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Atari Online News, Etc. Volume 15 Issue 06
Volume 15, Issue 06 Atari Online News, Etc. February 8, 2013
Published and Copyright (c) 1999 - 2013
All Rights Reserved
Atari Online News, Etc.
A-ONE Online Magazine
Dana P. Jacobson, Publisher/Managing Editor
Joseph Mirando, Managing Editor
Rob Mahlert, Associate Editor
Atari Online News, Etc. Staff
Dana P. Jacobson -- Editor
Joe Mirando -- "People Are Talking"
Michael Burkley -- "Unabashed Atariophile"
Albert Dayes -- "CC: Classic Chips"
Rob Mahlert -- Web site
Thomas J. Andrews -- "Keeper of the Flame"
With Contributions by:
Fred Horvat
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=~=~=~=
A-ONE #1506 02/08/13
~ Atari Gets A Lifeline! ~ People Are Talking! ~ Apple Lisa Turns 30!
~ Microsoft: Gmail Scary! ~ Court of Human Rights! ~ Dell Goes Private!
~ Whonix: An Anonymous OS ~ Photoline Now Freeware ~ Facebook Broke Web!
~ PS 4 Not A Powerhouse? ~ Bush Family Is Hacked! ~ Microsoft Blue Wave!
-* Cyber Crime Ring Is Disrupted *-
-* Daughter Given $200 To Quit Facebook *-
-* No, Facebook Is Not Going Dark on Feb. 29! *-
=~=~=~=
->From the Editor's Keyboard "Saying it like it is!"
""""""""""""""""""""""""""
They're calling it "The Blizzard of 2013"; and we're in the middle of it
right now here in the Northeast! The prediction is that we're going to
get a minimum od two feet of snow, and upwards of three feet!
The snow started this morning, with off-and-on squalls. Then it became a
steady flurry; and now it's really picked up. The forecast is for the
bulk of the storm to arrive late tonight into the morning. I'm not
looking forward to what will await us when waking up on Saturday! But,
we have two snowblowers ready to go, so I guess we're prepared.
Hopefully, you're not in this blizzard's path, and able to enjoy a
relaxing weekend!
Until next time...
=~=~=~=
The Little-known Apple Lisa: Five Quirks and Oddities
Thirty years ago, Apple unveiled the Apple Lisa, a pioneering machine that
introduced the mouse-driven graphical user interface to a wide audience
and opened a new chapter in personal computer history.
The Mac borrowed heavily from the Lisa, and the Mac went on to great things
while the Lisa floundered. As a result, its tempting to treat the Lisa as
merely a footnote in the history of Apple. But as anyone who has used a
real Lisa knows, Apples first GUI-based computer played host to many
distinctive quirks and traits that tend to get overlooked in the history
books.
The machines 30th anniversary is as good a time as any to take a look at
a handful of both odd and useful features that truly made the Lisa
something unique.
At the factory, Apple assigned every Lisa a unique, unchangeable serial
number permanently programmed into a chip on the motherboard. The first
time you ran an application from a floppy or copied it to the Lisas hard
disk, the machine serialized the application by writing its serial
number to the application program. From then on, you could run the
application only on that particular Lisa machine.
All software bought for a particular Lisa was locked to that machine,
destroying any ability to sell the software used, and negating any future
use of the software in the case of a massive hardware failure.
If the Lisa had become more popular (and if it had hosted more than about
seven major applications), its likely that users and the press would
have objected strongly to this feature. Ironically, today's DRM, which
links software to a certain account or piece of hardware, hearkens back to
Lisas copy protection mechanism.
To open a document on the Mac, you can run an application first and then
load the document from the Open command, or double-click on the document
icon in the Finder to load the document in its application.
In the Lisa Desktop Manager (its Finder equivalent), you see application
icons, but they just let you copy the application between disks. To create
a new document, you tear off a blank document from a virtual stack of
paper associated with an application. You can then double-click that
document to open it, which automatically loads the proper application.
In this way, Lisa OS is document-centric rather than partially
document-centric like OS X; iOS is application-centric in that it never
lets you handle documents outside of applications on the system.
On the Mac, you can't create two files with the exact same name in the
same folder. Makes sense; if the computer stored two files with the same
name, how would it know which one to open?
Amazingly, Lisa OS is one of the only operating systems in history (if
not the only one; research pending) to allow duplicate file names. Each
file was assigned a physical file name that represented the file on the
disk, and a virtual file name provided by the user that showed up in the
Lisa interface.
That way, two files could appear to be named Bobs Secret Recipes in
Lisas Desktop Manager, but the machine would know how to handle them on
a lower level hidden from the user.
In 1999, American media delighted in speculating on the possible Y2K
doomsday. Imagine the media ruckus if those machines had been saddled with
the same limitation as the Lisa, which would accept only year dates
between 1981 and 1995.
This bizarre restriction stems from the Lisas use of a primitive
real-time clock chip that stored the year as a 4-bit integeran integer
from 0 to 15. Lisa hardware development solidified around 1980, so that
became the base year (year 0), and 15 years after that was 1995. Why Apple
forced the starting date one year ahead to 1981 is a mystery.
To keep time when the Lisa was unplugged, the Lisa clock chip depended on
a four AA-cell NiCad battery pack that held a charge for only a few
hours. These battery packs often busted, leaking corrosive acid over most
remaining Lisas, ruining the circuit boards. (If you have a Lisa in your
closet, take out the batteries now!)
Soft shutdown
On the lower right corner of the front of every Lisa sits a small white
power button that becomes illuminated when the system is active. But this
button does far more than power the system on or off. In fact, the button
is a soft switch, which means its function is determined by software
rather than a simple electrical connection.
The switch tells the Lisa to wake up from a very low power mode and
restore to the screen from memory the previous computing session. The
Lisa OS presents open windows and documents that you were working on
before the shutdown.
