InfoSec Daily Podcast Episode 419 for July 1, 2011. Tonight's podcast is hosted by Rick Hayes, Geordy Rostad, Adrian Crenshaw, B0n3z and Varun Sharma.
Announcements:
2nd Annual AIDE conference
When: July 11th – 15th, 2011
Where: Marshall University Forensic Science Center, Huntington, WV
http://aide.marshall.edu/
OISF July Anniversary Event
When: July 16th, 2011
Where: Dayton, Ohio
http://ohioinfosec.org
Adrian Will be there
My Hard Drive Died
5-Day Bootcamp Data Recovery
Where: Chicago, Illinois
When: July 18-22, 2011
SANS Security 464 – Hacker Detection for Systems Administrators with Continuing Education Program – Russell Eubanks
Where: Atlanta, GA
When: Tue, Aug 09 to Wed, Aug 10
https://www.sans.org/mentor/details.php?nid=25573
#BruCon
When: Sept 19-22, 2011
Where: Brussels, Belgium
http://blog.brucon.org/2011/02/confirmation-of-brucon-dates.html
@DerbyCon
When: September 30th – October 2, 2011
Where: Louisville, KY
http://www.derbycon.com/
SANS Mentoring: Forensics 408 – Computer Forensic Essentials
When: Wednesday, October 12, 2011 – Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Where: Atlanta, GA
Discount Code: ISDPod15 (15% discount)
http://www.sans.org/mentor/details.php?nid=25504
2011 Fall Information Security Conference
When: November 8 – 9, 2011
Where: Atlanta, GA (Loudermilk Conference Center)
http://www.gaissa.org
CFP open now through July 1, 2011! Email submissions to Conference@gaissa.org
EFF:
The ISD Podcast is participating in a contest to see who can raise the most money for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. For those who don’t know, the EFF is a non-profit group of lawyers, policy analysts, activists, and technologists who fight for digital rights and have helped countless hackers and security researchers get out of hot water as well as exposing injustices caused by ignorant legislation and bad judgements. Please click the following link to donate to a vitally important cause:
http://eff.isdpodcast.com
Currently at $2,013.37! We will quit bugging you soon about this fundraiser. The contest ends on July 5th so please get any donations you were planning to make in now!
Stories
Source: http://dataliberation.blogspot.com/2011/06/data-liberation-front-delivers-google.html
Since we began in 2007, the Data Liberation Front has been focused on one thing: making it easier for you to take your data in and out of Google. Our first step was to make it easier to get your data out of our products, one product at a time. While we’ve made great progress on this front, we’ve been on the lookout for even better ways to let you take your data out of Google.
Today we’re pleased to announce the Data Liberation Front’s first revolutionary product: Google Takeout.
Google Takeout lets you take your data out of multiple Google products in one fell swoop. Moreover, you’ll find that all your data is in portable and open formats‚ so it’s easy to import to other services quickly.
Source: http://www.dataliberation.org/
The Data Liberation Front is an engineering team at Google whose singular goal is to make it easier for users to move their data in and out of Google products. We do this because we believe that you should be able to export any data that you create in (or import into) a product. We help and consult other engineering teams within Google on how to "liberate" their products. This is our mission statement:
Users should be able to control the data they store in any of Google's products. Our team's goal is to make it easier to move data in and out.
People usually don't look to see if they can get their data out of a product until they decide one day that they want to leave. For this reason, we always encourage people to ask these three questions before starting to use a product that will store their data:
- Can I get my data out at all?
- How much is it going to cost to get my data out?
- How much of my time is it going to take to get my data out?
The ideal answers to these questions are:
- Yes.
- Nothing more than I'm already paying.
- As little as possible.
There shouldn't be an additional charge to export your data. Beyond that, if it takes you many hours to get your data out, it's almost as bad as not being able to get your data out at all.
We don't think that our products are perfect yet, but we're continuing to work at making it easier to get your data in and out of them. Visit our Google Moderator page to vote on and add suggestions on what you'd like to see liberated and why.
