NASA tests 'interplanetary internet'

NASA has successfuly conducted a first test of a deep space communications network modelled on the internet. "This is the first step in creating a totally new space communications capability, an interplanetary internet,'' Adrian Hooke, NASA's manager of space-networking architecture, technology and standards, said. The US space agency said Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineers used software called Disruption-Tolerant Networking, or DTN, to transmit dozens of space images to and from a NASA spacecraft some 32.4 million kilometers from Earth. NASA said the software protocol, which must be able to withstand delays, disruptions and disconnections in space, was designed in partnership with Vint Cerf, a vice president at search giant Google. DTN sends information using a method that differs from the normal Internet's Transmission-Control Protocol/Internet Protocol, or TCP/IP, communication suite, which Cerf co-designed, NASA said. Unlike TCP/IP, DTN does not assume a continuous end-to-end connection, NASA said, noting that glitches can happen when a spacecraft moves behind a planet, or when solar storms and long communication delays occur. It said the delay, for example, in sending or receiving data from Mars takes between three-and-a-half minutes and 20 minutes at the speed of light. NASA said that if a destination path cannot be found, data packets are not discarded but kept by each network node until it can communicate safely with another node. Eventually, it said, the information is delivered to the end user.

Source: http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,24674990-5001028,00.html

The Pirate Bay Breaks 25 Million Users

The Pirate Bay (TPB) enjoyed another milestone today, breaking the 25 million user, or peer, barrier. Only two weeks ago, TPB surpassed 20 million users, and in January of this year, broke 10 million users. The growth of TPB has been stratospheric, and in less than a year, has more than doubled the size of this already impressive file-sharing network. TPB celebrated the event with the now traditional changing of the logo, this time a gauge pointing at 25 million. A blog post on the site celebrated the crossing of the quarter century mark. "We just broke 25 million peers! Growing and growing. It's so amazing to see! We had to add some new hardware but it's so worth it :-) Keep sharing!" TPB's new logo has room up to 50 million users. If the network can continue to survive intact, there's little stopping TPB from reaching that limit. More realistic this year is breaking 30 million, perhaps by the end of this month. With a network designed to survive regardless of the legal situation in Sweden, if nothing else TPB will offer a unique perspective of network evolution.

Source: http://www.slyck.com/story1797_The_Pirate_Bay_Breaks_25_Million_Users

ISPs To Speed Up P2P Transfers

The biggest U.S. Internet service providers, which include the largest phone and cable companies, will roll out updates to their network over the next two months that promise to make some peer-to-peer traffic faster and more efficient, we have learned. The results won't be immediate for consumers or ISPs, but the updates could make P2P downloads faster or video streams better over time. And just as important, the updates could someday save service providers money on bandwidth and capex -- which their investors would welcome. The upgrades could also potentially rejuvate the peer-to-peer content delivery industry, which -- despite high expectations -- hasn't been able to win much business from big media clients. The software, dubbed 'P4P', is a product of an industry association whose members include the two largest U.S. phone companies, AT&T (T) and Verizon (VZ); the largest U.S. cable company, Comcast (CMCSA); content delivery networks ('CDNs') like NYC-based Pando, BitTorrent, and Grid Networks; and tech companies like Cisco (CSCO) and VeriSign (VRSN). What does P4P do? It makes peer-to-peer transfers -- a huge chunk of all the bandwidth used on the Internet -- more efficient by sending more traffic, when possible, across the ISP's internal network -- as opposed to across the broader Internet. It can also prioritize P2P traffic from networks with which ISPs have so-called symbiotic "peering" relationships, which could save them money.

Source: http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/11/big-u-s-internet-providers-to-roll-out-p2p-friendly-network-updates

Secret Service gives Obama family not-so-secret codenames

Lots of things are secret about the Secret Service, how do they decide who takes a bullet for the president? Who's the sucker that has to guard Barack Obama during pick-up basketball games? Are there really hidden tunnels in the White House? One thing that's no secret is the code names given out to the President, Vice-President and their respective families. The Secret Service revealed the Obama's alliterative nicknames today. The President will now be known as Renegade, Michelle Obama as Renaissance), Malia as Radiance and Sasha as Rosebud. Vice-President Joe Biden got tagged with the fairly ho-hum Celtic and his wife Jill will be known as Capri. Wikipedia has got a bunch more but here are a few of the interesting ones: John McCain got the very cool and apt nickname Phoenix while Todd Palin got the chuckle-inducing Driller. But the absolute worst nickname has to go to Karenna Gore, Al Gore's eldest daughter was referred to by Secret Service agents as Smurfette.