A tap on the power button began a process that shut down the system
gracefully, saving all open documents and storing window and application
positions for later use.
The original Mac never tried to duplicate this feature. Only now has Apple
come back to the idea, as it introduced a similar function with OS X Lion
in 2011. The Lisa was ahead of its time.
Photoline Has Been Released as Freeware
Gerhard Huber of Computerinsel has given a free license for the Atari
version of Photoline, a professional image and vector graphics editor.
Get the Photoline download at the ACP page.
Link: http://acp.atari.org
=~=~=~=
->In This Week's Gaming Section - PS4 Not The Gaming Powerhouse?
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" Ouya Prepares for Yearly Release!
Atari Gets A Lifeline!
And much more!
=~=~=~=
->A-ONE's Game Console Industry News - The Latest Gaming News!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
PlayStation 4 May Not Be The Gaming Powerhouse Weve Been Expecting
Sony is scheduled to announce its next-generation PlayStation 4 console at
a press conference in New York City on February 20th. Recent rumors have
pegged the system as a gaming powerhouse with 16GB of RAM, 256GB of
storage, and 1080p HD resolution in 3D at 60 fps, however this may not be
what the company is aiming for. According to a report from the Nikkei,
Sony hopes the Playstation 4 will act more as a home entertainment nerve
center than a dedicated gaming system. An unnamed company executive
reportedly said that the consoles main selling point wont be its
high-end specs, but rather the new styles of play it will introduce and
its ability to connect and share to mobile devices. The PlayStation 4 is
rumored to launch in October and could cost more than $400.
The Next Xbox: Always Online, No Second-hand
Games, 50GB Blu-ray Discs and New Kinect
Microsofts next console will require an Internet connection in order to
function, ruling out a second-hand game market for the platform. A new
iteration of Xbox Live will be an integral part of Microsofts next
console, while improved Kinect hardware will also ship alongside the
unit.
Sources with first-hand experience of Microsofts next generation console
have told us that although the next Xbox will be absolutely committed to
online functionality, games will still be made available to purchase in
physical form. Next Xbox games will be manufactured on 50GB-capacity
Blu-ray discs, Microsoft having conceded defeat to Sony following its
ill-fated backing of the HD-DVD format. It is believed that games
purchased on disc will ship with activation codes, and will have no value
beyond the initial user.
Our source has also confirmed that the next Xboxs recently rumoured specs
are entirely accurate. That means an AMD eight-core x64 1.6GHz CPU, a
D3D11.x 800MHz graphics solution and 8GB of DDR3 RAM. As of now, the
consoles hard drive capacity is said to be undecided, but Microsofts
extended commitment to online delivery suggests that it will be the
largest unit it has put inside a console to date.
Though the architectures of the next-gen Xbox and PlayStation both
resemble that of PCs, several development sources have told us that
Sonys solution is preferable when it comes to leveraging power. Studios
working with the next-gen Xbox are currently being forced to work with
only approved development libraries, while Sony is encouraging coders to
get closer to the metal of its box. Furthermore, the operating system
overhead of Microsofts next console is more oppressive than Sonys
equivalent, giving the PlayStation-badged unit another advantage.
Unlike Nintendo, Microsoft is continuing to invest heavily in
motion-control interfaces, and a new, more reliably responsive Kinect will
also ship alongside the next Xbox. Sonys next-generation console camera
system is said to have a similar set of features, and is expected to be
discussed at the companys PlayStation event on February 20.
Ouya Plans To Release A New Version of Its $99 Console Every Year
After coming off of one of the most successful Kickstarter campaigns of
all time, the team behind the $99 Ouya game console have had their hands
full. It was announced earlier this week that starting in June the
Android-powered console will be sold at major retailers including
GameStop, Best Buy, Amazon, and Target. Ouya founder and CEO Julie Uhrman
also revealed in an interview with The Verge on Thursday that the company
plans to release a new Ouya model every year with improved specs and
performance.
Our plan is to have a yearly refresh of Ouya where we leverage the
best-performing chips and take advantage of falling component prices to
create the best experience we can at the $99 price point, she said. If
we could do it for less than $99, we would.
The current-generation Ouya is set to launch to Kickstarter backers in
March. The console is equipped with 1.7GHz quad-core Tegra 3 processor,
8GB of internal storage, 1GB of RAM, a USB port and microUSB port, a
special wireless controller, and Android 4.1 Jelly Bean.
EVE Onlines Battle of Asakai
EVE Onlines complicated inter-corporate politics are often held together
by fragile diplomatic treaties and economic agreements. So fragile, in
fact, that a single misclick can lead to a fracas that quickly snowballs
into all-out warfare. Thats what happened to two of the spacefaring
sandbox MMOs largest player alliances in the Battle of Asakai, a massive
fleet vs. fleet onslaught involving 3,000 players piloting ships ranging
from small interceptors to gargantuan capital ships.
Straight from the wreckage-strewn outcome of the battle, were breaking
down the basics of what happened for everyone to truly fathom one of the
biggest engagements in the games history.
On January 27, two of EVEs largest allied groupsthe ClusterF***
Coalition and the HoneyBadger Coalitionclashed with full force in the
low-sec Asakai VI region of the Kurala constellation. Both sides
continually supplied reinforcements for hours, including Supercarriers
and Titans, two of the largest vessel types in the game. In the end, the
HoneyBadgers emerged victorious against the Clusters (as were calling
them).
The Clusters are led by the GoonSwarm Federation Alliance, a gigantic
gamer horde originating from the Something Awful forums. Its leader, The
Mittani, keeps and updates one of the most popular blogs charting the
various events transpiring within EVE.
The HoneyBadgers are a coalition leading the Test Alliance, the primary
collection of EVE gamers populating Reddit. A sub-alliance within the
HoneyBadgers, the Pandemic Legion, focuses on PVP and inciting fleet
actions wherever possible.
