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UK's Get Safe Online website collapsed this week under heavy traffic after Brits were urged to visit it and protect themselves from the GOZeuS threat.

After a US-led international effort to significantly disrupt the Gameover ZeuS botnet was reported in the media, the UK's cybercrime cops warned the country that it had around two weeks to clean up infections of the nasty malware before cybercriminals could regain control.

Brits were told to visit the Get Safe Online website, which is partially government-funded and also supported by private firms including PayPal and Microsoft.

However, almost immediately after the news broke, the Stay Safe Online website crashed under heavy demand and was still struggling on Wednesday morning. Chief Exec Tony Neate apologized for the embarrassing downtime, and said the site has since quadrupled its capacity to deal with demand.

"It's important for people to realise that this has been a learning curve for us," Neate said.

"We're looking at what we can do to make sure this won't happen again. We're sorry. I've had no sleep for two days."

According to a new study, film streaming and downloads will overtake physical film sales on Blu-ray and DVD, and will also beat traditional cinema in the U.S. by 2017.

The research was conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). It notes that the market for DVDs and Blu-ray discs is declining rather quickly, and that streaming services like Netflix are picking up the slack in terms of revenue generation.

This trend, the study notes, will continue to the point that in 2016 total revenue from "electronic home video" will beat that of physical media. The decline of physical media will continue to drop to $8.7 billion in 2018, down from $12.2 billion.

By 2017, revenue from electronic home video will beat that of traditional cinema in the United States, and will swell to $17 billion the next year.

Still, traditional cinema will certainly not die. The study predicts a 16 percent increase in ticket sales over the next five years.

Eurogamer stumbled upon yet another Easter Egg in UbiSoft's Watch Dogs, this time involving Microsoft's Kinect device which was subject to privacy concerns last year.

When Microsoft first showed off the Xbox One console and started to spill details on how it would work, there was a lot of concern over the need for the bundled Kinect camera to be constantly on. With revelations and NSA spying and GCHQ reportedly even considering the use of Kinect, questions were raised about requiring a camera be constantly switched on when unnecessary.

Of course, Microsoft changed direction eventually and made it possible to use Xbox One without Kinect constantly on, and then went even further by unbundling Kinect from its cheapest Xbox One offering.

Ubisoft's Watch Dogs has been found to have a few Easter Eggs already that you find when hacking infrastructure around the city. In this one, Eurogamer found that you can hack into a "Kinekt" to watch a male gamer undergoing a fit of rage while playing.

The video is embedded below, but do note that it has quite a bit of colorful language in it. You have been warned!

The Xbox One June update is rolling out, bringing with it support for external storage and the ability to use your real name on Xbox Live.

After the update is applied, an Xbox One can support up to two external USB 3.0, 256GB or larger HDDs. Once formatted, you can copy and move games, apps and game add-ons to the external devices. You'll also be able to use the content on an external drive with a different Xbox One, as long as you sign in to Xbox Live for downloaded content, and insert a disc to verify ownership of an installed game.

The June update also brings with it the ability to use your real name on Xbox Live.

Improvements are also made to the SmartGlass app for Xbox One, including the entire OneGuide experience and Universal Remote Control. Now in supported markets you can view all of your TV listings on your SmartGlass device and set and view your favorite channels and app channels on your smart phone, tablet or PC.

With the Universal Remote Control, you can also easily switch channels, set new recordings and select and control recorded content from your DVR.

Hulu will also begin rolling out a free 3-month trial of Hulu Plus for all Xbox Live Gold members in the United States. Members who are not already Hulu Plus subscribers can sign up directly from within the Hulu Plus app and will receive a free 3-month trial of Hulu Plus.

A garage owner in Edinburgh has apologized after a complaint was made to police about a murder prank on Google's Street View.

Mechanic Dan Thompson noticed a Google Street View car was approaching in August 2012, and quickly staged a scene where a colleague stood over him with a pick axe handle as he laid on the ground playing dead. Over a year later the police showed up after a complaint by a member of the public.

"By complete fluke I saw the Google car coming along the road but it had to loop the block so I had one minute to rush back inside the garage and set up the murder scene," he told the BBC.

"We had forgotten about it when the police arrived a year later and we apologised for wasting police time. They found it funny."

Google's Street View has been subject to plenty of pranks in the past, including being flashed by both men and women as the cars passed by.


Source: BBC News
Picture: Sophos Naked Security

Four major music companies have joined Hollywood studios in seeking to have Kim Dotcom's assets frozen while the case against the Megaupload founder proceeds.

