Google+ rides momentum up social net ranks

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Google+ rides momentum up social net ranks

After opening membership to all, visits to Google+ skyrocket
By Sharon Gaudin
October 3, 2011 04:24 PM ET
3 Comments

Computerworld - Just weeks after opening up membership to Google+, visits to the new social network are booming.

Industry analysts say the trick will be whether Google+ can maintain the momentum that has taken its new social network to a spot in the top 10 ranking in just a matter of weeks.

"This is good growth," said Matt Tatham, spokesman for Experian Hitwise, an online traffic tracker. "Obviously, when they opened up the site, it did really well. It's down from that initial peak, [but] now they just need to sustain this traffic growth month over month."

Thatham told Computerworld on Monday that during the week of Sept. 20, when Google+ officially went from invitation-only to an open membership model, the site had 14.98 million U.S. visits. Last week, those numbers were down to 7.2 million visits.

However, the positive news is that it's still up considerably from the average 1.2 million visits the site saw between Aug. 6 and Sept. 17.

Google's new social network saw a 349% jump in visits between August and September, going from 5.4 million U.S. visits to 24.2 million, according to Hitwise.

And while Google+ is making great strides in bringing visitors to the site, it's still distinctly behind major social networking players like Facebook and Twitter.

By comparison, Facebook had 8.2 billion U.S. visits in August and 7.65 billion in September. And Hitwise reported that Twitter had 172.9 million U.S. visits in August and 144.9 million visits in September.

"The numbers for Google+ are good, but it's not really a challenger to Facebook yet, although the numbers are big enough to warrant advertiser attention," said Dan Olds, an analyst with The Gabriel Consulting Group.

Olds added that every time Facebook makes a misstep, as it did by tracking some users even after they had left the site and by launching yet another unpopular site redesign, it's an opportunity for Google+ to only look better by comparison and pick up a few more users.

Rob Enderle, an analyst with the Enderle Group, noted that Facebook's won't force a mass migration from that site to Google+, but each instance is cumulative.

"It's too early to tell but ... if Facebook isn't careful, they could drive renewed growth to Google+, and may have already," he added.

However, it's doubtful that Google+ can't thrive on Facebook castoffs alone.

Brad Shimmin, an analyst with CurrentAnalysis, said the coming months will be a strong indicator of how popular Google+ will be - especially once the hoopla of the site's opening cools off.

"Signups are one thing," said Shimmin. "Usage is another. I think only time will tell for Google+ in terms of its ability to truly compete with Twitter and Facebook in user retention and day-to-day usage. I think Google+ holds the most promise not as a rival to Facebook but as an enterprise social networking platform."

Microsoft kills Google Chrome with bad malware signature

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Microsoft kills Google Chrome with bad malware signature
'One way to win the browser war,' says security expert


By Gregg Keizer
September 30, 2011 04:11 PM ET
22 Comments

Computerworld - Microsoft scrambled earlier today to revise an antivirus definition file that deleted Google's Chrome browser from users' PCs.

"Wow, that's certainly one way to win the browser war," said Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Security.
Google Chrome Warning
Google told Chrome users that Microsoft incorrectly marked the browser as malware.

Storms was referring to the battle between Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) and rivals, including Chrome, for usage share. According to data from one Web metrics firm, Chrome will pass Mozilla's Firefox as the second-most-popular browser by the end of this year, pitting Google and Microsoft for the top spot.

Chrome users began reporting the specious detection of the browser early Friday in a quickly-growing thread on a Google support forum.

"This morning, after I started up the PC, a Windows Security box popped up and said I had a Security Problem that needed to be removed," said someone identified as "chasd harris" in the first message of the thread. "I clicked the Details button and saw that it was 'PWS:Win32/Zbot.' I clicked the Remove button and restarted my PC. Now I do not have Chrome. It has been removed or uninstalled."

Scores of others reported the same behavior on their Windows PCs running Microsoft's Security Essentials -- its free, consumer-grade antivirus software -- as well as Forefront, the antivirus product designed for enterprises.

Microsoft issued a corrected definition file around 10 a.m. PT Friday, about three hours after users began reporting the false positive on Google's support forum.

Several bloggers, including ZDNet's Ryan Naraine and Ed Bott, reported the problem earlier today.

Microsoft has acknowledged the gaffe, and said approximately 3,000 users were affected.

