The goal here is simple: do an awareness campaign for How-to-hide-ip readers when it comes to their privacy on the $10 billion social network called facebook.

The tool we’re going to cover here is FBpwn . If you want to know more about the tool, its development as well as ways to contact the developers, then you’re free to check their website.

So what is Facebook Profile?

In fact, it’s a Java-based program that claims itself as a social engineering platform. It can be used on different platforms, and is released under GPL v3 license. Simply said, everyone can copy, modify and distribute it: so expect a lot of your friends using this application so as to make some jokes, or so as to pick some of your photos.

How does it work?

Once installed on the “hacker’s” computer, FBpwn would send some friend request to a list of FB friends. The same program then checks for those who have accepted the friend requests. Once someone accept the friend request, then FBpwn pumps all the datas it can from each of those friend’s profile: all their information,photos and friend list to a local folder

Quoting the official page of FBpwn, this is how the system works:

Typically, first you create a new blank account for the purpose of the test. Then, the friending plugin works first, by adding all the friends of the victim (to have some common friends). Then the clonning plugin asks you to choose one of the victims friends. The cloning plugin clones only the display picture and the display name of the chosen friend of victim and set it to the authenticated account. Afterwards, a friend request is sent to the victim’s account. The dumper polls waiting for the friend to accept. As soon as the victim accepts the friend request, the dumper starts to save all accessable HTML pages (info, images, tags, …etc) for offline examining.

After a a few minutes, probably the victim will unfriend the fake account after he/she figures out it’s a fake, but probably it’s too late! 

Caveats

As a facebook user, you may wonder how you can be protected from such private data pumping? In fact, most facebook users have adopted an approach where they don’t accept friend requests from people they don’t know. Well, it may help on some situations, but if one of those accounts is using FBPwn, then that precaution doesn’t help.

And as you would have noticed, FBpwn even goes further by friending some of your friends so that when you receive a friend request, facebook would show you the common friends you have – this gives you some ” confidence” that this may be a ” good” connection: which is totally a scam, but you’ll only discover it later on – if you’ll ever discover it.

Keep in mind: the purpose of this program is to do a proof of concept. How would you fight against it? That’s another story that probably need some help from Facebook. Anyway, as I always said: never trust that things you post/share on Facebook are private.

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How to Dump Your Friend’s Facebook Profile and “private” Data?

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So let’s highlight few items that are worth mentioning. You’ll probably skip this article, as you’ve surely skipped Google’s e-mail announcing the update on the privacy policy: indeed, why would you spend three minutes reading a too “bureaucratic” writing?

- Well, it’ll only be effective on March 1st 2012 so you may say you still have time. But you can’t say you haven’t been warned should you have any concerns about this move, so it’s your call. Oh, and in case you think you have enough power to get Google reconsidering this move, well, there’s no way top opt-out from a privacy policy except not using Google services anymore.

- Users can customize their privacy settings. This reminds me of one article I once read where one big guy (I can’t remember who it was, was it Steve Jobs?) who said that Google is becoming the next Microsoft (and facebook IMHO). Leaving to the user the choice to configure his own privacy settings is like asking someone who’s never been to a kitchen to cook the diner for tonight while leaving all the ingredients on the table: it just doesn’t work. Have you seen how people react to the multiple Facebook privacy updates? People had enough, and a lot (including me) is considering that facebook just can’t secure any private informations.

So, yes, there doesn’t seem to be an emergency in this Google privacy update, what it actually does is that Google is informing you that they will integrate a lot of the informations he has about you in order to improve your experience.

By the way, in case you are still wondering, one report have evaluated that our private informations that Google holds is worth between $50 to $5000 per year to all kind of marketers. So yes, most of Google services we use are free but there’s a price to pay. Remember what I told about the new “SSL feature” on Google searches? Stats about incoming searches to your sites would be invisible to you as a website owner, but they will be available to Google Adwords advertisers.