Dotcom's assets had been frozen since January 2012 when his home was raided and Megaupload service was shut down. In April this year, a New Zealand court refused to extend the freeze on Dotcom's assets, which include a garage full of luxury cars, millions in cash, and other items taken from the raid of his mansion.

The court's decision has since been appealed by the Crown with a hearing due on July 30, and six major Hollywood studios also want Dotcom's assets to remain frozen while the case against him proceeds.

They are now joined by four record companies - reportedly Warner Music, UMG Recordings, Sony Music and Capitol Records - with papers served on Tuesday seeking to have Dotcom's assets frozen.

The entertainment companies allege that Dotcom facilitated and profited from widescale copyright infringement while running Megaupload, and the United States is seeking to extradite him to face copyright infringement charges.

However, hearings on extradition have been delayed repeatedly while the case remains in court in New Zealand.

Putlocker.bz has lost control of its domain name and so has registered a new domain in Iceland.

The Putlocker streaming site is unauthorized but claims millions of users each month. It is exactly the time of website you would expect the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) in the UK to target, but whether PIPCU is behind this is unknown so far.

Sports streaming site Cricfree also lost its .tv domain name and had to switch to .eu recently. Torrentz.eu also temporarily lost control of its domain due to PIPCU actions.

"We are having an issue with .BZ Registry, so we had to move from putlocker.bz to http://putlocker.is/. IS is the domain name of Iceland – a safe haven for freedom of speech," the site's operator announced, reports TF.

Iceland's domain registry ISNIC had previously stated that it would not proactively suspend a domain name, and that only an Icelandic Court would have the influence to force it to do so.


Source: TorrentFreak

If you run into trouble with Netflix streaming in the United States, Netflix will now let you know exactly who is to blame: your provider!

An image tweeted by Yuri Victor of Vox Media shows how Netflix identified Verizon's network as the problem when it had to adjust video settings for smoother playback. A similar message is reportedly shown when AT&T subscribers run into streaming problems with Netflix.

"The Verizon network is crowded right now," the message informs the likely-irritated viewer.

Netflix wants to be clear with its assertion that Internet Service Providers are the ones responsible for providing adequate bandwidth so that paying subscribers can use services like theirs.

It is currently fighting against proposals that would allow ISPs to offer faster lanes to services like Netflix for a fee, and has already had to agree to pay ISPs to ensure that subscribers have the best experience possible.

Netflix had visibly suffered on Comcast's network recently, and recovered almost immediately after agreeing to pay the service provider. This was highlighted brilliantly by comedian John Oliver in an epic viral rant aimed at the FCC and cable companies in the United States over the weekend.

A healthcare-focused company in Melbourne, Australia is not too happy that Apple has decided to use the name HealthKit in a new API.

Apple unveiled HealthKit for developers to create health and fitness apps for iOS devices that can share data with each other. There's just one problem; there's already a company called HealthKit and they are less than impressed with Apple's borrowing of their name.

"HealthKit is already in use, by us!," a blog post reads.

"Even the way they write it is the same as us. I'm flattered that they like our name so much and that it's a ringing endorsement for our market opportunity (which we already knew). However, as an Apple fan, I feel let down. They didn't feel that they had to do a quick domain search - it would have taken 5 seconds to type www.healthkit.com into their browser and discover us."

The firm also posed a question directly to Apple CEO Tim Cook on Twitter after Apple's WWDC keynote on Monday.

Feeling annoyed #Apple is using our #HealthKit name for their new health product! @tim_cook r u aware of this? @healthystartups #rockhealth

-- HealthKit (@HealthKit) June 3, 2014

Netflix has confirmed that plug-in-less HD video streaming is available through Safari on Apple's OS X Yosemite.

The streaming giant said that it had been working closely with Apple to implement Premium Video Extensions in the Safari browser, meaning upgrading Mac users can view high-definition video from Netflix in the browser without the need to install additional plug-ins.

HTML5 premium video streaming is made possible with the implementation of Media Source Extensions (MSE) using Apple's optimized video pipeline on OS X, enabling smooth 1080p playback without killing the CPU or draining the battery too fast.

According to Netflix, you can get up to 2 hours longer battery life on a MacBook Air streaming Netflix in 1080p now.

On the content protection side, Apple implemented Encrypted Media Extensions into Safari, which serves as DRM protection for premium video, while the Web Cryptography API enables Netflix to encrypt/decrypt communication between its Javascript application and its back-end servers.

