security company, today released the twelfth installment of the WhiteHat Security Website Security Statistics Report. The report reviewed serious vulnerabilities* in websites during the 2011 calendar year, examining the severity and duration of the most critical vulnerabilities from 7,000 websites across major vertical markets. Among the findings in the report, WhiteHat research suggests that the average number of serious vulnerabilities found per website per year in 2011 was 79, a substantial reduction from 230 in 2010 and down from 1,111 in 2007. Despite the significant improvement in the state of website security, organizational challenges in creating security programs that balance breadth of coverage and depth of testing leave large-scale attack surfaces or small, but very high-risk vulnerabilities open to attackers.
quote:Greenpeace welcomes Anonymous after Exxon Mobil hack
Greenpeace welcomes Anonymous in the fight to preserve the Arctic. Earlier this week, Anonymous enthusiasts hacked Exxon Mobil in solidarity with the ongoing Greenpeace campaign to save the Arctic from oil exploration.
Cyber War News reports Anonymous hacked and released data from Exxon Mobil Corporation on June 27 as part of Operation Save The Arctic (#OpSaveTheArctic).
Greenpeace, an independent global organisation acting to change attitudes and behavior in order to protect the environment and promote peace, welcomed the support of the international hacktivist collective known as Anonymous with the following tweet, issued June 29:
. The Arctic receives #anonymous support. Arctic oil drillers Exxon hacked in operation #OPSaveTheArctic #SaveTheArctic
Airdemon Network Security reports Anonymous leaked 300 accounts from Exxon Mobil in #OpSavetheArctic.
The following is an excerpt from a statement released by Anonymous hacktivists announcing solidarity with the efforts of Greenpeace to preserve the Arctic:
. The energy companies that caused the Arctic to melt in the first place are looking to profit from the disappearing ice. They want to open up a new oil frontier to get at a potential 90 billion barrels of oil. That's a lot of money to them, but it's only three years' worth of oil to the world.
Previously classified government documents say dealing with oil spills in the freezing waters is "almost impossible" and inevitable mistakes would shatter the fragile Arctic environment. We've seen the extreme damage caused by the Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon disasters -- we cannot let this happen in the Arctic.
To drill in the Arctic, oil companies have to drag icebergs out the way of their rigs and use giant hoses to melt floating ice with warm water. If we let them do this, a catastrophic oil spill is just a matter of time.
This gave rise to #OpSaveTheArctic put forward by Anonymous.
quote:
quote:This story envelopes a dysfunctional family living within in a devastatingly broken system — the mother accused of selling her daughter to a pedophile ring of high ranking authorities, including judges and politicians. The videos are unsettling, the transcripts of the investigation will make you angry. The murders will make your imagination go wild. The activism, will amaze you. Many factors played a role in uniting a country, demanding justice. Those cries for justice have gone unheard.
quote:Twitter forced to release Occupy protester's tweets to New York court
Micro-blogging site loses legal challenge to prosecutors' request for three months' worth of messages from Malcolm Harris
Twitter has been ordered to hand over almost three months worth of messages from an Occupy Wall Street protester after losing a legal challenge to prosecutors' demands for the tweets.
The micro-blogging website had argued that the posts belonged to activist Malcolm Harris and as such it would be violating fourth amendment privacy rights if it were to disclose the communications without first receiving a search warrant.
But a Manhattan judge ruled on Monday that under a timeline set out by federal law, a warrant is only needed for the final day's worth of messages from Harris, who is accused of disorderly conduct in relation to a protest on the Brooklyn Bridge in October.
All other tweets prior to this date could legitimately be demanded by means of subpoena, it was ruled.
Harris was amongst several hundred Occupy Wall Street demonstrators arrested last year during a protest march across Brooklyn Bridge.
Prosecutors say that messages posted by Harris – who goes by the twitter handle @destructuremal – could show whether the defendant was aware that he was breaking police orders relating to the demo.
In January, the New York County district attorney's office issued a subpoena to Twitter, calling on the firm to hand over "any and all user information, including email address, as well as any and all tweets posted for the period 9/15/2011 – 12/31/2011".
