PC Test Bench

A Los Angeles computer security consultant was sentenced Wednesday to four years in federal prison for using spyware that turned thousands of computers into “zombies” so he could steal their owners’ identities.

John Schiefer, 27, admitted using “botnets” — armies of infected computers — to steal the identities of victims nationwide by extracting information from their personal computers and wiretapping their communications.

“This kind of conduct is actually far more devastating than assaulting a prison officer,” said U.S. District Judge A. Howard Matz, referring to the case heard just prior to Schiefer’s.

Matz said Schiefer had been employed “to protect people from this kind of conduct, yet he engaged in this kind of conduct.”

Schiefer and several unindicted associates developed and distributed a malicious computer code to vulnerable computers, then used to code to assemble armies of up to 250,000 infected computers, which they used to engage in a variety of identity theft schemes, prosecutors said.

In pleading guilty last April to computer fraud, Schiefer acknowledged installing malicious computer code, or “malware,” that acted as a wiretap on compromised computers.

The victims — unaware their computers had been turned into “zombies” — continued to use them to engage in commercial activities.

Schiefer used the malware, which he called a “spybot,” to intercept electronic communications being sent online from the zombie computers to PayPal and other Web sites, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

“There’s a pathology that society has to deal with,” Matz said. “There are people who want to display their prowess in Internet technology — but they screw up big time.”

Schiefer also admitted signing up as a consultant with a Dutch Internet advertising company in order to defraud it with his botnets.

He promised to install the company’s programs on computers only when the owners gave consent. Instead, Schiefer and two co-schemers installed that program on about 150,000 computers that were infected with their malware, prosecutors said.

Schiefer advised his associates to moderate the number of installations so it appeared they were legitimate and not the result of a malicious computer program that was propagating itself. The company eventually paid Schiefer more than $19,000.

Schiefer was a member of the “botnet underground” and the case was the first prosecution of its kind in the United States, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Along with the prison sentence, Matz ordered Schiefer to pay restitution of $19,000 to PayPal and other companies.

NBCLosAngeles.com

Microsoft said the upcoming public release candidate of Windows 7 will include the ability turn off Internet Explorer 8, which is the target of antitrust charges by the European Commission.

Jack Mayo, group program manager for the Windows 7 document and printing team, said in Microsoft’s Engineering Windows 7 blog that Microsoft wanted to give users more choice in turning off features without removing components that may be needed by developers and other applications.

“We want to provide choice while also making sure we do not compromise on compatibility by removing APIs provided for developers,” Mayo said. “We also want to strike the right balance for consumers in providing choice and balancing compatibility with applications and providing a consistent Windows experience.”

Mayo did not say when the Windows 7 Release Candidate would be publicly available. The final version of Windows 7 is expected by early next year. The OS was released in beta in January.

Mayo said the list of features that can be turned off was expanded, compared to what was available in Windows Vista. Besides IE 8, users can toggle on and off the Windows Media Player, Windows Media Center, Windows DVD Maker, Windows Search, handwriting recognition, Windows gadget platform, fax and scan, and the XPS viewer and services, including the virtual print driver.

Mayo did not mention Microsoft’s anti-trust troubles in the posting. Nevertheless, in early January, the European Commission formally objected to Microsoft bundling IE with Windows, saying it “undermines product innovation, and ultimately reduces consumer choice.” The action followed a late 2007 antitrust complaint filed with the EC by Norwegian Web browser maker Opera.

The governing body could require Microsoft to distribute Windows in the European Union without IE, or offer an installation screen that gives consumers a choice of which browser to install. It’s too soon to say whether Microsoft’s latest move will satisfy the EC. The software maker declined comment Friday.

Microsoft is giving Windows users the option to turn off IE at a time when the browser is slowly losing market share to Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari. From April 2008 to February of this year, IE’s share fell to 67.44% from 74.83%, according to Web metrics firms Net Applications. Firefox, on the other hand, grew to 21.77% from 17.76% and Safari to 8.02% from 5.81%.

By Antone Gonsalves
InformationWeek
March 6, 2009 02:20 PM

Here is an interview with some that works Digg to get top placement for money. Here is a quote… “

There are couple different ways I offer my services. If someone
wants me to submit an article without any promotions involved, I charge
anywhere between $300 – $500 depending on the quality of article. My
submissions grow pretty fast so most people do not opt for promotion.
For a submission and promotion I charge $700 irrespective of whether
the article is good or not. As you know a front page can never be
guaranteed.

These prices are irrespective of whether or not the article makes it
to the front page. If the article does make it to the front page there
is an additional charge of $500.”

Read the full interview  at invesp.com

From WebProNews:

Thursday, September 04, 2008

A top Digg user with a popular ratio of 34% has been getting paid well for
promoting articles on Digg. His/her popularity has allowed numerous stories to
reach the Digg Home Page, and when that happens he/she gets paid even more.

Editor’s Note:
It’s hard to imagine this is limited to Digg or even to the social media
umbrella. It’s even harder to distinguish how this differs from other
PR/marketing tactics like celebrity endorsement or message creation and
dissemination. The ethics road is a virtual quagmire of journalistic idealism

vs. economic realism; but no one is altering truth, just presenting a truthmore prominently.
An interview with this person (who wishes to remain anonymous; for the
purpose of this article, let’s call them “Digg Throat”), and provides
quite an interesting look into the behind-the-scenes world of Digg marketing
and social media marketing in general.

