The Remote Administration Tool, or RAT, is the "revolver of the Internet's Wild West", says Nate Anderson in ArsTechnica. Put in simple terms, it's the tool increasingly being used (mostly by men) use to spy on people (mostly women; referred to in dedicated RAT forums as 'slaves') through their webcams, and access files on people's hard drives remotely.
India comes second only to the US in terms of the number of official requests the government made to Google for user details in 2012. The Indian government's number of daily requests during 2012 averaged at 13 - two thirds of which resulted in Google giving up at least some of the information requested.
Another Facebook study has produced new findings and theories on WHY people continue to share their personal details online, despite the possible negative consequences of doing so. The research found significant correlations between changes in Facebook's basic structure, and changes in how much personal information users are willing to share online.
A recent study has shown that your Facebook 'likes' can lead to surprisingly accurate estimates of your race, age, sexuality, IQ and other personal information.
Predictably, there have been different reactions to the research. In The Guardian, James Ball warns, "The new Facebook findings could, in essence, mark the innocuous beginnings of a tyranny of data".
(Bradley Manning. Image: http://boingboing.net/2013/03/12/leaked-audio-of-bradley-mannin.html)
"The Unlike Us Reader offers a critical examination of social media, bringing together theoretical essays, personal discussions, and artistic manifestos. How can we understand the social media we use everyday, or consciously choose not to use? We know very well that monopolies control social media, but what are the alternatives?". Find out, here.
In an article provocatively called "Who are the hackers? Profiling the masters of data disruption," the Guardian newspaper sets out to answer a tough question: When your PC is attacked, who is behind it? Focusing specifically on Denial of Service attacks, the article concludes that "Cybercriminals range from terrorists to 'hacktivists' and each has their own motives."
What is a secure server and do you have any secure servers near you? According to these stats from the world bank, a server is secure when it makes use of encryption technology. As for the second question, you can see how many secure servers there are in your country, per 1 million people.
A multinational security firm has secretly developed software capable of tracking people's movements and predicting future behaviour by mining data from social networking websites, says The Guardian. Dubbed a "Google for spies," the technology has already been shared with the US government as part of a "joint research and development effort in 2010".
An activist group has published evidence showing that significant proposed revisions to the data draft law currently being debated by the European Union are almost word-for-word the same as model legislation written by American and European corporate interests. The revelations have been met with opposition from a variety of sources.
