Wholesale hacking for my Ethical Hackers... “Quantity has a quality all its own” Stalin

Web Hosts — One-Stop-Shops For Mass Hacking?

"More than 70,000 websites were compromised in a recent breach of InMotion. Thousands of websites were defaced and others had alterations made to give users a hard time accessing their accounts and fixing the damage. A similar attack hit JustHost back in June, and in a breach of Australian Web host DistributeIT just prior to that, hackers completely deleted more than 4,800 websites that the company was unable to recover. The incidents raise concern that hacker groups are bypassing single targets and hitting Web hosts directly, giving them access to tens of thousands of websites, rather than single targets. While the attacks have caused damage, they weren't as malicious as they could have been. Rather than defacing and deleting, hackers could have quietly planted malware in the sites or stolen customer data. Web hosting companies could be one of the largest holes in non-government cybersecurity, since malicious hackers can gain access through openings left by the Web host, regardless of the security of a given site."

It wouldn't surprise me if “approval prior to publication” was a real policy, but it would be impossible to implement.

State Dept. Employee Investigated For Linking To WikiLeaks

"An employee of the State Department is under investigation and may be fired for 'disclosing classified information.' Or, as others might call it, posting a link to WikiLeaks. 'His crime, he said, was a link he posted on August 25 in a blog post discussing the hypocrisy of recent U.S. actions against Libyan leader Muammar Qadaffi. The link went to a 2009 cable about the sale of U.S. military spare parts to Qadaffi through a Portuguese middleman. ... The State Department investigators, he said, demanded to know who had helped him with his blog and told him that every blog post, Facebook post, and tweet by State Department employees had to be pre-cleared by the Department prior to publication."

What logic, if any, is being applied here? Are they saying that because technology makes it easy to commit a crime they have to reduce the level of the crime from felony to “shame on you?” Is society suddenly less damaged? Are we telling children that it is now “no big deal?” (As long as you send the cops a copy?)

Florida Reduces Penalties For 'Sexting' Teens

SonicSpike sends word that Florida has changed how law enforcement deals with teenagers who send racy pictures to each other over their phones. Quoting CNN:

"Before Saturday, a Florida teenager who sent or received nude photos or video could have been charged with a felony and forced to register as a sex offender. But a new law, recognizing the proliferation of cell phones and computers, eases the penalties for 'sexting' infractions. A first offense is punishable by eight hours of community service or a $60 fine; the second is a misdemeanor and the third is a felony. ... Under House Bill 75, teens who receive explicit images won't be charged if they took reasonable steps to report it, did not solicit the image and did not send it to someone."

(Related) Too little too late?

Estimating Age With Kinect's 3D Camera To Filter Content

"Hal in 2001: 'I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that [open the pod bay doors].' Kinect in 2011: 'I'm sorry, Dave Jr. I'm afraid I can't do that [tune in to the Spice Channel].' A Microsoft patent filing made public this week proposes to restrict access to TV, movies and video games by using a 3D depth camera to estimate viewers' ages based upon the dimensions and proportions of a person's body, such as head width to shoulder width, and torso length to overall height. For adults with short arms or other seemingly childlike proportions, settings can be overridden by someone with an administrator password."

Asking for new competitors? AT&T is stating that they don't benefit from heavy users. (More correctly, they benefit more from casual users) Clearly someone does. Perhaps one of the many companies that profit from ad views (Google, Facebook, etc.) will take action to ensure their cash cow keeps producing.

AT&T Starts Throttling Heavy Wireless Data Users

"AT&T has started tossing out warnings for users that fall into the top 5% of data users on their wireless network. AT&T announced this change back in July and is now starting to actually enforce it."

Easier than the University system.

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/extremely-simple-file-sharing-10gb-free-online-storage/

Minus: Extremely Simple File Sharing With 10GB of Free Online Storage

Drag some files into your browser and instantly get a link to share them with family or friends. It’s this simplicity, along with a staggering 10GB of free storage space, that puts Minus among the best file sharing tools on the web today.

Last December we profiled the then-new photo sharing tool Minus. The web app only worked for photos then. Almost a year later and Minus does so much more. With support for any file format, apps for all major platforms and a very generous amount of free online storage, Minus is the solution to the file sharing problem.

… Head to minus.com to get started. You can drag files to your browser to get uploaded right away, but I highly recommend you first get an account. Once you do you’ll see your dashboard, containing all the folders you’ve uploaded. Uploading another file, or collection of files, is as simple as dragging it or them from your computer’s file browser to your web browser window: