Who was behind the arrest of the well known torrent site kickass ?

Artem Vaulin, the alleged owner of the torrent directory service KickassTorrents, was arrested in Poland earlier this week, charged with copyright infringement and money laundering. As we dig deeper as to what exactly happened, it turns out Apple and Facebook were among the companies that handed over data to the U.S. in its investigation. Department of Homeland Security investigators traced IP addresses associated with KickassTorrents domains to a Canadian ISP, which turned over server data, including emails. At some point, investigators noticed that Vaulin had an Apple email account that was used to make iTunes purchases from two IP addresses -- both of which also accessed a Facebook account promoting KickassTorrents.if you're wondering where exactly iTunes came into play, here's a further explanation. It all started in November 2015, when an undercover IRS Special Agent reached out to a KickassTorrents representative about hosting an advertisement on the site. An agreement was made and the ad, which purportedly advertised a program to study in the United States, was to be placed on individual torrent listings for $300 per day. When it finally went live on March 14th 2016, a link appeared underneath the torrent download buttons for five days. Sure it was a short campaign, but it was enough to link KAT to a Latvian bank account, one that received $31 million in deposits -- mainly from advertising payments -- between August 2015 and March 2016. Upon further investigation of the email accounts, and corresponding reverse lookups, it was found that the account holder had made a purchase on iTunes.

A Safe Bet Verizon-Yahoo

Yahoo is set to be bought by Verizon

Why the telecom company is interested to invest in a Internet poortal ? Here is why

Finally, Someone has come forward to buy Yahoo! Guess Who? Its Verizon

Yes, Verizon Communications Inc. is reportedly closing in on a deal to acquire Yahoo’s core business for about $5 Billion, according to a report from Bloomberg.

Since the agreement between the companies has not been finalized, it is unclear at this moment that which Yahoo's assets the deal would include.

"In order to preserve the integrity of the process, we're not going to comment on the issue until we've finalized an agreement," a Yahoo spokeswoman said in a statement provided to CNNMoney.

You might be wondering Why Verizon is buying Yahoo! Well, I’ll come to it in the second half of my article, because before discussing this point, let’s first focus on why Yahoo! wants to get acquired.

Why Yahoo Was Up For Sale?

Founded in 1995, Yahoo! was once the brightest star of the Web. But when its rivals including Google, Facebook and even few-years-old companies like Snapchat and WhatsApp have won over users, Yahoo! has not been able to maintain that glory.

Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer - formerly a Google executive - has spent billions on acquisitions so far to improve Yahoo's mobile products, expanding its audience by acquiring Tumblr and doubling down on premium media content.

But Mayer struggled to slow the overall ad sales decline of Yahoo! and failed.

Last Monday, the company accepted that its revenue fell 15% in the second quarter, after excluding accounting adjustments, and its operating profit fell 64%.

So, after keeping investors at bay for years, Mayer said Yahoo! would explore strategic alternatives, including selling its core assets.

Verizon has long been considered a suitable buyer for Yahoo’s Internet assets, which the telecom giant wants to combine with AOL - the American global mass media corporation bought by Verizon last year for $4.4 Billion.

Now, the two companies are in one-on-one discussions, and Verizon will reportedly acquire Yahoo! for about $5 Billion.

So, why does a mobile telecom provider want to acquire the core editorial business of a failed Internet portal?

The sure short answer is: Advertising!

With the success in the wireless industry, Verizon has been buying up Internet and ad technology companies, like AOL, to compete in a mobile advertising market dominated by two big players, Google and Facebook.

And for this same reason, it is now buying Yahoo!’s ad and content businesses.

Yahoo! has millions of users, and a collection of websites like Flickr, Tumblr, Yahoo Finance, and Yahoo Sports, including some digital-ad technology like Flurry and BrightRoll.

Since the growth of Verizon’s traditional telecom business has been decreased, companies like Yahoo! and AOL would necessarily help Verizon make money from digital advertising on mobile devices.

The deal would not only give Verizon a powerful collection of content and revenue from ad related to that content but also give the telecom company a considerable amount of user data to provide target advertisements to users by the telecom as well as others.

So, this is the kind of deal Verizon was interested in when it acquired Yahoo!

Cithack GoToMyPC Resets All Passwords Citrix

GoToMyPC, a service that helps people access and control their computers remotely over the Internet, is forcing all users to change their passwords, citing a spike in attacks that target people who re-use passwords across multiple sites.

Owned by Santa Clara, Calif. based networking giant Citrix, GoToMyPC is a popular software-as-a-service product that lets users access and control their PC or Mac from anywhere in the world. On June 19, the company posted a status update and began notifying users that a system-wide password update was underway.

“Unfortunately, the GoToMYPC service has been targeted by a very sophisticated password attack,” reads the notice posted to status.gotomypc.com. “To protect you, the security team recommended that we reset all customer passwords immediately. Effective immediately, you will be required to reset your GoToMYPC password before you can login again. To reset your password please use your regular GoToMYPC login link.”

John Bennett, product line director at Citrix, said once the company learned about the attack it took immediate action. But contrary to previous published reports, there is no indication Citrix or its platforms have been compromised, he said.
“Citrix can confirm the recent incident was a password re-use attack, where attackers used usernames and passwords leaked from other websites to access the accounts of GoToMyPC users,” Bennett wrote in an emailed statement. “At this time, the response includes a mandatory password reset for all GoToMyPC users. Citrix encourages customers to visit the  GoToMyPC status page to learn about enabling two-step verification, and to use strong passwords in order to keep accounts as safe as possible. ”

Citrix’s GoTo division also operates GoToAssist, which is geared toward technical support specialists, and GoToMeeting, a product marketed at businesses. The company said it has no indication that user accounts at other GoTo services were compromised, but assuming that’s true it’s likely because the attackers haven’t gotten around to trying yet.
It’s a fair bet that whoever perpetrated this attack had help from huge email and password lists recently leaked online from older breaches at LinkedIn, MySpace and Tumblr to name a few. Re-using passwords at multiple sites is a bad idea to begin with, but re-using your GoToMyPC remote administrator password at other sites seems like an exceptionally lousy idea.

 

Fake Passport Copy can hijack anyone's Facebook Account

BBC has the story. The confusion is that a scan of a passport is much easier to forge than an actual passport. This is a truly hard problem: how do you give people the ability to get back into their accounts after they've lost their credentials, while at the same time prohibiting hackers from using the same mechanism to hijack accounts? Demanding an easy-to-forge copy of a hard-to-forge document isn't a good solution.