Harris initially attempted to block the move, but was told that he had no proprietary interest to his own messages.
Twitter countered that this contradicts its own terms and conditions, which explicitly states that users "retain their right to any content they submit, post or display on or through". Moreover, in its own legal challenge to the subpoena, the firm accused prosecutors of trying to force its employees to violate federal law.
Lawyers for Twitter also argued that under the Uniform Act, prosecutors would need to obtain a subpoena in California before it could demand documents from a company based in that state.
Monday's ruling found that a search warrant was indeed needed for a final day's worth of tweets by Harris as they fell within a timeline laid out in federal law. All else was fair game for the prosecutors, the judge found.
The court will now review the material and provide the relevant tweets to the DA's office.
In a statement, Chief Assistant District Attorney Daniel Alonso said he was "pleased that the court has ruled for a second time that the Tweets at issue must be turned over".
He added: "We look forward to Twitter's complying and to moving forward with the trial."
Responding to the development, Harris's attorney Martin Stolar said: "I'm not surprised by the ruling, but I'm still disappointed by it." He added that he and Twitter could still mount a further challenge, stating that there was still "plenty of time to do that" before his client's next court appearance.
Stolar suggested that the latest decision shows that the court fails to take into consideration 21st century developments when it comes to what should be covered under the fourth amendment. "That is somewhat bothersome," he added.
quote:Anonymous Rattles A Chinese Web Giant
Anonymous may be best known for knocking websites offline or stealing data, but one faction of the movement is subverting figures of power in a more circumspect way — by trawling through documents and computer code.
The sub group Anonymous Analytics released a damning report yesterday about Qihoo, the Chinese web giant that claims to be the No. 1 provider of Internet and mobile security products and services in China, as measured by its user base.
Qihoo distributes antivirus software called 360 Safeguard and has a browser called 360 Secure Browser, but in recent years has restructured it business to focus on selling online advertising space, in particular from a single directory page, hao.360.cn. The company claims to get approximately 90% of its advertising revenue “directly or indirectly” from this page and its sub pages; advertising accounted for 73% of the company’s total revenue in 2011 of $22.9 million.
That figure marked an increase of 136% from the year before, meaning hao.360.cn is a serious money-maker for Qihoo. Qihoo recently said that it charged, on average, 1 million yuan ($156,000) per month, per link on the “Famous Sites” section of its directory page — a breed of e-commerce widely known to have dwindled in Western cyberspace.
Anonymous Analytics says there’s something fishy about Qihoo’s directory page. Qihoo recently claimed on its fourth quarter conference call that the page was getting 20% more web traffic than dominant-player Baidu’s similar page and its sub pages, hao123.com. Qihoo confirmed this with me, citing a table of figures from iResearch.
But the Anonymous group claims that Qihoo is “grotesquely exaggerating” its traffic advantage, and their evidence comes in the form of a recent change in the source code of hao.360.cn. Having been monitoring the site since last year, the group noticed that a comScore tag had been added to Qihoo’s HTML source code. (ComScore is the best-known, third-party verifier of a web site’s traffic.)
This seemed fine, until the tag was removed on or around June 20, 2012. Why? Anonymous Analytics thinks that Qihoo didn’t like the figures it was seeing. The group then managed to get what it claims are the actual comScore figures through unnamed third parties — “people we trust,” according to the group’s representative — who had bought them from comScore. The figures show that in the months of February, March and April 2012, Qihoo’s all-important directory page had 56%, 51% and 52% less traffic than Baidu’s.
Anonymous Analytics provided me with what appears to be a legitimate document from comScore showing web traffic figures for Baidu and Qihoo’s main directory pages in April 2012. It states that Baidu’s directory page had 84.689 million unique visitors from China, while Qihoo’s had 40.877 million.
The activist group believes that before Qihoo balked at the figures, it had added the comScore tag to appease analysts, investors and critics, “who have called for management to provide independent verification of Qihoo’s traffic claims.”