Source: http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/posted/archive/2008/11/11/secret-service-gives-obama-family-not-so-secret-codenames.aspx

Researchers hack spam network for study

Researchers from University of California, Berkeley and UC, San Diego (UCSD) have published a report detailing how they hacked a spamming network to collect data on the economics of the problem. The team managed to get into the Storm botnet and configured the command and control infrastructure so that results were sent back to them for analysis. The team followed three spam campaigns, involving 469 million pieces of spam, and have published their results. The researchers found that after a campaign for pharmaceuticals the spammers were achieving a 0.00001 per cent conversion rate from spam to sale, and that all but one of the sales was for ‘male enhancement’ products. Nevertheless the low cost of sending out vast amounts of mail (they estimate $80 per million) meant that the spammers could potentially get revenues of £1.75 million a year from spam, although how much of that is profit is unknown. The research also revealed some interesting data on the effectiveness of anti-spam systems. Anti-spam filtering systems were typically cutting out around a quarter of all spam emails, indicating that they are a serious concern to spammers but not widely deployed enough to cut traffic significantly. Moreover the effectiveness of blacklisting was also called into question, since lists had to be updated every half hour and were frequently ineffective.

Source: http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2230180/researchers-hack-spam-network

Downloading guru seeks ruling on legality

The Richmond, B.C. owner of one of the Internet's most popular sites for downloading everything from music to porn is pre-emptively asking the Supreme Court of British Columbia to rule on whether he is violating the Copyright Act. Gary Fung, 25, runs the IsoHunt.com search engine for BitTorrent files, which are commonly used to download and upload virtually every type of copyrighted material, including music, movies, computer software and e-books. The site currently links to more than 1.5 million files online, such as the latest chart-topping CDs, video games, DVDs and even movies currently in theatres. Isohunt.com regularly cracks the Top 200 list of the web's most popular sites, according to analysts at Alexa.com. Fung has been named in a lawsuit launched in 2006 by the Motion Picture Association of America. After receiving letters last May from the Canadian Recording Industry Association demanding he take down links to copyrighted material, Fung decided he would ask the courts to rule on whether his site breaks Canadian law. Michael Geist, a copyright expert at the University of Ottawa, said IsoHunt.com's take-down policy is similar to what most BitTorrent download sites do in an attempt to avoid legal action.

Source: http://www.ctvbc.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20081105/BC_download_legality_081105/20081106?hub=BritishColumbia

One woman's genome hints at causes of cancer

For the first time, researchers have decoded all the genes of a person with cancer and found a set of mutations that may have caused the disease or aided its progression. Using cells donated by a woman in her 50s who died of leukemia, the scientists sequenced all the DNA from her cancer cells and compared it with the DNA from her own normal, healthy skin cells. Then they zeroed in on 10 mutations that occurred only in the cancer cells, apparently spurring abnormal growth, preventing the cells from suppressing that growth and enabling them to fight off chemotherapy. The findings will not help patients immediately, but researchers say they could lead to new therapies and will almost certainly help doctors make better choices among existing treatments, based on a more detailed genetic picture of each patient's cancer. Though the research involved leukemia, the same techniques can also be used to study other cancers. "This is the first of many of these whole cancer genomes to be sequenced," said Richard Wilson, director of the Genome Sequencing Center at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, and the senior author of the study. "They'll give us a whole bunch of clues about what's going on in the DNA when cancer starts to bloom." The mutations - genetic mistakes - found in this research were not inborn, but developed later in life, like most mutations that cause cancer. Only 5 percent to 10 percent of all cancers are thought to be hereditary.

Source: http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/11/06/healthscience/cancer.php

Speculation over Yahoo!'s future as Google drops advertising pact

Google snubbed Yahoo! yesterday by walking away from an agreed search advertising partnership to avert a long legal battle with American antitrust regulators. Google's decision - despite recent pledges from Eric Schmidt, its chief executive, to push ahead with or without regulatory approval - prompted renewed questions about whether Yahoo! can continue to exist as an independent company. Yahoo! struck the deal with Google on June 12 to fend off an unsolicited takeover bid from Microsoft. Analysts predicted yesterday that the internet portal operator will now be forced into new discussions with Microsoft. David Drummond, senior vice- president and chief legal officer of Google, said that the search giant was not prepared to damage its reputation or relationships with clients by embarking on a legal battle against the US Department of Justice (DoJ). The tie-up was meant to let Yahoo! display search ads sold by Google and to share some revenue, but advertisers feared the joint venture would lead to a rise in prices for search ads. Yahoo! was openly aggrieved that the tie-up will not go ahead, saying it was “disappointed that Google has elected to withdraw from the agreement rather than defend it in court”. Google's decision pre-empted the DoJ's confirmation of its opposition to the deal. Antitrust regulators said they would have taken legal action to block the alliance, claiming it would stifle competition in internet search advertising by controlling up to 90 per cent of the market. Google and Yahoo! are respectively No1 and No2 in the internet search market.

