Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Mastercard attack 'hits payments'

Web attacks on the Mastercard site have disrupted payments, the BBC has learnt.

The site is among several targeted by the Anonymous group of hackers, who have pledged to pursue firms that have withdrawn services from Wikileaks.

Mastercard, which stopped processing payments to the whistle-blowing site, said the attack had had "no impact" on people's ability to use their cards.

But the BBC has been contacted by a payment firm that said its customers had "a complete loss of service".

In particular, it said that an authentication service for online payments known as Mastercard's SecureCode, had been disrupted.

Other readers have also said that they have had problems with online payments. The scale of the problems is still unclear.

Mastercard has not responded to the claims.

Earlier, Doyel Maitra of the firm, said: "Mastercard is experiencing heavy traffic on its external corporate website - Mastercard.com - but this remains accessible.

"We are working to restore normal speed of service. There is no impact whatsoever on Mastercard or Maestro cardholders' ability to use their cards for secure transactions."

False account

Anonymous, which claimed to have carried out the attack, is a loose-knit group of hacktivists, with links to the notorious message board 4chan.

It said that it has hit several targets, including the website of the prosecutors who are acting in a legal case against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

"Start Quote

Websites that are bowing down to government pressure have become targets"

End Quote Coldblood Anonymous

PayPal, which has stopped processing donations to Wikileaks, has also been targeted.

The firm said Wikileaks' account had violated its terms of services.

"On 27 November the State Department, the US government, basically wrote a letter [to Wikileaks] saying that [its] activities were deemed illegal in the United States," PayPal's Osama Bedier told the Le Web conference in France.

"And as a result our policy group had to make the decision of suspending their account.

"It's honestly, just pretty straight forward from our perspective and there's not much more to it than that," he said.

Other firms that have distanced themselves from the site have also been hit in the recent spate of attacks including the Swiss bank, PostFinance, which closed the account of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

The bank said Mr Assange had provided false information when opening his account.

Swamp site

Security experts said the sites had been targeted by a so-called distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS), which swamp a site with so many page requests that it becomes overwhelmed and drops offline.

Paul Mutton of security firm Netcraft said that 1,600 computers were involved in flooding the site with spoof requests.

Access to Mastercard's site is still intermittent.

Noa Bar Yosef, a senior analyst at Imperva said the attacks were "very focused".

"It is recruiting people from within their own network. They are actually asking supporters to download a piece of code, the DDoSing malware, and upon a wake-up call the computer engages in the denial of service," he said.

Before the Mastercard attack, a member of Anonymous, who calls himself Coldblood, told the BBC that "multiple things" were being done to target companies that had stopped working with Wikileaks or which were perceived to have attacked the site.

"Websites that are bowing down to government pressure have become targets," he said.

"As an organisation we have always taken a strong stance on censorship and freedom of expression on the internet and come out against those who seek to destroy it by any means."

"We feel that Wikileaks has become more than just about leaking of documents, it has become a war ground, the people vs. the government," he said.

Some of the early DDoS hits failed to take sites offline, although that was not the point of the attacks, according to Coldblood.

"The idea is not to wipe them off but to give the companies a wake-up call," he said. "Companies will notice the increase in traffic and an increase in traffic means increase in costs associated with running a website."

DDoS attacks are illegal in many countries, including the UK.

Coldblood admitted that such attacks "may hurt people trying to get to these sites" but said it was "the only effective way to tell these companies that us, the people, are displeased".

Anonymous is also helping to create hundreds of mirror sites for Wikileaks, after its US domain name provider withdrew its services.

Coldblood said that the group was beginning to wind down the DDoS attacks so that it could concentrate on using "other methods which are more focused on supporting Wikileaks and making sure the Internet stays a free and open place".

Are you a Mastercard customer? Have you been affected by the attack? Send us your comments using the form below.



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Google unveils Chrome OS notebook

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Google's head of product for Chrome, Sundar Pichai, demonstrates the new operating system

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Google has delayed the launch of its much anticipated laptop, powered by its Chrome operating system, until 2011.

Instead, Google announced a pilot programme aimed at people who "live on the web".

Chrome OS is Google's boldest bid yet to challenge Microsoft's market dominance with Windows software.

Google has already gone after Microsoft's Office software with its Google Docs product.