"An incorrect detection for PWS:Win32/Zbot was identified and as a result, Google Chrome was inadvertently blocked and in some cases removed from customers PCs," Microsoft said in a statement posted to the Facebook page of its malware research center. "We have already fixed the issue..., but approximately 3,000 customers were impacted."

Microsoft told users to update Security Essentials with the new definition file, then reinstall Chrome.

For its part, Google slapped a red warning banner at the top of its Google support pages that read, "Alert: Google Chrome has been incorrectly marked as malware by Microsoft security software."

Chrome was fingered as Zbot, better known as Zeus, a widespread botnet Trojan that focuses on stealing online banking credentials, which criminals then use to vacuum money from accounts.

Microsoft isn't the only security software maker to have screwed up in this way: All three of the world's largest antivirus companies -- Symantec, McAfee and Trend Micro -- have issued defective definitions in the past. In some cases, those mistakes have wreaked much more havoc.

In April 2010, for example, a McAfee antivirus update crippled an unknown number of corporate PCs worldwide when it quarantined a crucial Windows XP system file.

Some users who had seen Chrome vanish when they accepted Security Essentials' advice and let the software delete "chrome.exe," said that their bookmarks had also been eliminated, and that they were not restored after reinstalling Chrome.

Others, however, said that their bookmarks had not been affected.

Computerworld replicated Security Essentials' error by manually deleting chrome.exe, but had trouble reinstalling Chrome in Windows 7 using IE to download Google's browser. Only after uninstalling the remainder of Chrome, then using Firefox to download and save the Chrome setup file was Computerworld able to restore Google's browser.

In that test, Chrome's bookmarks were reinstated.

Microsoft did not immediately reply to questions about whether the Security Essentials' snafu permanently eradicated Chrome bookmarks, as some users attested.
Published October 2nd, 2011

German men sentenced for hacking Lady Gaga, Dr. Dre

IDG News Service - Two German men were sentenced Thursday in a Duisberg court for hacking computers containing material belonging to Lady Gaga, Dr. Dre and other musicians, stealing their banking data and accessing e-mail accounts.

One of the men, identified as Deniz A., was sentenced to 18 months in prison, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), which aided in the investigation and often publicizes court cases involving piracy. Another man, Christian M., received an 18-month suspended sentence.

Both were convicted of copyright theft and computer intrusion, while Deniz A. was also convicted of extortion, the IFPI said.

Deniz A., who called himself DJ Stolen, was also accused of obtaining photographs from artist Kesha's computer and trying to blackmail her. Deniz A. later apologized to Lady Gaga in a letter that was published in Bild, a German newspaper. Justin Timberlake was also a target of the hackers, who were active between 2009 and 2010.

The IFPI said its investigators noticed a "growing number" of pre-release tracks being leaked earlier than expected. During the two-year probe, investigators found the two were sending phishing e-mails containing files purporting to be music but were actually Trojan horse programs that collected the authentication details for artists' e-mail accounts.

With those details, the two men downloaded the tracks and then sold them for as much as $1,000, the IFPI said.
Published June 18th, 2011

Story About an Underground Site Using the TOR Network

June 12, 2011

The e-commerce website Silk Road is being called the Amazon.com of illegal drugs.

The goods it sells include cocaine, heroin, ecstasy and marijuana. The products are delivered through regular mail and shipping services to a buyer's front door.

The site is not legal, and it is hard to find.

"The only way that it possibly exists is the fact that the people on it think that they are completely anonymous," Gawker staff writer Adrian Chen tells NPR's Rachel Martin.

Silk Road buyers and sellers use TOR, a system that allows its users to use the Internet anonymously, to log on to the site and only conduct transactions in the digital currency bitcoin, which is also untraceable.

TOR routes Internet traffic through a volunteer network of servers used to conceal a user's location.

"It kind of is a shell game that mixes up the traffic so that it's untraceable directly back to your computer," Chen says.

The anonymity doesn't stop there. The only way to make a purchase on Silk Road is to use bitcoins.

"Its completely peer to peer," Chen says. "There are no banks acting as middlemen. A transaction goes right from buyer to seller just like a cash transaction in the real world."

Although there are not too many uses for bitcoins in the real world, the virtual currency is making the purchase of illegal drugs as easy as buying shoes from Zappos.com or books from Amazon.com.