Source: http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/technology/article5093374.ece

The Pirate Bay's 20 Million

It's no secret that The Pirate Bay is by far the largest independent file-sharing community. With over 20 million peers, there is no other network that comes close to sharing its size. Remember when communities like LimeWire, eDonkey2000, WinMX and Kazaa were considered big with their 3-4 million users? Today, that's less than a quarter the size of The Pirate Bay. There's probably an equal amount of good news and bad news to go along with The Pirate Bay's massive size. The Pirate Bay hasn't had an easy march to 20 million users, as its history has been a constant battle with the entertainment industry. Comparatively, today's legal problems the tracker faces seems rather slight compared to May of 2006, when it was temporarily pushed offline by the same people they're fighting today. Considering the history of the file-sharing world, it's hard not to imagine what today's world would look like if The Pirate Bay was shut down permanently in 2006. Would someone else have stepped to the plate? Would BitTorrent be as important of a protocol as it is today? Not many file-sharing entities are willing to exhibit a similar personality as The Pirate Bay - it's just too risky for most jurisdictions. And it's probably too risky in Sweden also, but that won't be known for certain until the criminal copyright infringement trial is finished. The stakes are rather high - the administrators could face a hefty fine or prison time. Whether the network can be taken offline is another matter. The Pirate Bay's network is much more globally dispersed than it was in 2006, and ordering a shutdown is much more easily said than done. But for better or worse, the majority of file-sharers are on The Pirate Bay. History has a funny way of repeating itself; Napster, SuprNova, ShareReactor all fell despite their seemingly invulnerable nature. Will it happen to The Pirate Bay? And if it does, where will those 20 million users go?

Source: http://www.slyck.com/story1789_The_Pirate_Bays_20_Million

Innocent UK Gamers Collateral Damage in P2P War

The UK-based consumer advocacy group Which? Computing has successfully intervened in the case of a couple who was accused by Atari for uploading the game "Race 07". The couple were sent a monetary demand letter by Davenport Lyons, a UK-based law firm charged with a similar responsibility by the creators of Dream Pinball 3-D. According to Which? Computing, the letter demanded “£500 compensation and £25 costs for infringing the copyright of Atari." Like most people who receive a monetary demand, the couple Ken and Gill Murdoch, aged 54 and 66, were in a state of shock and awe. They had been identified by their IP address, which, before the age of knowledge, was thought to be an absolute way to identify an individual. That isn't so much the case anymore. The couple vigorously insisted that they never played a computer game in their life, and their computer was never used as a file-sharing platform. The couple told the BBC, "We do not have, and have never had, any computer game or sharing software. We did not even know what 'peer to peer' was until we received the letter." Somehow, the couple's IP address was identified. If an Internet account owner is accused of file-sharing but has never used a P2P application, typically the blame can be pointed at an insecure wireless access point. This happens more often than people realize - just drive down a developed street with a WIFI device and you'll see many weakly or downright unsecured connections. Now according to the BBC, the couple didn't even have a WIFI access point. So how did Atari and Davenport Lyons get the IP address? That's an excellent question that no one really has an answer to. Luckily for the Murdoch's, the case was dropped, but the mystery of the wandering IP address remains. It could have been a simple clerical error, or possibly, the Murdoch's were collateral damage in the online copyright wars. In order to pursue a suspected file-sharer, the investigator needs the IP address with the correct time/date stamp. This evidence has been used to successfully settle copyright infringement cases, however, in the United States there has yet to be a single trial case where this evidence has led to a successful outcome for the entertainment industry. But it’s enough to scare people into paying up a lower cost (about $3,000) instead of facing a multi-hundred thousand dollar judgment. To dilute the integrity of the IP address as evidence, it’s no secret that The Pirate Bay’s tracker returns random IP addresses in addition to actual peers. So when an investigator downloads a file from The Pirate Bay’s network and captures a few IP addresses, it’s very possible the captured IP could be a false or random number. It could’ve even been the Murdoch’s. No one will ever know. As TorrentFreak points out, professional firms such as BayTSP has an internal requirement to actually connect to a peer before capturing evidence, but BayTSP isn’t the only firm collecting evidence, and false positives are not outside the realm of possibility.

