FACT - Freedom Against Censorship Thailand

Elude your ISP’s BitTorrent blockade
Tom Spring
PC World: May 14, 2008

http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/index.php/id;409444582;fp;;fpid;;pf;1

I’m a fan of live music and a patron of online communities such as eTree.org, where music junkies swap copyright-free music. So I was stung when I recently tried to download a live recording of a Dave Matthews concert only to discover that my BitTorrent client was dead in the water…More and more Internet service providers are blocking or throttling traffic to the peer-to-peer file-sharing service. Find out whether you’ve been targeted, and learn how get around the restrictions…If you suspect that your ISP is blocking or throttling your BitTorrent traffic, call your ISP and ask whether you’re being blocked. But don’t trust that you’ll get a straight answer…If you discover or strongly suspect that your ISP is slowing your BitTorrent traffic, you can try several countermeasures, none of them a sure bet. One of these techniques may work for one ISP but not for another…First, try using encryption to cloak your peer-to-peer traffic. Most clients such as BitComet, BitTorrent, uTorrent, and Vuze, support in-client encryption. Turning this feature on makes it much harder, though not impossible, for your ISP to detect that you’re using peer-to-peer software…But ISPs are catching on to these advanced encryption techniques, reportedly clamping down and throttling encrypted tunnels despite being unsure that the encrypted data is BitTorrent traffic. The most extreme method an ISP may use to manage peer-to-peer traffic is to block anything that appears to be BitTorrent traffic, encrypted or not. If that happens to you, you must either switch ISPs or stop using BitTorrent software.

Thesis Abstract Rev. 1
Emery Martin
February 25, 2008

http://itp.nyu.edu/blogs/ecm292_thesis/2008/02/25/thesis-statement-rev-1/
Neighborhood Net Watch: http://www.dhsnnw.org/

The Neighborhood Network Watch (NNW) aims to address the lack of criticality being leveled at these areas, along with raising public awareness about the security issues with public networks, and revealing the malleable nature of information and data. It aims to do this by taking on the role of a government sanctioned community organization that is a hyperreal manifestation composited from current government agencies and potential future agencies. The group will carry out domestic eavesdropping operations on public networks, with the data being collected used to assess the amount of terrorist related or national security related traffic that is being transmitted over these profiled networks, via its proprietary network traffic keyword analysis software. This information will be made public through multiple mediums that include: literatures, maps, reports, presentation performances, public service announcements, and a web presence…The Neighborhood Network Watch will operate as if it were an actual government backed entity along with actually carrying out collections of real data and doing actual analysis on this data to create statistical results. Profiling networks that are in the communities in or around where presentation performances occur will allow a context that an audience can directly relate and engage with. It will be able to illustrate the gravity of the topics that are being presented as well as directly incite dialogue between them and myself as the public face of the NNW. This will also provide a point for education on network security and contemporary issues surrounding networks and the government. As well as a means to demonstrate the ease with which virtually anyone could carry out something similar.

Source Code for MediaDefender Anti-Piracy Tools Leaked
By Kim Zetter
Wired: September 20, 2007

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/09/source-code-for.html#previouspost

Source code has been leaked for dozens of tools MediaDefender uses (or, perhaps, used to use) to thwart the trading of copyrighted content on file-sharing networks. These include tools like BTSeedInflator and BTDecoyClient that target the BitTorrent network…The code is a boon to admins on the targeted file-sharing networks since it exposes MediaDefender’s methods for seeding the networks with decoy files and, therefore, will help the admins combat those strategies…Ernesto at TorrentFreak was, once again, the first to hear about the new leak of MediaDefender data. Ernesto has been on top of the MediaDefender story for months, having first discovered in July that MediaDefender was secretly operating a download site to catch users trading in illegal content.

