Cybercrime | Krypton Radio

Anonymous Retaliates: Activism or Vandalism?

Corsair's Chronicles, Cybercrime, Net Culture, Politics 3 Responses »

Jan 262013

Editorial By Vagabond 'Tony' Carter

Users of the Anonymous meme are at it again it seems, targeting the U.S. Sentencing Commission website in a show of support and outrage over the trial and subsequent suicide of computer scientist and hacktivist Aaron Swartz.

The defacement claims that with Aaron’s death ”a line was crossed.”, and that they’ve infiltrated several government computer systems and copied secret information that they now threaten to make public. The Department of Justice has yet, as of this writing, to issue a statement (as of this moment the site appears also to be down).

This leads me to wonder a few things, much of which is the same thing that runs through my mind every time someone puts on a virtual anonymous mask and commits a crime of this nature, and yes, this was a criminal act.

Do you honestly think this somehow helps?

While I agree that Aaron’s being charged as a criminal for a violation of a company’s Terms of Service was a travesty of justice and that his death was and is an absolute tragedy. How does actually breaking the law in any way help the cause of an innocent man, whose trial was never completed and who may have even been acquitted had he lived?

As I’ve said many times before: I agree with the sentiment, but not the method. Acts like this do nothing to aide the cause and only drag the names of the true victims, in this case Aaron Swartz, in the mud. A line was crossed alright – by the Anonymous meme user or users responsible for this act of vandalism.

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Death Of Internet Activist Aaron Swartz Prompts Introduction Of “Aaron’s Law”

Corsair's Chronicles, Cybercrime, Net Culture, Politics No Responses »

Jan 192013

Editorial by Vagabond ‘Tony’ Carter

With the suicide of RSS creator, Reddit Co-founder, and internet freedom activist Aaron Swartz making headlines, Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren(D.) has introduced a draft bill to return contract law to its civil home. Her bill which would amend 18 USC § 1030 with what she calls “Aaron’s Law,” and would limit the scope of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and exclude terms of service violations, which are nothing more than a breach of contract.

Lofgren who is a dedicated user of the Reddit social media site, reached out to fellow users on January 15, 2013 to ask for public support of her bill. The proposed amendments however do not take away from the stiff criminal penalties for those who forcibly gain access and under false pretense, or who share/leak data for malicious purposes.

In the case of Aaron Swartz, he had full and legal access to JSTOR files, but used a program to rapidly download a large number of academic articles to his laptop. This may have been a violation of JSTORs EULA/TOS, but that’s all he did. Swartz who had been accused of hacking the JSTOR system by prosecutors, was alleged to have downloaded the files with intent to illegally distribute copyrighted material.

Although no files ever made it out to the public, nor was there proof he intended to do anything more than have a local backup for personal use. Yet under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, (originally written in 1984 and updated over the years) Swartz was being tried in a criminal case on felony charges, which could have carried a lengthy prison term and massive financial penalties, if convicted.

The stress of this led to his eventual suicide on January 11, 2013.
Continue reading »

A Dark Knight Rises In Petaluma, California

Business, Charity, Comics, Community, Cybercrime, Hero Community, League of Heroes (LoH), Real Life Superheroes No Responses »

Jan 112013

The Petaluma Batman – his real life identity is a closely guarded secret, known only to a trusted few.

A 19-year-old college student in Petaluma, California has taken up the iconic identity of the Dark Knight. Cloaked in a disguise he made himself and shielded by the cover of darkness, he roams the streets of downtown Petaluma keeping an eye out for trouble.

He often elicits cheers and high-fives from residents familiar with his mission of inspiring good will. “I truly believe that anyone can be a hero,” said the 19-year-old to reporter Janelle Wetzstein in an interview. “There’s a lot of tough stuff going on around the world, so I wanted to do something to boost people’s morale.”

Petaluma Batman who wished to keep his identity a secret to protect his family’s privacy, has become a Facebook sensation almost overnight. He created a Facebook profile on Dec. 22 just to see how many Petalumans would “Like” his page. Within days, his page had more than 2,700 followers. He has already made a radio appearance, is recognized all over town by random passersby and has exploded on social media with the city taking note.

He’s a typical college student by day, attending Petaluma’s Santa Rosa Junior College campus. He then sits through business courses all morning before heading to his job at a local golf course. But as the sun sets, the student sheds his normal life and adopts the persona of Petaluma Batman. Even though he patrols the streets and bears the markings of a crime fighter, Petaluma Batman says that’s not his role.

