Facebook Will Open US Private Messages to Politicians

Brain Hackers

It recently appeared that the world’s largest social network Facebook will provide detailed personal information to the political research organization called Politico in order to help politicians get elected.The announced cooperation will mean that political research outfit will be able to compile sentiment analysis reports along with voting-age user surveys. Both private status messages and comments of the network’s American users will be sent to the outfit, which will analyze the data for political content and spit it out into stories like the ones appearing in newspapers from time to time.

Meanwhile, Facebook and the political research outfit promise that the entire process will be automated, so no social network employee could read the private posts and comments. However, each public and private message mentioning any name of presidential candidate will be fed through a sentiment analysis instrument which will then spits out somehow anonymized measures of the general population of American Facebook. In short words, the process will
resemble the way the giant of web search Google usually runs reports on search trends based on engine’s users’ aggregate search activities.

At the moment, it is unclear how any personal comment can be sufficiently anonymous. That’s why industry experts criticize this decision. At the same time, they recommend every Facebook user who wants to really stuff things up to write all their messages in such a way that a machine was unable to work out their real meaning. For instance, the best recommendations were to stick the names of both rivals in equal numbers, as this is expected to annoy the bean counters.
Source: extratorrent.com

Google Refused to Protect Indian Politicians

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India is going to drag the key players of the web industry into court, accusing them of failing to protect its corrupt politicians from being discussed on the Internet.


The Indian government has been angry that people don’t show enough respect on the Internet and wants to make it possible to filter all posts they do not like. They especially didn’t like that people were criticizing the fact that the Ghandi family was getting political jobs only because of their name, rather than experience. As a result, the Indian government told Google and Facebook to filter the web. If the web giants do it under some sort of industry agreement, people wouldn’t say that the largest democracy in the world does it.

Unsurprisingly enough, Google and Facebook have told the Asian politicians that the web is actually too big for them to filter. So India has bought charges against two online giants and 19 other companies. As a result, a lower court has required the Internet companies to filter objectionable content. Of course, all Internet outfits are currently appealing that ruling. Both Facebook and Google explained in the court that they couldn’t block offensive material that might appear on their services from time to time. Facebook and Google are only two out of 21 outfits that have been demanded to develop some tool to block objectionable content in the country.

In fact, the entire situation comes down to a new legislation drafted by the government in 2011, which makes
entities responsible for user material posted on their services, demanding them to take it offline within 36 hours after receiving a complaint. According to media reports, journalist Vinay Rai has bought the case against 21 social networking services for displaying pictures considered offensive to Christians, Hindus, and Muslims.

While the government claimed it was all about keeping the different religious groups in the country away from each other, industry observers regard it as a fairly blatant attempt to stop Internet users discussing corruption, bribery and nepotism. Apparently, civil rights groups oppose the suggested legislation and both online giants have previously claimed they couldn’t and wouldn’t filter Internet content in India. Google’s lawyers explained that if they start using blocks on such words as “sex”, it will lead to the situation where the system ends up cutting government documents, including voter ID lists or passports, because they also include the word “sex”.
Source: extratorrent.com

Chinese Online Population Grew

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It appeared that the country’s Internet population exceeded the 500 million mark by the end of last year. The government-sponsored China Internet Network Information Center has recently calculated some statistics, according to which China added around 28,000,000 new Internet users during the second half of 2011.
In other words, at the end of December 2011, China could boast 513 million Internet users. It means that over 38.3% of the country population already had a connection to the Internet, which is up 4% from last year. Meanwhile, the number of people accessing the worldwide web from their mobile devices has also increased, reaching the mark of 355 million users. Currently, 69.3% of the country’s Internet users connect through their handsets, and this number is also up from 66.2% in 2010.

At the same time, the number of Chinese users connecting to the web through their desktops has dropped to 73.4%, but the number of Internet users accessing the web from their laptops has remained steady at
46.8%. Meanwhile, it has been emphasized that the overall Internet growth in the country has actually been slowing down. The industry experts believe this is because most Chinese citizens within the 10 to 29 year old age range already have access to the Internet, while older people are less likely to express much interest in it.

At the moment, the most popular activities of the Chinese users on the Internet include instant messaging, using search engines, and listening to online music. Indeed, the observers point out that microblogs have been growing rapidly – for instance, their numbers have already reached 250 million users, which is almost 4 times up from 63 million in 2010.

Israeli Hackers Attack Saudi and UAE Stock Exchange Websites

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The tensions in the Middle East have grown to other spheres too. Now cyberspace is also treated as any other space owned by a country. According to the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, a group calling itself IDF-Team had shut down Saudi Arabia’s and the UAE’s stock exchange websites. These websites were hacked on Tuesday and caused paralysis and delays in these two stock exchanges’ websites.

The attack however was in retaliation to a Saudi hackers’ group called “Nightmare group” that shut down Tel Aviv stock exchange and Israeli airline El Al’s websites. These incidents have initiated a whole ongoing cyber-warfare between Israeli and Arab hackers who have been hacking and releasing Facebook data and email account information since the past couple of weeks. This hacked information is under threat to be
released to the masses causing further damage.

Already the tensions on the grounds are hard to handle and every effort to resolve issues between Arabs and Israelis seem to go wasted when such things happen. It is better that the governments take notice of such cyber-attacks and implement action preventing spilling of warfare into new spheres. Hacking is one the biggest cyber-attacks that could happen and spilling of information can help to promote the propaganda of the side having an upper hand.

