ESET Threat Blog
SOPA bytes GoDaddy’s business, and it will hurt you too.
by Andrew Lee CEO, ESET North America

The Stop Online Piracy Act or SOPA as it is more commonly known, currently being debated in congress, has lit up a huge outcry on the Internet in recent weeks. We, here at ESET were one of the companies who, a little while ago, started raising the alarm about the devastating effect it would have on America’s online economy, along with several other very high profile companies.

GoDaddy (users) Go

GoDaddy, the popular domain registrar was initially a prominent supporter of SOPA and when this was revealed it prompted a large Internet campaign to move domains away from GoDaddy – in the next couple of days they lost 37,000 domains.

Today, 29th of December, is the culmination of that campaign when many companies will be moving their domains.

As of today, ESET is also moving our 26 domains from GoDaddy. As expected, GoDaddy did a half turn a couple of days ago, and somewhat restricted their support, later doing a full turn and saying they no longer support SOPA.

That’s great – the effect is a demonstration of how America works. Money talks, and businesses listen. The problem with SOPA is that, unless people who still support it start to listen too, the money will go away, from them and their businesses too. It’s also too late for GoDaddy, integrity and trust is not something you can switch back on overnight, demonstrating that the most important thing a business can have is the belief of its users. GoDaddy, as they acknowledge, will have to work hard to get the support of the community back; they should have known better.

http://blog.eset.com/2011/12/29/sopa-bytes-godaddys-business-and-it-will-hurt-you-too

December 15, 2011
talkingpointsmemo.com

Polis pointed out that SOPA and Smith’s amendment already excluded certain operators of sub-domains, such as GoDaddy.com, from being subject to shutdowns under SOPA.

“If companies like GoDaddy.com are exempt, why aren’t non-commercial domain servers exempt?” Polis asked.

http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/12/sopa-hearing-will-never-end.php?m=1

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SOPA-GoDaddy

http://twitter.com/#!/wikileaks/status/108261633859649536

Spiegel OnLine
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,783084,00.html

nakedsecurity
http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011/08/30/wikileaks-suffers-its-own-data-loss-incident/

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WikiLeaks

Speaking with The Associated Press, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said the nonprofit company that runs the site is scrambling to simplify editing procedures in an attempt to retain volunteers.’

‘We are not replenishing our ranks… It is not a crisis, but I consider it to be important.’

http://washingtonexaminer.com/news/world/2011/08/wikipedia-says-it-losing-contributors

Comments at Slashdot.
http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/08/05/1621200/Wikipedia-Losing-Contributors-Says-Wales

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Wikipedia Losing Contributors

Two times now.

No.

http://www.mywot.com/en/scorecard/na-d.marketo.com

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Spam by any other name

Secret US Embassy Cables

Wikileaks began on Sunday November 28th publishing 251,287 leaked United States embassy cables, the largest set of confidential documents ever to be released into the public domain. The documents will give people around the world an unprecedented insight into US Government foreign activities.

The cables, which date from 1966 up until the end of February this year, contain confidential communications between 274 embassies in countries throughout the world and the State Department in Washington DC. 15,652 of the cables are classified Secret.

http://213.251.145.96/cablegate.html

Text of the White House press secretary’s statement on the WikiLeaks release.

Statement by the Press Secretary
We anticipate the release of what are claimed to be several hundred thousand classified State department cables on Sunday night that detail private diplomatic discussions with foreign governments. By its very nature, field reporting to Washington is candid and often incomplete information. It is not an expression of policy, nor does it always shape final policy decisions. Nevertheless, these cables could compromise private discussions with foreign governments and opposition leaders, and when the substance of private conversations is printed on the front pages of newspapers across the world, it can deeply impact not only US foreign policy interests, but those of our allies and friends around the world. To be clear — such disclosures put at risk our diplomats, intelligence professionals, and people around the world who come to the United States for assistance in promoting democracy and open government. These documents also may include named individuals who in many cases live and work under oppressive regimes and who are trying to create more open and free societies. President Obama supports responsible, accountable, and open government at home and around the world, but this reckless and dangerous action runs counter to that goal. By releasing stolen and classified documents, Wikileaks has put at risk not only the cause of human rights but also the lives and work of these individuals. We condemn in the strongest terms the unauthorized disclosure of classified documents and sensitive national security information.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2010/11/28/statement-press-secretary

Update
BetaNews
Pro-Wikileaks group using Botnet to retaliate against detractors

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WikiLeaks-how does it sit with you?

A fishing guide and former live fishing reporter for one of our local news stations finds out about this on a trip to Venezuela. He says many of the participants are American. Please help him bring attention to this and hopefully prevent this incredibly cruel practice

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=431_1232680237

Another point of view: http://www.adsavvy.org/save-our-cats-and-kittens-from-fishermen-or-how-to-make-lots-of-money-online-as-a-liar/

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Fishermen feed live kittens to sharks and marlin

Graham Cluley’s blog.

There are plenty of young coders out there who would not have acted so stupidly, are just as worthy of an opportunity inside a software development company, and are actually quite likely to be better coders than Towns who made a series of blunders with his code.

Ikee worm author gets job at iPhone app firm

Meanwhile,

Concerns have been raised that 43-year-old McKinnon, who was arrested almost eight years ago after allegedly hacking into computers belonging to the US Army, US Navy, US Air Force, Department of Defense and NASA, and has been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, might take his own life if jailed in the United States.

Bad news for NASA hacker Gary McKinnon – extradition seems imminent

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Worm Author gets job

I like my Dell equipment, mostly trouble free over the years but… woe betide the user who has a problem and needs to contact Dell support.

It has been over a week since I first contacted Dell via email to return a monitor broken and unusable because of a manufacturing defect.

Trying to communicate with what appears to this user to be Dell “cue card readers” repeating themselves ad nauseum while ignoring the user’s input is frustrating to say the least.

Certifiedbug.com

Dell Support-or lack thereof

FeedDemon’s on-line reader Newsgator has been discontinued.

New In FeedDemon 3.0!

* Google Reader sync – Use FeedDemon at home, at your office, or anywhere you go and keep your feeds, tags and shared items synched between locations.

If you don’t have a license this is the kind of ad you will see in FeedDemon version 3.

Sure they are ugly but you can remove them by opting to pay $9.95, and I did.

I have seen people looking for discount coupons (legal) and license cracks (illegal). Come on… if you have been using previous versions of FeedDemon you probably like the program as much as I do, it is well worth ten dollars.

I would like to have continued making FeedDemon both free of charge and free of ads as we planned, but after 18 months of following that plan, it unfortunately didn’t work out, and I doubt anybody feels worse about that than I do.

We found ourselves at a point where FeedDemon needed to generate revenue, and decided that customers would prefer non-intrusive advertising over having to pay for it again. Quite a few people told us they’d prefer to pay to remove the ads, so it’s now possible to do that (and it’s only $9.95 – far less than the upgrade cost of most software these days).
Saturday, September 05, 2009

Nick Bradbury Blog
Newsgator forum: Paid version of Feeddemon

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Feed Demon Google Reader sync

April 16, 2009.

PressPass spoke with Douglas Leland, general manager of Microsoft Corp.’s Identity and Security Business Group, about the company’s strategy to help provide “Business Ready Security.”

Question & Answer

Network World: Microsoft discloses ambitious security strategy

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Microsoft – A new approach to Enterprise Security