Well, the good news is that GoDaddy gained more domains than it lost on Move Your Domain Day (MYDD). MYDD was a reaction to the company’s former support for the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). According to DailyChanges, the combined domain transfers in and new registrations outstripped transfers out by a large margin, which you can see later in the image below. The numbers were definitely big enough for GoDaddy, who went on record as opposing the SOPA midway through the day.
The GoDaddy boycott began December 21 on reddit because of GoDaddy’s suppor for SOPA, which is itself an act that has been “derided” by opponents for its potential to infringe on First Amendment rights. GoDaddy backed off its support of SOPA only two days later, December 23, but refused to make any official statements. Midway through Thursday, the company officially announced its opposition of the act in response to “a spike in domain name transfers,” said Warren Adelman, CEO of GoDaddy.
Although hopping back and forth may seem risky, it seems to have worked out nicely. 43,304 new domains were registered with GoDaddy (domaincontrol.com) in the 24-hour period after 1AM PST on December 30, while 14,492 were transferred out. 35,907 domains were deleted, 27,843 domains were transferred in. After all is said and done, GoDaddy made a net gain of 20,748 domains. While currently having over 32 million domains, the gain represented a 0.06% increase.
After taking into consideration the $10 per year registration fee, the deletions and transfers out constitute a yearly revenue loss (not counting the gains at all here) of over $500,000 for GoDaddy. While not all can be blamed on MYDD, it certainly had an impact. In an attempt to keep customers, and cash, flowing in, GoDaddy has launched a new ad campaign over the last week, featuring a nearly-nude Danica Patrick.
Peter Jackson’s version on The Hobbit won’t be ready to watch on the big screen until December of 2012, but an official trailer has been released, so viewers can see how the movie will look and get a general feel for it. Martin Freeman, from the original Office series on BBC and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, will play a young Bilbo Baggins.
The trailer doesn’t show the entire film, obviously, but I feel like it gets a very good feel for the movie. It definitely looks like something I can’t wait to see.
I remember watching the cartoon version of The Hobbit years ago and reading the book even before that. What is almost strange about The Hobbit is that at this time, nobody is really someone you could call a hero. I mean, they all have pretty human traits. Later, with the Lord of the Rings, you have amazing battles and special effects. With The Hobbit, it may be harder to capture the more human-like side of things and make a successful movie, though I do have faith in Peter Jackson.
Even though I say there may not be a lot of special effects, there will still be plenty I have a feeling. I mean, we do have the story of Smaug, which will have to be 100% special effects, not to mention that the release is a year away, so they have plenty of time to add little things and work on the effects.
I regret to inform all of the readers that this blog will not be updated for the rest of December. We are currently undergoing updates among other things, where posting blogs can disrupt the things we are doing. I hope not to disappoint anyone too much, and know that I will be back January 1st with all-new blogs with an all-new look.
I am sad to say I won’t be posting for a month, but look forward to our next journey together. Happy holidays to everyone!
If you have any questions or comments, feel free to direct them to tyler@seowhat.com, which I will continue to check daily. Otherwise, message me on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/tyler.weaver.92.
Until 2012, my readers. Be safe and take care of yourselves!
Twitter has announced their recent purchase of Whisper Systems, a security start-up company that makes software for Android smartphones and other mobile devices. The price tag that Twitter and Whisper Systems agreed on was not disclosed, but we can assume it was more than enough.
Whisper System’s co-founders are well-recognized online security experts, which would probably be the reason Twitter went for them, as Twitter doesn’t have the best reputation for security. One of the co-founders, a developer and hacker who goes by the name Moxie Marlinspike, is an expert in SSL (secure sockets layer) encryption. Apparently, Twitter “could use his skills to lock down its services and make life harder for phishers.”
“The Whisper Systems team is joining Twitter starting today. As part of our fast-growing engineering team, they will be bringing their technology and security expertise to Twitter’s products and services. We’re happy to have Moxie and Stuart [Anderson] onboard,” Twitter said in an e-mail statement.
Whisper Systems is going to continue its products, but they will temporarily be unavailable while they’re integrated with Twitter. RedPhone, an application that provides call encryption between Android users, Flashback, which provides encrypted backup for Android, and TextSecure, which offers dual-encrypted SMS messaging, are three of the popular services that will be temporarily unavailable.