Lastly, you can also keep track of what we're doing by subscribing to the Data Liberation Front Blog or by following us on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/dataliberation.
Source: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/supporting-choice-ensuring-economic.html
At Google, we’ve always focused on putting the user first. We aim to provide relevant answers as quickly as possible—and our product innovation and engineering talent have delivered results that users seem to like, in a world where the competition is only one click away. Still, we recognize that our success has led to greater scrutiny. Yesterday, we received formal notification from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission that it has begun a review of our business. We respect the FTC’s process and will be working with them (as we have with other agencies) over the coming months to answer questions about Google and our services.
It’s still unclear exactly what the FTC’s concerns are, but we’re clear about where we stand. Since the beginning, we have been guided by the idea that, if we focus on the user, all else will follow. No matter what you’re looking for—buying a movie ticket, finding the best burger nearby, or watching a royal wedding—we want to get you the information you want as quickly as possible. Sometimes the best result is a link to another website. Other times it’s a news article, sports score, stock quote, a video or a map.
Instant answers. New sources of knowledge. Powerful tools—all for free. In just 13 years we’ve built a model that has changed the way people find answers and helped businesses both large and small create jobs and connect with new customers.
Search helps you go anywhere and discover anything, on an open Internet. Using Google is a choice—and there are lots of other choices available to you for getting information: other general-interest search engines, specialized search engines, direct navigation to websites, mobile applications, social networks, and more.
Because of the many choices available to you, we work constantly on making search better, and will continue to follow the principles that have guided us from the beginning:
- Do what’s best for the user. We make hundreds of changes to our algorithms every year to improve your search experience. Not every website can come out at the top of the page, or even appear on the first page of our search results.
- Provide the most relevant answers as quickly as possible. Today, when you type “weather in Chicago” or “how many feet in a mile” into our search box, you get the answers directly—often before you hit “enter”. And we’re always trying to figure out new ways to answer even more complicated questions just as clearly and quickly. Advertisements offer useful information, too, which is why we also work hard to ensure that our ads are relevant to you.
- Label advertisements clearly. Google always distinguishes advertisements from our organic search results. As we experiment with new ad formats and new types of content, we will continue to be transparent about what is an ad and what isn’t.
- Be transparent. We share more information about how our rankings work than any other search engine, through our Webmaster Central site, blog, diagnostic tools, support forum, and YouTube. We also give advertisers detailed information about the ad auction and tips to improve their ad quality scores. We’ve recently introduced even more transparency tools, announcing a major change to our algorithm, providing more notice when a website is demoted due to spam violations, and giving advertisers new information about ads that break our rules.
- Loyalty, not lock-in. We firmly believe you control your data, so we have a team of engineers whose only goal is to help you take your information with you. We want you to stay with us because we’re innovating and making our products better—not because you’re locked in.
These are the principles that guide us, and we know they’ll stand up to scrutiny. We’re committed to giving you choices, ensuring that businesses can grow and create jobs, and, ultimately, fostering an Internet that benefits us all.
To learn more about our business, please visit google.com/press/competition.
Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/28/us-britain-hacker-idUSTRE75Q50B20110628
Ryan Cleary, 19, is charged with attacking the website of the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) and sites owned by the British Phonographic Industry and the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.
Cleary, who was arrested last week as part of a joint investigation by London police and the U.S. FBI into recent attacks on high-profile websites, was given bail after an unsuccessful appeal by prosecutors at London's Southwark Crown Court.
He must observe a curfew between 9 a.m. and 7 p.m., has been electronically tagged and can only leave home with one of his parents. He is not allowed to access the Internet or possess any devices capable of going online, the Press Association reported.
His mother Rita said she would agree to any bail conditions placed on the teenager, who has been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome since his arrest.
"I'm aware that I'm his best friend as well as his mother, because he's reclusive," she told the court.
The attack on SOCA was one of a number of recent incidents claimed by the Lulz Security (LulzSec) group of hackers, which says it has also targeted the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Sony Corp.
The group announced on Saturday it was disbanding, saying it had accomplished its mission to disrupt corporate and government bodies for entertainment.