Given that users behaviour are the main assets of sites like Google and Facebook, I expect a drastic revamping of this “internet privacy” issue in the coming months (especially since there’s also a very active lobbying for/against bills and acts like SOPA, PIPA and ACTA on the way).

So get back to reading that Google privacy , do yourself a favor and check it in order to identify things that matter to you. Quoting the policy:

“ Tailored for you

If you’re signed into Google, we can do things like suggest search queries – or tailor your search results – based on the interests you’ve expressed in Google+, Gmail, and YouTube. We’ll better understand which version of Pink or Jaguar you’re searching for and get you those results faster. “ 

But then, there’s that little note that is worth mentioning:

“And we’ll never sell your personal information or share it without your permission (other than rare circumstances like valid legal requests).”

Hmmm, what’s your view? Do you think there’s any kind of threat in this change? Or do you think that Google already has a lot informations about you and that this move is just “publicly confirming” that they’ll be using it in a condensed way?

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Google’s Plan with Their New Privacy Policy

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Apart from hacking paid online catalogs and making it available for free download via torrent, the #OpMegaupload is also targeting strategic corporate and government websites in different countries of the world. Most of the times, they target the department of Justice. But one attack that is worth mentioning is the recent one the geared toward the FTC-related corporate wabsite called OnGuarOnline.gov. According to it definition,

"OnGuardOnline.gov, a partnership of fourteen federal agencies managed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)"

As of today, if we browse that website, it shows a clear sign that it has been tampered by the Anonymous

Having your own website tampered and showing something else is one big issue (especially when your core job is related to internet). But more importantly, when those hackers publish the list of users/e-mail address as well as the hashed password on the same page – that’s horrifying.

In fact, anyone with some knowledge of Unix and that has some interest in cracking password would surely be playing with those passwords as of now trying to figure out the actual password, just for the sake of being able to say “I did it”.

When you see from the list some nickname like “FTC admin”, I can guess that the hunt for cracking passwords would become even more interesting. And since there’s a lot of tools available online for cracking password (even if most of them are doing some “brute-force” cracking), it’s  more than sure that those passwords are going to be cracked in the next few hours. I guess those guys would have changed their passwords as well as put in place some more security measures.

Interestingly, the attacks are getting more and more subtle: first it was about attacking via DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) where the goal was to flood one server so that it can’t handle requests anymore. Then, they cracked online catalog and put all the content available for free – well, it’s similar as being the modern Robin Hood. Now, not only do the attackers replace the website’s content, but they also publish private information of the users on this server.

So far, it has been reported that websites has been attacked. But if we want to be paranoid, what do actually prevent hackers from cracking bank informations as well as other private data? As it is with most movements, it is expected that some guys would want to branch out from the original goals and try to turn it to their own profit. And bank accounts are a very promising targets. Let’s hope I’m wrong.

Now the question is, as a regular user of technology: how safe do you feel as of now? Do you think your private data is at risk? While most of the attacks has targeted public websites, do you think that this would get more trickier and attack some more corporate applications?

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How Would You Feel If Your Passwords Were Published Online?

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I would say those are genuine files (if it weren’t then you know how to scour the internet looking for feedbacks from people who actually downloaded them). From the time of writing this article, the torrent files were still alive. And due to the conception of torrents, I would expect that this breach has already given the opportunity to hackers and pirates to download whatever they could then share it to the whole internet in a distributed peer-to-peer manner. Which means that even if Sony can technically recover the security breach and close its catalog (or at least bring it back to the normal situation where people would have to buy first before being able to download legal files).

I know you are expecting me to share with you the links for doing so: to be frank with you, I won’t do that. But since it’s very easy to find this out via some search on the internet, I guess you can do it by yourself. For the purpose of writing this article, I just took a sneak peak on what was made available on one of the torrent files so that I can give a more fact-checked information to how-to-hide-ip.info readers.

Would you download Sony Music for free?