Years before, the Test Alliance was part of the HoneyBadgers in a hulking
super-coalition. Seeking to carve out a piece of the galaxy for its own,
a large portion of Test broke away from the accord to form HoneyBadgers,
an independently operating group still pledging allegiance to Test but
not to GoonSwarm. Strained relations between Test and GoonSwarm reached a
breaking point after the leadership threatened open warfare against each
other.
The cause
A single misclick.
No, really: A Titan pilot beneath the Cluster banner was attempting a
bridgeusing a ship to act as an artificial warp corridor for other
shipsto Asakai VI when he accidentally warped himself straight into a
very surprised Pandemic Legion fleet. The pilot, named Dabigredboat,
immediately came under heavy attack as the Legion pounced on the
extremely valuable ship.
The battle
Both Dabigredboat and members of the Legion bat-phonedcalled in
reinforcementsadditional members of their alliances over the course of the
battle. Eventually, nearly the entirety of Test and GoonSwarm became
involved in the tremendous tussle, including the deployment of extra Titans
and Supercarriers into the fleets.
Titans and Supercarriers are two of the most expensive, deadly, and rare
ship types in EVE Online. A single Titan, bristling with gun emplacements
and heavy armor, can need upwards of over 900 pilots to beat down into
submission. Read that again: 900 pilots. And there were more than one of
those behemoths in the battle.
The results
For the HoneyBadgers, losses sustained included six Dreadnoughts, 11
Carriers, and one Supercarrier. The Clusters suffered far worse: 44
Dreadnoughts, 29 Carriers, five Supercarriers, and three Titans.
Ultimately, GoonSwarm leader The Mittani called the Battle of Asakai a
complete rout for the powerful Something Awful alliance. Estimated ISK
(EVEs in-game currency) cost in damages are still being calculated, but
early totals reach beyond 700 billion for both sides combined.
Pioneering Videogame Firm Atari Gets Lifeline
Atari, the pioneering video game company mired in bankruptcy proceedings
in both France and the US, said on Tuesday it had found a last minute
buyer after the latest leading shareholder gave up on turning the company
around.
Atari SA "supports the proposed acquisition of the BlueBay Funds'
interests in the Atari group by a longtime videogame professional and a
fund advised by Alden Global Capital," the videogamer said in a statement.
Atari was born 40 years ago in California and jumped to fame by bringing
the arcade game experience to living rooms worldwide with games such as
Pong and Centipede.
The key buyer of the embattled company is Frenchman Frederic Chesnais, a
former Atari executive, who is picking up 25 percent of the Atari SA's
capital through his own fund Ker Ventures for 400 euros with hedge fund
Alden providing financing.
"I made this move because I love the team, I know about games, I love the
brand and in the past we have all spent nights and days to make it shine,"
said Chesnais who becomes Atari chief executive with the deal.
"I am just given a few weeks to put the Company back on track and I have to
give it a try," Chesnais said.
In the buyout which includes taking over debt, Alden and Ker Ventures agree
to pump 5.0 million euros ($6.7 million) in Atari's US activities where the
company hopes to break through.
A man carries a box with an Atari game in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on
January 30, 2013. Atari, the pioneering video game company mired in
bankruptcy proceedings in both France and the US, said on Tuesday it had
found a last minute buyer after the latest leading shareholder gave up on
turning the company around.
Xbox Hoax Leads Armed Cops to Family
Members of a Florida family were shocked to be awakened in the middle of
the night to find their house surrounded by police with guns drawn
shouting at them to put their hands up.
Police Lt. Mike Beavers said the commotion was "very rare" for the small
town of Oviedo, about 20 miles northeast of Orlando.
"This is the first time I've heard of it happening in our little town,"
Beavers told ABCNews.com.
The frightened family did not want to be identified but recounted the
ordeal to ABC News' Orlando affiliate WFTV.
"I heard the doorbell ring," the father of two told WFTV. "We couldn't see
anybody at the front of the door. All we saw was the rifle barrel."
The man said he and his wife originally believed they were being robbed.
"They have rifles, they have guns, and I said, 'Let's get out of the
house,' so we ran down the hallway and got our two boys up," the father
said.
"We were told to freeze and put our hands over our heads," he recalled.
"They said, 'We're the police,' so that was a big relief."
What the family didn't realize was that an Xbox hoax had led the Oviedo
police to its house. The police said they were responding to a call from
AT&T saying it had received online messages from a person who said he was
hiding inside the house, claiming that someone had been killed there and
that others were being held hostage.
But when police arrived, all they found was a very surprised and confused
family.
Upon investigation, police learned that the confusion all started when an
Oviedo teenager living in another house called police saying his Xbox had
been hacked.
The teenager said the hackers had threatened to call in bomb threats to
his home if he did not meet their demands for gaming information.
When the teenager refused, the hackers sent fake messages reporting the
killing and hostage taking at the teenager's former home. His previous
address, where police showed up, was still connected to his Xbox.
The teenager did some of his own investigating, police said, and provided
authorities with some possible identifying information on the hackers.
"The caller gave information to officers regarding two possible suspects,
including IP addresses, Twitter and Facebook accounts and a possible name
of one of the suspects," according to the police report. "The information
provided to the officers revealed that both suspects were located in
different states."
The information has been turned over to Oviedo detectives for further
investigation.
=~=~=~=
A-ONE's Headline News
The Latest in Computer Technology News
Compiled by: Dana P. Jacobson
Dell Says Goodbye to Wall Street with $2 billion Loan from Microsoft
Dell announced today that it has completed the terms of a deal that will
take the company private, buying out stockholders at $13.65 a share in a
$24.4 billion deal partially bankrolled by Microsoft. When the deal is
complete, the company will be owned by a small group of private investors
led by Dell CEO and founder Michael Dell and the investment firm Silver
Lake.