Now, U.S. leaders are calling for a crackdown.

Democratic Sens. Charles Schumer of New York and Joe Manchin of West Virginia want U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and the Drug Enforcement Administration to launch a full investigation into Silk Road and the use of bitcoin.

"The only method of payment for these illegal purchases is an untraceable peer-to-peer currency known as bitcoins," the senators wrote in a letter to Holder. "After purchasing bitcoins through an exchange, a user can create an account on Silk Road and start purchasing illegal drugs from individuals around the world and have them delivered to their homes within days.

"We urge you to take immediate action and shut down the Silk Road network."

Chen is not sure it will be that easy.

"It's unclear if they will be able to shut it down," he says. "It's going to be a real test of TOR to see if they can actually preserve anonymity."

Still, Chen says, Silk Road does have an Achilles' heel.

"You need a physical address to deliver the stuff," he says.

If anything takes Silk Road out, it will probably be a good old-fashion sting that targets buyers one by one.

Leakage of Private Data is Common on Popular Sties

ScienceDaily (June 2, 2011) — A study of more than 100 popular web sites used by tens of millions of people has found that three quarters directly leak either private information or users' unique identifiers to third-party tracking sites. The study, co-authored by Craig Wills, professor of computer science at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), also demonstrated how the leakage of private information by many sites, including email addresses, physical addresses, and even the configuration of a user's web browser -- so-called browser fingerprints -- could permit tracking sites to link many disparate pieces of information, including browsing histories contained in tracking cookies and the contents of searches on health and travel sites, to create detailed profiles of individuals.
The study, presented last week at the Web 2.0 Security and Privacy conference in Oakland, Calif., concluded that efforts made to date to curb the leakage of personal information from web sites and online social networking suites, including proposals made in a 2010 Federal Trade Commission (FTC) report on protecting consumer privacy, would be largely ineffective in preventing the identified leakage and linkage. They asserted that web sites need to take greater responsibility for privacy protection.

"Despite a number of proposals and reports put forward by researchers, government agencies, and privacy advocates, the problem of privacy has worsened significantly," Wills said. "With the growing disconnect between the existing and proposed privacy protection measures and the increasing and increasingly worrisome linkage of personal information from all sorts of web sites, we believe it is time to move beyond what is clearly a losing battle with third-party aggregators and examine what roles first-party sites can play in protecting the privacy of their users."

The researchers, who had previously brought attention to the leakage of personal information from many popular social networking sites, decided to explore the handling of private information by conventional web sites, an area that has gone largely unexamined, Wills said. They focused on sites that encourage users to register, since users often share personal and personally identifiable information, including their names, physical address, and email address, during the registration process. They also examined popular health and travel sites, since users conduct searches on these sites that can point to their health issues or reveal their travel plans.

They found that information is leaked through a number of routes to third-party sites that track users' browsing behavior for advertisers. In some cases, information was passed deliberately to the third-party sites. In others it was included, either deliberately or inadvertently, as part of routine information exchanges with these sites. Depending on the site, the leakage occurred as users were creating, viewing, editing, or logging into their accounts, or while navigating the web sites. They also observed sensitive search terms (such as pancreatic cancer) being leaked by health sites and travel itineraries being leaked by travel sites.

The researchers examined the types of information being leaked by the web sites and rated them according to their sensitivity and their ability to identify users. A user's name, phone number, or email address rated highest on the identifiability scale, for example, while health information and travel itineraries rated highest on the sensitivity scale. While the majority of leaked information rated low on both scales, the authors said this does not necessarily suggest that users need not be concerned about privacy leaks from web sites.

They noted that third-party tracking sites receive a wide range of information from popular web sites that could be used to connect diverse bits of leaked information and connect them to an individual user's identity. These include the user ID that a web site assigns to a user (leaked by nearly half of the sites studied), unique identifiers like email addresses or home addresses, and browser fingerprints -- information on how an individual browser is configured, including the list of installed plugins, which the authors found is leaked by a number of sites.

The study also evaluated a range of actions that web users could take to prevent their information from being leaked, including blocking the setting of cookies and using an advertising blocking utility or the blocking features built into the newest versions of some popular browsers. They found that all of these techniques miss some types of leakage; ad blockers, for example, do not reliably block leakage to so-called hidden third-party sites and also impair the usability of some web sites.