Source: http://www.slyck.com/story1788_Innocent_UK_Gamers_Collateral_Damage_in_P2P_War

Kim Jong Il 'Being Treated by Brain Surgeon'

The speculation surrounding the health of Kim Jong Il has continued with a Japanese TV station reporting that the North Korean leader’s son has been seen visiting a brain surgeon in Paris. Japan's Fuji Television showed footage from Paris of a man it identified as Kim Jong-Nam, the eldest son of the North Korean leader, visiting a French brain surgeon who then apparently flew to Pyongyang to treat his father. Speculation about Kim Jong Il's health has swirled since he failed to appear at a key anniversary parade in early September, and U.S. and South Korean officials say the 66-year-old recluse is believed to have suffered a stroke. Japan's Fuji Television showed footage from Paris of a man it identified as Kim. "He is believed to have met with a French brain surgeon, who later departed from Paris for Pyongyang under North Korean escort," the network said.

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,444165,00.html

eBay buyer facing lawsuit over feedback

An eBay user is facing legal action after leaving negative feedback for a seller following an unsuccessful transaction. Chris Read, a 42-year-old mechanic from Kent, used the auction website to purchase a £155 mobile phone from Joel Jones. When the item arrived, he discovered that it was the wrong model and was dissatisfied with its quality. After receiving a refund for the phone, Read used the website's feedback facility to write: "Item was scratched, chipped and not the model advertised on Mr. Jones's eBay account." Read has now reportedly received a letter from the seller, which warns that he will face court action, substantial legal fees and costs of £175 if he does not remove his comments. "I am being punished on eBay because of this as sellers who have negative feedback appear lower down the screen in searches than other people," Mr. Jones is quoted by The Times as saying. "I'm losing money by the day and my business could go under because of it. I've been left with no option but to take legal action." Meanwhile, Mr. Read has made a public response to the complaint, arguing: "All I had done was left an honest opinion and everything I said was true. I thought that was why the feedback service was there. It's not like I wrote anything malicious or nasty." An eBay spokeswoman said: "We are very disappointed that this seller has chosen to sue rather than to attempt to resolve the buyer's problem amicably."

Source: http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/odd/a133680/ebay-buyer-facing-lawsuit-over-feedback.html

Court upholds Bianca Jagger's Manhattan eviction

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — New York's top court upheld Bianca Jagger's eviction from a rent-stabilized Manhattan apartment, concluding Thursday that foreigners on tourist visas generally can't claim New York digs as a "primary residence." The British human rights activist and ex-wife of Rolling Stones singer Mick Jagger was evicted in December from the Upper East Side apartment she rented for 20 years. She hasn't lived in the apartment for the past few years because of a dispute over asbestos and fungus contamination that led to a lawsuit against landlord Katz Park Avenue Corp. "There are still claims for legal fees and unpaid rent and use and occupancy," said attorney Magda Cruz, the landlord's lawyer. She said there's no way of knowing how many New York tenants on tourist visas might be affected by the ruling, since tenants generally don't disclose their visa status when they rent. Jagger's lawyer, Roger Olson, did not immediately return a call Thursday. Jagger was renting the 18th-floor Park Avenue space for $4,614 a month when a judge imposed a fine in 2006 and ordered her to pay months of back rent, though she said the apartment was uninhabitable because of the contamination. The apartment has since been leased to another tenant. As that dispute wore on, the landlord evicted Jagger, saying she wasn't entitled to rent control protections. Court of Appeals Judge Robert Smith wrote that Jagger failed to explain how she could have a valid tourist visa and a primary residence in New York City.