The deal, according to the company, has been in progress since August of
2012, when Michael Dell first expressed an interest in taking the company
private to Dell's board of directors. The board then formed a "Special
Committee" to oversee negotiations.
For stockholders, the deal will pay out a 35 percent bonus over where
Dell's stock price was as of January 11, before word of a possible deal
leaked out and drove the stock price up. But the deal also includes a "go
shop" provision that gives the company 45 days to solicit other
interested parties for better offers.
Microsoft put up a $2 billion loan to finance the deal rather than taking
a stake in the company itself. Michael Dell put in his own cash and his
14 percent stake in the company, and additional cash is coming from Silver
Lake's investment funds and from Michael Dell's investment group MSD
Capital, LP, as well as from the company's own cash on hand. The rest is
being financed by $15 billion in debt from a raft of banks: BofA Merrill
Lynch, Barclays, Credit Suisse, and RBC Capital Markets.
Just what influence Microsoft's stake in the financing of the deal gives
the company in the operation of Dell after the deal is completed isn't
clearnor is it clear what the terms of the debt arethough those should
be reported when the transaction is complete.
Update: The Wall Street Journal has obtained a copy of a memo sent by
Michael Dell to his employees:
Today, we announced a definitive agreement for me and global technology
investment firm Silver Lake to acquire Dell and take it private.
This transaction is an exciting new chapter for Dell, our team and our
customers. We can immediately deliver value to stockholders, while
continuing to execute our long-term growth strategy and focus on helping
customers achieve their goals.
Together, we have built an incredible business that generates nearly $60
billion in annual revenue. We deliver enormous customer value through
end-to-end solutions that are scalable, secure and easy to manage, and
Enterprise Solutions and Services now account for 50 percent of our gross
margins.
Dells transformation is well underway, but we recognize it will still
take more time, investment and patience. I believe that we are better
served with partners who will provide long-term support to help Dell
innovate and accelerate the companys transformation strategy. Well have
the flexibility to continue organic and inorganic investment, and grow
our business for the long term.
I am particularly pleased to be in partnership with Silver Lake, a
world-class investment firm with an outstanding reputation and significant
experience in the technology sector. They know all the technology business
models, understand the value chain and have an extremely strong global
network of contacts. I am also glad that Microsoft is part of the
transaction, further building on a nearly 30-year relationship.
I am honored to continue serving as chairman and CEO, and I look forward
to working with all of you, including our current senior leadership team,
to accelerate our efforts. There is much more we can accomplish together.
I am committed to this journey and I am grateful for your dedication and
support. Please, stay focused on delivering results for our customers and
our company.
There is still considerable work to be done, and undoubtedly both
challenges and triumphs lie ahead, but as always, we are making the right
decisions to position Dell, our team and our customers for long-term
success.
Michael
Microsoft Plans To Spend A Seven-figure Sum To Convince You That Gmail Is Scary
Microsoft is not giving up its quest to scare customers away from Google
services. Despite the fact that its previous efforts havent exactly
persuaded users, Microsoft is apparently ramping up a brand new ad
campaign that will again attack Google for allegedly spying on users
through Gmail, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Stefan Weitz, senior director of online services at Microsoft, tells the
Journal that the company will spend a seven-figure dollar amount to
produce and distribute ads that criticize Gmail for the way it selects
ads to be shown to users and that promote Microsofts own Outlook.com as
a less invasive alternative.
Of course, Microsoft has good reason to go after Google since its Google
Apps business productivity suite has been creeping into the territory
typically held by Microsoft Office, and now generates an estimated $1
billion in revenues in 2012.
Hacker Gains Access to Bush Family Emails, Photos
A hacker apparently accessed private photos and emails sent between members
of the Bush family, including both former presidents, and the Secret
Service is investigating.
The Smoking Gun website said the hacker, who went by the online moniker
"Guccifer," gained access to emails, photos, private telephone numbers and
addresses of Bush family members and friends.
The website displayed photos it said came from the hacker, including one
that purported to show the elder Bush during his recent stay in a Houston
hospital, where the 88-year-old spent almost two months being treated for
complications from a bronchial infection.
The authenticity of the photos and other details on the website could not
immediately be confirmed. A spokesman for former President George H.W.
Bush declined to comment on the reports.
"There's a criminal investigation and, as such, there's nothing else we
can say," Jim McGrath said Friday.
Secret Service spokesman George Ogilvie said the agency was investigating.
He would not elaborate.
In Dallas, where Bush's son, former President George W. Bush has a home,
Bush spokesman Freddy Ford declined to make a statement.
The FBI in Houston, where the elder Bush lives, would not confirm or deny
any investigation.
George H.W. Bush's son Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida, when
reached by email, said the hacking was "outrageous" and the decision to
publish the material showed "total disregard for privacy."
The word "Guccifer" was plastered across the photos published on the
website, which quotes "Guccifer" as describing himself as a veteran hacker
who has long been in the government's sights.
Free email accounts from commercial providers are especially vulnerable to
hackers who exploit easy-to-use features to reset email passwords. AOL's
email passwords can be reset by a hacker who could discover, for example,
the birth year of a customer's mother, a father's middle name or the name
of a favorite pet.
Last year, after The Associated Press revealed that Republican presidential
candidate Mitt Romney and some top aides had used private email accounts to
conduct state business at times when Romney was governor of Massachusetts,
Romney's free Microsoft Hotmail account was hacked. The alleged hacker
claimed to have guessed the answer to a security question about Romney's
favorite pet in order to gain access to the account and change the
password. The anonymous hacker said Romney's account on DropBox, a
file-sharing service, also was compromised.
A college student in Tennessee, David Kernell, was convicted in April 2010
on federal charges of hacking into Sarah Palin's private emails weeks
before the 2008 presidential election. Kernell had correctly guessed
answers to security questions guarding Palin's account, giving him access.