But back to the question I raised as the title of this article which is “Would you download Sony Music for Free?” – my answer is straight simple: I won’t, and I didn’t in fact. Now you may be curious why I won’t?

Well let’s take a step back first.

As of today, I’m taking for granted that there’s a high number of servers that has been hacked. And if we consider that there’s also a lot of computers from the internet that has been infected so as to contribute to making those attack a “success”, then there’s a high risk that this issue is going to get worse for the next days. This will also mean that hundred of millions of dollars (if not billions) would account for lost sales from big companies and they would want to recover it in one way or another. Can you evaluate how much is the Sony’s music catalog worth? Since the nature of the distribution of the hacked music catalog relies on peer-to-peer (torrent) system, then I can see the legal  unit of Sony trying to sue every internet user who would have downloaded those files. Remember, whatever you do on the internet can be tracked in one way or another (especially if you are not as good as the hackers who can create a lot of “untraceable” links from where they can harm whatever system they want).

I can imagine guys from iTunes and AmazonMP3 (as well as other online platforms that allow legal download of music) that can’t sleep anymore since this Sony “open” catalog issue has its way to making part of history, they would think that they can be the next target. On the other hand, I can also imagine a lot of internet users and pirates who are always following the #OpMegaupload hashtag waiting for the next attack where they could profit from it.

Now you know my stand: I truly am amazed how good Anonymous guys can be. They have shown o the world how fragile internet systems can be. And so as to ironically demonstrate it: they have put online for free download Sony’s artist creations. They’ve made a point.

But now, for us internet users, it’s another question to ask if we want to download those files. I’ve made my choice, what’s yours?

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Would You Download Sony Music for Free?

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We all have heard it : the popular file-sharing platform megaupload.com has been brought down, a ripost from a group called The Anonymous meant to attack major French websites as a follow-up to their #OpMegaupload campaign.

In fact, while I coined (well I think so) the word “World Web War” as I imagined the scenario of the next Hollywood movie that will deal with SOPA, it is now certain that reality goes far beyond my imagination.

Now the collateral damages (or is it more than that) has also landed in France (while SOPA and PIPA actually happens in the USA). The anonymous group has claimed an attack that led to the issues with the Vivendi online resources.  As if it weren’t enough, they also claimed to be the guys between the downtime of the French ministry of Justice website.

In fact, that website has been brought down via a DDoS attack (DDoD stands for Distributed Denial of Service). Simply said, the hackers are sending a lot of requests to the webserver to flood it so that it can’t handle the charge anymore, thereby making it unavailable to the internet users.

Ironically, while SOPA and PIPA, as well as the closing of Megaupload, was meant to end (or at least limit) the free sharing of copyrighted materials over the internet, the Anonymous hackers made a point of making Sony’s music and movie catalog available for free last Sunday. I guess Sony would have to work hard gaining again the trust of the artists that they are distributing.

On the Vivendi side, which website is still down, Anonymous guys could even show on the homepage of Vivendi.fr the slogan and message of Anonymous instead of the actual content.

In fact, the examples and illustration of Anonymous attack are legion. Interestingly, while PIPA and SOPA would allow the US attorney to shutdown any website (even if they aren’t in the US), the Anonymous has demonstrated that they could harm any website that publicly supports those bills. The Vivendi case (replacing the homepage), as well as the Sony’s case (making the whole catalog available for free) are strong messages showing that there’s no such thing as secure thing on the internet  as of today.

I guess security experts’ hourly prices have decupled since last week. But I’m just wondering how they can limit the damages, especially knowing that the attacks either use DDoS or even some specific software that leverages any internet user’s computer via the LOIC software

As a regular internet user, do you still think you’re not concerned about how things quickly evolve now? I’m hesitating to ask you to comment here as you may be afraid to be tracked since it is now obvious that both sides of the “game” can do any damage to whatever you do. But anyway, for those that are most courageous, feel free to voice your feelings in the comment section. 

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Sony’s Music and Movie Catalog Made Available for Free

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So let’s go back to the initial 2 minutes of rewind of my movie, you know, that first two or three minutes in  those series where they just reminds you of the highlights of the last episode. The communication war has begun. Anti-SOPA fervents have deployed a lot of tools (avatars, browser plugins alerting on sites that support SOPA,  petitions, …). They even planned a blackout day that went on January 18^th 2012. While I didn’t take the time to make an exhaustive list of sites who observed that blackout day, I could find that Wikipedia actually showed a black page and couldn’t be browsed, on Flickr (part of the yahoo network), each of my photos came with a note about SOPA, … I guess the day was too short to find out who else observed it.

As it is common with good movies, there are always intense and very active periods. This was also the case with the SOPA act. In fact, just before the January 18^th, the Obama administration made a statement on SOPA. Then, a communication went out that the SOPA won’t be presented as-it-is now to the Senate. So people thought it’d be over. Anyway, the January 18^th blackout still went on. Right after that, I’ve read that the SOPA discussion will resume on February.

I titled this article: the World Web War since that’s what is actually happening now. So where’s the fight and gunshots? In fact it’s everywhere. It first was materialized by communication war on tweeter, via press releases and by using every partisans communication outlet.

But the first actual attack happened when the FBI shutdown megaupload.com on January 19^th 2012: one of the major sites for downloading files. According to the official FBI press release, Justice Department Charges Leaders of Megaupload with Widespread Online Copyright Infringement . Interestingly (although I’m no good at legal things), the guys behind megaupload aren’t US residents. The same press release acknowledges it by saying “The indictment alleges that the criminal enterprise is led by Kim Dotcom, aka Kim Schmitz, and Kim Tim Jim Vestor, 37, a resident of both Hong Kong and New Zealand.”

Right after that “attack”, the ripost came by internet-driven ripost that you could follow on twitter with the hashtag #OpMegaupload where the Anonymous group claimed they are behind a major internet attack targeting major US online properties including the US Justice Department, the Motion Picture Association of America.

What’s interesting is that the attack has been led by using thousands of computers via the LOIC software. As we are a blog about online anonymity, this is where things become more interesting: so as to spread this attack, the guys have surely used other people’s computers (probably your computer if it isn’t secure enough). As CNN reports it, the Anonymous guys, who are behind this major attack reported: “We’ve given average ppl the power to help in #Opmegaupload using LOIC software & home internet connection”

Now, the question is: how do you make sure you weren’t one of the people who unconsciously contributed to this attack?

What do the future reveal? You tell us. As I told you, while I’m wasting my time trying to figure out what to write for my scenario, things are moving faster in the real world: reality outpaces fiction here.

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Project Octopus Season 2: the World Web War

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So let me try to be a film writer here. I’ll probably get a the worst mark on this essay, but anyway I’ve never read any movie script, nor did I even had any literary courses

The background

The legitimate need to protect content creators from online piracy has made them want to find some solutions to ban it. The solution they’ve found is to pass a law that allows US legal entities to bring down any website that’s considered as a “rogue website”. Well, if I were a great movie script writer, I would have codenamed it something like “project Octopus” or something more fancy than SOPA, but anyway. Or is it that H.R 3261 sounds more enigmatic? Hmm, Octopus would have given more latitude to the jacket designer although it may sound a bit obsolete (may remind some people about an old James Bond movie).

To add more excitement to the movie, we need to involve some high-level politics. That’s great since 2012 is presidential election time in the U.S . This is great as Obama’s administration finally made a stand on the SOPA issue.

The Obama’s administration stand

Don’t get lost yet. I’m still thinking out loud for my scenario here. So in need to find some inspiration, and inspiration comes from actual facts. So, in real life, the Obama’s government had finally made a stand on SOPA. As it is common with diplomatic language, it has found the words to keep the discussions going. The statement says that “ important task of protecting intellectual property online must not threaten an open and innovative internet.”

