b0ndo2 blogs

[b0ndo2]

Are we about to discover the most watched internet in the world??

First time I've heard of it however The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act is not the first time its been introduced. In April 2012 it came to the scene when it passed the House however as "it lacked privacy safeguards" it was vetoed by Obama administration. Now its back to haunt.

April 2013 the house passed the law again with 288 to 127 votes. This is not the end as it will still go through the Senate and potentially end up with Obama to give the last say. 

Some of the main reason behind bringing this law in is to protect American trade secrets being stolen by US companies and to combat the 25 million cybercrime victims as stated here by the representatives supporting the act.

So what's wrong with CISPA? An anti-CISPA website setup called www.cispaisback.org state that it wont protect us from cyber threats, but it will violate our 4th Amendment right to privacy. They tried to sum this up in the least words as possible:

It lets the government spy on you without a warrant.

It makes it so you can't even find out about it after the fact.

It makes it so companies can't be sued when they do illegal things with your data.

It allows corporations to cyber-attack eachother and individuals outside of the law.

It makes every privacy policy on the web a moot point, and violates the 4th amendment.

CISPA co-author Rep. Mike Rogers also said:

"We have yet to find a single United Stated company that opposed this bill"

According to cispaisback website some of the companies which are against the bill are 4chan, Craigslist, Imgur, Mozilla and Reddit. However major companies like Microsoft, Facebook and eBay are with the bill which causes a big divide in the online world.

Listen to Rep.Mike Rogers talk about how CISPA helps rich rech CEOs and those opposing it are "14 year old tweeters in their basement" 

This Info Graphic is quite useful to understand it a bit more:

They say London is the most watched city in the world, will the US be the most watched internet in the world?

[b0ndo2]

“Data is the new oil? No: Data is the new soil.”

“Data is the new oil? No: Data is the new soil.” – David McCandless

It's all about data now, when used in the right direction can be used to save lives. I came across this very intresting idea Google announced it will launch. The Google Global Human Trafficking Hotline Network this initiative will be to fight human trafficking worldwide using data.

The project requires a team up with non-governmental organisations Polaris Project which works on the US, Liberty Asia which covers Asia and La Strada International on Europe. The way it will work is when a emergency phone call is made to one of the hotlines the data received will be passed on and turned into information. This could include location of crime, age of victim, and the type of crime they are labored into, with this you can start to build a more visible picture as what, where, when, and how this criminal network is operating. The clearer the information the easier it will be for law enforcement to act and prevent human trafficking.

“Working with the [anti-trafficking] partners, we can take data from their help lines and map it so that we can identify who is vulnerable, the patterns that emerge, and anticipate the movement, offering prevention measures, not just rescue,” says Jacquelline Fuller, director of Google Giving.

This video gives a clear overview of the potential powerful effect

  "Looking at the existing data, we found that the number of reports in the US of sex workers calling a hotline because they're being controlled by a pimp is double on Wednesday than on any other day of the week," Jared Cohen, director of Google Ideas, told the Atlantic when discussing what data applications can reveal.

No doubt this project is heading in the right direction, it just goes to show how much can be done with just data and the collaboration of organisations. 

"The same problems, different time, different technique."

Most information in article from: Wired and Business Week

[b0ndo2]

"You cannot arrest an idea."

The only tweet found on the twitter feed of 19 turning 20 year-old Jake Davis (@atopiary). He has allegedly been involved in attacks or hacks against: Sony, The Sun, EA Games, SOCA (Britain's Serious Organised Crime Agency), CIA, EVE Online, Fox TV, Twitter & Linkedln. 

Hacking is a process by which a programmer or a team of programmers design a piece of software which can bypass encryptions and gain unauthorised access to data. The problem is no matter how much is spent on security to try stopping these hackers, for some reason they still seem to break the barrier and bypass the security.