Source: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5h4DjoJu_LoxIg7VCtKuQWI79gY1wD940EO4O0

Pirate Bay Tricks Anti-Pirates with Fake Peers

The Pirate Bay has always made it clear that they don’t obey takedown requests from content owners. That doesn’t stop Hollywood from going after the Pirate Bay’s users, however, and they do so on a large scale. The Pirate Bay is well aware of these pirate tracking outfits, and does what it can to give them a hard time. Reporting fake peers is one of the tricks they use. Most often, companies such as BayTSP and MediaSentry are hired to connect to BitTorrent trackers, and send takedown notices to the users (via their ISP) who download movies, TV-shows or music albums of a company they represent. This is a fairly easy process, since BitTorrent is far from anonymous: Every user necessarily broadcasts his or her IP-address to other peers in the swarm. Sometimes anti-piracy outfits use their own trackers to gather evidence. Last week we reported that The Pirate Bay started to actively remove these suspicious trackers from their torrents, with some help from torrenteditor.com. Running a tracker is not required though, to collect information from BitTorrent users. In fact, many attempt to use publicly available trackers such as The Pirate Bay to do so. However, the tracker owners are aware of this, and trick these tracking companies by polluting the list of IP-addresses the tracker returns. That is one of the techniques The Pirate Bay uses, just to show how flawed the evidence gathering is.

Source: http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-tricks-anti-pirates-with-fake-peers-081020/

Microsoft celebrates antipiracy day

Microsoft plans on Tuesday to announce "Global Anti-Piracy Day," an effort to gain attention for the steps the company undertakes in order to thwart those who would profit from illegitimate software. As part of the event, Microsoft is highlighting recent antipiracy efforts in 49 countries, ranging from the filing of lawsuits in the U.S. to a seminar for journalists in Pakistan. It's the kind of thing that Microsoft does all the time, although the company is aiming for some added ink by grouping together so many actions at once. "One of the things we want to illustrate with this announcement is the diverse nature of the work," associate general counsel David Finn said in an interview from Singapore. The third pillar of Microsoft's efforts is its engineering work, adding programs like Windows Genuine Advantage that are designed to make it harder--and less rewarding--to copy Microsoft's products. Whether it's a testament to tougher engineering or the lukewarm response to Vista, or some combination, Windows XP continues to be copied far more than its successor. "We continue to see much more counterfeit Windows XP," said Finn, who actually says the company is predicting a rise in XP pirating as the last legitimate copies of the OS wind their way off retail shelves. Overall, Finn said Microsoft and the software industry are making progress in some areas. He noted that the piracy rate in Western Europe has dropped to about 34 percent from the 78 percent level in 1991.

Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10070706-56.html
At the same time, however, rates still top 90 percent in some emerging markets. And even in the U.S., where rates are a relatively low 20 percent, that still means 1 in 5 software installations are illegitimate.

‘Anonymous’ Hacker Faces 10 Years In Jail For Scientology Attack

The conflict between the group Anonymous and the Church of Scientology is a secret to no one, but secrecy of the group may have just been broken, after 18-year-old Dimitriy Guzner admitted to hacking the Church’s website, and being a member of the hacker group. Guzner pleaded guilty to charges of hacking the website, and agreed to pay a $37,500 fee. The young man also faces 10 years in jail for his act, but the sentence in his case is yet to be announced. According to court papers, Guzner caused the transmission of information, codes and commands, which caused damage by impairing the integrity and availability of data on websites belonging to the Church of Scientology, which caused loss to one or more persons of $5,000. Anonymous began its official protest against the Church of Scientology at the beginning of this year, when they directed a DDOS attack to the church’s website, forcing them to move it to a new server. The church felt the need to respond, and posted a video on how Anonymous was allegedly instigating to hate crimes against the church and its members. The group of vigilantes, which the church called “cyber-terrorists,” has created a worldwide movement, and has since organized public protests against the church in cities across the globe, also promising not to rest until they accomplish three main purposes: save people from Scientology by reversing their brainwashing, cause current Scientologists to doubt their religion, and obtain epic and memorable lulz.

Source: http://www.efluxmedia.com/news_Anonymous_Hacker_Faces_10_Years_In_Jail_For_Scientology_Attack_26984.html

Newzbin Prepares for Litigation

The newsgroups have remained largely outside the focus of the entertainment industry's campaign to thwart illegal file-sharing, thanks to dual-use role as discussion/bulletin board system. This role has diminished significantly in recent months, as major ISPs across the United States have discontinued their newsgroup support. What's left? The major newsgroup players remaining are third party providers such as Giganews and indexing services such as Newzbin. Newzbin operates similarly to BitTorrent indexing sites, as they both act like card catalogs in a library. Similar to BitTorrent indexing/tracking sites, Newzbin contains no copyrighted work on their servers - only NZB files. NZB files are analogous to torrent files; like torrent files, NZB point the user to where the file is located on the network. And like BitTorrent indexing sites, Newzbin may soon face litigation. In an announcement made today, Newzbin has stated they expect litigation in the coming weeks. It appears that Newzbin has received two distinct complaints regarding their indexing service, yet compliance with these complaints doesn't appear to be part of the plan. "It is likely that we will in the coming weeks be presented with a court case and have to defend our rights," the announcement reads. "We will be defending ourselves vigorously against both the complainants if necessary and we believe a court will agree with our view that linking to content on Usenet is indeed legal and our method of dealing with unlawful content is appropriate. We believe that, or we wouldn't still be here."

