Darkest day of the internet age

A day without wikipedia...

Find out more about SOPA and PIPA on non other than wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative/Learn_more

Stop Online Piracy Act
The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), also known as House Bill 3261 or H.R. 3261, is a bill that was introduced in the United States House of Representatives on October 26, 2011, by House Judiciary Committee Chair Representative Lamar S. Smith (R-TX) and a bipartisan group of 12 initial co-sponsors. The bill, if made law, would expand the ability of U.S. law enforcement and copyright holders to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods. Presented to the House Judiciary Committee, it builds on the similar PRO-IP Act of 2008 and the corresponding Senate bill, the PROTECT IP Act.

PROTECT IP Act
The PROTECT IP Act (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011 or PIPA), also known as Senate Bill 968 or S. 968, is a proposed law with the stated goal of giving the US government and copyright holders additional tools to curb access to "rogue websites dedicated to infringing or counterfeit goods", especially those registered outside the U.S. The bill was introduced on May 12, 2011, by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and 11 bipartisan co-sponsors. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that implementation of the bill would cost the federal government $47 million through 2016, to cover enforcement costs and the hiring and training of 22 new special agents and 26 support staff. The Senate Judiciary Committee passed the bill, but Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) placed a hold on it.

Of course lauyee will always have his own view on this kind of matter but is too busy to put in my input. Stay tune for the lauyeelosophied version!

Update 25/1/2012:
Living in Malaysia, SOPA and PIPA does not directly affect me at all, however, US is one of the largest internet content provider for the time being. At least, they have done a great job in internet content aggregation. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, FMyLife, 9gag among others bring us massive amount of user generated content which some I find useful or amusing at the very least.

I love music. Frankly, do I buy from the internet? Not at all. Am I a net-pirate? Sure am! I was one of the proud user of Napster, back in the days when I was still using a 56kbps dial up. To be even more despiteful, I'm a leecher,   one who only download but never seed. However as time goes by, then come the broadband age in Malaysia, I find it easier to just stream it from site like LastFM and YouTube. The buffering is annoying for sure, but the pop song that doesn't even last the test of time doesn't deserve a permanent sector in my hard disk.

There is no doubt that intellectual property should be protected. That is if the property is actually showing intellectual value, sadly a lot of the content being sold on the internet simply doesn't bear the value of their price tag. Take music for example, US$1.29 for a song on iTune music store, one which I see one years down the road, I'd most probably forget about. Why should I even pay for that when I can easily get it for free somewhere else? SOPA will proudly say that, that's their whole purpose, so, now even if I couldn't get it for free somewhere else, I wouldn't even bother. I'd just listen to the radio! You can't stop me from using a tape recorder if I really like that song and doesn't want to pay for it.

Let's see, the bill is proposed because there are people who share or distribute intellectual property of other people on the internet, hurting the economic creativity. Why not do some reverse thinking, in economic down time like as is, people are cautious with their money, least they should be. If we found something we really appreciate and we like it so much, that's where our money go, or at the very least, the marketing company is doing a very good job in packaging the product to entice you on buying it. On such a platform, it increase competitiveness and in such an open market, may the best person win. It open up possibility for distribution channel, distributed content and most important of all, to grab the attention and interest of the buyer. This process automatically filter out those contents which the internet community at large doesn't see the commercial value of such so called intellectual property. In a way, it's a test to see how intelligent your property is.

Which is exactly why I don't charge royalties on what I'm writing here. You willing to read to this line is already a great motivation for me, if you leave a comment, that's superb, if you click on any of the related ads, even better. If you want to quote, and not credit me, well maybe what I'm writing is just not that valuable or intelligent. So if I really want to make money as an author, maybe I should put in much more effort and be more creative. This is the platform that a free, un(maybe slightly)censored internet open up for me. Don't take this away.

Malware Ungeekified: A layman perspective

Malware, short for malicious software, consists of programming (code, scripts, active content, and other software) designed to disrupt or deny operation, gather information that leads to loss of privacy or exploitation, gain unauthorized access to system resources, and other abusive behavior. The expression is a general term used by computer professionals to mean a variety of forms of hostile, intrusive, or annoying software or program code.

- source: Malware

In short, virus, worms, trojan, adware, spyware and other exploits are all a form of malware, however, most people simply refer everything as virus. They are given different names due to their infection and concealment methods further sub divided with their exploitation methods. A malware even under the same subdivision may have different purposes, for example a spyware may be coded to spy on a specific activities that you're doing on your computer, website that you're visiting and then propose to you pop-up advertisement that you are more likely interested in.

Before moving further, keep this simple thing in mind, the purpose of the malware maybe different. They may also be a mix and match of different infection and concealment technique. They may also use different concealment technique while infiltrating different stage of the system. They can also be custom made to intrude a certain device, system or individual, depending on the purpose of the hacker. In short, they can take any form as their designer wish. Also bear in mind that unless the malware is infecting a lot of people and gain popularity, else a specific removal guide is hardly available.