HTML5 plug-in free playback is also already available in Internet Explorer 11 on Windows 8.1, and Netflix hopes to extend to all major browsers on different platforms as soon as possible.

If an Internet Service Provider detects that a customer is running a PC infected with Gameover Zeus, or any comparable threat, should the default action be to quarantine that account until it is cleaned?

According to one security researcher, that's exactly what has to happen. Writing on his blog in the wake of the US-led operation that significantly disrupted the GOZeuS botnet yesterday, Vice President of Security Researchat Trend Micro, Rik Ferguson, argued that we should learn from this and act accordingly.

Internet Service Providers in several countries will be contacting customers who appear to be running an infected PC in order to assist them in cleaning up. Should this be considered part of ISP's long-term strategy against malware, botnets and all kinds of cybergarbage?

Botnets can be used to wreak havoc online. They can be used as part of distributed denial of service attacks, and of course to steal sensitive information from victims and funnel it to the gangs behind the malicious networks. They wouldn't function as well however if ISPs restricted Internet access upon detecting the threat.

Google is expanding its efforts to secure e-mail in transit from snooping by working on an end-to-end encryption extension for Chrome, and adding a section about e-mail security to its transparency report.

According to Google, around 40 to 50 percent of emails sent between Gmail and other email providers aren't encrypted. Google itself has always supported encryption in transit by using Transport Layer Security (TLS) and will encrypt incoming and outgoing e-mail if it can, but its hands are tied when other e-mail providers don't support encryption.

In Google's transparency report, it shows the percentage of email encrypted for the top domains in terms of volume of email to and from Gmail. One notable bad performer is Comcast, with less than 1 percent.

As if like magic, Comcast came out not long after Google made the transparency report available and said it will encrypt e-mails soon.

What about mail providers who will never switch though? Google is going to provide an answer for that too. It has revealed that soon it will offer an extension called End-to-End for Chrome, which will make it far simpler for users to utilize end-to-end encryption without having to use tools like PGP or GnuPG.

Comedian John Oliver has provided the FCC with a nice headache after imploring viewers to send comments to the FCC on the issue of Net Neutrality, following a rant about the regulator and the telecommunications industry in America.

On his show, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, the host decided to tackle the debate over Net Neutrality in the United States, and the possible creation of a two-speed system that would see Internet providers being paid fees for "faster lane" access to their paying subscribers.

In a fairly epic ~12 minute rant, Oliver uses his comedic routine to expose the monopolistic nature of cable companies and their cushy relationship with the Federal Communications Commission.

Toward the end of the segment, Oliver peaks with an appeal to "monsters", referring to Internet commenters. He ends it with a call to all viewing to go to the FCC's website and leave comments on "Protecting and Promoting the Open Internet."

His call to arms worked a bit too well, causing "technical difficulties" (FCC's words..) with the commenting system itself. Visiting the comments page shows that over 45,000 have left comments on the issue already, and while the site appears to work now it is still noticeably slow at times.

Google has announced extended support for its Chromecast HDMI dongle, including notable sports programming like Major League Soccer and WatchESPN.

Ahead of the 2014 FIFA World Cup, soccer fans (and other sports fans, of course) will be able to stream live sports content as long as you pay for ESPN as part of your cable/satellite/pay-TV package. This is great given the proximity to the world's most popular sporting event, and ahead of the NBA Finals this week.

Adds the search giant: "And if you can't wait to get your soccer fix, starting today you can cast professional soccer matchups with the MLS Matchday app and MLS LIVE premium services. So get your friends together to watch your local favorites while practicing the new game-day anthem for the U.S. Men's National Team from the comfort of your couch."

Additionally, Google has also added the ability to cast Google+ photos and videos from your desktop, Android or iOS Google+ apps. Anime fans are in luck as well, with Crunchyroll being given the cast treatment.

Games with Gold and Deals with Gold for Xbox One are now available to Xbox Live Gold members, with the first two games available for download now.

As was previously revealed, "Max: The Curse of Brotherhood" and "Halo: Spartan Assault" can now be downloaded from the Xbox Games store for free by Xbox Live Gold members. Through Xbox One Deals with Gold, Crimson Dragon is also available at 50 percent off.

Xbox One will receive a system update in June that will add a new hub for exploring all the benefits available to those with Gold Membership.

Xbox 360 owners can also get their two free Games with Gold titles this month, including Dark Souls and Charlie Murder. Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition will also be available this month as a bonus to celebrate the one-year Games with Gold anniversary.