If u r Google Service User : Don't EXPECT any Privacy@MISINTERPRETED!!!!!

1.    For about last 4-5 years ,we have come across many debates about how so many companies are minting our private data and associating that with third parties to create a profile based marketing environment in and around the naive user....and except for the few white papers about the technicalities involved in doing this ...max of the companies had denied mincing with privacy..but actually they were just mincing with words to have their way inside the privacy den of each user!!!!and now the big revelation from Google comes as part of small news...and that says 

"Google Tells Court You Cannot Expect Privacy When Sending Messages to Gmail -- People Who Care About Privacy Should Not Use Service"

But it seems that the meaning has been mis interpreted....

The complete extract available here at http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/resources/googlemotion061313.pdf

2.      Isn't it a big news otherwise!!!!but the news has been put across the web as just a small snippet news....

"Just as a sender of a letter to a business colleague cannot be surprised that the recipient’s assistant opens the letter, people who use web-based email today cannot be surprised if their communications are processed by the recipient’s ECS provider in the course of delivery. Indeed, “a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties.” Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735, 743-44 (1979). In particular, the Court noted that persons communicating through a service provided by an intermediary (in the Smith case, a telephone call routed through a telephone company) must necessarily expect that the communication will be subject to the intermediary’s systems. For example, the Court explained that in using the telephone, a person “voluntarily convey[s] numerical information to the telephone company and ‘expose[s]’ that information to its equipment in the ordinary course of business.” 

 3.      Now this declaration by Google has two connotations : one from point of view of a user who is only concerned about his private life,his social exchanges with friends,relative and office staff...and then the other point of view has a deeper meaning to it.The line highlighted above has been widely misinterpreted to make it seem like Google is saying Gmail users have no expectation of privacy when they use Gmail. To clarify and paint a better picture,Google's argument is about non-Gmail users who haven't signed Google's terms of service. It's right there in black and white — the heading for the section literally starts with the words "The Non-Gmail Plaintiffs."

 4.     But that does not mean the gmail users can take a back seat and relax about being safe again...the issue is too complex to have a clear cut YES...OR NO....the surfing goes on.....

ScareWare : One more WAREior in the family

1. Adware,spyware,malware....and now one SCAREWARE.Imagine this...u r surfing innocently(???) on the web via your home/office PC,an advertisement appears on the web-page, trying to convince you that your computer is at risk and you must download the anti-virus to clean it. Once you click on the advertisement, a software trigger gets activated and you get caught in an unnerving loop impossible to abort. A scanner window will appear with red-letter warnings listing viruses purportedly infesting your hard drive. A series of dialogue boxes will follow giving you choices that all lead to the same screen: a sales pitch. Make the purchase, and you get a bogus inoculation. Try to cancel it, and you'll get repeated offers. It's like stepping into quicksand. The more you try to get out of it, the deeper you sink.....this is Scareware..the latest new generation way to get ur PC infected...although its first origin dates to sometime in 2004...its now that this is getting firm roots via increased strength of web surfers who are naive about security.

2. In brief, the scareware trickery ensnares internet users in the following steps:

• Criminals buy blocks of advertisement space on websites, intermittently slipping in a tainted advertisement.
• Just visiting a webpage with a tainted ad causes a fake warning box to appear.
• Clicking "OK" or "Cancel" launches the same thing: a "free scan."

After you've been lured into a fake "free" scan of your PC:

• The bogus scan will purport to find a virus infestation.
• Ensuing boxes steer the user to activate "Personal Antivirus," on left.
• The activation prompts take the user to a shopping cart.
• Declining to place an order triggers endless fake scans.

3. Thanks http://fanaticmedia.com

CYBER GENOME PROJECT : U CAN BE TRACED BACK!!!!

1. The earlier mention on IP Spoofing and the pleothra of options and techniques available for attack,hack,sniff,crashing a network etc are well known for not reaching out to the origin of the person or hacker with the malaecious intention. DARPA (...please google or bing if u wish to know more on DARPA)has finally come out with the ‘Cyber Genome Program’ which will allow any digital artifact either in form of a document, or a piece of malware - to be poked into its very origins.

2. In in principle, it appears that almost any data fished from a relevant network, a computer, a pen drive, someone's phone or whatever is to be studied much as like a human genetic material. The code or document's relationships with other "digital artifacts" will be revealed, perhaps its origins, and other info of interest to a Pentagon admin defending military networks or a military/spook investigator tracing online adversaries.In other words, any code you write, perhaps even any document you create, might one day be traceable back to you - just as your DNA could be if found at a crime scene, and just as it used to be possible to identify radio operators even on encrypted channels by the distinctive "fist" with which they operated their Morse keys. Or something like that, anyway.

3. The concept is a cyber-equivalent of human finger-prints or DNA. The project will thus seek to develop a digital genotype as well as any inferred or observed phenotype in order to determine the identity of such digital artifacts and thus the users who left them behind.

4. DARPA is now looking for technologists to develop and use the cyber-equivalent of DNA to target the people behind cyber attacks. They are looking for geniuses in the fields of Cyber Genetics, Cyber Anthropology and Sociology and Cyber Physiology who can jointly work out the practical solutions to this project.The research involves creating lineage tree for digital artifacts, gaining better understanding of software evolution, and automatic analysis of social relationships between users and malware. Each of these researches will jointly develop the cyber equivalent of fingerprints or DNA.DARPA believes that this can identify the best-of-the-best hackers.

5. Thanks http://www.theregister.co.uk