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Microsoft

Here We Go Again: Microsoft's Popping Up Ads From the Windows 10 Toolbar (pcworld.com) 322

Posted by msmash from the being-Microsoft dept.
Mark Hachman, reporting for PCWorld: When Microsoft's Windows 10 deadline passed, many heaved a sigh of relief, thinking that Microsoft's obnoxious popup reminders had finally been laid to rest. Surprise! Microsoft's at it again, reminding users to sign up for Bing Rewards by using Edge, Windows 10's built-in browser. My colleague Brad Chacos was hit by the ad after hours, reported it, and immediately erased Edge from his toolbar. Here's what we know: The popup doesn't seem to appear if you use Edge frequently (Brad does not). Personally, I've never experienced a similar ad, though I use Edge as well as Bing Rewards, meaning there's no need for such an ad to appear. A notification here, a suggestion there: Microsoft's gently slipped in promotions for Office as well as its third-party apps off and on since Windows 10 was launched, and then sneakily reset those options once the Anniversary Update launched last summer. But here's the problem. Brad turned off his ad settings; the Anniversary Update reinstated them. Brad says he turned off the ad settings again -- and once again, Microsoft reinstated them.
Media

Cisco Develops System To Automatically Cut-Off Pirate Video Streams (torrentfreak.com) 112

Posted by BeauHD from the party's-over dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Pirate services obtain content by capturing and restreaming feeds obtained from official sources, often from something as humble as a regular subscriber account. These streams can then be redistributed by thousands of other sites and services, many of which are easily found using a simple search. Dedicated anti-piracy companies track down these streams and send takedown notices to the hosts carrying them. Sometimes this means that streams go down quickly but in other cases hosts can take a while to respond or may not comply at all. Networking company Cisco thinks it has found a solution to these problems. The company's claims center around its Streaming Piracy Prevention (SPP) platform, a system that aims to take down illicit streams in real-time. Perhaps most interestingly, Cisco says SPP functions without needing to send takedown notices to companies hosting illicit streams. "Traditional takedown mechanisms such as sending legal notices (commonly referred to as 'DMCA notices') are ineffective where pirate services have put in place infrastructure capable of delivering video at tens and even hundreds of gigabits per second, as in essence there is nobody to send a notice to," the company explains. "Escalation to infrastructure providers works to an extent, but the process is often slow as the pirate services will likely provide the largest revenue source for many of the platform providers in question." To overcome these problems Cisco says it has partnered with Friend MTS (FMTS), a UK-based company specializing in content-protection. Among its services, FMTS offers Distribution iD, which allows content providers to pinpoint which of their downstream distributors' platforms are a current source of content leaks. "Robust and unique watermarks are embedded into each distributor feed for identification. The code is invisible to the viewer but can be recovered by our specialist detector software," FMTS explains. "Once infringing content has been located, the service automatically extracts the watermark for accurate distributor identification." According to Cisco, FMTS feeds the SPP service with pirate video streams it finds online. These are tracked back to the source of the leak (such as a particular distributor or specific pay TV subscriber account) which can then be shut-down in real time.
Iphone

4Chan Hackers Claim To Have Remotely Wiped John Podesta's iPhone and iPad (gizmodo.com) 269

Posted by BeauHD from the private-information dept.
An anonymous reader writes from a report via Gizmodo: For the past several days, WikiLeaks has been publishing thousands of emails belonging to Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta -- and the leaks are starting to cause some serious damage. Gizmodo reports: "Many of the leaked emails contained contact info, cell phone numbers, and account data, none of which was redacted by Wikileaks before being posted. With this information accessible to anyone with the time and energy to read through it all, users on 4chan's /pol/ (politically incorrect) board were able to gain access to Podesta's Twitter account, tweeting a message in support of Trump. Imageboard posters also stumbled on an email containing Podesta's Apple ID -- and appear to have exploited it. 'iPad/iPhone info and data wiped out,' a post on Endchan claimed, show screenshots of what seems to be the hacker gaining access to Find My iPhone using Podesta's credentials. If Podesta's Apple ID was compromised, it stands to reason that his iCloud account was similarly vulnerable. And sure enough, Redditor's on r/The_Donald claim Podesta's iCloud data was downloaded. A hacker known as CyberZeist also appears to have uncovered the passwords to dozens of senators' email addresses, as well as social security numbers and credit card info for many Democrats including Vice President Joe Biden, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, and acting Chair of the DNC Donna Brazile. The information was posted to pastebin.
Government