The rising voice against SOPA from big internet companies

While it is clear that a big part of the internet world has been very talkative for their movement against SOPA, they take some differentiated stand. One one side, we can count the most agressive anti-SOPA proponents who plan a shutdown on January 18th: reddit, boingboing, cheezburger, and even wikipedia: the founder of Wikipedia tweeted to students to do their homework earlier since Wikipedia would shutdown on January 18th. On the other hand, Twitter’s CEO Dick Costolo, for example,  prioritize business: he says Closing a global business in reaction to single-issue national politics is foolish.

Well, back to my movie, this debate between the anti-SOPA proponents can take at least 15 Minutes of back-and-forth discussions and meetings as well as online jeremiades.

The pro-SOPA stand

On the pro-SOPA front, they’ve joined the online discussion bandwagon about SOPA. One of the icons,Rupert Murdoch has been actively tweeting his stand: he just doesn’t take it lightly (ooh, movie addict would love that character): he just fires at Google and Obama administration.

So far, the SOPA has been shelved (for now), but the story ain’t over yet. And instead of making it a one-shot movie, I’m just considering preparing the second opus already… This is getting really interesting.

Now …

Who’s the actor  to be playing into that movie?

Hey, come one how-to-hide-ip readers, vote for your actors This can be fun . I know, it’s a topic that shouldn’t be joked about, but isn’t it the “magic” behind Hollywood movies? So now, your role is to distribute the roles, and find a great finale for this movie.

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SOPA – Worth a Hollywood Movie Script

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At the other side of the north Atlantic ocean, the European Union is also busy trying to address some privacy issues with regards to websites. It is called the EU cookies directive and you can check the full details here.

So what’s the point here?

Clearly, this law will enforce website owners to ask for permission from the internet user before setting a cookie to be stored on that user’s computer. Again, the main goal here can be legitimate:  website owners are trying to collect as much information as possible from the internet visitor so as to customize the browsing experience, this law just wants to systematize the fact that those website should ask for permission first before setting those cookies.

I don’t know about you, but when I’m brave enough to check the cookies that are stored on my computer, I’m more than astonished to find out the huge list of cookies that lies around. Most of them come from domain names that I’m not even aware of. So, I tend to think that for any website that I visit, there must be multiple cookies that are used.  I can only think of all those sites using javascript that can do so, among which is the biggest player of the internet, I name Google with its Google analytics tracking software.

Wanna simulate how it’d work?

So I searched for the internet for a site who’d be daring enough to simulate what would happen if a website would have to ask for permission before setting a cookie on a user’s browser. And I found a gem, and funny page. So, I tried to answer all the questions, and I can tell you I was a bit tired at the end after answering 5 or 6 cookies-related questions. Wanna have a good laugh? Go and check this webpage that simulates how the user experience would be with the EU cookie law.

Funny? Disturbing? Made you wanna runaway from that website? I had the same feelings too. Now imagine a big e-commerce site (or even a small ecommerce website) who’d ask that number of authorization when someone wants to visit the site (think of amazon, ebay or that niche e-commerce site): would you still buy from such website?

I know, this law (or the way it is written as of now) may seem “non-sense”, anyway, it seems to be taken seriously into account by big guys (again): have you noticed that youtube, for example, have included the embedding via iframe of their videos instead of javascript? They now ship with a “ privacy enabled mode”.

As unbelievable as it may seem, this topic is yet to become another “story of the year”. What’s your view on this?

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Law and Internet: from the European Union Side of Things

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But on the other hand, I always pride on trying to consider both sides of the fence, so although this blog is about showcasing different VPN and proxy solution to override geolocation limited services, or to hide your traces when you are surfing the internet, it’s always good to consider things that VPN and proxies can’t solve: and SOPA is one of them.

