Wednesday, July 6, 2011

The house with the great sea views

Monster waves hammered coastal settlements in Hawkes Bay yesterday, sweeping away a piece of road and heavy concrete blocks.
The swells reached 4m, buffeting the shores of Haumoana, Te Awanga and Clifton in what was a late punch from a tropical weather system that WeatherWatch analyst Phillip Duncan said "sideswiped" the East Coast.
A large length of roadway built three years ago and connecting Clifton Beach Reserve Motor Camp to the rest of the settlement was washed away, as were a row of 1m concrete cubes that formed part of a rock wall.
Camp owner Marie Bennett described the swells as "tremendous" and the largest she had seen. 

The waves also left some Clifton Rd sections strewn with gravel and driftwood, but homeowners were making light of the situation.
Haumoana homeowner and renowned artist Dick Frizzell was amused to find that a beach campfire place he built in front of his house was now well stocked with firewood.
"The waves just came from nowhere - God knows where they came from."
Another Clifton Rd resident, Martin Hussey, joked that large waves were becoming so common that residents should start setting bait nets on their driveways.
Local resident and Hastings councillor Rod Heaps said the easterly angle of the waves as they swept in made them higher than usual.
Coastal erosion caused by large waves in the area has been a controversial issue for years.
Last month, a residents' group proposed a $10 million groyne field be built at Haumoana.
WeatherWatch has forecast that another large storm in the Southern Ocean will bring large swells to the entire west coast of the country over the next 10 days.
Some swells are predicted to reach 6m today and more than 8m at the weekend. WeatherWatch advised people to take extreme caution when near the sea, especially at the entrance to Manukau Harbour in Auckland.
Mr Duncan said strong winds that lashed Auckland and the central parts of the country were also likely to linger for the next 10 days.
By Jamie Morton | Email Jamie


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Police say hackers targeted Orlando mayor

Orlando police said Wednesday they are treating a photo taken by computer hackers outside the mayor's house as a threat.

Members of the group Anonymous, which has been launching cyber-attacks on Orlando-related websites, turned up the dial on what it calls "Operation Orlando."
Over the weekend, the group posted online a nighttime picture taken outside Mayor Buddy Dyer's home in College Park. One of the group's telltale Guy Fawkes masks, made famous in the 2006 film V for Vendetta, was left hanging from a street sign.

"We consider it a threat because they targeted an individual," said Orlando police Sgt. Vince Ogburn. "Officers who actively patrol that area have been made aware of it and they're keeping an eye out in the neighborhood for suspicious activity, anybody who looks like they don't belong there.

The mayor's office declined to comment, deferring to the police department.

On Twitter, a member of the group denied that the visit to Dyer's block was meant as a threat.

"It was just proving a point," the hacker wrote. "Anon will always be non-violent... we are however watching. Expect us."

Anonymous, known for its cyber-attacks on government and corporate websites, has pledged to attack a different Orlando website each day. The group is trying to pressure the city to stop arresting members of the group Food Not Bombs for defying restrictions on feeding large groups in downtown parks.

The city ordinance requires groups sharing food in downtown parks to first obtain a city permit, and restricts each group to no more than two permits per park, per year. In the past five weeks, more than 20 people have been arrested for violating the ordinance.

Photos were also posted of masked members leafleting the plaza in front of the Orange County Courthouse with a flyer listing the group's demands, before being chased off by an Orange County deputy.

Hackers have had limited success attacking local websites. The city's site was down briefly over the weekend, and sites owned by the chamber of commerce and the police union have been disabled. Others, including the site for Orlando International Airport, weathered attacks with no apparent disruption.

A hacker did access a password-protected area of the website for the Orange County Democratic Party, then posted online the names, addresses and phone numbers of its members. Orange Democrats secretary Roberta Bailey was unaware her password had been compromised until notified by a reporter.

"It makes me uneasy and angry," Bailey said. "I don't think it proves much of anything. To what end?"

Hackers also trumpeted their posting online of Florida election data, but it was simply records of previous elections that can be downloaded by anyone from the state's Division of Elections.

Even so, Ogburn said Orlando police, the FBI and city computer technicians are investigating the attacks.

From: orlandosentinel.com/news/local/breakingnews


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Hackers Threaten Orlando Mayor, Police Force

