The Pirate Bay Domains Targeted in Legal Action

A pair of domains operated by The Pirate Bay are at risk of seizure following legal action by Swedish authorities. The man behind December's raid, prosecutor Fredrik Ingblad, says that the domains should be canceled or placed under state control. The domain registry involved has criticized the move.

While it is technically possible to operate without one, domain names are considered vital for any mainstream website. Domains give a web service an identity and make them easy to find.
This is exactly what authorities in Sweden are now trying to deny The Pirate Bay.
Prosecutor Fredrik Ingblad, the man behind the now-famous operation to take the site down in December, is now spearheading the drive to shut down The Pirate Bay’s access to a pair of key domains. ThePirateBay.se and PirateBay.se are Ingblad’s targets, the former being the only domain currently being used by the site.
Originally filed at the District Court of Stockholm back in 2013, the motion targets Punkt SE, the organization responsible for Sweden’s top level .SE domain. Ingblad’s assertion is that since The Pirate Bay is acting illegally, domain names are necessarily part of that site’s ‘crimes’ and should be tackled like any other part of its infrastructure.
“A domain name is an aid for a site. When a site is used for criminal activities a domain is aiding crime,” Ingblad said.
While actions against domain names aren’t unprecedented in Sweden, this case is unique. Punkt SE (also referred to as the Internet Infrastructure Foundation) informs TorrentFreak that while two earlier actions targeted the owners of Swedish domain names, this is the first time that the prosecutor has targeted the .SE / IIS registrar directly.
“There have been two legal cases regarding forfeiture of domain names from the domain name holder (ikonm.se and [torrent site] xnt.nu). In the Pirate bay case the prosecutor wants to forfeit the domain names directly from .SE,” Punkt SE’s Maria Ekelund told TF.
Also of interest is Inglblad’s demands for the domains should he prevail. The prosecutor says that Punkt SE should at the least be forbidden from allowing anyone to register the domains in future or, preferably, they should be placed under control of the Swedish government.
“It is not our intention to impose any monitoring responsibility on Punkt SE. The best outcome is that the state takes over the domain,” Ingblad told DN.se.
At this point it’s worth noting how far removed Punkt SE are from any online infringement. In the original Pirate Bay criminal trial the site’s former operators were found guilty of assisting in copyright infringements carried out by the site’s users. In the current case Punkt SE are being accused of assisting people who were previously found guilty of assisting other people to commit copyright infringement.
Punkt SE CEO Danny Aerts previously noted that the case is unique.
“In the eyes of the prosecutor, .SE’s catalogue function has become some form of accomplice to criminal activity, a perspective that is unique in Europe as far as I know,” Aerts said.
“There are no previous cases of states suing a registry for abetting criminal activity or breaching copyright law.”
Frederick Ingblad agrees that the case is complicated.
“It is about fundamental rights versus the need to prevent crime online. It’s a balancing act, and ultimately it’s for the legislature to decide.”
A few moments ago Punkt SE told us that the case will be heard at the end of April, two years since its original filing in 2013.
“The serving of all the counterparties has taken a long time,” Maria Ekelund concludes.

Megaupload Programmer Arrested in The U.S.

Andrus Nomm, one of the seven Megaupload employees indicted by the United States, has been arrested. The U.S. authorities have yet to comment on the arrest of the programmer but Megaupload lawyer Ira Rothken believes that he may have cut a deal with the FBI.

Acting on a lead from the entertainment industry, the U.S. Government shut down Megaupload early 2012.
Since then the case hasn’t progressed much. Kim Dotcom’s extradition hearing has been delayed time and time again, while most of the recent court proceedings have dealt with how the seized assets should be handled.
However, during the weeks to come the case is likely to heat up again as U.S. authorities have just arrested Andrus Nomm, one of the indicted Megaupload defendants.
The 36-year-old programmer had been living in the Netherlands awaiting his extradition hearing, but was arrested in Alexandria, Virginia yesterday.
The unusual arrest after more than three years could suggest that Nomm made a deal to testify against Dotcom and his former colleagues.
That suspicion is confirmed by Megaupload lawyer Ira Rothken, who told the NZHerald that Nomm “either agreed to come to the US or is involved in some sort of deal.”
Nomm’s arrest warrant, filed yesterday
In the indictment Nomm is described as a software programmer and Head of the Development of Megaupload’s Software Division. In 2010 he received $100,000 for his work at the now defunct file-hosting service.
Nomm is also accused of watching at least one copy of a pirated TV-show.
“On or about December 5, 2008, NOMM sent VAN DER KOLK an e-mail, which included a screenshot of NOMM’s account using Megavideo.com to watch an infringing episode of the copyrighted television show Chuck,” the indictment reads.
Megaupload lawyer Ira Rothken believes that U.S. authorities might have taken of Nomm. As an Estonian citizen living in a foreign country he was vulnerable, and running out of funds.
“Unless the DOJ is taking advantage of him and his weak financial condition, which is possible, it is hard to fathom which copyrighted works they think Mr. Nomm criminally infringed,” Rothken tells TF.
If Mr. Nomm testifies truthfully including things like the Megaupload copyright neutral cloud technology and robust takedown policies it will likely help the defense,” he adds.
The U.S. authorities have yet to comment on the arrest and the possibility of a plea deal.

