Technology Info

Two weeks after Joshua Lipton was charged in a drunken driving crash that seriously injured a woman, the 20-year-old college junior attended a Halloween party dressed as a prisoner. Pictures from the party showed him in a black-and-white striped shirt and an orange jumpsuit labeled “Jail Bird.”

In the age of the Internet, it might not be hard to guess what happened to those pictures: Someone posted them on the social networking site Facebook. And that offered remarkable evidence for Jay Sullivan, the prosecutor handling Lipton’s drunken-driving case. (link)

Computer industry heavyweights are hustling to fix a flaw in the foundation of the Internet that would let hackers control traffic on the World Wide Web.

Major software and hardware makers worked in secret for months to create a software “patch” released on Tuesday to repair the problem, which is in the way computers are routed to web page addresses.

“It’s a very fundamental issue with how the entire addressing scheme of the Internet works,” Securosis analyst Rich Mogul said in a media conference call.

“You’d have the Internet, but it wouldn’t be the Internet you expect. (Hackers) would control everything.”

The flaw would be a boon for “phishing” cons that involve leading people to imitation web pages of businesses such as bank or credit card companies to trick them into disclosing account numbers, passwords and other information. (link)

Google Inc. says Bell Canada Inc. is breaking Canadian telecommunications law by slowing certain internet traffic, and is urging the CRTC to take action against the company.

“Bell claims its throttling of peer-to-peer applications is a reasonable form of network management. Google respectfully disagrees. Network management does not include Canadian carriers’ blocking or degrading lawful applications that consumers wish to use,” the company wrote in a 15-page submission to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, which was made public over the weekend.

“From consumer, competition and innovation perspectives, throttling applications that consumers choose is inconsistent with a content and application-neutral internet, and a violation of Canadian telecommunications law, which forbids unfair discrimination and undue or unreasonable preferences and requires that regulation be technologically and competitively neutral.” (link)

Recently Lori Drew was charged with violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act for signing up for a MySpace account under a fake name. While the larger circumstances were quite shocking (and have been covered enough I don’t think I need to go into them), she was charged for nothing more than pretending to be someone else on the Internet. The indictment calls this a felony, under title 130 section (a) (2) (c) of the US Code, which criminalizes anyone who “intentionally accesses a computer without authorization or exceeds authorized access, and thereby obtains information from any protected computer if the conduct involved an interstate or foreign communication.” The access to MySpace was unauthorized because using a fake name violated the terms of service. The information from a “protected computer” was the profiles of other MySpace users.

If this is found to be a valid interpretation of the law, it’s really quite frightening. If you violate the Terms of Service of a website, you can be charged with hacking. That’s an astounding concept. Does this mean that everyone who uses Bugmenot could be prosecuted? Also, this isn’t a minor crime, it’s a felony punishable by up to 5 years imprisonment per count. In Drew’s case she was charged with three counts for accessing MySpace on three different occasions. (link)

Back in April, McAfee launched an experiment designed as a tribute to Morgan Spurlock’s Super-Size Me documentary on eating nothing but McDonald’s food for 30 days. Instead of fast food, however, McAfee gathered a group of some 50 volunteers from Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, The Netherlands, Spain, the US, and the UK. Once this elite group of brave souls had been assembled, McAfee put them on a diet of pure spam.

No, we’re not referring to the creamy mounds of whipped pig nestled inside a pop-top container—although 30 days of eating it might make an interesting experiment in and of itself—but the kind of spam that arrives via your inbox and tempts you with online degrees, job offers, free XBox 360s, and magnanimous gifts from your great-uncle Dmitri back in Russia. (link)

A recent collaborative study between Google, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, and IBM offers new insight into how many people surfing the web are doing so safely. According to the report, a clear majority of users (some 59 percent) are using the latest version of their preferred Internet browser—but that still leaves 40.1 percent who aren’t. That’s a troublingly high number for anyone working in IT security, given that virtually all (89.4 percent) of the vulnerabilities reported in 2007 were remote exploits. Not all of these exploits specifically targeted the web browser, but it’s become the target of choice for an increasingly large percentage of all attacks. Proper browser security is therefore of paramount concern. (link)

In the accompanying letter, Bell buckles up and takes a tortuous metaphor involving roads for a lengthy drive in order to illustrate its point that even low congestion numbers can cause big problems. Visualize a traffic accident at a busy intersection: even though the “network” is congested at only one point, it can still have repercussions for users in the entire area. Just to make sure no one gets the idea that these low percentages are actually no big deal, Bell spells out its message in small words so that we can all understand.

“While these numbers may seem low to the average layperson,” says the letter, “they are significant and network traffic engineers such that it is important to consider the number of congested links in the proper context.” (link)

The technological feats of the 3G iPhone are key to the coming pornucopia. To date, mobile porn has consisted largely of still images, racy text services and “moan tones,” which are sultry-sounding ringtones. In Europe there is an active market for video chatting; customers pay on average $50 a month to exchange dirty messages with actresses. But now, thanks in large part to the iPhone’s video dexterity, short clips are becoming a staple of the mobile porn business. The speed promised by the iPhone 2.0 is much anticipated. Google Trends, which measures Web buzz, shows a sharp increase over the past year in the popularity of the term “iPhone porn.”

Leading porn purveyors see the iPhone as a dream come true. Its relatively ample screen size, speedy Web access and ease of use are just part of it. The device’s miniaturized version of Apple’s Safari software simplifies mobile access and streamlines the process of tailoring dirty sites for optimal viewing on the go. “It’s by far the porn-friendliest phone,” says Devan Cypher, representative for San Francisco–based Sin City Entertainment. As evidence of the gadget’s rocketing popularity in California’s porn capital, the San Fernando Valley, numerous iPhone-specific porn sites have been launched in recent months. “There are a few hundred iPhone porn sites now in use,” says Farley Cahen, vice president of business development for AVN Media Network, the adult industry’s trade body. Many others are currently in the works targeting the iPhone 2.0, which goes on sale July 11. (link)

The number of personal computers in use around the world has surpassed 1 billion, with strong growth in emerging markets set to double the number of PCs by early 2014, research firm Gartner said on Monday.

Mature markets accounted for 58 percent of the first billion installed PCs, but would only account for about 30 percent of the next billion, Gartner said.

“Rapid penetration in emerging markets is being driven by the explosive expansion of broadband and wireless connectivity, the continuing fall in PC average selling prices, and the general realization that PCs are an indispensable tool for advancement,” George Shiffler, research director at Gartner, said.

Gartner expects more than 180 million computers will be replaced this year, with some sold to second owners through various channels, some broken up and recycled, but many simply dumped directly into landfill. (link)

Anyone who persists in illicit downloading of music or films will be barred from broadband access under a controversial new law that makes France a pioneer in combating internet piracy.

“There is no reason that the internet should be a lawless zone,” President Sarkozy told his Cabinet yesterday as it endorsed the “three-strikes-and-you’re-out” scheme that from next January will hit illegal downloaders where it hurts.

Under a cross-industry agreement, internet service providers (ISPs) must cut off access for up to a year for third-time offenders.

In a classical French approach the scheme will be enforced by a new £15 million a year state agency, to be called Hadopi (high authority for copyright protection and dissemination of works on the internet). (link)