Hacking crimes are estimated to cost United States corporations alone $63 billion a year, and then $75.6 billion in the following year, now that isn’t a small amount of money. The U.S defence network is attacked around 250,000 times a year, with only one in 500 of these attacks detected. When Hollywood came to release their next generation DVD formats such as Blu-ray, they had spent billions on this ‘hugely complex and expensive beast’ called Advanced Access Content System (AACS); designed to prevent unauthorised pirating. They thought they had the solution which actually took the hacker “Arnezami” a few weeks to bypass this beast. “It’s pretty incredible that a carefully thought-of encryption system is now reduced to, at worst, a guessing game. Somebody should feel very ashamed.” Arnezami wrote once he had bypassed the system.   If after all that money is spent and hackers are still succeeding, I can definitely relate to why this money can be seen as wasted. 

On 7th April a famous hacker group 'Anonymous' launched a campaign called "#OpIsrael". They planned to attack Israeli websites, facebook, twitter, bank, & email accounts. This wasn't the first of this type of attack. The group consists of smaller hacker groups worldwide who come together on such events and aim all their efforts onto one target. 

this image is a tweet is from the AVG(popular security/anti-virus software) for Israel twitter handle.  According to this blog by an Anonymous member partial damage from attack cost $3+ billion. Also they posted a list of the damage caused and websites effected:

Anonymous partial damage report:  - 100k+ websites - 40k Facebook pages - 5k twitter - 30k Israeli bank acc got hacked - Israelien prime ministers wife number: 0502977997 … Lulz - 3k+ websites of companies in israeli cyber space completely deleted - Secret Israel Documents of Military leaked - Several Gov websites hacked like Central Bureau of Statistics, Government Companies Authority, Government Publications Office, The National Insurance Institute, Israel’s Social Security ogranization, Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Israel Export Institute, Israel Government Press Office, Israel Ministry of Defense, Israel Ministry of Environment, Israel Ports & Railways Authority, Israeli Antiquity Authority, Israeli Judicial Authority, Israeli Prime Minister, Parlament’s website, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Education, Culture And Sports, State of Israel Information Technologies, Offical website of the State of Israel, Citizen Info Service, The Civil Service Commission, The Jewish Agency, Ministry of Tourism etc. - Several trading websites hacked and US supported Zionist exposed - 200k+ Visa/Mastercards users leaked on the internet

Questions that come to mind are: Was it that easy? Can they do it again if they wanted to? does it really matter? more importantly can you even stop them? 

Maybe Jake Davis had a valid point "You cannot arrest an idea."

[b0ndo2]

We're not all the same..

So I came across this very interesting chart on iClarified which represents what we do with out smartphones globally.

I'm totally not surprised about Brasil being number 1 for the social networking side according to this article titled: 'Brazil: The Social Media Capital of the Universe'  

Facebook time grew 208% to 535 minutes over the same period [one year between Sep '11 - Sep '12]

I think this also gives a good overview for phone/software developers to know what they should focus on more or even totally scrap if there isn't much popularity.

I find this quite interesting because logically you would think across the globe countries of similar standards and development will do the same with their phones. But it seems no, that's not the case, does the environment, media & culture push us to use specific tools on our phones more than others?

My last question is: India, what do you do with your phones?

[b0ndo2]

the internet knows me like the.. back of its hands?

So the other day I visited about 5 normal popular websites and just stayed on the home page for about less than 20 seconds. As I done this I was running a tool called 'collusion' which runs on the browser firefox as a add-on. This tool records every website you visit and all the other websites which try to send you data through each site, then put it in a graph to show you.

The results, well quite shocking after visiting 5 websites, collusion recorded 50+ websites trying to send me data. Now all these websites are so called 'trackers' which secretly track my every click trying to collect all data about me. So they collect all this data and store it to build some sort of a profile on me based on what my 'interests' are. With that they sell it to advertising companies so they know what type of advertisements to show me.

Now you can easily download some sort of application/add-on which makes you a 'ghost' on the internet and blocks all sorts of trackers from taking any information about you. However my question is, is it the norm for there to be all sorts of tracking and collecting data about internet users that we have to go the extra step to prevent it? or should it be the other way round? 

the website of 'disconnect' (https://disconnect.me) which is an app designed to block trackers, summed up their privacy policy in one sentence:

"We don’t collect your IP address or any other personal info, except your email address if you ask us to write you."

makes you wonder what the policies are of those who this app blocks.