source: TF

Is Your Smart TV Spying On You? You just need to make sure you don't hold any private conversations in front of the internet-connected TV.

IS SMART TV GETTING TOO SMART?

Smart TVs are connected to the Internet, and they are capable of collecting and transmitting our data.

Samsung's Smart TV uses voice recognition technology to enable voice commands, but its privacy policy defined by the company says "if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be captured and transmitted to a third party."

In other words, Samsung's Voice Recognition feature is always listening you, unless you deactivate it. So these internet-enabled smart devices can be exploited to reveal a wealth of personal.

"In addition, Samsung may collect and your device may capture voice commands and associated texts so that we can provide you with Voice Recognition features and evaluate and improve the features." Samsung Smart TV privacy policy says.

Samsung points out that the voice recognition feature can be turned off by the TV's owner, but even if you turn the feature off, Samsung can still collect enough of your data.

A spokesperson for the company told that Samsung "takes consumer privacy very seriously. In all of our Smart TVs we employ industry-standard security safeguards and practices, including data encryption, to secure consumers’ personal information and prevent unauthorized collection or use"

This is not the first time Samsung Smart TV or other Internet of Things has set off alarms among privacy experts.

• December 2012: Security researcher revealed a vulnerability in Samsung Smart TVs that allows an intruder to take control of the devices that are connected to the same network.
• November 2013: Researchers found that LG's Smart TVs are sending personal information back to the company's servers about what channels you watch and viewing habits.
• July 2013: Another vulnerability allowed hackers to remotely crash Samsung Smart TV without doing much efforts.
• January, 2014: More than 100,000 Refrigerators and other internet-enabled home appliances were hacked to perform a massive cyber attack.
• April 2014: We reported about cyber attacks and specialized malware targeting Internet of Things (IoT) such as TVs, Refrigerators, Microwave or dishwashers.

Internet-enabled devices and voice command technology is becoming more ubiquitous, and many consumers rely on those solutions. So it is advised that companies needs to address some elements of its privacy policy more properly.

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KickAss Torrent Download Website Seized

So far, the torrent users didn’t forget the incident of The Pirate Bay seizer, that another most popular Torrent website, KickAss Torrents, has been kicked off by the Somalian registry.

KickAss Torrent download website has lost access to its Kickass.so - the Somalian domain with millions of unique visitors per day and the most visited torrent website on the Internet. The domain is currently offline and, according to TorrentFreak, the Somalia based KickAss Torrent download domain was recently listed as "banned" by the .so registry, forcing the site's operators to switch to another domain.

Just like The Pirate Bay, KickAss Torrents is also a well-known torrent download service that has often been criticized for providing easy access to pirated content, so it’s no surprise that the ban came following a complaint received by Somalian authorities.

KickAss Torrents website stopped working around 4 am ET and is still offline and will not be returning. However, an alternative domain of KickAss Torrents, i.e. kickass.to, is already available on the Internet for users to access the contents hosted on Kickass Torrents.

This is for the second time a torrent website has been targeted by the government. Late last year, The Pirate Bay — a widely popular file-sharing website predominantly used to share copyrighted material free of charge — went dark from the Internet following a raid in Sweden.

The raid was in response to a complaint from Swedish anti-piracy group Rights Alliance. The police raided The Pirate Bay's server room in Stockholm and seized several servers and other equipment. However, the infamous torrent download website The Pirate Bay (TPB) made a defiant return and finally came back online last weekend.

And this time, it's KickAssTorrents website that is experiencing the same outage. It seems like the world of online piracy is on target by the government, at least one out at the moment. Few hours ago, the Kickass.so domain status listing was updated to a "banned" message as follows:

It likely appears that the Somalia .so domain registry acted following a complaint from copyright holders against the KickAss Torrents website, although there is no such official confirmation yet.

However, few hours after the KickassTorrents aws down, the torrent download website moved its operation to a new domain, Kickass.to, name later today.

15-Year-Old JasBug Vulnerability Affects All Versions of Microsoft Windows

Microsoft just issued a critical patch to fix a 15-year-old vulnerability that could be exploited by hackers to remotely hijack users’ PCs running all supported versions of Windows operating system.