The hacktivist group Anonymous is targeting Orlando's mayor and police force, bringing cyber-threats into the real-world as it flexes its digital muscles in the political arena.
In a twist to Anonymous' online activities, a supposed member of the group tweeted a picture of a Guy Fawkes mask dangling outside Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer's home. The collective also posted a photo-shopped picture of two headless police officers to drive home Anonymous' disgust with the city's new law.
An ordinance now prohibits mass food distribution without a permit to the homeless at Orlando's Lake Eola Park. The charity, "Food Not Bombs," argues that law is useless since the permit remains valid for only two times per year.
Food Not Bombs, which has distributed free vegetarian meals to homeless people for 30 years, has had 25 volunteers arrested for continuing to pass out food in defiance of the law. Coming to their aid, Anonymous began Operation Orlando, a distributed denial-of-service, or DDoS, attack on the city's governmental organizations.
"We will not allow Food Not Bombs volunteers to be silenced," the hacking group stated. "We will fight for their rights, and yours. The hacking will continue. Your city will lose money, time, and resources."
So far, Anonymous has brought down the mayor's campaign and Orlando police websites, insisting it will continue attacks until the city repeals the law. The group granted the city a 48-hour cease fire to rethink its policies, but began DDoS bombardments again after police arrested two more volunteers.
At first, it may seem strange that Anonymous, a worldwide, leaderless hacktivist group, is interested in the issue, but the hackers are attracted to political activities. The group says its mission is to campaign peacefully for "Freedom of Expression," which it alleges Orlando denies to those who would feed hungry people.
Anonymous has targeted several governments for political reasons. It first became famous when it hammered Visa, MasterCard and Amazon sites with DDoS attacks, due to their refusal to process WikiLeaks payments.
Then it took down official government websites of Malaysia, Turkey, Tunisia and Egypt to protest those country's Internet restrictions.
The group also defended its own members, targeting Sony with attacks after the company took an Anon to court for posting instructions online about how to root the PlayStation 3. And when Spain arrested three members, the organization retaliated by hacking into its police website, much like it did to Arizona's and now Orlando's police department.
Anonymous also teamed up with the now defunct LulzSec hackers for Operation AntiSec, which targets governments and corporations that the group believes suppress free speech.
If today's attack is any indication, such hacks are sure to continue as long as Anonymous members are bent on Operation AntiSec.

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AntiBUZZ: A MESSAGE TO ALL CORPORATIONS SUPPORTING CENSORSHIP MEASURES

      _  _                   __   __    
   __| || |__ _____    _____/  |_|__| ______ ____   ____        #antisec  
   \   __   / \__  \  /    \   __\  |/  ___// __ \_/ ___\       #anonops    
    |  ||  |   / __ \|   |  \  | |  |\___ \\  ___/\  \___       #antisec      
   /_  ~~  _\ (____  /___|  /__| |__/____ \ \___ \ \___  |      #lulzsec      
     |_||_|        \/     \/             \/     \/     \/       #blackhats
                                                                               
/*******************************************************************************
***  AntiBUZZ: A MESSAGE TO ALL CORPORATIONS SUPPORTING CENSORSHIP MEASURES  ***
*******************************************************************************/

To all friendly and enemy vessels,

Today we want to introduce you to Nimbuzz, a Dutch company providing a free
mobile messaging application carrying the same name. This company is not
situated in just the Netherlands as they have offices in Argentina, India,
Indonesia and all over Europe. So why does this company interest us? Well,
simply put, they are capable and self-admittingly willing to co-operate with
governments to help censor the public's use of the very service they offer.

Now it should be noted that some of our blackhat friends who are extensively
involved in the AntiSec movement have had access to this company's networks for
some time. Their access to this network is best described as complete access to
everything in their network including all of their source code on Nimbuzz's svn
server. The gross incompetence of the security model put in place for this
server astounded even us.

We have access to many many networks and because of this we have to prioritize
what is of interest or use to us (or you, the public that we love so much).
However, we had some friends bring it to our attention that this Nimbuzz
company is actually enacting policies that directly go against everything
Antisec stands for. Thus, here we are.

To prove that we aren't making this up here is a document in their CMS
displaying the procedure of how, if requested, they can switch off VOIP
services BY GOVERNMENT REQUEST. A quote from the document:

  "In some countries governments and/or operators have reasons for not allowing
  VoIP over (mobile) data networks. They may use technical means to active
  block and / or throttle the Nimbuzz traffic over their network. This results
  in total, partial or severe Nimbuzz service degradation towards the end-user.

  When these cases are known, Nimbuzz will open dialogue with the
  government/operator. Aim is to resolve the service degradation and restore
  quality of service. In return for allowing Nimbuzz service to run properly,
  we can offer to switch of VoIP calls on this operator network."

The document goes further to state that Nimbuzz currently blocks all VOIP
traffic in Syria and Egypt and even includes specific data such as IP ranges
given by providers.

This is entirely unacceptable and let's make this perfectly clear:

We DO NOT tolerate any kind of censorship of communication.

We DO NOT tolerate companies working in collusion with governments to stop the
free flow of information

We WILL expose these companies to the public to show how their information can
be manipulated and censored by the governments and corporations that work with
them

Thus, we release the document mentioned above in full as well as some other
information from their CMS. As a bonus we have also acquired some code from the
/trunk directory on their svn. In total we downloaded over 120 Gigabyte of
source code but will not release it..yet.

Take heed, governments that seek to oppose the people who elect them and the
corporations who the people work for - We will not stand idly by while you take
away our electronic and physical freedom.

"People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid
of their people."

