Internet censorship in Pakistan, National Filtering and Blocking System

Internet censorship in Pakistan, National Filtering and Blocking System

A Pakistan government department has called for proposals for the development, deployment and operation of a national level URL Filtering and Blocking System. The proposal request states that each box of the system “should be able to handle a block list of up to 50 million URLs with a processing delay of not more than 1 millisecond.”

According to a request for proposals from the National ICT (Information and Communications and Technologies) R&D Fund, the Pakistani government is struggling to keep a lid on growing Internet and Web use and is looking for a way to filter out undesirable Web sites. The 'indigenous' filtering system would be 'deployed at IP backbones in major cities, i.e., Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad,' the RFP.

According to a post on EEF, Ever since the Pakistan Telecommunication Act, passed in 1996, enacted a prohibition on people from transmitting messages that are “false‚ fabricated‚ indecent or obscene,” the PTA has increasingly intensified their efforts to censor content online. The PTA blocked thousands of sites in 2007 not just those containing pornographic material or content offensive to Islam, but numerous vital websites and services in response to a Supreme Court ruling that ordered the blocking of “blasphemous” websites. 

In 2008, they briefly blocked YouTube because the site hosted Geert Wilder’s film “Fitna.” They blocked it again in 2010, over a hosted clip of Pakistani President Asir Zardari telling an unruly audience member to “shut up.” In May of 2010, the PTA blocked Facebook in response to a controversy over a competition to draw the Prophet Mohammed.

The filtering and blocking of Web sites and Internet addresses that are deemed hostile to authorities has become a major political and human rights issue in the last year, as popular protests in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Syria, dubbed "The Arab Spring" erupted. Notably, the Egyptian government used Web filtering tools to block access to Facebook in the midst of that country's popular overthrow of the government of Hosni Mubarak in January, 2011.

The proposal states that the solution should be able to handle 85Gbps of bandwidth and should have growth scalability of around 40% to 50% every year.The government has recently cracked down on content that is deemed offensive, blocking up to over 13,000 pornographic websites and was also considering certain words in SMSs.

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Internet censorship in Pakistan, National Filtering and Blocking System : The Hacker News ~ http://thehackernews.com/2012/02/internet-censorship-in-pakistan.html

Hackers leak objectionable Photos from LA cops inbox

Hackers leak objectionable Photos from LA cops inbox

CabinCrew group of Hackers, that claims to have found, and reported, objectionable photos of children in an officer's private e-mail account, anonymously posted hacked police data to a website. More than 100 local law enforcement officers had their private information pilfered and published on a public website prompting a response from the FBI

"Over the past three weeks, we in the cabin have been targeting law enforcement sites across the United States, be it for injustices they have allowed through ignorance or naivety, taken part in, or to point out the fact that their insecurity failed to protect the safety of those they took an oath to serve," the hacker statement on the Pastebin site said.

The hackers posted officers' property records, campaign contributions, biographical information and, in a few cases, the names of family members, including children. Authorities said the current intrusion is different because the information gleaned from the association's website was not available to the public.

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Hackers leak objectionable Photos from LA cops inbox : The Hacker News ~ http://thehackernews.com/2012/02/hackers-leak-objectionable-photos-from.html

Facebook app spreading Android Malwares

Facebook app spreading Android Malwares

Even though Google recently introduced a malware-blocking system called Bouncer to keep the Android Market safe from malicious software, crafty spammers and fraudsters are still managing to find ways around the restrictions to get their software onto users’ phones.

Security firm, Sophos have reported that there is malware going around via the Facebook application. The malicious software disguises itself as an Android app named “any_name.apk” or “allnew.apk” and is sent to Android phones via Facebook’s mobile app. 

An Android user may receive a Facebook friend request and if the user goes to the requester’s profile to check them out, they could be diverted to another web page instead, where the malicious app will be automatically downloaded.

Although Android doesn’t by default allow apps to be automatically downloaded, some users choose to turn off this protection in order to have access to apps distributed outside of the Android Market. This kind of malware is similar to clickjacking, which takes place very often on Facebook.

Bouncer is a good first step towards protecting Android users, but regardless of what methods are used to lock down the Android Market, spammers and scammers can always find another way in.

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Facebook app spreading Android Malwares : The Hacker News ~ http://thehackernews.com/2012/02/facebook-app-spreading-android-malwares.html

Millions of pcAnywhere users still Vulnerable to hijacking

Millions of pcAnywhere users still Vulnerable to hijacking

3 weeks before we reported that Symantec releases patch to address pcAnywhere source code exposure, because attackers had obtained the remote access software's source code. But According to H.D. Moore, chief security officer at Rapid7, estimated 150,000 to 200,000 PCs are running an as-yet-unpatched copy of the Symantec software.

