Stuxnet Wasn’t The Only Malware Of Its Kind

According to the Russian computer security company Kaspersky Lab, the Stuxnet virus, known worldwide for damaging Iran's nuclear program, was most likely one of at least 5 cyber weapons based on the same platform.

Kaspersky experts have tracked the development of the malware back to 2007. As you may remember, Stuxnet has already been linked to another malware called Duqu. However, the research conducted by Kaspersky Lab suggests that the cyber weapons software which has targeted Iran might be much more sophisticated. According to Kaspersky's director of global research, Costin Raiu, the platform used to build both Stuxnet and Duqu was also used to design at least 3 other pieces of malware. This platform was made up of software modules developed in such a way that they were locked together, each with different functions. In other words, developers are able to create new cyber weapons by easily adding and removing modules.

Kaspersky explained that the platform used to create Stuxnet is similar to Lego. They called it "Tilded", because most of the files in both Duqu and Stuxnet had names starting with the tilde symbol "~" and the letter "d". Thus far, Kaspersky Lab hasn’t discovered any new types of malware built on this platform, but it is fairly clear that they do exist somewhere. Shared parts of the malware look to link up with their relatives. The search they perform uses at least 3 other unique registry keys, which means that the developers of both Stuxnet and Duqu also created at least 3 other pieces of malware based on the same platform. Kaspersky experts think that Tilded platform traces back to at least 2007, as a part of its code was compiled in the end of the summer 2007.

Movie Industry Killing Films, Not Pirates

Famous film writer David Germain claimed that this year's box office receipts appeared below last year not because of piracy, but rather because the studios didn’t have a successful movie.

Back in 2010, they had Avatar and Dark Knight, but in 2011 they didn’t get a single must-see mass blockbuster. Nevertheless, this reveals one of the problems that the movie industry has been having adjusting itself to our digital era.

For a while now, the movie studios have tried to encourage consumers to the cinemas by developing a product worthwhile experiencing in comparison to what people could have at home. But it wasn’t like that: instead, the movie studios have jacked up the price of a cinema ticket so much that they could now be compared to live concerts and restaurants. Indeed, today a family of four will have to mortgage their house if they want to see a film. So, when they have other, cheaper alternative, they won’t even bother – most people will just wait for the movie to come out on DVD and watch it at home.

There used to be time when users were happy with the fact that they find themselves tossed in a room with a bunch of strangers, where the worst worry is about someone rustling their sweetie packets. However, today you have to worry about people with cell phones that keep ringing and sending messages, or even about an idiot insisting on shouting a review of the movie to their mate over the phone. With audience experience going, sitting in a dark room with a bunch of kids watching Transformers would drive someone to bittorrent in order to avoid the experience.

The next problem is the inflated prices of food available in the cinema – indeed, it is unclear to everyone why popcorn and fizz, which have to be about the cheapest food products should cost so much. David Germain pointed out that the movies currently being screened are actually more about overhyped disappointments and there’s really a complete lack of choice. In 2010, indie, foreign and documentary movies did really well, they also cleaned up at Netflix and Blockbuster. Germain also added the statistics shows that while the audience still loves films, cinema theaters are already losing their charm and the studios have lost the plot.

Meanwhile, the Motion Picture Association of America insists that everything will be all right if they could crucify some more file-sharing pirates.

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uTorrent Merged With Dropbox

Good news for people staying far from home on holidays but willing to torrent remotely! As you might already know, remote file-sharing has been available for a while thus far, as uTorrent’s Remote App was quite helpful for that. But in a case when you need to download a file from outside your home – for example, when you visit a friend or stay in another country – Dropbox offers a better solution than the one provided by uTorrent Remote.

Dropbox is widely known as a cloud-based service, which provides its users with the opportunity to synchronize files between modern devices and the cloud. In addition, the user is also able to access files through using the service’s site. This now allows them to send torrents to uTorrent remotely. In order to do that, you must first install Dropbox on your PC, then create a new folder within the installation directory, and finally launch uTorrent. In the application, visit Options -> Preferences, choose the Directories tab and check “Automatically load .torrents from”. Underneath you should choose Dropbox’s newly created folder. It is that easy!

After completing this procedure, you can log into Dropbox’s online service from any PC and save torrents into the folder you just created. Within this operation, the cloud will synchronize the torrent files with your PC located at your house provided it is online. If the computer is online right after you have uploaded your torrent files, it will automatically start download. Otherwise, downloads will start as soon as your PC is online and uTorrent is launched.