The critical vulnerability — named "JASBUG" by the researcher who reported the flaw — is due to a flaw in the fundamental design of Windows that took Microsoft more than 12 months to release a fix. However, the flaw is still unpatched in Windows Server 2003, leaving the version wide open to the hackers for the remaining five months.

HACKERS CAN EASILY HIJACK YOUR WINDOWS MACHINE

The vulnerability (CVE-2015-0008) could allow an attacker to easily hijack a domain-configured Windows system if it is connected to a malicious network – wirelessly or wired, giving attacker consent to do various tasks including, to go forth and install programs; delete, alter or peruse users' data; or to create new accounts with full user rights.

However, Jasbug vulnerability do not affects home users because they are not usually domain-configured, but the bug is a massive discomfort for IT pros who typically connect to business, corporate, or government networks using the Active Directory service.

The vulnerability, classified as MS15-011, allows hackers who are in a position to monitor traffic passing between the user and the Active Directory network to launch a Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attack in order to execute malicious code on vulnerable systems.

AFFECTED WINDOWS VERSIONS

• Windows Vista
• Windows 7
• Windows 8
• Windows RT
• Windows 8.1
• Windows RT 8.1
• Windows Server 2003
• Windows Server 2008
• Windows Server 2008 R2
• Windows Server 2012
• Windows Server 2012 R2

HOW JASBUG WORKS

Microsoft, on its blog post, provided the following example of how a malicious hacker could exploit the Jasbug vulnerability on a machine connected over open Wi-Fi at a coffee shop:

• This is an example of a ‘coffee shop’ attack scenario, where an attacker would attempt to make changes to a shared network switch in a public place and can direct the client traffic an attacker-controlled system.
• In this scenario, the attacker has observed traffic across the switch and found that a specific machine is attempting to download a file located at the UNC path: \\10.0.0.100\Share\Login.bat .
• On the attacker machine, a share is set up that exactly matches the UNC path of the file requested by the victim: \\*\Share\Login.bat.
• The attacker will have crafted the contents of Login.bat to execute arbitrary, malicious code on the target system. Depending on the service requesting Login.bat, this could be executed as the local user or as the SYSTEM account on the victim’s machine.
• The attacker then modifies the ARP table in the local switch to ensure that traffic intended for the target server 10.0.0.100 is now routed through to the attacker’s machine.
• When the victim’s machine next requests the file, the attacker’s machine will return the malicious version of Login.bat. This scenario also illustrates that this attack cannot be used broadly across the internet – an attacker need to target a specific system or group of systems that request files with this unique UNC.

MORE PATCHES TO APPLY

In addition to Jasbug vulnerability, Microsoft released two other security updates that are rated critical, both with the potential to allow remote code execution on a vulnerable machine.

1. MS15-009: The update patches 41 reported vulnerabilities, one publicly disclosed flaw and 40 privately reported vulnerabilities, in Internet Explorer affecting all versions of the browser from version 6 and above on all operating systems.
2. MS15-010: This security update patches six vulnerabilities, one publicly disclosed flaw and remaining reported privately, in Windows 7 and above, and server software after Windows Server 2008 R2 and later editions. The vulnerabilities are due to the way a Windows kernel-level component handles TrueType fonts.

The remaining six patches in Microsoft's February Patch update are all rated "important" by Redmond. Two vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office could allow RCE and security feature bypass, and bugs in Windows that could allow elevation of privilege, security feature bypass and information disclosure. Also a vulnerability in Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) could give an attacker elevated privileges.

File Hosting Service RapidShare Shutting Down

Remember RapidShare? Once one of the world's most popular and first ever one-click online file hosting and cloud storage website on the Internet. The company has announced that it will shut down its business at the end of next month.

RapidShare file hosting service announced its shut down Tuesday through a notice on its official website, saying that it will stop active service on March 31, 2015. All user accounts on the website will no longer be available after this date, and all files will be deleted automatically.

WHAT RAPIDSHARE USERS MUST DO ?

"We strongly recommend all customers to secure their data. After March 31st, 2015 all accounts will no longer be accessible and will be deleted automatically," the notice on RapidShare official website reads.

Just two days back, the most popular Torrent website KickAss Torrents banned by the .so registry (Somalian registry), forcing the site's operators to switch to another domain. Now, suddenly the oldest and popular file hosting service is closing up its shop.

RapidShare, founded in May 2002, was widely used to share copyrighted content directly. In 2009, the site claimed to have 10 petabytes of files uploaded to its servers, and in 2010, it was said to have hundreds of millions of visitors per month, making it among the world’s 50 most popular websites.

