Woman changes name to Princess-Rainbow.com

A twenty-four-year-old woman in Manchester, formerly known as Claire Forshaw, has officially changed her name to Princess-Rainbow.com. She had apparently been contemplating such a move for quite some time, but her boyfriend dissuaded her, arguing that it would cost a lot of money. She finally investigated and found that she could do it for only £10.

The young woman does own the domain name princess-rainbow.com and plans to use it to sell her art online. Her reason for changing her name, however, is quite simple. She wanted to be the first to have a domain name as her name.

“When I realised it actually cost as little as £10 my boyfriend said that Princess-Rainbow.com was ideal for me because I am mad on rainbows!”

While it is amusing, the story does raise some questions. As the legal owner of princess-rainbow.com, which she intends to make a business, does she also have some right to the name? Can another person change her name to Princess-Rainbow.com? What about Princess-Rainbow.net or .org? Furthermore, it does open up a whole range of possibilities about other domains. Can I change my name to Internetblog.org.uk?

Source: The Independent
Photo: Flickr

Korean DDoS malware may self destruct

Earlier this week, we reported a series of attacks on key South Korean and U.S. government servers that took some of them offline. The attacks are still under investigation, but a blog post on the Washington Post’s website suggests that the botnet being used to deliver the DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack could self destruct.

An attack bot of this nature works by first infecting vulnerable computers around the world. The computer user is unaware of its presence and continues going about his business. Meanwhile, the bot uses that person’s computer to attack another, usually a server. With the coordinated effort of possibly thousands or even millions of computers, it easily disrupts service of the server or multiple servers. With some botnets, after the task is completed, they wipe the person’s hard drive.

According to security expert Joe Stewart, director of malware research at SecureWorks, this particular form of malware is a version of the Mydoom worm, includes a Trojan horse program that will overwrite all of the data on a victim’s hard drive. Microsoft Windows PCs are vulnerable to this attack, and experts believe that between 60,000 to 100,000 PCs may have been infected with the malware. South Korean government officials have also warned their citizens about this danger, saying that at least 20,000 PCs in South Korea are infected.

Source: Washington Post
Photo: Flickr

Hackers attack South Korea and US

According to reports, North Korean hackers are believed to have launched cyber attacks on government offices in the US and South Korea. Some South Korean and US websites were momentarily taken down. Among the South Korean sites with service disruption were the Blue House, defense ministry, national assembly, Shinhan bank, Korean Exchange bank, and Internet portal Naver.

As of yet, there seems to be no concrete evidence that the North Korean government had any involvement in the attack, despite the suspicions to the contrary. South Korean officials announced that they suspected North Korea or its sympathizers of initiating the attack and that they are working with the US in the investigation. The US treasury department, secret service, Federal Trade Commission, and transport department websites were hit and momentarily taken off line over the past weekend.

The method of attack appears to be DoS (denial of service), a technique preferred by hackers because of its effectiveness at taking down websites without the need to infiltrate security systems. The hackers will normally use several computers connected to the Internet, sometimes spread all over the world, to bombard a website with simultaneous connections until the site can no longer handle the load. The site then either goes offline or is simply unreachable to legitimate visitors.

Source: Guardian
Photo: Flickr

Google Announces Chrome Operating System

In a move that has surprised few in the tech world, Google has announced plans to release an operating system for netbooks in 2010. Analysts have long speculated that the search giant would release a desktop OS to compete with Microsoft on its largest front. Not surprisingly they intend to create an OS that will rely on the web as a central platform for applications.

This will extend Google’s cloud environment into a natural desktop setting, integrating web applications with a desktop environment. The interface will be Google Chrome running within a newly created window manager, on top of Linux, much like the Android mobile operating system. Their hope is that developers will create web applications specifically tailored for the new OS but compatible with any standards compliant web browser on any OS.

“Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.”

There is no word on whether this operating system will be released to the public for installation on any computer or only on new netbooks. What seems clear, however, is that Google will continue to rely on open source technology, which means the OS will end up on many computers all over the world, simply through user curiosity and ingenuity. Is this Google’s big play on Microsoft’s empire? The world will certainly wait and wonder.

Source: Official Google Blog

U.S. to team with Italy in fight against cyber crime

The U.S. Secret Service has signed an agreement to join forces with the Italian Police and Postal Service to fight cyber crime. The new team will be called The European Electronic Cime Task Force and will specialize in fighting identity theft, malicious hacking and other forms of cyber crime. The group will be headquartered in Rome.

Massimo Sarmi, the CEO of the Italian Postal Service, said the new task force would be open to contributions from outside Europe as well. “We provide our services to more than 20 million customers and we are able to monitor in real time that operations are proceeding normally, and not turning into criminal events,” Sarmi said.

This alliance might strike some as odd, but it appears to be the first of many western government aligning their forces to combat cyber crime. Their hope is to extend it beyond Europe into a global effort. The United States and Britain have both formed new cyber security chief positions in their countries, and other nations are expected to take a similar approach, treating cyber crime like terrorism and other forms of high profile, international crime.

“This morning we detected seven phishing attacks from various parts of the world. If the criminals had been allowed enough time, our clients might have become victims of fraud,” Sarmi said. The Postal Service CEO said the quickest online thief he had encountered was able to start withdrawing funds just 39 seconds after a successful identity theft.