“I am in no way trying to get in front of the police or trained law enforcement at all. They keep a tight lock on everything,” he said. “I’m not trying to stop crime personally. If I see something going on, I’ll let the trained authorities know, rather than take justice into my own hands.”

Regular people dressing up like superheroes is not a new phenomenon. They’ve cropped up from Seattle, Wash. to Bar Harbor, Maine, sometimes causing issues for actual law enforcement. For instance, in Seattle, a 10-member costumed crew attempts to prevent crime led by a man called Phoenix Jones, who reported being stabbed while trying to intervene during a fight between a known drug dealer and a citizen.

Petaluma’s very own caped crusader has attained a bit of celebrity with local law enforcement, but so far they’ve been nothing but supportive.

Even City Council member Gabe Kearney has caught Petaluma Batman fever, following his Facebook page and watching his videos.

“I think that anyone trying to help the community is a good thing,” said Kearney. “To do it while bringing some comedic relief is an added bonus.”

Petaluma Batman says he gets the thumbs up from local officers when he patrols the streets. As his fame spreads, he says he is hoping to host some charity events including city cleanup days, and some events for a local theater. He already volunteers — out of costume — with the Special Olympics. Most of all, he’s hoping to strike a positive note in Petaluma.

“When I’m not in my Petaluma Batman costume, I hear people talking about me a lot,” he said. “It’s weird, but I’m glad that I have been able to entertain people and lift their spirits. I just want to inspire some good will.”

The Petaluma Batman is not the first real life superhero – one of the more notable ones being Phoenix Jones of Seattle - but his positive approach is helping to redefine how people think of costumed heroes walking amongst us.

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Krypton Radio is hiring for freelance writers

Activities, Animation, Awards, Babylon 5, Books, Business, Charity, Codenamed: Epic, Comics, Community, Conventions, Corsair's Chronicles, Cybercrime, Doctor Who, Editorials, Events, Fan Films, Fanboy Comics, Fandom, Fantasy / Horror, Firefly, Games, Gary DaBaum!, Hero Community, Internet, Interviews, League of Heroes (LoH), Lord of the Rings, Machinema, Marvel / DC, Mobile Devices, Movie Reviews, Movies, Music, Net Culture, New Second Life Resident Education, Politics, Promotions, Quantum Physics, Radio Serials, Real Life Heroes, Real Life Superheroes, Satire, Sci / Tech, Science Fiction, Space Command, Space Sciences, Special Reports, Star Trek, Star Wars, Stark Reality, Steam Powered Cabaret, Steampunk, Stolen Droids, Superhero, Swingtastic!, Television, The Corsair's Closet, Theater, Toys, TV Campfire, Uncategorized, Video Of the Day, Web Series No Responses »

Dec 132012

Krypton Radio Human Resources Office

Job Posting Announcement: KRW1-DEC2012 | Freelance Writer

Job Overview

Company:	Krypton Media Group d.b.a: Krypton Radio http://kryptonradio.com	Required Education:	The ability to read, but Masters in English Literature preferred.
Job Type:	Journalism Reporting on Current Events Being nosy	Required Experience:	The ability to write, spell correctly, and use proper grammar.
Base Pay:	The admiration of your friends and random strangers on the internet.	Required Travel:	Only as far as you want to go.
Other Pay:		Location:	The Internet (Map it!)
Employee Type:	Part-Time
Manages Others:	No
Relocation Covered:	No
Industry:	Radio Broadcasting Internet Media News Agencies
Reference ID:	KRW1-DEC2012

Job Description:

Are you looking to develop your career in journalism? If you love superheroes, comic books, science fiction, steampunk, fantasy, gaming, internet radio stations, shiny pieces of metal, sniffing strange objects, getting just the facts on stories, scooping other news outlets on major stories, rescuing damsels in distress, blowing up small towns in the Nevada desert, cackling evilly, wearing tight revealing spandex pants, chest hair, Doctor Who, Star Trek, Star Wars, X-Men, K-9, being a xenophobic weirdo, polishing the Death Star, skydiving, scuba diving, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, horseshoes, Twilight Sparkle, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, Rarity, Apple Jack, Princess Celestia, Spike, plotting to take over the world, building elaborate underwater bases, turning water into wine, drinking mudders milk, wearing browncoats, laying shipwrecked and comatose drinking fresh mango juice with goldfish shoals nibbling at my toes, having fun, fun, fun, In the sun, sun, sun, becoming overlord of the world, interstellar domination, mind melding with dogs, laughing at cats, drink the last bit of milk in the fridge, and thinking no one will notice?