FILE VIEW/DOWNLOAD:

VOIP Block CMS Site: http://pastehtml.com/view/azgwu5ol2.html
AntiBuzz.rar (4.25 MB): http://www.mediafire.com/?zj9q7gng34ptais

Mirrors available soon, also to be included in next torrent release. Let it flow!

From: http://pastebin.com/TvSxycCf

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Anonymous Hacks Apple, Posts Logins Online

Anonymous is continuing the AntiSec movement led by LulzSec and this past weekend it proved that Apple is not immune to its hacking prowess.
So far, 2011 has been a bit of a hackfest. What started with the hacking of PSN and SOE in April sparked a 50-day-long hackathon by a group calling itself LulzSec. However, LulzSec wasn't alone in its efforts to expose the poor security measures put in place by big-name companies and it quickly joined forces with Anonymous to form the AntiSec movement.
Though LulzSec is no more, Anon Sunday revealed that it had targeted Apple in one of its attacks and posted a portion of user data online to prove it. 
The data posted to Pastebin includes the user details of 27 people registered on the abs.Apple.com website. Apple uses this site for customer surveys and though Anonymous says it wasn't serious in its attempts, Reuters reports it is offline now and displaying only an error message. Probably for the best. Anonymous later pointed out that considering the attention this small 'drive-by' was getting, a larger-scale attack would likely result in a huge reaction from both the media and tech community.
Apple has not yet commented on the attack.

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ANZ spends to counter Anonymous threat


Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) Banking group's chief information officer Ann Weatherston has revealed that ANZ is battening down its hatches against the danger posed by hacktivist group Anonymous, after recent threats were levelled against the Australian banking industry.
Speaking at the tenth annual Banktech Summit in Sydney today, making one of her first public appearances since her appointment 18 months ago, Weatherston said that the threat presented by Anonymous is serious, and requires immediate action to ensure the ongoing security of customer data and the preservation of a squeaky clean reputation.
"Security is ... a key focus in terms of reputational risk and the business of hacking financial systems is now a global one. In recent days, we've seen the hacktivist group Anonymous announce that their next target is Australia and New Zealand banks. While this can have a damaging bottom line impact, the real damage is to the reputation of the organisation, and to customer and regulator confidence.
"Bank systems hold customer data, and that data represents customer trust in the bank. We must protect it at all costs," Weatherston said.
Shoring up the bank's defences, Weatherston said, is set to come at a price, but warned that the price of inaction would be much higher, costing the bank its precious reputation in the market.
"[Protecting data] will require increasing levels of annual expenditure, and, indeed, changes to the way in which we design and architect systems. Increasingly, a loss of customer data by any organisation, as we know from the Sony experience, regularly achieves front page news."
Australian Bankers Association chief executive Steven Munchenberg last week said that customers shouldn't be concerned because banks were monitoring for security risks. He said that preventing attacks is an issue that banks are accustomed to dealing with, because the security of customer funds is the "bedrock of any banking business".
Anonymous recently joined forces with now-defunct hacking group LulzSec, uniting under a campaign called "AntiSec", or Anti-Security, designed to expose data from banks and governments. Anonymous members are continuing the campaign despite the disbanding of Lulzsec, with a Sydney council and the New South Wales Electoral Commission already falling victim to data leaks.
Other hacktivist attacks in recent months have included millions of records going missing from Sony, and an ongoing campaign to disrupt the online presence of Mastercard, Visa and PayPal following their financial blockade of Wikileaks.

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Italian police crack down on Anonymous hackers

07/06/2011
Italian police claimed on Tuesday to have arrested some members of the hacker group Anonymous following a series of raids, but the hacktivist group remained defiant.

Amid the recent arrests, the Anonymous group vowed to make "louder" its continued fight for the freedom of the Internet.

"The Italian Anonymous have not fallen because of this cowardly attempt to dismantle them and announce consequences for there actions taken by the police, to demonstrate that Anonymous is present and fights on, like it did in the past and will in the future, for the freedom of the Internet. Italy Anonymous calls all citizens of the Internet and the international Anonymous: We need you! Let them have it, stronger than ever," it said.

A report on GamesRadar.com said that Italian police arrested 15 suspected Anonymous members for attacks on Sony's servers.

Citing information from Italian newspaper La Republica, it said that those arrested are suspected to be part of Anonymous' Italian arm.

Five of the suspects were minors, the report added.

But Anonymous belied some media reports claiming the group's "leaders" were among those arrested.

"Anonymous denies these media reports (and) reiterates that this is impossible: Anonymous is not been dismantled. Anonymous has no leaders, no structure. All Anonymous members operate at the same level," it said.

It added those arrested are not “dangerous hackers" as the media calls them, "but people like you. They have been arrested while peacefully protesting for there and your rights."

"Our protest will continue louder than ever," it said. — TJD, GMA News



Source:gmanews.tv/story/225488/technology/italian-police-crack-down-on-anonymous-hackers


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