Largest-ever cyber attack slowing global Internet services

LONDON — One of the largest ever cyber attacks is slowing global internet services and the disruption could get worse, experts said on Wednesday, after an organization blocking “spam” content became a target.

Spamhaus, a London and Geneva-based non-profit group which helps weed out unsolicited “spam” messages for email providers, said it had been subjected to “distributed denial of service” (DDoS) attacks on an unprecedented scale for more than a week.

“Based on the reported scale of the attack, which was evaluated at 300 Gigabits per second, we can confirm that this is one of the largest DDoS operations to date,” online security firm Kaspersky Lab said in a statement.

“There may be further disruptions on a larger scale as the attack escalates.”

Spamhaus publishes blacklists used by internet service providers (ISPs) to weed out spam in email traffic.

The group is directly or indirectly responsible for filtering as much as 80 percent of daily spam messages, according to Cloudflare, a company that said it was helping Spamhaus mitigate the attack.

“We’ve been under this cyber-attack for well over a week,” Steve Linford, chief executive of Spamhaus, told the BBC. “They are targeting every part of the internet infrastructure that they feel can be brought down.”

Perpetrators of DDoS attacks typically target websites by flooding servers with messages from multiple systems so they cannot identify and respond to legitimate traffic.

Paul Vlissidis, group technical director at internet security firm NCC, said the volumes of traffic involved in the attack were having a knock-on effect on the rest of the internet.

Because many computers were involved in the attack, it was difficult to defend against.

“If you have a few computers sending large amounts of traffic you can filter them out easily. When literally thousands and thousands are involved it makes it much, much harder,” he told Reuters.

However, according to thinkbroadband, an independent British information website which allows users to test their broadband speed, there appeared to be little evidence of a slowdown.

“Of course it is possible that people may be finding some services or sites they access over the Internet are performing slower than usual … but there appears to be no evidence to say that UK broadband users have been slowed down across the board,” it said on its blog.

source: interaksyon.com

Internet trademark clearinghouse to be launched in March

LOS ANGELES — A trademark clearinghouse will be launched in March to prepare for a major change in the way Internet and email addresses are structured and assigned.

Fadi Chehade, newly appointed CEO of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which oversees the Internet address system, told Xinhua Wednesday that one of his chief tasks would be guiding the largest expansion of the Internet address system since its creation in the 1980s.

Now, there were only 23 domain name suffixes, such as .com, .org, .gov, Chehade said, but this year, ICANN would allow other endings, including .google, .music or .apple.

Chinese and other characters will also be allowed in the domain names, IP addresses and suffixes.

He said such a major expansion would greatly increase the number of domain names and IP addresses.

However, the expansion faces criticism, especially from trademark holders who are concerned about misuse of their brands.

Therefore, ICANN decided to launch the trademark clearinghouse in partnership with IBM to protect trademarks, Chehade said.

“Protection of trademarks and IP is at the top of my mind,” he said.

“ICANN is undertaking one of the largest trademark protection programs in history. We are building a trademark clearinghouse, the first global trademark clearinghouse in the world. No one has done that before,” he said.

Chehade said it would allow any trademark holders to be registered with the trademark clearinghouse, and anybody wanting to register their IP or domain names could check with the clearinghouse first to see if someone already owned the name.

“We are doing the most we can in good faith to make sure that we do not end up in the situation where our consumers are confused,” Chehade said.

source: interaksyon.com

Facebook to share data with Instagram, loosen email rules

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook Inc is proposing to combine user data with that of recently acquired photo-sharing service Instagram, and will loosen restrictions on emails between members of the social network.

Facebook also said on Wednesday it is proposing to scrap a 4-year old process that can allow the social network’s roughly 1 billion users to vote on changes to its policies and terms of services.

Facebook said it may share information between its own service and other businesses or affiliates that Facebook owns to “help provide, understand, and improve our services and their own services.”

One of Facebook’s most significant affiliate businesses is Instagram, a photo-sharing service for smartphone users that Facebook acquired in October for roughly $715 million.