While Symantec said it had patched all the known vulnerabilities in pcAnywhere. Symantec has released new information and a patch to address the recent code exposure incident. According to Computerworld report, PCs connected to the Internet, including as many as 5,000 running point-of-sale programs that collect consumer credit card data, could be hijacked by hackers exploiting bugs in the troubled program.

Symantec released a patch that eliminates known vulnerabilities affecting pcAnywhere 12.0 and pcAnywhere 12.1.At this time, Symantec recommends that all customers upgrade to pcAnywhere 12.5, apply all relevant patches as they are released, and follow general security best practices.

Moore said, even though Symantec has patched some flaws. With the source code at their disposal and the software's problems highlighted in the media, researchers on both sides of the law will spend time looking for vulnerabilities.

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Millions of pcAnywhere users still Vulnerable to hijacking : The Hacker News ~ http://thehackernews.com/2012/02/millions-of-pcanywhere-users-still.html

Zero-day Smartphone Vulnerability exposes location and User Data

Zero-day Smartphone Vulnerability exposes location and User Data

Smartphones are increasingly becoming the preferred device for both personal and professional computing, which has also attracted hackers to increase their focus on creating malware and other security vulnerabilities for these devices. A former McAfee researcher "Dmitri Alperovitch" has used a previously unknown hole in smartphone browsers to plant China-based malware that can record calls, pinpoint locations and access user texts and emails.

He conducted the experiment on a phone running Android operating system, although he saysApple Inc.'s iPhones are equally vulnerable. Android is particularly vulnerable because it has become the main operating system for mobile devices. Today most smartphones are android-based therefore there is a huge dividend for hackers to write Android-targeted malware compared to other operating systems.

Alperovitch, who has consulted with the U.S. intelligence community, is scheduled to demonstrate his findings Feb. 29 at the RSA conference in San Francisco, an annual cyber security gathering. Alperovitch and his team reversed engineered the malware called Nickispy and and took control of it.

A nice little piece of Android spyware, commonly known as 'NickiSpy.C' . For those unfamiliar, NickiSpy gained quite a bit of notoriety around July/August 2011, as it was one of the first malicious Android applications to have the ability to record phone calls. Alperovitch said he exploited a so-called zero-day vulnerability in smartphone browsers to secretly install the malware. Zero-day vulnerabilities are ones that are not yet known by the manufacturers and anti-virus companies.

The malware also intercepts texts and emails and tracks the phone's location, he said. In theory, it could be used to infiltrate a corporate network with which the phone connects. Like most pieces of Android spyware/malware, installation is dependant on the end-user. In an experiment he also delivered it through a classic "spear phishing" attack.

Protect  from Malware : For Android, the danger is downloading apps outside of Google's App Market . If you're off somewhere getting apps from sources you don't know or trust, there could be consequences. For iPhone users, the line really is whether you jailbreak or not. Jailbreaking can be pretty easy, and getting pirated or bootlegged apps can seem like a great way to save money, but in doing so, you're basically handing out the smart phone equivalent of a front door key to Lord only knows.

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Zero-day Smartphone Vulnerability exposes location and User Data : The Hacker News ~ http://thehackernews.com/2012/02/zero-day-smartphone-vulnerability.html

Another #FuckFBIFriday , Anonymous hack FBI partner Infragard

Another #FuckFBIFriday , Anonymous hack FBI partner Infragard

As Anonymous has promised that it will attack government, corporate and law enforcement web sites every Friday, So Anonymous has attacked the FBI affiliate Infragard for the second time, this time taking over and defacing the web site of its Dayton, Ohio chapter.

Hackers give message "Greetings Pirates! Another #FuckFBIFriday is here and once again we emerge from the hacker underground to wreak havoc upon the 1%'s institutions of repression" .

InfraGard is a private non-profit organization serving as a public-private partnership between the U.S. businesses and the FBI. However, Anonymous has its own definition - "the sinister alliance between law enforcement, corporations, and white hat wannabees," the group wrote in a note it posted onto the homepage of InfraGard Dayton, Ohio.

Mirror link of hack is here.

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Another #FuckFBIFriday , Anonymous hack FBI partner Infragard : The Hacker News ~ http://thehackernews.com/2012/02/another-fuckfbifriday-anonymous-hack.html