Hackers Smack Anti-Piracy Firm Again and Again
By Kim Zetter
Wired: September 18, 2007

http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2007/09/mediadefender

More than 6,000 internal company e-mails were exposed in a 700-megabyte BitTorrent download. A note from the hackers that accompanied the download points to a MediaDefender employee’s personal Gmail account as the source of the purloined mail, which covered six months of internal correspondence.
At least two more MediaDefender hacks have also emerged…In one, hackers obtained a copy of an internal company database identifying some of the decoy files the company has slipped onto peer-to-peer networks. In the other, intruders released a digital recording of a private phone call that appears to be a discussion between MediaDefender personnel and staff at the New York attorney general’s office…In that phone call, ironically, a man who seems to be a MediaDefender official is heard reassuring law enforcement agents that the company’s systems are secure…The stolen database may have been obtained after hackers noticed that the MediaDefender employee’s e-mail contained the IP addresses of company servers, as well as server-login information and passwords…MediaDefender is an anti-piracy company that works with the entertainment industry to thwart the trading of copyright content on file-sharing networks. The company scans the networks and notifies content owners when their material appears on download sites…MediaDefender also posts decoy movie and music files to make it difficult for users to distinguish real from fake content.

International Anti-Pirating Group Gets Swashbuckled
By David Kravets
Wired: October 15, 2007

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/10/international-a.html#previouspost

Sweden’s The Pirate Bay, the notorious BitTorrent site pointing the way to thousands of copyrighted movies for free, now owns one of the domain registrations of the IFPI — IFPI.com. Click on to the .com site, and the site for the International Federation of Pirates Interests, owned by The Pirate Bay, “is coming soon.”…Pirate Bay administrator Brokep told the TorrentFreak blog that: “International Federation of Pirate Interests is the new international federation we’re starting in order to get the word of piracy spread.”…The IFPI.org site is still run by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. But for how long….?

[FACT comments: These are some big numbers. Is it in the interest of a public who uses P2P so extensively to try to slow it down?]

Internet Mysteries: How Much File Sharing Traffic Travels the Net?
By Ryan Singel
Wired: May 5, 2008

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/05/how-much-file-s.html

How much of the traffic on the internet is peer-to-peer file trading?…Ellacoya’s report said that http-based web traffic had overtaken peer-to-peer traffic on the net, thanks to streaming media sites like YouTube.
Ellacoya, since acquired by Arbor Networks for its traffic-shaping technology, pegged http traffic at 46 percent of the net’s volume, with P2P traffic close by at 37 percent.The company says the data was based on about 1 million North American broadband subscribers…Cache Logic study just came out with a number — no trends, just that file sharing was  30 to 50 percent of traffic…The information is vital.  Comcast claims that torrents of purloined pop music and movies are filling the internet’s tubes — requiring them to block, divert and dam peer-to-peer traffic…Ipoque, a P2P traffic management firm, released its own study (.pdf) of internet traffic in 2007, focusing on Germany, Australia, Eastern Europe and Southern Europe…P2P traffic accounted for between 49% and 83 % of internet traffic in these regions…For instance in the Middle East, the most popular BitTorrent Audio download was Beyonce’s Listen, according to Ipoque. (Does that mean American foreign policy is winning or losing?)…The study is unlikely to please internet scientists, since the data set is not public nor is there much discussion of how the numbers were arrived at.

Egypt: Facebooking the Struggle
Sami Ben Gharbia
Global Voices Advocacy: May 1, 2008

http://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org/2008/04/30/egypt-facebooking-the-struggle/

After little less than a month following the April 6 strike in support of the textile workers in Mahalla City, during which a number of prominent Egyptian bloggers and internet activists were arrested, preparations for the next round of a planned general strike to mark the 80th birthday of President Hosni Mubarak, on May 4, 2008, are currently spreading all over the blogosphere and the Internet. And like the preparation for the April 6 strike, the internet has a vital role to play in mobilizing for the upcoming protest. SMS, email, blogs, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter: almost all of these outlets are used by Egyptian Internet activists in their campaign the May 4 event. We’ve even seen a Facebookist Movement to Overthrow Mubarak being created. Another group entitled “We don’t want Muslim Brothers” is calling for the strike but without participation of the Muslim Brotherhood, who recently decided to join May 4 protest.