The change could open the door for Facebook to build unified profiles of its users that include people’s personal data from its social network and from Instagram, similar to recent moves by Google Inc. In January, Google said it would combine users’ personal information from its various Web services – such as search, email and the Google+ social network – to provide a more customized experience.

Google’s unified data policy raised concerns among some privacy advocates and regulators, who said it was an invasion of people’s privacy. A group of 36 U.S. state attorney generals also warned in a letter to Google that consolidating so much personal information in one place could put people at greater risk from hackers and identity thieves.

Facebook also wants to loosen the restrictions on how members of the social network can contact other members using the Facebook email system.

Facebook said it wanted to eliminate a setting for users to control who can contact them. The company said it planned to replace the “Who can send you Facebook messages” setting with new filters for managing incoming messages.

Asked whether such a change could leave Facebook users exposed to a flood of unwanted, spam-like messages, Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes said that the company carefully monitors user interaction and feedback to find ways to enhance the user experience.

“We are working on updates to Facebook Messages and have made this change in our Data Use Policy in order to allow for improvements to the product,” Noyes said.

Facebook’s changes come as the world’s largest social networking company with roughly 1 billion users has experienced a sharp slowdown in revenue growth. The company generates the bulk of its revenue from advertising on its website.

The changes are open to public comment for the next seven days. If the proposed changes generate more than 7,000 public comments, Facebook’s current terms of service automatically trigger a vote by users to approve the changes. But the vote is only binding if at least 30 percent of users take part, and two prior votes never reached that threshold.

Facebook has said in that past that it was rethinking the voting system and on Wednesday Facebook moved to eliminate the vote entirely, noting that it hasn’t functioned as intended and is no longer suited to its current situation as a large publicly traded company subject to oversight by various regulatory agencies.

“We found that the voting mechanism, which is triggered by a specific number of comments, actually resulted in a system that incentivized the quantity of comments over their quality,” Elliot Schrage, Facebook’s vice president of communications, public policy and marketing, said in a blog post on Wednesday.

Instead of the vote, Facebook will look for other forms of user feedback on changes, such as an “Ask the Chief Privacy Officer” question-and-answer forum on its website as well as live webcasts about privacy, safety and security.

Facebook, Google and other online companies have faced increasing scrutiny and enforcement from privacy regulators as consumers entrust ever-increasing amounts of information about their personal lives to Web services.

In April, Facebook settled privacy charges with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission that it had deceived consumers and forced them to share more personal information than they intended. Under the settlement, Facebook is required to get user consent for certain changes to its privacy settings and is subject to 20 years of independent audits.

source: interaksyon.com

Microsoft relaunches Hotmail as social-friendly Outlook

Microsoft Corp unveiled a revamped, Facebook-friendly version of its free, online email service on Tuesday in an attempt to reverse market share losses to Google Inc’s fast-growing Gmail.

The world’s largest software company is renaming its Hotmail service Outlook, giving it a sharp new look, social network links, and new features for handling the tide of junk and mass mail that swamps many users.

Hotmail was still the world’s largest online mail service as of June, according to the latest comScore figures available, with 324 million users, or about 36 percent of the global market.

But it is losing customers to Google’s Gmail, the fastest-growing rival, which now has about 31 percent of the market. Yahoo Mail is static with about 32 percent. (For a graphic showing webmail market share, click on link.reuters.com/ded79s)

In a bid to recapture growth, Microsoft is renaming the service Outlook, a name familiar to most corporate workers who use Microsoft’s Office email application, and sprucing up the whole experience. Hotmail users will be prompted to switch over to the new service over the next few months.

Hotmail, launched in 1996, was one of the first online email services, but it has not been updated by Microsoft for eight years.

“A lot has changed in the last eight years, and we think it’s time for a fresh look at email,” Chris Jones, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of Windows Live, said in a blog post.

The new look is clean and uncluttered, featuring lots of white space, reminiscent of Google’s recent makeover of Gmail. Relatively unobtrusive advertisements appear in a column to the right of the screen when looking at folders. They do not appear when a message is open.

