Microsoft shuts down 2 Zeus botnet servers
abercrombie and fitch outletMicrosoft is receiving wide kudos for once again disrupting a major botnet.Botnets are sprawling networks of infected Windows PCs manipulated by criminal gangs to steal from online banking accounts.Working with U.S. Marshals and two financial services industry trade groups, the software giant on Friday orchestrated a surprise raid on two Internet hosting companies: Continuum Data Centers in Lombard, Ill., and BurstNet in Scranton, Pa.Seized were two command-and-control servers used to send instructions to millions of infected PCs that are part of the massive Zeus botnet.The raid came after Microsoft filed a civil lawsuit, partly under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. The company has combined legal tactics with cyberforensics three other times since 2010 to shut down command-and-control servers used to direct large botnets."Microsoft has done the online world a great service by establishing a repeatable process and a legal framework for taking down botnets and bringing malware distributors to justice," says Stephen Cobb, security evangelist at anti-virus firm ESET.Graham Cluley, researcher at tech security firm Sophos, says Microsoft has a profound self-interest in cleaning up the Internet."The last thing Microsoft wants is for the prevalence of malware to be a reason for people to purchase their next computer from Apple," he says.
abercrombie and fitch ukMicrosoft's lawsuit identifies 39 John Does, who use 65 different online aliases, and accuses them of controlling as many as 13 million infected PCs, using them to steal more than $100 million from online banking accounts."We expect this effort will significantly impact the cybercriminal underground for quite some time, but cybercrime, like all crime, will always be a societal challenge," says Richard Boscovich, senior attorney in charge of Microsoft's digital crimes unit. Botnet gangs have hit small organizations that rely on Automated Clearing House (ACH) cash transfers — a service banks have integrated into their online banking accounts — especially hard.Companies use ACH transfers to deposit salaries, pay suppliers and receive payments. Cybercriminals have perfected intricate systems to pull off fraudulent transfers. The seized servers could help authorities pinpoint the identities of gang members named in the lawsuit, says Michael Sutton, research vice president at network security firm Zscaler."Microsoft should be applauded for expending considerable human and financial resources to at least put a dent in what has become one of the more prolific botnets out there."
abercrombie uk outletEmails from Mark Zuckerberg's Harvard days show the dropout-turned-Facebook CEO as a young entrepreneur losing patience with a client's delayed payments."I contracted out my services for money, and even though I seem to continually be providing services, I don't seem to be receiving money from you guys," he wrote on Sunday, January 25, 2004, according to court documents filed on Monday by Facebook's lawyers. The deal, writes Zuckerberg, was for $18,000, plus a side project for $1,500. He was still owed $10,000. Zuckerberg founded Facebook the following month.The client, Paul Ceglia, sued Zuckerberg in 2010, claiming that a contract he signed in 2003 entitled him to a 50 percent ownership stake in Facebook. If Facebook's upcoming initial public offering goes as expected, that could amount to as much as $50 billion. Facebook's lawyers are seeking to dismiss the suit. They say the contract is a fake.Facebook included email exchanges between Ceglia, his associates and Zuckerberg in court documents filed in a U.S. District Court in Buffalo, New York on Monday. Facebook said the roughly 300 emails it obtained from Harvard's servers relating to the case make no mention of Facebook.
cheap abercrombie outlet ukInstead, the emails center on a database company called StreetFax that never took off. The two traded messages on technical specifications of the website that Ceglia had hired Zuckerberg to work on, and payments. The emails show a range of exchanges between Zuckerberg and Ceglia, which were sometimes terse and at other times lengthy and detailed."I will do my best to try to raise the cash needed to pay the amount requested though I honestly cannot guarantee it," wrote Ceglia on Feb. 22, 2004 according to the filing.A day earlier, Zuckerberg wrote that he did not think Ceglia would pay him "at any point in the near future."In addition to losing patience with his late payments, Zuckerberg tells Ceglia's colleague in one email that StreetFax is not a very high priority for him, given that there are "many other things I'd like to, and have started to, work on.""I am at a school surrounded by some of the smartest people in the world, cultivating ideas and constantly coming up with projects to work on," he wrote in January 2004, just days before launching "Thefacebook," as it was then called. "The last thing I need right now is someone calling me twice a day asking if I've uploaded some small changes to a site that I made eight months ago ... My time is valuable, and seems better spent on things that I know, or at least can reasonably expect, will produce some sort of gratification in the near future."
abercrombie outletThe last email, from May 2004, shows the two men may have worked out a payment plan, where Ceglia would send $500 a month until his bill was paid in full. It's not clear if the payments were actually made.Ceglia's lawyers said that Ceglia deserves his day in court where a jury will decide the ownership dispute. The problems range from poor WiFi reception and WAN data plans that run through their monthly allocation in hours, to the very high temperature that the iPad operates at, which Consumer Reports says could cause burns if held for a long period — like, say, if a child were playing games. Let’s just say when I get an ad about a product that will make me longer and harder I’m not expecting to get an iron, yet this Apple appears to be designed to take the creases out of my private part. In short, for a device that typically is held for hours to consume online content, it sucks at being wireless — and it could burn you if used that way. Apple’s initial, and poorly thought through, response was “it is within spec,” which means that all of these problems were designed into the iPad. Maybe they are features intended to make us use the device less and get a life, but I doubt that was the intent.”The Consumer Reports study noted here did not say that the iPad could cause burns. Consumer Reports stated instead that “During our tests, I held the new iPad in my hands. When it was at its hottest, it felt very warm but not especially uncomfortable if held for a brief period.”