The group further believes that management installed the tag with a view figuring out how to manipulate comScore’s traffic analytics. “We are so certain of this that we invite engineers at comScore to analyze data coming out of hao.360.cn since the beginning of the year,” Anonymous Analytics says.
Qihoo has denied these allegations completely, though it seems rattled enough by them. Their chief operating officer, Alex Yu, told me in an email on Monday that “allegations regarding our web site traffic has been put out by several different parties. Most of them are on the short side of our stock. ”
He added that Qihoo had started working with comScore to get a “backup measurement” of Qihoo’s traffic since the beginning of 2012.
“However from time to time, comScore’s tracking tools may trigger some security software,” Yu said. “When such conflict between comScore and security software occurs, we will temporarily remove the comScore tag to make sure users don’t get false alarm.” Yu added that the comScore tag would be put back once such conflicts were resolved.
“There were several such incidences in the past few months, and there may be additional ones in the future until comScore and us come with a solution to completely solve the issue,” Yu said. He added that until the issue was resolved, comScore would not be ready to “officially release” any data regarding Qihoo’s directory site. “Any of the ‘leaked’ data should be viewed as inaccurate and unofficial,” he said.
When I put this to comScore, a spokesperson provided a formal statement from the tracking firm:
. ComScore have been working and is still working with Qihoo and other publishers in China on tagging their websites for Unified Digital Measurement. At this point, comScore has not released any Unified (tagged) data for Qihoo Sites. We do not comment on publisher’s unpublished data or any work in progress.
Anonymous Analytics claims that the comScore data it got on Qihoo came form a third party that had bought it directly from comScore. When I asked comScore how much “unpublished” figures like this counted as legitimate comScore data, they reiterated that they could only comment on data that had been put in the public domain.
A representative of Anonymous Analytics offered some responses to Yu’s denials, and to an official rebuttal that was put out by Qihoo in the form of a press release this morning, which stated that in the recent months in question, a European third-party anti-virus software had “mistakenly identified the tag as a Trojan.” Qihoo said it had temporarily removed the comScore tag from hao.360.cn to “ensure user experience till the issue was resolved.”
“We would love to know which European anti-virus company triggered the tag as a Trojan,” the Anonymous Analytics representative told me. “Any anti-virus company big enough to make a sizeable impact in Qihoo’s traffic volume would know to white flag any data analytics from major companies, such as comScore, Alexa, and Google Analytics. Technical absurdity of that aside, how many people could that have been affected since Qihoo claims most its users use its own anti-virus products? Also, they ‘removed the tag for user experience?’ What does that even mean?”
The Anonymous researchers, who it’s worth noting cannot be accountable for the validity of their claims due to their professed namelessness, are not the first group to question Qihoo’s claims about web traffic. Seeking Alpha did so here, a short seller of the stock called Citron Research did so here, and Qihoo responded to that latter report here. (My own take is that there’s something rather unsustainable about a company with a market capitalization of $1.9 billion getting most of its revenue from a single directory page of web links.)
Anonymous is both a movement and brand of hacktivists and trolls, best known for illegal cyber attacks against targets like the Church of Scientology in 2008, MasterCard, Visa and PayPal in late 2010, and Sony in 2012. There were all manner of motivations at play but underneath it all an attempt to unleash a modern-day form of vigilante justice.
Yet this is also not the first time that Anonymous has pursued legal means of subversion. Recently a faction of Anonymous in Japan announced a clean-up event, encouraging supporters to meet in Shibuya, Tokyo on July 7 to don Guy Fawkes masks, then pick up garbage and hand out leaflets about the cyber collective.
Anonymous Analytics is on the edgier side of these legal activities. It was established less than a year ago and includes ”enough guys with finance backgrounds to know what we are talking about,” its representative said. Its website is a parody of a financial research firm, preluding each report title with “Initiating Coverage.” Last April it targeted Huabao International, claiming in a 44-page report that the Chinese tobacco and fragrance firm overpaid for several companies it bought from its billionaire chairwoman. As a result, Huabao asked to suspend trading of its shares on the Hong Kong stock exchange, according to The Financial Times. The September before, the group targeted Chaoda Modern Agriculture. So far it has released three reports.