This seems to be a very convenient way to share files remotely. However, if you don’t like Dropbox for any reason, you are able to use most of the cloud-based services available online.

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RIAA Caught Infringing

When in court, the RIAA attorneys explain the normally technically illiterate jury that if the industry obtained a “pirate” IP address, they have caught the infringer red handed.

In other words, they believe that it’s impossible for an IP address to be spoofed and the pirate is banged to rights. After this the industry proceeds to demand outstanding amounts of cash from the “pirate”. According to this strategy, it isn’t bad if you or your staff aren’t caught out pirating using the same standard of proof you have established for others.

Earlier in December the media reported how, by analysing the IP addresses in some torrent swarm, the experts found links to the offices of the Recording Industry Association of America. It looks like while the music industry was frantically demanding the death penalty for illegal file-sharers, they have been downloading copies of TV programs illegally themselves. The Recording Industry Association of America, however, has an excuse: they claimed that the 6 IP addresses used for the unauthorized file-sharing was some 3rd-party vendor who unknowingly smeared the outfit’s good name.

The RIAA’s spokesman said during the interview to the press that those IP addresses are similar to block addresses assigned to the anti-piracy outfit, but they were used by a 3rd-party vendor to serve up the public site. He insisted that they weren’t used by the staff of the outfit to access the web at all.

As you can see, the question is one of faith: since the IP address is assigned to the Recording Industry Association of America, what mysterious 3rd party could be allowed to register a range of IP-addresses to the private company and, worse still, allow others to use those addresses? The industry experts believe that the RIAA, which sanctimoniously presumes to lecture others on their own network security, must have worked out that it was not such a good idea to let other people use your outfit’s IP addresses to surf the web.

The most interesting thing is that when over 20,000 people who were sued by the music industry over the years used the same excuse, claiming that someone else violated the law, they were simply told that this was impossible. Now the experts believe that if there are such cases with defendants using the “someone else did it” excuse, the legal team of the anti-piracy outfit would have to come up with some better rebuttal. 

Israeli Security Firm Sold Apps to Iran

The news says that Israeli security outfit named Allot has problems after being caught selling software to Iran. Local media confirmed that Allot Communications shares fell to the lowest level in December after Bloomberg had reported that the firm’s software was sold to Iran.

Media reports say that Allot’s software for monitoring online traffic was flogged to Iran through some distributor in Denmark. Meanwhile, Israel forbids any trade with Iran, as the latter fails to recognize the State and its defence force doesn’t want to be on the receiving end of military technology it created. Now a member of the country’s parliament Nachman Shai calls for an investigation. In response, the Ministry of Defence confirmed it is currently examining the report.

In the meantime, Allot Chief Executive Officer Rami Hadar explained that the agreement with the distributor from Denmark, RanTek A/S, contained the provision that the firm could only market its products in that country. They claim that no Allot employees were aware that the distributor was selling their software outside of Denmark. The company insists that it obeys Israeli and non-Israeli legislation, including all applicable export laws and regulations. At the moment, Allot is investigating the claims contained in the press reports.

However, 3 former sales employees for the company told during the interview that the fact was well known inside the company that the software was headed to Iran. There’s a bigger fear that if the United States finds that the firm has been flogging the gear to Iran it might forbid shipments to the lucrative American market.

The software shipped to Iran is named NetEnforcer, and it was specifically designed for looking at pieces of information moving over a network. This application may be used in various ways, from eliminating and protecting from spam to helping network operators prioritize or ban specific types of traffic. However, the security experts agree that the worries are groundless – in fact, the software in question can’t really be used to spy on people. Moreover, it lacks any capability to analyse or extract knowledge on the real content of online traffic. Still, the investigation is carried on and Allot may find itself in a big trouble.

Microsoft Will Update Their Browser

Microsoft team of developers has had a gutsful waiting for Internet users to upgrade to the latest form of Internet Explorer and is currently going to do this automatically.

Microsoft announced that starting this week it will start auto-updating Internet Explorer (IE) browser users’ computers to the latest versions of the software, depending on which Windows version they are currently using. The company thinks that it will get away with it since Google’s Chrome browser, for example, already does that.

Although there will be a number of firms who might see their networks go crazy with such kind of an upgrade, Microsoft Corporation is providing them with workarounds in case they express the desire to remain on their current IE version. The company explained that generally the feeling is that they will manage to force users on unlikely ancient browsers like Internet Explorer 6 and have no idea how to upgrade them to receive some safer programs. The matter is that usually such types end up recruited into botnet.