Last year, a group of hackers known as the D33D Company published a list
of what it said were usernames and passwords for more than 450,000 email
accounts, including more than 25,000 AOL accounts. It was not immediately
clear whether the Bush family's hacked AOL accounts were among these.
Microsoft and Symantec Disrupt Cyber Crime Ring
Software makers Microsoft Corp and Symantec Corp said they disrupted a
global cyber crime operation by shutting down servers that controlled
hundreds of thousands of PCs without the knowledge of their users.
The move made it temporarily impossible for infected PCs around the world
to search the web, though the companies offered free tools to clean
machines through messages that were automatically pushed out to infected
computers.
Technicians working on behalf of both companies raided data centers in
Weehawken, New Jersey, and Manassas, Virginia, on Wednesday, accompanied
by U.S. federal marshals, under an order issued by the U.S. District Court
in Alexandria, Virginia.
They seized control of one server at the New Jersey facility and
persuaded the operators of the Virginia data center to take down a server
at their parent company in the Netherlands, according to Richard
Boscovich, assistant general counsel with Microsoft's Digital Crimes
Unit.
Boscovich told Reuters that he had "a high degree of confidence" that the
operation had succeeded in bringing down the cyber crime operation, known
as the Bamital botnet.
"We think we got everything, but time will tell," he said.
The servers that were pulled off line on Wednesday had been used to
communicate with what Microsoft and Symantec estimate are between 300,000
and 1 million PCs currently infected with malicious software that enslaved
them into the botnet.
The companies said that the Bamital operation hijacked search results and
engaged in other schemes that the companies said fraudulently charge
businesses for online advertisement clicks.
Bamital's organizers also had the ability to take control of infected PCs,
installing other types of computer viruses that could engage in identity
theft, recruit PCs into networks that attack websites and conduct other
types of computer crimes.
Now that the servers have been shut down, users of infected PCs will be
directed to a site informing them that their machines are infected with
malicious software when they attempt to search the web.
Microsoft and Symantec are offering them free tools to fix their PCs and
restore access to web searches via messages automatically pushed out to
victims.
The messages warn: "You have reached this website because your computer is
very likely to be infected by malware that redirects the results of your
search queries. You will receive this notification until you remove the
malware from your computer."
It was the sixth time that Microsoft has obtained a court order to disrupt
a botnet since 2010. Previous operations have targeted bigger botnets, but
this is the first where infected users have received warnings and free
tools to clean up their machines.
Microsoft runs a Digital Crimes Unit out of its Redmond, Washington,
headquarters that is staffed by 11 attorneys, investigators and other
staff who work to help law enforcement fight financial crimes and
exploitation of children over the web.
Symantec approached Microsoft about a year ago, asking the maker of
Windows software to collaborate in trying to take down the Bamital
operation. Last week they sought a court order to seize the Bamital
servers.
The two companies said they conservatively estimate that the Bamital
botnet generated at least $1 million a year in profits for the organizers
of the operation. They said they will learn more about the size of the
operation after they analyze information from infected machines that check
in to the domains once controlled by Bamital's servers.
Their complaint identified 18 "John Doe" ringleaders, scattered from
Russia and Romania to Britain, the United States and Australia, who
registered websites and rented servers used in the operation under
fictitious names. The complaint was filed last week with a federal court
in Alexandria and unsealed on Wednesday.
The complaint alleges that the ringleaders made money through a scheme
known as "click fraud" in which criminals get cash from advertisers who
pay websites commissions when their users click on ads.
Bamital redirected search results from Google, Yahoo and Microsoft's Bing
search engines to sites with which the authors of the botnet have
financial relationships, according to the complaint.
The complaint also charges that Bamital's operators profited by forcing
infected computers to generate large quantities of automated ad clicks
without the knowledge of PC users.
Symantec researcher Vikram Thakur said Bamital is just one of several
major botnets in a complex underground "click fraud ecosystem" that he
believes generates at least tens of millions of dollars in revenue.
He said that researchers at will comb the data on the servers in order to
better understand how the click fraud ecosystem works and potentially
identify providers of fraudulent ads and traffic brokers.
"This is just the tip of the iceberg in the world of click fraud," said
Thakur.
Boscovich said he believes the botnet originated in Russia or Ukraine
because affiliated sites install a small text file known as a cookie that
is written in Russian on infected computers.
The cookie file contains the Russian phrase "yatutuzebil," according to
the court filing. That can loosely be translated as "I was here," he
said.
Microsoft provided details on the takedown operation on its blog:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2013/02/06/microsoft-
and-symantec-take-down-bamital-botnet-that-hijacks-online-searches.aspx
Whonix: An OS for The Era of Anonymous and Wikileaks
Anonymity is an increasingly scarce commodity. Google's latest
Transparency Report revealed government requests for data about users of
its online services are increasing. It's not hard to find examples of
threats to privacy either intentional or unintentional.
However, for almost as long as there have been concerns about protecting
privacy on the Internet, there have been tools available to do the job.
In many cases these tools, such as GPG and Tor, are available for free.
But it is one thing to have access to these tools, and another to cobble
them together into an effective solution that preserves your identity
from prying eyes.
Whonix is a project to build an operating system that will offer the
maximum privacy and anonymity possible straight out of the box. Its
creator, 'Adrelanos', says the aim is to make it as hard as possible for
privacy-conscious users to make missteps when it comes to remaining
anonymous. "It also provides loads of documentation and possibilities for
interested users to make it even more secure," he says.
Adrelanos says the project began because he wanted to run more than just a
basic browser over the Tor network. At the time, online guides to
remaining anonymous could often be contradictory.
"Running applications directly on a user's operating system was implicitly
assumed," Adrelanos says. "Some people would argue for using proxy
settings or a socksifier. Other argued that applications might not honour
proxy settings or that there could be bugs in the socksifier, or even
protocol leaks."