They also reviewed proposals included in a December 2010 report on online privacy release by the FTC. "The report advocates the Privacy by Design initiative, which seeks proactive embedding of privacy at the design stage, defaults to be set to private, transparence about users' information, and access to all user-related sensitive data stored in aggregators," the study notes. But even these proposals fail to provide safeguards against the linkage of user information by third-party sites or leakage to hidden third parties, and they do not include methods for either verifying that third-party sites abide by the guidelines or penalizing those that do not.

"A key failure of the FTC report is that it largely ignores the responsibility of web sites in safeguarding the privacy of their users," Wills said. "These sites should play a custodial role in protecting their users and preventing the leakage of their sensitive or identifiable information. Third-party sites have a powerful economic incentive to continue to collect and aggregate user information, so relying on them to protect user privacy will continue to be a losing battle. It is time to put the focus on what first-party sites can and should do."

Interesting Article on Recent Attacks Against Sony and Others

This article caught my attention:

Attacks on Sony, others show it's open hacking season

It can be found at http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-20069995-245/attacks-on-sony-others-show-its-open-hacking-season/

What was interesting was that it discusses some of the hacks that have been on sites and mentions that it isn't really more cyber crime then normal, it is just publicized more now. Especially after the attack on Sony that killed PSN for all that time.

What I liked about the article is that it mentioned some of the nature of the attacks. It mentions that the hacks are acts of activism. The Hactivism and the defacements remind those in infosec of the acts in the 1990's. They seem to be really loving the nostalgia. That's the reason I still Hackers!

At least the hacker community is not being completely slandered in this article. That impressed me since the community is usually made to look like thieves guild.

US and Big Business Lie!

It is interesting to know we can trust those of the legal system to all ways tell the truth. Like how a man that setup a company that helps others with their networks is a criminal...

Wait? that seems odd.....

Well lets start this by saying what is going on.

A Canadian Judge blocked the extradition of Peter Alfred-Adekeye. He is accused of accessing Cisco materials using a Cisco ID. Of course Alfred-Adekeye used to be a Cisco employee. But the big issue is that this came up after Alfred-Adekeye sued Cisco for making users purchase support, so that others may support Cisco products and provide competition. And Cisco was angry.

Peter Alfred-Adekeye was arrested during a meeting in Vancouver with Cisco over the law suit. Mounted police arrested him due to the arrest warrant signed. The claim was that he had committed crimes against Cisco and was charged with 97 counts. A Canadian judge Halted the extradition saying that the claims are grossly exaggerated.

Imagine that! the US complying to big business and arresting people on false charges. I never thought that could happen! Really, the shocking thing is that the Canadian Judge did the right thing here. To read the article in Computer World, go to:

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9217300/Canada_blocks_extradition_of_Cisco_suspect

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The Hacker Manifesto

by
+++The Mentor+++
Written January 8, 1986

Another one got caught today, it's all over the papers. "Teenager Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal", "Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering"...

Damn kids. They're all alike.

But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950's technobrain, ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him?

I am a hacker, enter my world...

Mine is a world that begins with school... I'm smarter than most of the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me...

Damn underachiever. They're all alike.

I'm in junior high or high school. I've listened to teachers explain for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. "No, Ms. Smith, I didn't show my work. I did it in my head..."

Damn kid. Probably copied it. They're all alike.

I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it's because I screwed it up. Not because it doesn't like me... Or feels threatened by me.. Or thinks I'm a smart ass.. Or doesn't like teaching and shouldn't be here...

Damn kid. All he does is play games. They're all alike.

And then it happened... a door opened to a world... rushing through the phone line like heroin through an addict's veins, an electronic pulse is sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought... a board is found. "This is it... this is where I belong..." I know everyone here... even if I've never met them, never talked to them, may never hear from them again... I know you all...

Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They're all alike...

You bet your ass we're all alike... we've been spoon-fed baby food at school when we hungered for steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been dominated by sadists, or ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us willing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert.

This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore... and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge... and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals.

Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for.

I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual, but you can't stop us all... after all, we're all alike.

This is how a lot of us feel growing up. The first time I read this I realized that I was not alone. Since this helped me, I like to post it as the welcome to all blogs I ever do.