Hasta La Gadget!

Facebook has blocked Path’s access to its social graph due to Path’s recent spam debacle. This will prevent Path from being able to access the social network’s “Find Friends” feature, meaning the app won’t be able to spam your contacts list with invites. However, users will still be able to login to Path via Facebook and they will still be able to share their content onto their walls.

Earlier this week, Path was in boiling water after many users complained that the app was spamming text messages to all of their friends. The text messages were sent around 6:00A.M. last week, disrupting a lot of people’s sleep. After a series of complaints, Facebook decided that it’s in everyone’s best interest if the service no longer had access to their friend’s personal information.

Unfortunately for Path, losing access to Facebook’s social graph will be detrimental to its growing user base. It was just last week when Path announced that over 10 million users have registered for its service. It may have trouble reaching its next milestone if it doesn’t find another way to entice users fast (without the need of spam of course). It can still let people invite others through their Gmail accounts, contact books, and Twitter accounts, but even then, it still may not generate nearly as many new additions as when it was able to let users “Find Friends” on Facebook.

Path isn’t the only service to be banned from Twitter. Facebook has also blocked MessageMe’s access to its social graph, as well as Voxers. It’s speculated that Facebook blocked MessageMe because it poses a threat to Facebook’s own Messenger service, however Facebook stated that it was because the service copied Messenger’s core functionalities. Facebook’s social graph is important in helping these apps obtain a huge user base, so being forbidden access to it can spell danger for their futures.

[via TechCrunch]

Path “Find Friends” blocked by Facebook for suspicious spam is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The social messaging app Path recently announced that it’s gaining a million users each week, but it may be using some spam-like methods to achieve that growth. Several users — and several Engadget staffers — have reported that the app has been sending smartphone contacts unwanted text messages, a problem that was first pinpointed several months ago. Contacts on the receiving end have seen messages stating that a friend wants to share photos with them, with a prompt to sign up for Path’s service. According to a source who spoke with The Verge, Path has also triggered robocalls to contact lists — even after uninstalling the app. Last year, the company came under fire for collecting contact info sans users’ consent– leading to an $800,000 settlement with the FTC — and we imagine this new privacy snafu won’t be without consequences, either.

Filed under: Software, Mobile

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Via: The Verge

The authorities in the Netherlands and other countries are currently investigating a man whom they say is at the center of the recent cyber attacks against Spamhaus, an anti-spam group. Sven Olaf Kamphuis, who calls himself the “Minister of telecommunications and foreign affairs for the Republic of CyberBunker”, started a war against Spamhaus because the anti-spam group blacklisted two of Kamphuis’s companies, CB3ROB and CyberBunker.

The New York Times states that Kamphuis asked for support from hackers to launch attacks against Spamhaus. He wrote on his Facebook,

“Yo anons, we could use a little help in shutting down illegal slander and blackmail censorship project ‘spamhaus.org,’ which thinks it can dictate its views on what should and should not be on the internet.

Kamphuis later stated that he had no direct roles in the attacks against Spamhaus, and that it was actually the work of Stophaus, an anti-Spamhaus group, that was directly to blame. He states that Stophaus was also at fault for causing the internet lag that affected many consumers in the past week. Dutch authorities, however, have discovered evidence that contradicts Kamphuis’s statement. Greenhost, a Dutch internet hosting service, discovered the digital footprints of one of Kamphuis’s companies, CB3ROB, in the digital attack against Spamhaus.

A security specialist at the University of Amsterdam, J.P. Velders, stated, “It’s very clear that he has a big role in this, even if there isn’t 100 percent airtight proof that he is behind it.” Velders says that authorities need to figure out how much he was involved in these cyber attacks, and how they can take action against him.

Kamphuis worked at XS4ALL, a Dutch ISP, where one of his ex co-workers stated that he was constantly reprimanded for hacking into his boss’s computer system. The ex co-worker also stated that Kamphuis was a very eccentric person, and that he “hates authority in any form.” Erik Bais, owner of A2B-Internet, a company that used to work with Kamphuis’s company, stated that Kamphuis is “like a loose cannon” and that he doesn’t have “regard for repercussions or collateral damage.”