The guides on the topic were often partial and not updated to take new
developments into account. "One guide had this precaution and another
included different precautions, but none really included all important
considerations," Adrelanos says.
The guides were also complicated and made a lot of assumptions or missed
out important details.
"Starting fresh with a wiki page on the official Tor homepage looked like
a good idea to me, to allow others to check if I badly messed up or to
let others improve the guide so everyone profits."
"In the beginning the [Whonix] project wasn't even called project," he
says. "It was called a guide named TorBOX and was a simple wiki page in
the Torproject.org wiki." The original guide was created in January 2012.
"This guide became more and more sophisticated and because manually
following the steps in it took a lot of time, shell scripts to make it
easier were created by Anonymous. As building it became more time
consuming and more complicated, and as more people became interested, the
first binary builds were created by Anonymous."
Whonix itself is a virtualised operating system based on Debian GNU/Linux
and uses VirtualBox for the hots VMs. It uses a dual VM design: The
primary VM (Whonix-Workstation), which runs end-user applications, and a
gateway (Whonix-Gateway) through which all network requests from the
workstation VM are channelled, and which uses the Tor network.
"The Whonix-Workstation has, on purpose, no ability to find out its own
real IP address," Adrelanos says. "This is because it has no direct
network connection and can only connect to Tor on the Whonix-Gateway. The
main goal is to stay anonymous. To hide the IP [address]."
"Technically 'IP hiding' is impossible." he adds. "It can only be
replaced with another IP, and the Tor network was the best tool I found
for this purpose. So the question was, how do I hide the IP from
applications, if I am unable for technical and/or time reasons to check
and/or modify all the applications in a very detailed manner?
"The transparent Tor proxy, where the applications have no way to find out
the real IP address and can only find out their Tor exit node IP address,
looked like the best approach."
In addition, a whole computing environment dedicated to anonymity is less
likely to be confused with a user's standard computing environment,
Adrelanos says, preventing inadvertent privacy breaches.
While Whonix utilises Tor, it can offer advantages over a purely Tor-based
approach, particularly when it comes to the dangers of applications or
browser plug-ins, such as Flash and Java, leaking IP addresses. Because of
the sandbox setup, applications running on Whonix-Workstation can at worst
only leak the IP addresses of the internal (virtual) network.
Because it's a project that focused on anonymity and privacy, it is hard
to get a picture of its user base; however, there have been approximately
14,000 downloads of Whonix-Gateway 0.45 directly from the project's
Sourceforge homepage. (This number doesn't reflect those who built the
project from source code or downloaded from mirrors.) "This is not a bad
number, because the Tor network in total has 500,000 users," Adrelanos
says.
As for who is using it, that is, naturally, even harder to know, Adrelanos
says: "Use cases have included journalists, admins of hidden services
[sites whose address is obfuscated by the Tor network], businesspeople,
activists, hackers (however that word is defined and understood), people
who want to protect themselves from hackers (or crackers), users who just
want to protect their privacy..."
The task list for the project is "endless," Adrelanos says. He plans to
improve pretty much every aspect of Whonix, including increasing privacy
and making it more resistant to more sophisticated attacks, adding
multi-language support (both for the OS itself and the website), improving
the documentation, working on an encrypted USB installer, adding an
updater for the OS, and working on a graphical gateway.
There's no funding and very few contributors (of the three or so people
who started the project, Adrelanos is currently the only active
developer), but Adrelanos says progress "will remain steady". (Though he
adds "there are no promises about what gets finished and what gets done,
and what may never get done...")
He's keen for more contributors to join the project and says it's easy to
get involved (Whonix has a page explaining how people can get involved.)
Even contributing to the technical side is not that difficult, Adrelanos
says. "Whonix mainly consists of application configuration files and
Linux shell scripts. No real programming (in C or assembler) is involved
yet. I believe developing something like Tor, Firefox, drivers, a
compiler etc. is much more difficult than developing Whonix."
Court of Human Rights: Convictions for File Sharing Violate Human Rights
The European Court of Human Rights has declared that the copyright
monopoly stands in direct conflict with fundamental Human Rights, as
defined in the European Union and elsewhere. This means that as of today,
nobody sharing culture in the EU may be convicted just for breaking the
copyright monopoly law; the bar for convicting was raised considerably.
This can be expected to have far-reaching implications, not just
judicially, but in confirming that the copyright monopoly stands at odds
with human rights.
The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg is no dismissible small
player. It is the court that oversees the European Convention on Human
Rights, which is part of the Constitution of the European Union and of
most European states. When this court makes a decision, that decision
gets constitutional status in all of Europe (except for Belarus, which is
not a signatory).
Therefore, the copyright monopoly as such which is ordinary law in
European states was just defined as taking a back seat to the
constitutional right to share and seek culture and knowledge, as defined in
the European Convention on Human Rights, article 10:
Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall
include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and
ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of
frontiers.
We have long claimed that the copyright monopoly stands in direct conflict
with civil liberties (one of my most well-known keynotes, Copyright regime
vs. civil liberties, even highlights this in the title). While the
judiciary is slow to react to new phenomena, and issues like this
percolate very slowly to the top courts where verdicts make a real
difference, Im very happy to see that the issue did indeed get to the
relevant court at last, and that the Court made the only reasonable
decision.
However, this verdict doesnt mean that people sharing culture can never
be convicted. Exceptions can be made to Human Rights according to a
well-defined three-step test: the verdict must be necessary in a
democratic society, prescribed by law (the copyright monopoly already is),
and pursuing a legitimate aim (this can be discussed at length).
This means that people can no longer get convicted for violating the
copyright monopoly alone. The court just declared it illegal for any court
in Europe to convict somebody for breaking the copyright monopoly law when
sharing culture, only on the merits of breaking the law. A court that
tries somebody for violating the copyright monopoly must now also show
that a conviction is necessary to defend democracy itself in order to
convict. This is a considerably higher bar to meet.
