Current Privacy News

For the past two days Internet connectivity in Libya has been oscillating on and off in a confusing yet systematic manner. Going down during the night, only to be restored minutes before sunrise amidst riots calling for the removal of Muammar Al-Gaddafi’s 42 year old regime.

Monitoring the country’s connectivity shows that every morning at pricesly 05:30 AM GMT, the Internet is restored to the country, yet not entirely as websites such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and aljazeera.net are being blocked from Libyan users.

Day one of the unrest resulted in a 6 hour lock-down of the Internet which was restored after sunrise, only to be severed again 22:00 GMT the same day and then restored again this morning at the same time, 05:30 AM GMT.

TRIPOLI (AFP) – Access to social networking site Facebook was cut in the Libyan capital on Friday and access to the Internet was intermittent amid deadly anti-regime protests, computer users reported.

From early evening it was impossible to access the popular Facebook site, and connections to other sites were either very slow or not possible, they said.

The state of Internet connections in the rest of the country was not known.

The regime of Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi vowed on Friday to snuff out attempts to challenge the Libyan leader, after an opposition "day of anger" became a bloodbath.

According to a toll compiled by AFP from different local sources, at least 41 people have lost their lives since demonstrations first erupted on Tuesday.
Refer - AFP

As protests have erupted in Bahrain over the last several days, the government has severely restricted the access of its citizens to the Internet, new data from an organization that monitors Internet traffic strongly suggests.

The data, collected by Arbor Networks, is the first quantitative confirmation that Internet traffic into and out of Bahrain has suffered an anomalous drop over the past days.

Jose Nazario, the senior manager of security research at Arbor, which is based in Massachusetts, said that the traffic was 10 percent to 20 percent below expected levels. The measurements gauge the amount of information flowing through Internet backbone lines into and out of Bahrain.

A fluctuation of that size is generally caused only by natural calamities or major global sporting events, Mr. Nazario said, leading the company to conclude that the most likely explanation is that Bahrain is blocking many sites on the Internet.

He said that the company could not absolutely rule out technical problems with Internet carriers inside the country as a cause.

But Jillian York of Harvard, project coordinator for the OpenNet Initiative, said that the findings were consistent with reports that Bahrainis had been blocked from various sites, including YouTube and Bambuser.
Refer - New York Times

Computerworld - The Zeus botnet is now using an unpatched flaw in Adobe PDF document format to infect users with malicious code, security researchers said today.

An alleged hacker has been hailed as a latter-day Robin Hood for leaking data about the finances of banks and state-owned firms to Latvian TV.

test

"CNET is reporting that Microsoft has issued an emergency patch for 10 IE security holes. 'The cumulative update, which Microsoft announced on Monday, resolves nine privately reported flaws and one that was publicly disclosed. ... Software affected by the cumulative update addressing all the IE vulnerabilities includes Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and Server 2008, Vista, and Windows 7.'"

A Vogue cover girl has won a precedent-setting court battle to unmask an anonymous blogger who called her a "skank" on the internet.
The Australian Aug. 2009

This White House is the most technically savvy administration in history. It wants to "own your computer" when you sign up for the "Cash for Clunkers" program; it wants to monitor your browsing habits with "cookies;" and it wants you to report your neighbor if you notice anything "fishy."
Fox News Aug. 2009

But did you ever stop to consider what your innocent little surf has just divulged about your computer and your location?
Journalism UK 9th Jul 2007