In March, after an FTC investigation into two breaches of security, Twitter finalized a settlement over charges that the micro-blogging service failed to safeguard user information. In September, hackers got into the NBC News account and posted a message that stated that terrorists had launched an attack at Ground Zero.
The iPhone app is the third most popular way to access the site, behind Twitter.com and mobile.twitter.com. Marlinspike observed that attacks on phones are getting easier and cheaper. It used to cost $750,000 to attack a cellular network, but now an attack can be done with hardware that costs less than $20. “Right now, we are kind of at the point with cellular wireless where we were with [Wi-Fi] 10 years ago,” Marlinspike told Technology Review.
Whisper Systems recently stated on their blog regarding the Twitter deal: ”We started Whisper Systems with the goal of improving security and privacy for mobile devices. We were attracted to this not only because we saw it as an opportunity to reinvent the security solutions that never really worked in the PC environment to begin with, but also because the stakes are much higher—due to the nature of mobile devices themselves—and we didn’t like the way that things were looking.”
In September, Twitter purchased social information analysis start-up Julpan for an undisclosed amount. Upon purchasing, Twitter got Ori Allon onboard, who is the guy credited for perfecting Google Search. Other Twitter purchases this year include TweetDeck, which was bought for more than $40 million, and social analytics start-up Backtype, in which the price was undisclosed as well.
Security researchers at Columbia University have accused HP of selling printers with a flaw that could let hackers gain remote control over the devices. Once the hackers are in, they can steal personal information, attack networks, and even set the printers on fire by feeding them a stream of instructions designed to heat them up.
The researchers were funded by government and industry grants. They reported the flaw to federal officials and HP earlier this month, even giving a demonstration to MSNBC. HP told MSNBC that it is currently reviewing the details, but denied that the problem is as extensive as claimed by Columia PhD student Ang Cui and Professor Salvatore Stolfo.
Cui and Stolfo demonstrated that they can remotely install malicious software onto HP LaserJet printers because of the fact that these printers accept software updates without even considering digital signatures. They also check for updates each time they accept a print job. “In one demonstration of an attack based on the flaw, Stolfo and fellow researcher Ang Cui showed how a hijacked computer could be given instructions that would continuously heat up the printer’s fuser—which is designed to dry the ink once it’s applied to paper—eventually causing the paper to turn brown and smoke,” according to MSNBC. “In that demonstration, a thermal switch shut the printer down—basically, causing it to self-destruct—before a fire started, but the researchers believe other printers might be used as fire starters, giving computer hackers a dangerous new tool that could allow simple computer code to wreak real-world havoc.”
Cui and Stolfo also showed how a printer can be forced to send documents, such as tax forms, and stated that the flaw could be used to disable printers by the thousands. Not only can physical networks be taken down, but printers hooked up to computers could be used to launch attacks and join botnets.
ARM has officially announced the launch of their new ARM Development Studio 5 Community Edition. This is a suite of Eclipse-based tools that are designed to help Android app developers who use the NDK to write native code. The tools will simplify the debugging of native ARM code in apps and help performance of the applications as well.
Usually, Android applications are coded in the Java programming language. Then, they are compiled and ran on the Dalvik runtime environment. In 2009, Google launched the Android Native Development Kit (NDK). This provided a way for third-party application developers to incorporate libraries coded in C or C++ within their Android applications. C and C++ are far more powerful and performance-enhanced than Java, which is why Google pushed the NDK and developers loved it. This new release by ARM will help even further to reduce the technical challenges and allow developers to push even more performance out of their applications.
The toolkit should be widely accepted and welcomed by developers who use the NDK. Android is moving more and more towards the x86 architecture due to Intel’s growing commitment to the platform. Android applications that rely on native code compiled for ARM aren’t going to work on future Intel-based Android devices and app-enabled, such as Google TV, products.
Two New Jersey DMV employees have been charged with selling names, addresses, birthdates and Social Security numbers for as little as $200 per identity. The same investigation, conducted by the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Economic Crime Unit in Trenton, led to charges against two non-government workers who used their jobs in a tax office and realty company to sell identities as part of a similar scheme to this one.
The prosecutor’s office had this to say: “In April 2011, the prosecutor’s ECU received information regarding allegations of identity theft involving a state government employee. Further investigation uncovered that two employees of the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission were providing the names, addresses, dates of birth and social security numbers of unsuspecting residents that they obtained through their employment. They were charging as little as $200 per identity.”