In fact, this move is more like a bit of an experiment, because the company is still not really sure how this auto-update process will go down with Internet users. Microsoft is going to roll the process out slowly worldwide in order to see if anything goes wrong. It seems that Australia will be the guinea pig for this purpose.

The company keeps insisting that the change will be good for all of its core browser audiences, which includes people, developers, and the enterprise. The move can be good for people since it allows them stay up to date and secure automatically. This can also let developers, who are also people, focus on the latest Internet technologies like HTML 5 without having a need to worry about whether most of the online users are accessing the Internet with an updated browser.

People running Windows XP and having Internet Explorer 6 installed will be updated to version 8 of the browser, as that is the most recent version of Internet Explorer supported on this operating system. Meanwhile, users of Windows Vista and Windows 7 will be updated to version 9 of the Microsoft browser. Internet Explorer 8 and 9 are now offered through Windows Update as an Important update, but it is not carried out automatically. 

Firefox Updated

Mozzarella Foundation seems to have much to celebrate these days: first of all, it has managed to secure their finances by concluding a deal with Google, and secondly, they have released a version of a browser which is very good indeed.

Unfortunately, Firefox has been a kind of an also-ran on the browser market recent days, having been eclipsed by Google’s Chrome browser and rejected by companies due to insisting on upgrading itself every other day. Indeed, a system administrator, whose employer is running Firefox, usually faces the necessity to run continual upgrades without even seeing any benefits. That’s why many chose to simply walk away from Firefox.

This situation was apparently heading to a crisis when the Mozzarella Foundation discovered that its financial agreement with Google was close to running out. Actually, Google had been bankrolling this company for a while now, but that was before Google entered the browser market itself. That’s why industry experts had expected that when the agreement ended at the end of this year, Google would say goodbye to the company.

However, it now seems that the company has managed to prolong the agreement and currently it looks like the status quo will continue. For ages already the users have been moaning that the browser has been getting slower with each upgrade, but the last one, version 9, makes the thing go like the clappers. Meanwhile, there isn’t much different to see in the browser’s interface, and there only seem to be some developer-oriented fixes – for example, Do Not Track status is queried through JavaScript, and support was added for such standards as HTML5, CSS, and MathML. However, the experts noticed significant improvements in JavaScript performance.

That’s what makes everything look like going about 30% faster, and you can easily see this kind of “faster”, which is just obvious. The thing that is causing it appeared to be a major improvement in the browser’s JaegerMonkey JIT compiler. It is called type inference and was meant to be seen in version 5 of the browser, but it was pushed back. Consequently, Firefox appeared to fall behind Google’s Chrome for speed, but now those bugs are ironed out.

That’s undoubtedly good news for the company. However, the experts worry that Firefox might have lost too much ground already. Indeed, although Firefox 9 is clearly a superior product, there is almost no matter of whether it needs all the updates keeping it out of businesses.

Hosting Outfit GoDaddy Betrayed Its Customers

Website hosting outfit known as GoDaddy has recently joined an elite group of the entertainment industry and paid off congressmen supporting an attempt to suspend American constitutional rights under the guise of fighting digital piracy.

GoDaddy service has officially expressed its support for the recently suggested Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) legislation, which will provide rights owners the sway to effectively take offline sites if it thinks they might so much as think about violating content. The media reports that a GoDaddy.com spokesperson applauded the authorities for taking decisive, bicameral and bipartisan action.

Executive vice-president of GoDaddy, Christine Jones, claimed during the interview that the suggested legislation would be protecting the intellectual property of hard-working US citizens, businesses and the public from the harm necessarily flowing from the purchase of fake goods. However, the industry observers believe that the service will change its mind after the entertainment industry demands GoDaddy to shut down for hosting something regarded as unauthorized material. The matter is that the new legislation doesn’t actually require anyone to provide any proof. That’s why GoDaddy is in a minority, not only of tech firms, but also public, in supporting this bill – even President Obama has said that he would veto it if it gets that far. However, GoDaddy claims that the United States can’t turn a blind eye to unauthorized conduct on the Internet.

Christine Jones explained that both businesses and consumers in the United States were getting duped, because their intellectual property was being stolen and that the online ecosystem really had a duty to help. She also added that while the United States should not be suppressing free speech, the web still shouldn’t work as the Wild West either. Meanwhile, a grassroots campaign started on Reddit has already seen GoDaddy’s clients vote with their feet. After announcing its support for the new copyright legislation, GoDaddy will be getting a great Christmas present as the sane-thinking Internet turns its back on the firm and switches domain hosting.