“We will exchange information and alerts with the Secret Service to prevent this type of event before it happens,” Sarmi said.

Source: ComputerWorld
Photo: Flickr

UK to get its own "Cyber Czar"

Following suit with the American announcement of a new cyber security advisor position, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown is expected to announce the creation of Britain’s own cyber security chief. The new chief will be responsible for protecting the country from hackers, cyber spies and every other sort of tech baddie out there.

Brown’s plan was endorsed by the Cabinet, and sources anticipate that he will name Neil Thompson to the position. His biggest concern, upon taking the position will be hackers in China and, to a lesser degree, Russia, where the cyber worlds are essentially lawless by UK standards. He will also have to tackle the possibility of terrorists who decide to attack through viruses and network security breeches rather than conventional means.

A lesser publicized role of a nation’s cyber chief might also be developing cyber warfare to attack enemy infrastructure, as the U.S. has used in the past to disable Taliban anti-aircraft systems. One can only imagine how many other countries will soon have their own cyber chiefs, which does raise a question. Will the “cyber czars” of the world’s nations have their conferences on Twitter, or will they start a Facebook group?

Source: Independent
Photo: Flickr

PIR advocates to keep registries and registrars separate

The Public Interest Registry (PIR), the non-profit organization responsible for the management of .ORG top-level domains (TLD), is raising its voice to advocate registry-registrar separation. The organization is concerned that ICANN is moving toward removing restrictions that prevent a registry, responsible for maintaining the infrastructure and management of a Top-level domain, from simultaneously owning registrars, the companies that sell domains.

Among the problems such cross-ownership could cause are that registries that are also registrars could provide domains at lower prices and thereby give themselves an unfair advantage over competing registrars. Another possible negative outcome is that information that a registrar gives to the domain registry could be used for their own registrar’s business, thereby once again giving them an unfair advantage.

PIR believes that these safeguards must stay in place and be more thoroughly defined when the new gTLDs are implemented. ICANN will be presenting information about cross ownership to a panel in Sydney on June 22. This will also undoubtedly raise questions about ICANN’s future. While the U.S. government believes it should maintain oversight over the organization, the E.U. wants oversight to be handed over to a collective committee of nations. ICANN itself, however, has expressed wishes to become an independent organization.

Source: CircleID

UK government to restrict Internet access of pirates

The British government has announced plans to curb Internet piracy by restricting access of repeat offenders. In collaboration with the entertainment industry and Ofcom, Britain’s broadcasting regulator, the plan includes sending letters to customers who have been suspected of downloading illegal files, such as movies. Internet service providers would be required to send information collected about the offenders to media companies who could threaten them with legal action.

Ultimately, if a year passes without a cease of pirating activities, Ofcom would have the authority to order ISPs to cap the user’s Internet usage. The film and music industries around the world has long called for stricter measures to stop piracy, particularly with the advent of BitTorrent, a peer-to-peer file sharing system without any centralized servers. The law still has to pass through Parliament, and there will undoubtedly be serious concerns about privacy.

This move is part of a larger £200 million plan being initiated to connect everyone in the UK to high-speed Internet access by 2012. In the United States, bandwidth capping has been met with staunch opposition, forcing service providers to change their planned restrictions. A law is now moving through U.S. Congress that would place regulations on capping. France has announced plans to completely ban Internet pirates from access after three offenses. In Sweeden, owners of the popular torrent sharing site The Pirate Bay were convicted of copyright infringement and sentenced to prison, pending appeal.

Source: Wall Street Journal
Photo: Flickr

Opera to turn browser into web server

Opera is introducing a new service called Opera Unite that will run a tiny web server on a user’s computer, allowing them to sharing media over he web. The services are loaded on demand and can share files, stream MP3′s and share photos. Users can even create their own web site.

“Today, we are opening the full potential of the Web for everyone,” said Jon von Tetzchner, Opera CEO, in a statement. “With server capability in the browser, Web developers can create Web applications with profound ease. Consumers have the flexibility to choose private and efficient ways of sharing information.”

Each service is started independently. A user only chooses the ones he wants to run. It relies on UPnP to connect to a user’s router, eliminating the need for port-forwarding. It also sets up a proxy that should create a security layer, protecting the user’s computer from Internet attacks. The small web server is design to not tax a user’s CPU or broadband connection, allowing it to work in the background without interfering with regular computing.

Source: Ars Technica
Photo: Flickr

Government to Bring Broadband to Rural Areas with Telephone Tax

To help pay for a government plan that would beef up the UK’s communications infrastructure and bring broadband Internet access to all homes by 2012, a 50p telephone tax will be charged to all landlines each month.

The new tax was just of many things discussed in “Digital Britain,” a report presented by Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw to the MPs. Bradshaw said the improvements financed by the tax would “accelerate Britain’s recovery from the biggest economic shock the world has seen since the war.”

Conservatives and Liberal Democrats both dismissed the plan, but Britain has a duty to make sure all of its citizens are able to get online. Over the last ten years, web access has transformed from a luxury into a necessity. Broadband in rural areas will benefit education, increase quality of life, and- as Bradshaw said- provide much-needed employment.

Source: The Independent