How Vulnerable Are Countries To Cyberattacks? Ask Estonia!
By Ahto Lobjakas
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2008/04/D7ED058F-DD64-40BF-8B46-3F8591887900.html

A little over a year ago, Estonia became the first country in the world to come under a broad and sustained attack from the Internet. Beginning on April 27, and continuing for several weeks, anonymous foreign networks comprising hundreds of thousands of computers repeatedly disabled Estonia’s Internet servers used by the government, banks, media, and other organizations by bombarding them with information requests…During the two peaks in the attacks — on May 10 and May 15, 2007 — Estonia first lost 50 percent of its “bread, milk, and gasoline” for 90 minutes and then again 75 percent of the same commodities for another five minutes…During these two episodes, the attacks, simultaneously harnessing as many as 1 million remotely controlled computers across the world, infected with malicious software without their owners’ knowledge, brought down the Internet servers of Estonia’s biggest bank, Hansapank, among others. People paying for their gasoline, milk, and bread — not to mention other purchases — suddenly found that their bank cards didn’t work…People parking their cars in Tallinn routinely pay by text message. Free wireless Internet is ubiquitous, as are people using laptops in cafes and restaurants…Estonia has an “e-government” — government meetings now involve no paperwork. Its public administration has become an “e-state” — people vote, pay their taxes, and perform a multitude of other operations via the Internet. Outside office hours, teachers and pupils are linked into “e-schools.”…From the start, Estonia sought to implicate the Russian government in orchestrating if not ordering the onslaught. However, the nature of such attacks makes it virtually impossible to track the real culprits as the computers used in them participate as “zombies,” controlled by means of malicious software installed illicitly unbeknownst to their owners.

Belarusian Cyber Attack
World Politics Review: April 28, 2008

http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/blog/blog.aspx?id=2012#

An attack of unprecedented scale and intensity is under way against the Internet sites of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Belarus Service and more than half a dozen other RFE/RL language broadcasting sites…The cyber warfare started at 8 AM Prague time (2 AM EST), Saturday, April 26, and is ongoing. Known as “Denial of Service,” or DOS, it slows web traffic to a standstill by bombarding the system with bogus requests it has to consider and then deny. The brunt of the attack is aimed at RFE/RL’s Belarus Service and is intensifying…RFE/RL President Jeff Gedmin compared the situation to the Cold War days when RFE/RL radio broadcasting to Communist countries was jammed. He said: “this is a different weapon to block a technologically advanced information platform, but little else has changed. Dictators are still trying to prevent the kind of unfiltered news and information that RFE/RL provides from reaching their people. They did not succeed in the last century and they will not succeed now.”…RFE/RL is taking countermeasures to restore service to affected RFE/RL Internet sites in Iran, Russia, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Kosovo in Serbia, Macedonia, Bosnia and Croatia, as well as Belarus.

[FACT comments: The US government is still trying to manipulate public opinion in other countries!]

Cyberjamming
Wall Street Journal: April 29, 2008

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120942466671951083.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries

Eight Internet sites operated by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty were knocked out or affected in recent days by what the broadcaster calls an “unprecedented cyberattack.”…The medium and the means may have changed from the days when this legendary U.S.-funded station set up shop to beam news behind the Iron Curtain. But the conflict is no less pitched. Despots live in fear of accurate information and go to extraordinary means to stop it…The likely source of the cyberstrike is Europe’s longest-ruling dictator, Belarus’s Aleksander Lukashenko. The Web site of RFE/RL’s Belarusan-language service on Saturday was brought down by 50,000 “fake hits” a second. The Minsk regime may have wanted to limit access to coverage of opposition protests. Saturday marked the 22nd anniversary of the Chernobyl accident and the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union…In the old days, the Soviets and their satellites jammed radio broadcasts.