“I have worked for many popular blogs and I know most top users do,”
explains Digg Throat. “As of now I am involved with three blogs/companies
that I regularly help with social media promotion, especially on Digg. To put
it in short : my status and reach within the community allows me to help
businesses leverage their opportunities by reaching a different crowd and a
large crowd for that matter.”

Digg
Throat has been charging up to $700 per article for his/her promotion, and if a
particular item reaches Digg’s home page, he/she gets another $500. Now that’s
some easy money. Too bad it’s frowned upon by Digg, and Digg users alike.
However, paid promotion is just a fact of Digg. It’s not a surprise, and users
who have a real problem with it, will likely just find another site to read.
Besides, is this really that much different than paying PR staff to push your
message?

What is Digg to do though?

“Digg should strongly consider placing clearly labeled advertisements
within the news stories,” says
TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington. “Even as paid ads they’ll get a ton of
traffic and Digg can charge accordingly. TechMeme, a tiny site in comparison,
has done this successfully for some time. If Digg can’t stop its users from
making a little money on the side, they may as well get in on the game.”

Something like this could work for Digg. It could incorporate spots into ad
campaigns with existing clients like
YouTube allegedly does with its promoted videos. Digg users may not be too
enthusiastic about such a scenario though.

Something tells me Digg is going to be doing some investigating. They ought to
be able to at least narrow down the number of possible suspects for Digg
Throat’s identity. He/she may have wished to remain anonymous, but may have
still given enough information away for Digg to figure out who they are. This
may not do much to combat that problem of what some would refer to as
“Digg Spam”, but I’m sure they would like to at least get closer to
the bottom of it.

Comcast, one of the country’s largest Internet providers, said this week that it would place limits on customers’ broadband usage.

Beginning
Oct. 1, Comcast will put a 250 gigabyte-a-month cap on residential
users. The limit will not affect most users, at least not in the
short-term, but is certain to create tension as some technologies gain
traction.

A Comcast spokeswoman, Jennifer Khoury, said 250
gigabytes was about 100 times the typical usage; the average customer
uses two to three gigabytes a month. Less than 1 percent of customers
exceed the cap, she said.

Many Internet providers reserve the
right to cancel the service of the most excessive users. The
250-gigabyte cap is Comcast’s way of specifying a longstanding policy
of placing a limit on Internet consumption, and it comes after customer
pushed for a definition of excessive use.

But on the Internet, consumer behavior does not stand still. As the technology company Cisco stated in a report last winter, “today’s ‘bandwidth hog’ is tomorrow’s average user.”

Some
commentators were quick to characterize Comcast’s decision as having a
chilling effect. Om Malik, the founder of the technology Web site
GigaOm, called the cap “the end of the Internet as we know it.”

DSLReports.com,
a Web site about consumer broadband information, said it indicated “a
significant shift in the U.S. broadband market that won’t be
reversible.”

In recent months Comcast and other companies have
considered clamping down on their most active subscribers, saying the
limits were necessary to ensure fair access to the network for all.

Comcast’s
cap does not amount to Internet metering, the charging of different
prices for different broadband speeds or usage, but the change to
Comcast’s policy does not rule out metering in the future.

In June, Time Warner Cable
began a metering trial in one Texas city by offering various monthly
plans and charging extra when consumers exceeded their bandwidth limit.
AT&T
has said that it is considering a similar pricing plan. The concept is
not a foreign one; consumers already pay by usage for water and
electricity. But broadband access has seemed unlimited, and any
stifling of that is sure to concern some customers.

Until now,
Comcast had not defined excessive use, but it had contacted customers
who were using the heaviest amount of broadband and asked them to curb
usage. Most do so willingly, the company said. The ones who do not curb
their usage receive a second notice and risk having their accounts
terminated.

Although the 250 gigabyte cap is now specified, users
who exceed that amount will not have their access switched off
immediately, nor will they be charged for excessive use. Instead, the
customers may be contacted by Comcast and notified of the cap. The
company did not say how 250 gigabytes was selected.

According to
Comcast, a customer would have to download 62,500 songs or 125
standard-definition movies a month to exceed the caps. But
high-definition video and video gaming require a higher amount of
bandwidth. S. Derek Turner, the research director for the nonpartisan
media policy group Free Press, said broadband caps could create a
disincentive to view online video.

“As media companies put
content online, consumers can bypass the cable companies and get their
content directly from the Internet,” Mr. Turner said. “A 250 gigabyte
cap may seem very high — and it is for today’s Internet use. But it’s
essentially the equivalent of four hours of HD television a day.”

Critics
have charged that Internet providers are trying to protect their cable
TV and telephone businesses by stifling Internet access. Comcast says
Fancast, its online video Web site, will count against the 250 gigabyte
limit, but its digital voice service will not.

Comcast said there was no link between the caps, announced Thursday, and the Federal Communications Commission’s finding on Aug. 1 that the company was improperly inhibiting customers who used BitTorrent, a popular file-sharing program.

But
Andrew Jay Schwartzman, the president of the Media Access Project, said
the caps appeared to be a direct result of that finding. Mr.
Schwartzman’s group represented Free Press in its complaint against
Comcast about the file-sharing controls.