Infection Method
Virus and Worms are perhaps the best-known type of malware by their infection method.


Virus embed or disguise itself as an executable software, which upon running the program spread to other software or devices.
Worm however transmit itself actively, over a network, and may infect thumb drive, external hard disks and any devices that come into contact with that device. The method of infection may be different from worm to worm.

These infectious malware may carry codes that may alter and delete files, or perform other destructive activity. They may also combine itself with other malware perform a hack and gain access to the device.


Concealment Method
These sly programmers who created the malware must find a smart way to conceal themselves so that one would run them and they must also avoid the detection of various antivirus to make their plan works.


Trojan Horse
From the old Greek myth of the Trojan war, when the Greeks wars with the Trojan and try to intrude their unbeatable the city of Troy. After 10 fruitless years to siege the city, they hid 30 strong soldiers in a huge wooden horse, and pretend to sail away. The Trojans took the horse back into the city as trophy not knowing that there are Greeks hiding inside. In the dark of the night, the Greeks sail back and with the help of the soldiers already in the city wall end the war with a victory. Trojan horse conceal themselves in similar manner, they pose themselves as fancy or helpful software that is desirable but upon installing grant remote access to the hacker. The hacker might then use their access to perform activities like:

• Use of the machine as part of a botnet (e.g. to perform automated spamming or to distribute Denial-of-service attacks)
• Data theft (e.g. retrieving passwords or credit card information)
• Installation of software, including third-party malware
• Downloading or uploading of files on the user's computer
• Modification or deletion of files
• Keystroke logging
• Watching the user's screen
• Crashing the computer
• Anonymizing internet viewing

Rootkit
This concealment method is perhaps the hardest to detect and removed. They disguise themselves as root (a privileged access) which is invisible even from the administrator. They are primarily used to steal sensitive information by circumventing normal authentication and authorization mechanisms. Due to their high permission level, they may alter the detection measures installed on the computer and effectively conceal themselves, or worse, regenerate/resurrect themselves after deletion. The "perfect rootkit" can be thought of as similar to a "perfect crime": one that nobody realizes has taken place.


Backdoor
Backdoor as the name suggest, opens a backdoor and invite unwanted guest into your system. Ever received any email from your friend that doesn't make sense and contain a link? That's probably a computer worms which install backdoor on the affected computer so that spammer can send junk mail from infected machines. Opening of backdoor can be made through various methods.

Common Known Malicious Software Classes
There's a huge library of malicious software, some infecting more people, while some targeting a specific group or individual. With social networking becoming common, it opens up new avenue for the hackers to spread their malware. Some of them smartly disguised themselves among the news feed/stream to prey on unsuspecting targets.

Adware are primarily use to generate pop up ads, like in Windows Live Messenger, Skype, ICQ, Movie streaming software or applications. Although it's commonly available now on legitimate software some still consider them intrusive, and in the part of the world where they are getting slow internet speed, it's a waste of resources to load those ads. They are usually more towards annoying but and not harmful.

Spyware as the namesake, are software which spy on your device activities and report it back to the attacker. They collect small bit and pieces about you without you even noticing. Some of them are more harmful and some of them just want to monitor your activities to study you and recommend you to advertisement that you might be interested.

Botnet is rather a collection of compromised devices connecting via the internet to perform malicious act without the knowledge of the device owner.

Most of the malware have straight forward class name performing as the name suggest, Key logger keep a log (record) of your key stroke, and then rearrange them to find out what you typed. Dialer are rather old school, mainly used during the dial-up connection era, they will ask you to dial a connection to their premium rate call line much like the 600-xx-xxxx number in Malaysia. Browser Hi-Jack will hi-jack your browser, altering from the default browser search engine, to redirecting the search result to an ads page.


Alas, this is a simple summary showing the relationship between malware:

Of course in actual case they are way more complex than this, but this is the ungeekified version so I try to simplify things that are confusing. If you are still confused as you read, do put them down in comment so I can alter or elaborate further.

When it comes to malware it's better to be safe than sorry, don't be tempted by fancy software, and make sure you read their reviews before installing them. You will never know what's coming together with it, and while installing, read along the installation process carefully, they might ask you to download additional toolbar, adware or spyware that you want to avoid. Always remember that although curiosity is an important key to help self improvement, one should be vigilant to the dangers on the cyberspace. These malware usually spread in a certain pattern, if there's something that you received from your friend especially via apps that doesn't seems normal, please remove or ignore it. Do not attempt to comment on it or like/+1 it.

Related read:
Wikipedia: Malware
Internet irritations and dangers
2-Spyware
Avira Virus Lab


P/S: usually the -ware suffix is referring to software. Well I think I should waste such a well written article that I wrote for someone I care about. Now that she couldn't see the real world anymore I really couldn't convince her anyway.