The check into becoming a Freelance Writer. Krypton Radio is one of the fastest growing internet radio stations in the Milky Way Galaxy, with more than 3,000 fans on Facebook and admirers in many Earth countries. We offer tremendous career growth opportunities for our employees that get results.

But wait! There’s more! Continue reading »

Security flaw in Internet Explorer allows tracking of mouse movements

Business, Community, Cybercrime, Internet, Net Culture, Sci / Tech No Responses »

Dec 132012

A public service message to users of Internet Explorer

Krypton Radio Tech News Service

Using Internet Explorer may put you at risk of having data you enter into websites be compromised. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) is the default web browser that comes with windows and for those who don’t care a lot about performance or extra options it’s a decent workhorse of a browser, but as tech experts have discovered it has a major security hole that can allow those with malicious intent to track your mouse cursor.

Spider.IO a security group reported back in October that they had discovered a programming issue with Internet Explorer versions 6-10 that allowed those with the know-how to record your mouse movements via websites ad banners even if you have your browser downsized. Microsoft has stated to news sources, that they are investigating the issue but have no reports of anyone being currently affected by it.

You may think that’s not a big deal, some random website watching your mouse cursor fly about the screen, but it actually is. While you may not realize it, you do a lot of data entry with your mouse. Clicking on screen options and if you use programs like Skype, someone could possibly record the phone numbers you click in with your mouse.

There are those who use what are called Virtual Keyboards, which is what many people have on their smartphones. An on-screen keyboard to enter information. There are many who use virtual keyboards on their main computers as well, as a way to defeat keyloggers which may have infected a website. Virtual keyboards are used to enter sensitive date like credit card numbers and anything else you may be concerned about getting tracked via your normal keyboard. With the security flaw in IE, it would be possible to track the mouse movements on the virtual keyboard and still record information entered into it.

Basically a keylogger is a program which records what buttons you press on your keyboard, and can playback those keystrokes in order to disclose passwords or other sensitive information.

Recently a demonstration was put out to help illustrate how the tracking of your mouse movements work when using a virtual keyboard. In this video produced by Nick Johnson, we see a side by side comparison of how the mouse is tracked click-typing in Skype while the IE window is downsized.

As a matter of personal preference for better security and speed, most KR staffers recommend either Google’s Chrome or Mozilla’s Firefox browsers.

For general internet safety we strongly recommend using your Windows update feature to download the latest security fixes, and always remember to frequently update all programs on your computer, especially ones integrated into your browser that tend to be targeted by malicious code on a regular basis.

The big three browser extensions be hit with attacks are Java, Flash/Shockwave, and PDF (Adobe Reader). If you don’t update your computer regularly and don’t even know where to start looking, we can’t recommend enough that you explore FileHippo.

FileHippo has a great little utility you can download and it’ll scan your computer to let you know what third party programs like Java need to be updated, and will even let you download the latest updates directly from their site.

We’re not saying you should assume that your data has already been recorded or tracked maliciously due to the flaw, but since the exploit is out there, it’s better to be safe than sorry and go ahead and just use a different browser for now.

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Holiday Online Safety Tips: Passwords & Scams

Business, Community, Corsair's Chronicles, Cybercrime, Net Culture No Responses »

Dec 062012

Tis the season to get ready for online scams

By Senior Editor PK

Most people who read our website are already fairly tech-savvy, but I know there’s a few who are probably in need of a refresher course on those little things out there that can let cyber-criminals ruin your day in more ways than one.

If you happen to be one of the net’s newer denizens, my hope is you’ll take some advice from an old fogey who has seen his share of newcomers get taken advantage of.

This holiday season you may see an increase in the number of emails you get, especially from online retailers and more importantly from people pretending to be those online retailers and who are trying to steal your information through phishing scams.

Over the years friends and family have called me in a panic, saying that their email or other online account has been hacked. To say that your account has been hacked is many times somewhat of a misnomer. The purest use of the word hacked is to use a program or other method to exploit a security loophole in a system and then brute force breach it with multiple computers working together for the purposes of obtaining data/information that is supposed to be kept private.

The issues with email and just any online account being broken into are very intertwined with crimes called phishing scams.

Many people have heard of phishing scams and know that the Nigerian Prince who contacted you via e-mail saying you’ve won money is full of bologna. By the way, my email spam folder is so full of Canadian Viagra advertisements that it should be able to stand at attention and salute, well ok, maybe not the best mental imagery but you understand.

