Who are the enemies of the Internet? Governments like China, Vietnam and Iran that hold the largest number of cyber-citizens or netizens in jail. The latest countries to join the annual list are Bahrain and Belarus – these governments restrict Internet access, filter content and imprison bloggers. On the other hand, governments that try to introduce mandatory web filtering mechanisms to block inappropriate content such as, child pornography can also be on the watch list! Countries like Australia and France are in fact, under surveillance! Read the full story here - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17350225
According to recent investigations by Verizon companies are not aware of how precious and important systems logs are! Companies either do not maintain logs or simply ignore them but logs are needed to identify unusual system behavior and track events! Alan Brill, Senior Managing Director at Kroll has published an interesting article on net-security.org that discusses the importance and value of log maintenance and analysis. Briefly, the main points discussed are related to the following: • Logs are invaluable in security analysis, especially when reconstructing the events of an intrusion • Logs may be required to comply with regulations and law • Logs are invaluable in detecting abnormal activities Read the full article here - http://www.net-security.org/secworld.php?id=12469
AfriNIC, a source of information of Internet technology and governance for the African community, Internet Society a leader in Internet policy, and France Telecom a leading telecoms operator, will be organizing an IPv6 webinar to assist African operators with their adoption plans and raise awareness about IPv6 initiatives and activities. The agenda for the webinar is: The Cost of not deploying IPv6 IPv6 launch and why it is important Sonatel: An IPv6 experience Open discussion To register for the webinar go here - http://www.afrinic.net/ipv6_webminar.htm
Michael Jackson's entire 50,000-track catalog which includes many songs that have never been released may have been compromised in last year's Sony hack! It is reported that hackers were able to download the entire catalog! In fact, Sony admits the breach and stated that all compromised servers have been patched. Sony purchased the catalog back in 2001 for $250 million! Meanwhile, two men in the UK have been arrested and charged with this crime. Read more - http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/mar/05/michael-jackson-back-catalogue-stolen
Microsoft Research presents bilingual avatars at the TechFest 2012. The Monolingual TTS can translate the user's speech into another language and in a voice that sounds like the original user's. Imagine, the tool recognizes your native tongue, translates it to a different language, and plays it with a great deal of approximation of what you sound like! The demo at Microsoft this week used an avatar of Craig Mundie, Microsoft's chief research and strategy officer, to illustrate the system in action. Watch Craig Mundie's talking head speaks in English and then translated into Chinese here - http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-03-bilingual-avatar-mundie-language.html