SOPA isn’t yet another technical jargon or protocol that the internet uses. It is an act that is being fiercly discussed at the U.S senate so as to allow a U.S attorney general to request the help of internet companies to identify and sue some pirates (you know, any internet user in the world who is doing illegal downloads and file sharing). I’ve written more details about this SOPA thing here.

So why did I put such a provocative title? Maybe because that’s the whole truth. Or maybe there’s some gray area there that won’t put you in a safe place if you are sued.

In fact, the whole point is simple: let’s suppose that someone does some file-sharing over the internet. Let’s not discuss if it’s a legitimate or not file-sharing. Let’s suppose that this file-sharer was smart enough to use a VPN or proxy for doing so.  For whatever reason, let’s suppose that the case comes under the SOPA act, so an attorney wants to know who the guy who did that file-sharing is. From the logs of the file-sharing server, there will be an IP address showing the computer that did the download/upload. So by going-up the line, the attorney would find that that IP address belongs to the VPN or Proxy service provider. He will then ask who that IP address belong to. SOPA allows him to do so.

At this stage, there may be some hot discussions about privacy and all those long political/legal debate so as to identify if the VPN provider would provide the information  or not. Should the SOPA become enacted, then there’s a legal argument that the VPN provider can’t deny, so he’ll be obliged to reveal the IP address corresponding to that specific connection.

Wait, wait, wait …

Aren’t VPN providers supposed not to log those kinds of things? Well, let’s just consider that if it isn’t clearly written on the contract that they don’t log your IP address, or anything private, then just assume they’re doing it – so I strongly advise you re-read your contract with the VPN or Proxy provider. From here, they have your actual IP address. Guess what, the SOPA enables the attorney to ask the ISP to reveal who used that IP at that time – guess what: the ISP would have to give the information he has about you on their files (or at least the data that are associated to the internet contract).

What’s your view? Am I being paranoid?

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When VPN and Proxies Won’t Protect You from SOPA

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So I’d like to jump into that bandwagon of getting the word out about what we’re doing here at how-to-hide-ip: this blog is the centerpiece of our online presence, but as social media is getting more and more exposure in our daily lives, How-to-hide-IP can also be found on different social media places, and I thought you’d want to connect with us, so here is a summary list:

•  Facebook page: don’t forget to tell your friends or whoever found any interesting thing on this blog to like and share this page. As we write this article, we are more than 760 people from around the world who like how-to-hide-IP facebook page, thank you for that, and don’t hesitate to have other people know about what we’re doing here. By the way, apart from the comment section for each article, this can also be a great place to submit to us some news that are worth covering, or some comments you want us to be aware of;
• Twitter: well, twitter is the place for real-time news in 160 characters. Have some interesting topics related to the themes of our topic on this blog? Feel free to mention them to us. We would also appreciate any RT (who doesn’t?).

Okay, the self-promotion is over now.

Anyway, as the new 2012 year starts, let us take this opportunity to thank all how-to-hide-IP readers for being loyal to us and for interacting with us for all those years that this adventure has started.  2012 is up to be another challenging year when it comes to keeping our privacy when going to the internet – although we’re doing our best to cover things from our perspective, we invite you to raise some interesting topics to our interest.

Moreover, 2012 is also the year where a lot of different mobile-connected devices will become more and more popular. The last few years have seen the rise of smartphones (iPhone, Android, Windows phone, …). While Android is yet the most shipped smartphone device (at least in the US), iOS still gathers a strong market share while Windows Phone are expected to be on the rise with the support of Nokia.

This means that, in 2012, new challenges are ahead when it comes to protecting the online privacy of those smartphone users.This year will also be the year where the tablet battle will be fierce as every player wants to bring alternatives to the iPad to the market. We’re thinking of the lower-budget Nook, or the serious Samsung Galaxy Tab II as well as other not-so-popular (yet?) devices. Do you think there’ll be a need for protecting online privacy from those mobile devices? And what about those Wi-Fi enabled game consoles?

Anyway, looking forward for an exciting 2012 year.

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Thank You, Social Media and Looking Ahead

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