Kamphuis is currently discussing his distaste for Spamhaus publicly on his Facebook. There he states that he is an internet freedom fighter who is along the same lines as Julian Assange and that what Spamhaus is doing is censorship. He stated that Spamhaus as acted “without any court verdit, just by blackmail of suppliers and Jew lies.”

[via The New York Times]

Authorities investigate CyberBunker “minister” over cyber attacks is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

This week you may well have thought your connection to the internet was slowing down – in fact you would be right, and it’s not just you! According to security specialists Spamhaus, a multi-national group based in both London and Geneva, there’s a war going on outside no one is safe from. The beastly battle between Spamhaus and a supposed nefarious web host by the name of Cyberbunker have resulted in what the former says is a global internet slowdown.

What we’ve got going on here is a battle on several tiers. The first is the blocking of Cyberbunker by the powers that be – with Spamhaus, that is. The second is the retaliation that a variety of hacker groups are taking on Cyberbunker as well as a collection of other sites for having blocked Cyberbunker in the first place. Cyberbunker is being accused of hosting SPAM websites and sources that Spamhaus has dedicated themselves to kicking out of the web.

Spamhaus is a non-profit group that helps email providers filter unwanted content from users across the web. They do this with a collection of block lists of known Spammers and malicious organizations. Spamhaus recently blocked servers maintained by Cyberbunker and said that the business was working in cooperation with “criminal gangs” of the Eastern Europe and Russian variety in their retaliation for the blocks.

Cyberbunker is known for being a server of all manner of web content, with only a couple of choice exceptions. Spam is not one of them. Speaking with the BBC this week, Steve Linford, chief executive for Spamhaus, noted that the retaliatory attacks happening now have been unheard of in scale.

“We’ve been under this cyber-attack for well over a week. But we’re up – they haven’t been able to knock us down. Our engineers are doing an immense job in keeping it up – this sort of attack would take down pretty much anything else. If you aimed this at Downing Street they would be down instantly. They would be completely off the internet.” – Linford

Speaking about the effect this attack has been having on the rest of the web, Prof Alan Woodward also let the BBC know that the internet was, indeed, slowing down as a result. Woodward is a cybersecurity expert at the University of Surrey.

“If you imagine it as a motorway, attacks try and put enough traffic on there to clog up the on and off ramps. With this attack, there’s so much traffic it’s clogging up the motorway itself.” – Woodward

According to Spamhaus’ Linford, Google and a variety of other helpful companies with the capacity to assist have been making their resources available in an effort to “absorb” the traffic this event is generating. Linford has also added that they’re quite confident that they’ll prevail eventually.

“They are targeting every part of the internet infrastructure that they feel can be brought down. We can’t be brought down. Spamhaus has more than 80 servers around the world. We’ve built the biggest DNS server around.” – Linford

Sound like a fun battle to you? We’ll be following this story with a close eye as it continues to affect us all. Let us know if you’ve felt the impact yourself – or if you think it’s all bullocks, instead insisting that your internet is just slower than everyone else!

Internet slows as historically unprecedented cyber-battle ensues is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Many Dropbox users are reporting that they’re being bombarded by spam e-mails. This led users to believe that Dropbox was once again hacked, like last year when hundreds of users were receiving spam emails to email accounts only used for their Dropbox account. A spokesman from Dropbox has stated that it’s not the same this time around, and assured users that its service wasn’t hacked.

Many users took to Dropbox’s support forums and stated that many of their Dropbox-exclusive e-mail accounts were compromised. They are receiving phishing e-mails from fake LinkedIn and PayPal e-mail addresses, as well as “offers” from casinos and gambling sites. The PayPal phishing e-mails are more frightening because they appear very similar to real PayPal transaction e-mails, and to the unaware user, could result in their computers being infected by malware.

Dropbox states that this attack may have been a long, postponed effect from its previous security compromise last July. The attacks doesn’t seem as widespread as they were last year, but then again, more affected users can come forward and post their own reports soon.

If you believe you’re one of the affected users, Dropbox encourages you to forward the spam emails to their support e-mail address. A spokesperson for Dropbox stated, “If you’ve received spam to an email account you only use for Dropbox, please send the message (including full headers) to support-security@dropbox.com to help our ongoing investigation.” It is also suggested that you change your e-mail password as well as your Dropbox password.

[via Dropbox]

Dropbox users bombarded by spam e-mails is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.