Why the focus on China? Anonymous Analytics claims on its web site that Chinese companies aren’t very good at covering their tracks. But they’re ready to move on — in their latest report they added that “exposing Chinese frauds” had become cliche, “if not outright boring.” The group says it has already turned its attention to Western companies, and expects to release its first report by year-end.
quote:
quote:The arrests deprived Anonymous, at least temporarily, of a well of talent and social inspiration. But even as the small group of hackers who originally comprised AntiSec has all but vanished from the net, the name has now taken on a life of its own. What used to be a traditional hacker group, a structured and elite club of talent within the otherwise chaotic collective, has now—like Anonymous itself—become a banner.
“AntiSec” attacked Florida’s Lake County Sheriff’s Office, with several gigabytes of sensitive data leaked on April 27. In late May, “AntiSec” attacked the website of the Chicago police in retaliation for what anons perceived as harsh treatment of anti-NATO protestors. Around the same time, “AntiSec” also hacked into the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, releasing a sizable cache of internal data. But as far as anyone could tell, these attacks weren’t connected to the fragmented group Sabu had played dean to—and they weren’t even connected to one another. It was as if the destruction of AntiSec had allowed the idea of AntiSec to escape into the Internet’s social ether.
After the arrests, it seemed that Anonymous would never terrify governments and corporations in quite the same way again. But that’s the sort of underestimation that led Aaron Barr to count 10 senior members of Anonymous, right before a mob ruined his life. It’s the type of judgment that led the Stratfor analyst Sean Noonan, on reading a description of Anonymous as “ultra-coordinated motherfuckery,” to write that the group was “completely uncoordinated and couldn’t fuck anything”—in a personal email that we can read, of course, thanks to some truly coordinated fucking of his employer.
quote:Three NSA Whistleblowers Back EFF's Lawsuit Over Government's Massive Spying Program
EFF Asks Court to Reject Stale State Secret Arguments So Case Can Proceed
San Francisco - Three whistleblowers – all former employees of the National Security Agency (NSA) – have come forward to give evidence in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF's) lawsuit against the government's illegal mass surveillance program, Jewel v. NSA.
In a motion filed today, the three former intelligence analysts confirm that the NSA has, or is in the process of obtaining, the capability to seize and store most electronic communications passing through its U.S. intercept centers, such as the "secret room" at the AT&T facility in San Francisco first disclosed by retired AT&T technician Mark Klein in early 2006.
"For years, government lawyers have been arguing that our case is too secret for the courts to consider, despite the mounting confirmation of widespread mass illegal surveillance of ordinary people," said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. "Now we have three former NSA officials confirming the basic facts. Neither the Constitution nor federal law allow the government to collect massive amounts of communications and data of innocent Americans and fish around in it in case it might find something interesting. This kind of power is too easily abused. We're extremely pleased that more whistleblowers have come forward to help end this massive spying program."
The three former NSA employees with declarations in EFF's brief are William E. Binney, Thomas A. Drake, and J. Kirk Wiebe. All were targets of a federal investigation into leaks to the New York Times that sparked the initial news coverage about the warrantless wiretapping program. Binney and Wiebe were formally cleared of charges and Drake had those charges against him dropped.
Jewel v. NSA is back in district court after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated it in late 2011. In the motion for partial summary judgment filed today, EFF asked the court to reject the stale state secrets arguments that the government has been using in its attempts to sidetrack this important litigation and instead apply the processes in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that require the court to determine whether electronic surveillance was conducted legally.
"The NSA warrantless surveillance programs have been the subject of widespread reporting and debate for more than six years now. They are just not a secret," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Lee Tien. "Yet the government keeps making the same 'state secrets' claims again and again. It's time for Americans to have their day in court and for a judge to rule on the legality of this massive surveillance."
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