I am happy to see that people persecuted for sharing culture and knowledge
all over Europe got this quite strong judicial decision in their back.
Id love to see the copyright industry lobby try to make a case why it is
necessary to defend democracy to convict a single mother of three who
shared pop songs.
The summary in English of the French verdict is well worth reading (with
my highlights):
For the first time in a judgment on the merits, the European Court of
Human Rights has clarified that a conviction based on copyright law for
illegally reproducing or publicly communicating copyright protected
material can be regarded as an interference with the right of freedom of
expression and information under Article 10 of the European Convention.
Such interference must be in accordance with the three conditions
enshrined in the second paragraph of Article 10 of the Convention. This
means that a conviction or any other judicial decision based on copyright
law, restricting a persons or an organisations freedom of expression,
must be pertinently motivated as being necessary in a democratic society,
apart from being prescribed by law and pursuing a legitimate aim.
It is, in other words, no longer sufficient to justify a sanction or
any other judicial order restricting ones artistic or journalistic
freedom of expression on the basis that a copyright law provision has been
infringed. Neither is it sufficient to consider that the unauthorised use,
reproduction or public communication of a work cannot rely on one of the
narrowly interpreted exceptions in the copyright law itself, including the
application of the so-called three-step test [...]
UPDATE 1: Be careful interpreting this verdict as a free-for-all. Its
not. What it says is that violating the copyright monopoly laws is not
enough for a conviction, and that the copyright monopoly laws collide
with Human Rights. Those are two huge wins in themselves. But it doesnt
mean nobody will ever get convicted for sharing culture again just that
courts have to justify why a conviction is also necessary in a democratic
society, in addition to having met the normal and previous bar for a
conviction.
It will take years to flesh out precedents with this wide a margin for
interpretation, and the specific action on trial as well as its intent
will be under close scrutiny for its value to democracy as such record
label lawyers will justify a conviction with circular reasoning
(upholding the law is necessary in a democracy, so the prerequisites are
already met) and human rights lawyers will probably strike down any
conviction (human rights trump all). So while this verdict gave two
important victories, its not the end of the conflict nor the end of the
war.
UPDATE 2: Some people have pointed at the end verdict and said its insane
and asked how its good news. The overall verdict was about photographs
taken at a fashion show and later published commercially, where the ECHR
found that that human rights had not been violated in handing out insane
damages. But the end decision isnt the interesting thing with this
verdict its the two subdecisions noted above before the court arrived
at an end verdict:
The copyright monopoly does come at odds with the human right to seek
and share knowledge and culture;
In order to justify any verdict based on the copyright monopoly laws,
the court must therefore also show that the verdict is necessary in a
democratic society.
In this case, the ECHR found that the fashion show and the publication
were thoroughly commercial, and didnt have an important democratic
function worth protecting over the copyright monopoly. In essence, the
court is saying that political speech and political expression can trump
the copyright monopoly for instance, if you were seeding a documentary
on human rights abuses with the intent of bringing about political
change, that action will very likely be legal after this verdict, which
it wasnt before.
So the verdict or rather, two subdecisions leading up to the verdict
opens up a huge gray area of law which was previously pitch black,
stating clear examples of where the freedom of expression would take
precedence over the copyright monopoly (even if they arrive at the end
conclusion in this particular case that it doesnt meet that bar).
A few people have observed that the court seems to draw the line at
commercial vs. noncommercial, implying that all file-sharing would always
be in the clear, but I wouldnt bet on that interpretation (although it
would certainly be a great outcome).
The real interesting cases come when youre seeding ordinary commercial
movies in a political context with a political intent. That ones a coin
toss for now.
Facebook Broke the Internet
A weird thing happened on Thursday night. Anytime you clicked on a link
or most of the time anyways some strange Internet force directed you to
an error page on Facebook. The URL is full of weird randomly generated
code, but it's definitely a Facebook page. You can even check your
notifications even though you didn't even want to visit Facebook. No, this
is not a conspiracy. In all likelihood, it's a bug that will be fixed
within the hour. (Unless, it's not, in which case things will get very
interesting.) If you need to use the Internet before then, simply log out
of Facebook, and you should be good to go.
Folks that understand how these Internet things work have quickly surmised
that the bug must be related to Facebook Connect, the ubiquitous,
one-click log-in feature that you've been using much more than you though
you were. If true this would mean that every time you're redirected by
this bug or whatever it is, you're heading to a site that's controlled by
Facebook. We couldn't have said anything so dramatic yesterday, but today
it's become painfully apparent. Facebook rules the Internet. There are
few corners that it does not touch, and whether you read your News Feed
or not, Facebook can ruin your Thursday night of Internet surfing any
time it wants to.
Social Media Control After Death
Most people cant live without Facebook but what happens to your
Facebook page when you are no longer living? New Hampshire and other
states are trying to figure that out.
State Rep. Peter Sullivan has introduced legislation to allow the executor
of an estate control over the social networking pages of the dead. Last
week, the New Hampshire House of Representatives voted 222-128 to give
Sullivan more time to write an amendment that begins a study of the issue.
The bill proposed by Sullivan, a Democrat from Manchester, would allow
control of someones Facebook, Twitter, and other accounts such as Gmail
to be passed to the executor of their estate after death.
No, Facebook Is Not Going Dark on February 29
Attention all Facebook users: You will not be able to access the
social-networking site on Feb. 29, 30 and 31.
"Share this message with at least 15 of your friends for the best chance
of alerting everyone," reads a message circulating on Facebook. "Many
people will try to log in from February 29 to 31, just to find the site
closed down for those days with no warning."
The message is absolutely right. You can't use Facebook on those days,
because those particular days don't exist in February this year.
The message, reported by Sophos' Naked Security blog, is one of several
Facebook scams, jokes and hoaxes that have circulated in the past few
years.
Who can forget the time Lady Gaga "died"? Or the story about the two
Spanish cousins dying of cancer, neither of whom were real?