REASON BEHIND THE SHUT DOWN

The reason behind the sudden shutdown decision is still unclear, however, the legal troubles related to copyright infringement have plagued the company for years.

RapidShare has often been faced several lawsuits just like all other notorious file hosting services including The Pirate Bay, Megaupload and Isohunt, which all have been hit with legal issues for facilitating copyright infringement.

While RapidShare worked to cooperate with the entertainment industry and even tried to rebrand itself as a personal cloud storage service in recent years by introducing a number of measures to discourage infringement. But at the end, its user base fell dramatically. It’s likely the site simply isn't as profitable as it once was.

The reason behind the closure could also be the increasing competition with the other cloud storage services. We know that RapidShare cloud file hosting servers provides unlimited upload and download sizes, but the service does make you wait to download files if you are not its premium user.

Comparatively, RapidShare charges roughly $680 per year for 300GB of space, while Dropbox charges just $99 a year for 1TB.

ONLINE FILE STORAGE SERVICES Vs. COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT

MegaUpload, one of the largest file sharing websites on the Internet, was shut down in 2012 by federal prosecutors in Virginia, and the site's founder Kim Dotcom and three others were arrested by the police in New Zealand at the request of US authorities, conspiring to commit copyright infringement.

The same happened in the case of The Pirate Bay — a widely popular torrent download website predominantly used to share copyrighted material free of charge, when TPB went dark from the Internet following a raid in Sweden.

The raid was in response to a complaint from Swedish anti-piracy group Rights Alliance. The police raided The Pirate Bay's server room in Stockholm and seized several servers and other equipment. However, the infamous torrent download website The Pirate Bay (TPB) made a defiant return and finally came back online last weekend.

Facebook Launches Free Mobile Internet Service In India

 

Last year, the founder of the Social Network giant highlighted the future of universal Internet access, the dream that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg wants to fulfill — Making Internet access available to everyone across the world just like a service as essential as of 911 in the case of an emergency.

Dreams are transforming into Reality!! Facebook’s Internet.org app has launched in India to offer free Internet access to a set of websites for users in seven different circles, including Mumbai, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Chennai, Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

Internet.org, with motto 'Internet for All', named after a project developed by the world’s biggest social network site Facebook to expand Internet access to "the next 5 billion people" around the world who currently don't have it.

Facebook has tied up with India's Reliance Communications in an effort to provide free Internet services to users on mobile phones, making India the first country in Asia to get Facebook's Internet.org service.

The Internet.org Smartphone app will initially provide free Internet access to a total of 38 websites and services. The service will work for both existing and new subscribers of Reliance Communications and will work on both feature phones as well as Android smartphones.

India is not first country to receive the service, Internet.org app has far been available in Colombia and a handful of African countries, including Zambia, Kenya, and Tanzania, but now the service is making its way to India’s billion-plus population.

"This is a big step forward in our efforts to connect everyone to the Internet, and to help people share their ideas and creativity with the entire world. We'll continue to improve the experience and roll it out to other parts of the world," Facebook said in a statement.

Most of the services on Internet.org are available in English and six local languages — Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Gujarati, and Marathi — and they can be accessed through the dedicated Android app, from the start screen of the Opera Mini mobile Web browser, or from UCWeb’s popular UC Browser app.

The full list of services includes:

• Aaj Tak: News in Hindi
• AccuWeather: Weather information
• amarujala.com: News in Hindi
• AP Speaks: Engage with local government
• Babajob: Search for jobs
• BabyCenter & MAMA: Learn about pregnancy and childcare
• BBC News
• Bing Search Cleartrip: Check train and flight schedules & buy tickets
• Daily Bhaskar: Read local news
• Dictionary.com
• ESPN Cricinfo: Cricket updates
• Facebook
• Facts for Life: Health and hygiene information
• Girl Effect: Articles and tips for girls
• HungamaPlay: Music
• IBNLive: News
• iLearn: Learn from Women Entrepreneurs
• India Today: Local news
• Internet Basics
• Jagran: Local news
• Jagran Josh: Education and career information
• Maalai Malar: News in Tamil
• Maharashtra Times: News in Marathi
• Malaria No More: Malaria information
• manoramanews.com: Local news
• Messenger: Send messages to friends and family
• NDTV: Read news
• Newshunt: Read news in English
• OLX: Buy and sell products and services
• Reliance Astrology: Read your horoscope
• Reuters Market Lite: Get farming and crop information
• Socialblood: Register to donate blood
• Times of India: Read news
• TimesJobs: Search for jobs
• Translator: Translate words and phrases
• Wikipedia: Find information
• wikiHow: Find information

On the whole, it is reasonable to expect that giving poor people access to Internet and possibility of connecting with people anywhere around the world will be socially transforming the life in a very positive way.