The Unsettling Relationship Between Russia and Wikileaks (dailymail.co.uk) 271

Posted by BeauHD from the coincidence-I-think-not dept.
schnell writes: The New York Times is reporting on the informal but seemingly symbiotic relationship between Russian hackers attacking American targets and Wikileaks (Warning: may be paywalled) as their favorite spot for disseminating the embarrassing results. New York Times reports: "American officials say Mr. Assange and WikiLeaks probably have no direct ties to Russian intelligence services. But the agendas of WikiLeaks and the Kremlin have often dovetailed." When it comes to embarrassing the U.S. government, Russia and Wikileaks' Julian Assange doubtlessly have common interests. But the reporters' analysis of leaks over the past several years raises a question of whether this is just a natural alliance of a source for incriminating documents and a motivated publisher, or does Wikileaks focus on the U.S. and downplay revelations about authoritarian regimes like Russia's as a result of the cozy relationship? nickovs adds: The New York Times is reporting how Russia often benefits when Julian Assange reveals the West's secrets. The article discusses Assange's change in stance regarding Russia over the years and how the Kremlin appears to support, and benefit from, the leaks that he publishes. The New York Times reports: "United States officials say they believe with a high degree of confidence that the Democratic Party material was hacked by the Russian government, and suspect that the codes may have been stolen by the Russians as well. That raises a question: Has WikiLeaks become a laundering machine for compromising material gathered by Russian spies? And more broadly, what precisely is the relationship between Mr. Assange and Mr. Putin's Kremlin?" Daily Mail (non paywalled source) reports: "In 2010 Assange was arrested in London on allegations of rape stemming from Sweden and released on bail. He described the arrest as a plot to extradite him to the U.S. where he could be investigated over the diplomatic cables leak, which greatly harmed American relations with the rest of the world while Clinton was Secretary of State. Putin also called the charges against Assange 'politically motivated' and said he is being 'persecuted for spreading the information he received from the U.S. military regarding the actions of the USA in the Middle East, including Iraq.' Russian officials have also suggested that Assange be given a Nobel Prize, and in 2012 paid to stream his TV show on state-backed network Russia Today. The Times also claims that Assange was offered a visa by Russia in 2011, though WikiLeaks has denounced this as false..."
Democrats

DOJ Will Not File Charges Against Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (politico.com) 801

Posted by BeauHD from the closed-investigation dept.
An anonymous reader writes: After FBI Director James Comey recommended not to indict Hillary Clinton for her email misconduct yesterday, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said on Wednesday that the Justice Department has decided not to pursue charges against Hillary Clinton or her aids and that the department will close the investigation into her use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state. "Late this afternoon, I met with FBI Director James Comey and career prosecutors and agents who conducted the investigation of Secretary Hillary Clinton's use of a personal email system during her time as Secretary of State," Lynch said in a statement on Wednesday. "I received and accepted their unanimous recommendation that the thorough, year-long investigation be closed and that no charges be brought against any individuals within the scope of the investigation."
United Kingdom

Britain's Conservatives Scrub Speeches from the Internet 234

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the history-is-no-more dept.
An anonymous reader writes news of an attempt to erase a bit of history. From the article: "The Conservative Party have attempted to delete all their speeches and press releases online from the past 10 years, including one in which David Cameron promises to use the Internet to make politicians 'more accountable'. The Tory party have deleted the backlog of speeches from the main website and the Internet Archive — which aims to make a permanent record of websites and their content — between 2000 and May 2010."
Education

Why One Woman Says Sending Your Kid To Private School Is Evil 1255

Posted by samzenpus from the price-of-a-good-education dept.
theodp writes "Slate's Allison Benedikt is ruffling some feathers with her recent manifesto, If You Send Your Kid to Private School, You Are a Bad Person. 'Not bad like murderer bad,' Benedikt writes, 'but bad like ruining-one-of-our-nation's-most-essential-institutions-in-order-to-get-what's-best-for-your-kid bad. So, pretty bad.' If your local school stinks and you send your child there, Benedikt explains, 'I bet you are going to do everything within your power to make it better.'"

Comment Down the memory hole (Score 5, Interesting) 229

by mkro (#43914939) Attached to: Facebook Silently Removes Ability To Download Your Posts

On Sunday or Monday, I shared a "What is happening in Turkey" post, in English, from a Turkish friend's wall to my own. It was shared to "Friends except acquaintances" and got a few likes and comments. This morning I noticed it was gone from my wall. It is not to be found in my activity log, and the notifications of that it had been commented on were also gone.

I was starting to doubt I had posted it at all, when I remembered to check Google Reader (Yep, still running), as I ages ago had set up a RSS feed with my notifications there. There it was, "[Friend's name] likes your link", with a clickable link to facebook.com/my name/posts/ followed by a numerical value. However clicking on it gave this message: "This content is currently unavailable. The page you requested cannot be displayed right now. It may be temporarily unavailable, the link you clicked on may have expired, or you may not have permission to view this page". Other posts in my RSS feed works fine, so it was just this particular one.

If it wasn't for the RSS feed, I probably would have shrugged it off and thought no more of it, so I guess the RSS feature will be gone soon too.

Comment Doesn't desktop firewalls have one advantage? (Score 1) 440

by mkro (#33666218) Attached to: Are Desktop Firewalls Overkill?

Aren't desktop firewalls useful in cases where attackers use malicious PDFs/Office documents/browser exploits to run reverse shells? If the exploit tries to connect to evilhost.com:443, how can a server firewall know that the connection is not a legitimate HTTPS connection?

As far as I understand, desktop firewalls would block attempts like these, as long as the connection isn't initiated by a whitelisted program. Of course the exploit payload could include methods to whitelist itself, but I assume there is no one single method to do this, so the payload would have to include custom methods for each of the personal firewall vendors.

Disclaimer: I have no experience with personal firewalls, and if I'm talking out of my ass, please correct me.
Graphics

Analyzing (All of) Star Trek With Face Recognition 140

Posted by kdawson from the sees-you-when-you're-sleeping dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Accurate face recognition is coming. Pittsburgh Pattern Recognition, a face recognition start-up spun out from Carnegie Mellon University, has posted a tech demo showing an analysis of the entire original Star Trek series using face recognition. The online visualization includes various annotated clips of the series with clickable thumbnails of each character's appearance. They also have a separate page showing the full data of all the prominent characters in every episode including extracting thumbnails of each appearance." Their software can recognize frontal or near-frontal face instances.

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