The DMV employees, 28-year-old Sherilyn Rivera and 31-year-old Johnny Semmon, were arrested and charged with misconduct, bribery and identity theft. They will both be facing up to 10 years in state prison with five of those years not having parole eligibility if found guilty.
The two others charged from the investigation were 37-year-old Daniel Roberts, a tax preparer in Trenton, and 55-year-old Abdulah Sumo of Willingboro, New Jersey, an employee of a realty company. Both of these men were charged with identity theft and trafficking in personal identifying information. ”Both men were selling the names, addresses, dates of birth, social security numbers and credit history reports of victims obtained through their respective jobs,” the prosecutor’s office alleged. Upon searching Sumo’s vehicle, personal records of more than 60 people were found. While both are free on bail as of now, they face the same potential sentence as the government workers if convicted.
While who bought the identities remains under investigation, the risk is becoming more and more into attention. Sony offered identity theft protection after their PlayStation Network was hacked and down for a month. What is more troubling than the act itself of identity theft is that they were done by government employees. These government employees have information to these things on a daily basis.
What’s more to wonder, perhaps, is if these two were caught in the act, how many are still out there that haven’t been caught?
Microsoft’s Kinect voice and motion control capabilities has made the device very popular in not-so-serious gamers. However, there are practical uses that have been demonstrated as well outside of the realm of Xbox 360 gaming. Microsoft has revealed plans to release Kinect hardware designed for Windows. This device will be made available by early 2012.
What will Microsoft optimize to make the Kinect more suitable for PC usage? Well, shortening the USB cable to ensure a reliable connection and including a small dongle to make the device connect more easily with other USB devices will be necessary hardware-side. Software-side, the Kinect will need to be tweaked to enable the depth camera to perceive objects as close as 50 centimeters in front of the device, approximately 1.5 feet.
The Kinect for Windows has had the Kinect for Windows SDK beta version for testing and academic use back in June. They are also giving away $20,000 in funding to give to ten finalists to advanced the development of Kinect.
Battlefield 3 has been a very popular multiplayer game, but it came with its fair share of problems at launch. DICE has been working to fix all of the little things that keep people from having a good time, and they have announced that a patch should be coming very soon; for the PC.
What is in this PC patch? Well, DICE has stated the following improvements: “improved polish, stability, weapons balancing, squad control functionality, user interface enhancements, and several feature enhancements that address feedback the community has provided to date–plus we’re removing the so called ‘negative mouse acceleration’ that some of you have experienced.”
The patch is expected to be released this week for the PC, but the console version will have to wait while Microsoft and Sony put the code through their certification processes. Here is a comparison of what the tactical light has been fixed and reduced to, before and after:
This tactical light is used as a “weapon” that can be used to blind and disorient the enemy in Battlefield 3, but some know how to turn it against the enemy. Sometimes, there are people who just run around literally fully blinding everyone around them.
Juniper Networks has reported the rates of Android malware infections increasing at alarming rates on the networks of its mobile customers, with detected malware more than quadrupling in the last six weeks. There have been dramatic increases in the previous two years, as well.
In May, Juniper Networks reported a 400 percent increase in malware attacks since the summer of 2010. This week, they reported an increase of 500 percent since that report.
The total number of smartphones in the market is growing rapidly, so this may be one reason behind the increase. Android’s share of the market has been increasing as well. Malware authors tend to target those who have a larger audience. However, Juniper is also blaming Google for the security policies of its app store:
The main reason for the malware epidemic on Android is because of different approaches that Apple and Google take to police their application stores. Android’s open applications store model, which lacks the code signing and an application review process that Apple requires, makes it easy for attackers to distribute their malware. There is still no upfront review process in the official Android Market that offers even the hint of a challenge to malware writers that their investment in coding malware will be for naught. Until there comes a time that someone (ever heard of Charlie Miller?) figures out a tried and true way to get malicious applications into the App Store, Android will remain the target of mobile malware writers around the world.
Google removes malware from its app store when they discover it. They do this as quickly as they can. Google can even wipe malicious software from users’ phones OTA (over the air). However, some malware gains root access and passes Android security vulnerabilities. Once that happens, users must reset the phone to factory settings to remove it.