Source: http://www.slyck.com/story1782_Newzbin_Prepares_for_Litigation

World's largest spam bust linked to Australia

A New Zealand man living in Australia has been fingered by US authorities as a ringleader of the largest spam operation in the world, responsible for sending out billions of unsolicited emails in recent years. Lance Atkinson, 26, who lives in Pelican Waters in Queensland, has had his assets frozen by a US district court at the request of the US Federal Trade Commission, which also succeeded in having the spam network shut down. Criminal charges are expected to be laid after the FTC said Atkinson's assets were frozen to "preserve them for consumer redress pending trial". Atkinson's Australian-registered company, Inet Ventures, is one of four companies targeted by the FTC over the operation, which encouraged people to click through to websites that allegedly used false claims to peddle prescription drugs, as well as "male enhancement" and weight-loss pills. The only other defendant named by the FTC is Jody Smith of Texas. Atkinson and Smith allegedly controlled a "botnet" of 35,000 computers, capable of sending 10 billion email messages a day. The non-profit antispam research group SpamHaus said the network - which has ties to Australia, New Zealand, India, China and the United States - was the largest spam operation in the world and at one point was responsible for one-third of all spam.

Source: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2008/10/15/1223750102617.html

Cybercrime Supersite 'DarkMarket' Was FBI Sting, Documents Confirm

DarkMarket.ws, an online watering hole for thousands of identify thieves, hackers and credit card swindlers, has been secretly run by an FBI cybercrime agent for the last two years, until its voluntary shutdown earlier this month, according to documents unearthed by a German radio network. Reports from the German national police obtained by the Südwestrundfunk, Southwest Germany public radio, blow the lid off the long running sting by revealing its role in nabbing a German credit card forger active on DarkMarket. The FBI agent is identified in the documents as J. Keith Mularski, a senior cybercrime agent based at the National Cyber Forensics Training Alliance in Pittsburgh, who ran the site under the hacker handle Master Splynter. Like earlier crime sites, DarkMarket allowed buyers and sellers of stolen identities and credit card data to meet and do business in an entrepreneurial, peer-reviewed environment. Products for sale ran the gamut from specialized hardware, to electronic banking logins collected from phishing attacks, stolen personal data needed to assume a consumer's identity ("full infos") and credit card magstripe swipes ("dumps), which are used to produce counterfeit cards. Vendors were encouraged to submit their goods for review before offering them for sale. The unearthed documents, seen by Threat Level, show the FBI sting had begun by November, 2006. An FBI memo sent to the German national police regarding a forum member in that country boasts, "Currently, the FBI has been successful in penetrating the inner 'family' of the carding forum, DarkMarket." A March 2007 e-mail from Mularski's FBI address to his German counterpart puts it bluntly. "Master Splynter is me." The documents indicate the FBI used DarkMarket to build "intelligence briefs" on its members, complete with their internet IP addresses and details of their activities on the site. In at least some cases, the bureau matched the information with transaction records provided by the electronic currency service E-Gold.

Source: http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/10/darkmarket-post.html

Artificial intelligence gets a step closer

Artificial intelligence came another step closer to reality this weekend after a computer came within five per cent of passing the Turing Test which evaluates a system's ability to demonstrate intelligence. The Turing Test is named after mathematician Alan Turing whose 1950 paper Computing Machinery and Intelligence stated that, if enough people cannot reliably differentiate between a human and a machine during a natural language conversation, the machine can be considered intelligent.No machine has yet managed to deceive the 30 per cent of interrogators required to pass the Turing Test. However, at this weekend's annual Loebner Prize competition at the University of Reading, one system, dubbed Elbot, managed the most successful score yet, fooling 25 per cent of the judges. In this year's test, five computer systems were pitted against five judges who were each given five minutes of unrestricted conversation through a terminal to decide which of the entities they were talking to was a human and which was a machine. The Loebner Prize was created by American businessman Hugh Loebner in 1990 together with the Cambridge Centre for Behavioural Studies, and is an annual competition offering a grand prize of $100,000 (£58,000) and a solid gold medal to the first machine to crack the Turing Test.

Source: http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2228123/ai-gets-step-closer