“Phishing is the act of attempting to acquire information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details (and sometimes, indirectly, money) by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Communications purporting to be from popular social web sites, auction sites, online payment processors or IT administrators are commonly used to lure the unsuspecting public.” – Wikipedia

GoDaddy Gone As Anonymous Attacks

Corsair's Chronicles, Cybercrime, Net Culture No Responses »

Sep 102012

Dumpster Knights of LulzSec

UPDATE

After all the chest thumping and a public game of political dodgeball by Anonymous, it turns out that the whole thing was akin to GoDaddy accidentally tripping over the power cord.

“The service outage was not caused by external influences. It was not a ‘hack’ and it was not a denial of service attack (DDoS),” interim CEO Scott Wagner said in an e-mailed statement. “We have determined the service outage was due to a series of internal network events that corrupted router data tables.”

A router is a device that takes internet data packets, consults a map of which physical piece of hardware is currently using a given internet address, and uses that to send the data on its way. If a router table is corrupt, data either goes to the wrong place or simply doesn’t go anywhere. Somewhere, something that was supposed to update the router’s table of addresses wrote garbage into the routers instead.

The outage knocked internet services offline for a large number of GoDaddy customers between about 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. Pacific yesterday.

Anonymous Claims Responsibility While Simultaneously Denying It

GoDaddy went dark today, apparently due to a denial of service attack launched by a person claiming to be a supporter of “Anonymous”, the cybergang being pursued by law enforcement officials all over the planet for similar acts. The alleged attack took out much of GoDaddy, its name servers and many of the web sites belonging to its 10.5 million customers – including, ironically, eBaum’s World, a low-brow internet humor site and known hangout of Anonymous.

“We’re aware of the issues affecting our site,” Elizabeth Driscoll, a GoDaddy spokeswoman, said. “We’re still working to figure out what happened and determine the number of Web sites impacted.”

More Than Runes Stolen From ‘Torchlight’ By ‘Armed Heroes Online’

Cybercrime, Games, Net Culture No Responses »

Jul 182012

Characters from Runic Games' 'TORCHLIGHT'

Runic Games claims that nearly identical character models and sound files constitutes more than just “inspiration.”

Characters from Runic Games’ ‘TORCHLIGHT’

"Armed Heroes" and "Torchlight" asset similarities

“This took only a few minutes of random snapshots from Armed Heroes video – notice anything? This is a TINY sample. pic.twitter.com/IH80z9Ko“. One or two look different enough to pass, but most of them look just copied and touched up a bit, or just plain copied. This looks like a slam dunk for Runic Games as far as we can see. – ed.

According to Torchlight developer Runic Games, their game assets have been stolen wholesale and used in the new mobile MMO Armed Heroes Online.

The game, made by Beijing developer EGLS and released on the Canada app store early July, differs in gameplay from Torchlight – but it’s the actual art and sounds in the game that prompted Runic Games’ Co-founder Travis Baldree to call out the company on Twitter last weekend. He took several snapshots from the new game and made a paste-up sheet showing the similarities between the two games, claiming that the games’ similarities go beyond stylistic choice. You can see that picture to the right. In the tweet, Baldree says, “This took only a few minutes of random snapshots from Armed Heroes video – notice anything? This is a TINY sample. pic.twitter.com/IH80z9Ko“.

In response, EGLS is bobbing and weaving. Serena Zhang of EGLS completely denies Baldree’s accusations, claiming that similarities come from the team members taking “inspirations from other games and movies”. Zhang also compared the protagonists of the two games, pointing out that the models do not match exactly. For example, the Wizard protagonist in Armed Heroes Online is female, while Torchlight‘s Alchemist is male. However, the similarities are so great that in some cases, it looks like they took the models and did a slight repaint of them and stuck them in.

Baldree responded by pointing out that the sound files packaged with Armed Heroes Online share filenames – including typos and unique monster names – with Torchlight. “I have no problem with inspiration,”, he said. “We are obviously inspired by Diablo, and make no bones about it. But we don’t include any Diablo artwork or sounds in our game.” He then posted two more comparison shots using the models Zhang used in the original post, again showing eerie similarities with Torchlight. It’s pretty much like what the image you see on our page demonstrates, and it looks pretty cut and dried.

It’s been asked why Runic Games hasn’t gone to the courts yet – the answer is, of course, that legal fees alone can kill a company. At this level it costs $15 thousand just to call your attorney and say “batter up!” Then there’s the fact that the alleged thieves in this case are in China, where Runic Games’ rights aren’t necessarily recognized. Instead, Runic is trying to get Apple to intervene directly by getting them to remove Armed Heroes Online from the App Store.

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