Israel Attacked by Hackers

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Regardless of all worries of the country, the only thing getting blown up in a so-called “cyber war” that has erupted in Israel seems to be a sense of all proportion.
Cyber intruders have somehow disrupted access to the official sites of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (known as TASE) and the country’s largest carrier El Al Airlines. For some reason, the latter panicked and issued a response which became a string of over the top statements from the company’s press office: it claimed that Israel was involved in a cyber war!

El Al Airlines has announced in its statement that the country has been attacked in a kind of a “cyber war” within the last couple weeks. Nobody knows why, but the company claimed that the attacks had come from Saudi Arabia. The facts are that the website of El Al Airlines crashed, and it said the company has been busy trying to solve the problem. Aside from the airline, another organization complained about hacker attack: the stock exchange also said that it experienced cyber attack
on the access routes to its site. In the interview, deputy manager of the exchange’s marketing and communications unit explained that the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange’s trading activities are currently operating normally.

Meanwhile, the intruder in question is suspected to be the same individual who recently published thousands of personal credit card details of the Israel citizens, that has been gleaned from commercial sites during the worst case of mass cyber identity theft that Israel had even seen. Although the intruder claimed to reside in Saudi Arabia, a number of security experts still claim that the hacker was from South America. Up to date, no individual or hacker group has claimed responsibility for these cyber attacks, so it might be not the same person. Nevertheless, this hasn’t stopped El Al Airlines bumping up the “cyber war” rhetoric.

Although the government of the attacked country has already threatened to respond militarily to defend its online structures, attacking Saudi schools from air when the hacker might be in Brazil could be a bit over the top. In addition, Israel forgets that there were only three minor hacks. Still, it set up an agency to address cyber attacks earlier in January, whose founding member explained that Israeli most vital systems had already been protected, but the hacker attacks were likely to increase.

Source: extratorrent.com

US threatens Wikipedia

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The free online encyclopedia website, Wikipedia, has blacked out as part of a global protest against anti-piracy legislation making its way through the US congress.

On its English homepage, Wikipedia, a primary research tool on the Internet and one of the most frequently visited websites, says, “Right now, the US congress is considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open Internet. For 24 hours, to raise awareness, we are blacking out Wikipedia.”

“This is an extraordinary action for our community to take,” Wikipedia’s founder Jimmy Wales said about the blackout of Wikipedia’s English version.

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) are currently under review by the US House of Representatives and the Senate.

“We simply cannot ignore the fact that SOPA and PIPA endanger free speech both in the United States and abroad, and set a frightening precedent of Internet censorship for the world,” said Wales.

Internet giant Google has also covered its logo in black despite being available for searches. Other popular websites are also protesting against the legislation, including Reddit, which said it will be blacked out
for 12 hours.

The protesting sites say they intend to ‘shutter and silence’ the Internet the same way many in the tech world say will happen if the Stop Online Piracy Act in the House and the Protect IP Act in the Senate move forward.

The two bills are claimed to be aimed at hindering the illegal downloading of movies and TV shows.

However, Wikipedia and other Internet giants such as Google, Twitter and Yahoo say the two bills would give the US government the power to censor the web as they would let federal authorities shut down sites on the Internet without adequate processing and would essentially change the platform of free speech that the Internet provides.

Source: extratorrent,com

Israel seeks revenge for hacking

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The Israeli government has threatened to retaliate against the hacker who last week published the credit card details of thousands of Israelis, with one senior official comparing the cyberattack to a “terrorist operation”.

Danny Ayalon, the deputy foreign minister, warned that the attack represented “a breach of sovereignty comparable to a terrorist operation, and must be treated as such”. He added: “Israel has active capabilities for striking at those who are trying to harm it, and no agency or hacker will be immune from retaliatory action.”

A Saudi-based hacker calling himself 0xOmar last week revealed several batches of credit card details affecting at least 14,000 Israeli cardholders. The hacker claimed to have access to a far greater trove of personal information, warning at first that he had uncovered the credit card details of about 400,000
Israelis. He later claimed to possess personal information about no fewer than 1.1m Israelis – a boast that is being treated with caution by Israeli officials.

Israeli credit card companies have said there is so far little sign of financial damage as a result of the hacking attack. However, on Sunday Israeli media reported the arrest of an 18-year-old Israeli man who used the leaked credit card information to buy, among other things, a Galaxy smartphone and a tablet computer.

Israeli officials say they are not certain the hacker is indeed based in Saudi Arabia, and whether he is acting alone or as part of a group.

Yedioth Ahronoth, the Israeli daily, published what it claimed was an email exchange with 0xOmar on Friday. In it, the hacker insists that his attack was politically motivated, accusing Israel of “genocide” and of breaking “legal international rules”. He adds: “I want to harm Israel financially and socially.”

Cyber attacks have become a source of growing concern in Israel, prompting the government to set up a National Cyber Directorate last year. The directorate is responsible for shoring up the country’s defences against cyber attacks, but is also supposed to help Israeli companies that specialise in cyber security.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, said at the time that Israel should be “in the vanguard of the cyber field around the world”. Aside from the security aspect, he said, there was “great economic opportunity here”.

The websites of the Bank of Israel and of Tel Aviv municipality have been targets for politically motivated hacking attacks in recent years. Last November, the websites of the Israeli army, the Mossad spy agency and the Shin Bet internal security service all crashed simultaneously. Israeli officials said the failure was not due to a hacking attack.

The denial came despite a threat only days earlier by Anonymous, the group of hackers and online activists, warning of an impending cyberattack against Israel.