More serious are the scams that con you in order to make money, such as
the one promising a free Facebook T-shirt (it asked you to take a survey),
or the one that Mark Zuckerberg will personally give you an iPad (in
exchange for your email address and other personal information).
Even worse are fake Facebook pages hosted on other sites, which are
designed to capture your username and password for the 800-million-strong
social network. Facebook's done a good job of keeping malware out, but
once you go off-site, you're on your own.
By adding email, instant messaging, search and video features over the
past few years, Facebook is aiming to be the Internet for its users.
The same thing happened in the 1990s with AOL, which replicated almost
everything available on the wider Internet within its own walled
Disneyland.
For many AOL users, AOL was the Internet, partly because AOL's dial-up
subscribers had to go through the service to reach the real Internet. The
business model collapsed when affordable broadband connections reached
most residences in the United States after 2000.
But both then and now, there are millions of people who trust their
particular service and don't care to see what's beyond its walls.
It's those people who are targeted by Facebook hoaxes and scams, in the
assumption that they'll believe the scams and forward them to their
friends.
Instead of becoming one of those people, ask yourself whether something's
too good to be true, and then trust your instincts. That's true both on
Facebook and on the Internet as a whole.
Daughter Given $200 to Quit Facebook
Spending too much time on Facebook? More than half of Facebook users say
they've taken vacations from the site. Now comes the story of a 14-year-old
who did better - she managed to get paid for quitting.
Rachel Baier, a high school freshman in Massachusetts, went to her dad with
a deal: no Facebook for the rest of the school year in exchange for cash.
"She approached me. She has been frustrated she hasn't been able to find
a babysitting job and she has been looking for ways to get cash," Baier
told ABC News. "So she asked, 'If I didn't use Facebook for so long would
you pay me?'"
Baier, knowing that his daughter spends hours and hours on the site every
day, thought she was joking at first. "I said, 'Go away, you can't live
without Facebook!'" But Rachel was serious. Her dad drew up the paperwork.
"I went back and thought about it, and said if you are going to do it, we
are going to sign a contract. And she said okay."
The contract says that from Feb. 4, 2013 through June 26, 2013, Rachel
will have her Facebook account deactivated. She will receive $50 halfway
through and the remaining $150 on June 26, which is the last day of ninth
grade.
Baier says that he thinks his daughter will keep her part of the bargain.
"She has deactivated a few times for the weekend," he said "She has spent
two to three years on Facebook for 24/7, she realizes there is a lot of
talk and noise."
Rachel, who was at school when we spoke to her father, told him she
doesn't worry about being left out by friends.
"I asked her about that. She said, 'Dad, I see my friends at school. I am
in the loop and I can still text them,'" Baier said.
But even if Rachel does have a moment of weakness and yearn to see her
Newsfeed, her dad now holds the keys to the castle. "Part of the
agreement," he says "was that she allowed me to change the password. She
can't get back in and turn it back on."
Microsoft's 'Blue' Wave Is Coming to More Than Just Windows
As we've known for a few months, the Windows client team at Microsoft is
working on its first "feature-pack" update for Windows 8, supposedly due
this summer/fall, which is codenamed "Blue."
But it turns out Blue isn't a Windows thing only, according to one very
accurate tipster of mine who doesn't want to be identified.
Blue also is the way Microsoft is referring to the next substantial
platform update for Windows Phone, the Windows Services (like SkyDrive,
Hotmail, etc.), and Windows Server, according to my source. In other
words, Blue is a wave of product refreshes which are not expected to
arrive exactly all on the same day, but which are meant to be released
more or less around the same time.
Before these various Blues come to market, there will continue to be minor
fixes, firmware updates and new features added to Windows 8, Windows RT,
Windows Services and Windows Phone. On the phone side of the house, for
example, the first minor update, codenamed Portico, already has made its
way out to a number of Windows Phone users.
Blue represents a major change in how Microsoft builds, deploys and markets
software and services. To date, many Microsoft teams like Windows, Windows
Live and Windows Server have been focused on delivering major platform
updates every two to three years. The challenge is to get them to pivot
around yearly platform updates, the first of which will hit as part of the
Blue wave.
On the Windows side, the changes required to make this happen will be
especially far reaching and pronounced. Instead of RTMing a new version of
Windows once every three or so years, and then hoping/praying OEMs can get
the final bits tested and preloaded on new hardware a few months later,
Microsoft is going to try to push Blue out to users far more quickly,
possibly via the Windows Store, my contact said.
There's still no word on specific new features coming to any of the Blue
wave of products and services. But tweaks to the user experience, new
dev-platform related bits, as well as new versions of Internet Explorer,
Mail, Calendar, Bing and other integrated apps are likely to figure into
the Blue picture, my source said. Blue will include some kernel and
driver-level updates which could help with battery life and overall
performance, according to my source, but backward compatibility with
Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 seem to be a priority.
I know there are still some Blue doubters out there, but Charon at
Ma-Config.com found a recent mention of Blue in a member of the Windows
team's LinkedIn profile:
winbluemention
Windows 9 is still seemingly on the roadmap, too, by the way, but it's not
clear when Microsoft intends to deliver it. Charon also found a LinkedIn
poster mentioning his work on Windows 9 recently:
win9teamindia
For the time being, as executives like Windows Chief Financial Officer
Tami Reller have said repeatedly, Microsoft envisions Windows 8 as
something more than a one-season wonder. (Reller has said Microsoft
considers Windows 8 a product "of multiple selling seasons.") That makes
more sense if you think about Blue - and Lilac and Fuchsia or whatever
Blue's successors are codenamed - as updates to Windows 8, rather than as
Windows 9, 10, and beyond.
I very, very seldom post a single-sourced rumor. But go ahead and Tracour
this Blue update. I'm feeling pretty solid on this one.
=~=~=~=
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