Users can link up with their Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ accounts, to see the latest updates from friends and contacts. Online chat is available via Facebook.

Newsletters, offers, daily deals and social updates make up over 80 percent of a typical inbox, according to Microsoft’s own research. To help combat that overflow, the new service automatically detects mass messages and puts them in separate folders. Users can customize the process to sort mail any way they want to.

The new mail service also allows easy use of Microsoft’s Internet-based products, such as SkyDrive for storing documents, Office Web Apps for working away from a PC, and will eventually have Skype video chat built in.

Users can access the service at www.outlook.com. Microsoft said the service is currently a “preview,” meaning more features will likely be added before the final version is fully launched.

source: interaksyon.com

WikiLeaks begins publishing two million Syria emails

LONDON - WikiLeaks said Thursday it was publishing over two million emails from Syrian political figures dating back to 2006 but also covering the period of the crackdown on dissent by Syria's regime.

"Just now... WikiLeaks began publishing the Syria files, more than two million emails from Syrian political figures, ministries and associated companies dating from August 2006 to March 2012," said Sarah Harrison, spokeswoman for the anti-secrecy website.

The latest disclosures could throw fresh light on the workings of the Syrian regime and its interactions with allies in the run-up to and during the current bloody crackdown.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says the 16 months of bloodshed in Syria have claimed more than 16,500 lives.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is currently holed up in Ecuador's embassy in London seeking political asylum, said in a written statement: "The material is embarrassing to Syria, but it is also embarrassing to Syria's external opponents.

"It helps us not merely to criticise one group or another, but to understand their interests, actions and thoughts.

"It is only through understanding this conflict that we can hope to resolve it."

WikiLeaks said the first files, released on Wednesday, reveal that Italian defence giant Finmeccanica has provided communications equipment to the Syrian regime since the unrest began.

The communications system was provided by Finmeccanica's subsidiary SELEX Elsag, in claims by WikiLeaks published by Italian magazine L'Espresso.

WikiLeaks' announcement comes a day after Russia denied having discussed with Washington offering exile to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad.

It also comes ahead of a meeting Friday in Paris of the "Friends of Syria" group of countries which support tougher action against Assad's government.

WikiLeaks said the 2,434,899 emails came from Syrian ministries including foreign affairs, finance and presidential affairs. There are around 400,000 emails in Arabic but also 68,000 in Russian.

Harrison said WikiLeaks could not comment on the full contents of the release, which is being organised in collaboration with media partners in countries including the US, Lebanon, Egypt, Germany, France, Italy and Spain.

"This is a large data set. It will take time for these stories to come out," she said at a press conference in London announcing the release.

She refused to comment on how WikiLeaks had obtained the emails, telling AFP: "We never comment on our sourcing."

The publication comes amid continued wrangling between world powers about how the bloody conflict in Syria should be tackled.

Russia has indicated it will stay away from the Paris meeting on Friday after accusing the West of seeking to distort a deal struck last weekend for a political transition in the violence-hit nation.

Moscow's move to shun the gathering comes after UN-Arab League peace envoy Kofi Annan stressed that a ceasefire was imperative.

Assange, meanwhile, has been inside the Ecuadorian embassy since June 19 in a bid to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning over allegations that he sexually assaulted two female former WikiLeaks volunteers.

Assange denies the allegations, which he says are politically motivated. The 40-year-old Australian fears he could be extradited from Sweden to the United States, where he claims he could face the death penalty.

WikiLeaks enraged Washington in 2010 by publishing a flood of secret documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as more than 250,000 confidential US diplomatic cables that embarrassed a slew of governments.

The Syria files are WikiLeaks' first major publication since it began disclosing internal emails from the US-based intelligence firm Stratfor in February.

WikiLeaks was forced to suspend many of its publishing operations last October after Visa, MasterCard and PayPal refused to continue processing donations to the whistleblowing website.

source: interaksyon.com