Chrome marks a departure from traditional operating systems, such as Mac OSX and Windows, by targeting users who spend most of their time on the web.

"We think cloud computing will define computing as we know it," said Eric Schmidt, Google's chief operating officer.

"Finally there is a viable third choice for an operating system."

Google's Sundar Pichai said the pilot scheme is aimed at early adopters, developers and users who are used to using beta software.

They will be given an unbranded black notebook, called the Cr-48.

Mr Pichai said there would be no devices on sale until next year simply because the software was not ready for prime time, due to a number of bugs and unfinished features.

"This is a profound shift," said Mr Pichai, claiming that the operating system is Google's attempt to "re-think the personal experience for the modern web".

"Chrome is nothing but the web," he added.

Machines for the pilot scheme will start shipping soon.

Consumer devices from Acer and Samsung are due on the market in 2011. No pricing details were given.

Computer share

At the press event in San Francisco, Google also outlined a number of features in Chrome OS.

Security was at its heart, with automatic updates for users taking away the need to constantly ensure that the latest version has been activated.

The company said that it hoped to be the first to ship a tool called "verified boot" on Chrome OS devices, which makes sure nothing on the machine has been modified or compromised.

"We are confident that when we ship Chrome notebooks, it will be the most secure OS ever shipped to users," said Mr Pichai.

He also said that because data will be accessed through the cloud, users could loan their machines to other people.

"By delivering nothing but the web, it makes it very easy to share your computer," said Mr Pichai.

Google said it has also partnered with US telecom titan Verizon to offer connectivity with Chrome notebooks when they go on sale.

The plans range from 100 MB of free data, to $9.99 a day for unlimited data, with no extra fees.

Two paths

A number of analysts have questioned whether or not Google is making a smart play with the Chrome OS, given that the computing world has changed dramatically since it announced plans for the low-cost operating system over 18 months ago.

In the last year, Apple's iPad has reinvigorated the tablet market, and Google's own Android OS - which powers smartphones - has taken off.

Android is also being used in tablet devices and netbooks, prompting a number of industry watchers to question Google's twin approach in the OS market.

"Google hasn't done a good job on why these two things need to exist," Michael Gartenberg, director with research firm Gartner, told the BBC last week.

"Android is designed for the here and now, an app centred world. The hottest devices don't have keyboards. Google has to come up with a better story of how Chrome fits in," he added.

Many fear two Google operating systems will cause confusion for consumers.

Google's Mr Schmidt does not believe it will, and recently stated that Chrome was for keyboards and Android was for touch-based devices.

The Chrome OS will be given free to hardware manufacturers.

Microsoft, in comparison, charges a fee for its Windows software.

Back in October, the software leader said Windows sales increased by 66% on a year earlier, to $4.8bn, helping to boost first quarter profits.



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IE9 introduces anti-tracking tool

Microsoft's IE9 browser will have tools that control what data is collected about what a user does online.

The tools will let people stop a site they are visiting sharing information about what they do with other sites.

Users will be able to create lists stating that their data will only be shared with sites they want to see it.

The news comes as the US government criticises the computer industry for its slow progress on protecting user privacy.

In a blog post, Microsoft said many people did not realise that when they visit a website what they look for, view or buy there is often shared with other companies without that user's knowledge.

In IE9, Microsoft is planning to introduce what it calls "Tracking Protection Lists" that it says will work like the "Do Not Call" lists that limit who marketing firms can cold call.

The lists will be defined by users and limit the sharing of data only to those sites which a user is happy to see the information. When switched on, the system might mean that some adverts or other features do not appear when users visit sites.

Anyone will be able to write a list and share it with others so they can get the same protection, said Microsoft.

It also plans to release the formatting and standards for the lists under an open licence so other browser makers can adopt them.

The tracking system will be turned off by default and users will have to "opt in" to use it.

Microsoft said early versions of the tools would be included in the version of IE9 due for release in early 2011.

It is not the first browser to offer such functionality. Chrome, Firefox and Opera also allow users to create lists of trusted sites.

The announcement comes in the wake of a report from the US Federal Trade Commission report into online privacy.

In it the FTC said that industry self-regulation of privacy was "too slow" and has "failed to provide adequate and meaningful protection".

It called for consumers to be given far more choice about the data being collected about them. It recommended the creation of a "Do Not Track" mechanism that would stop the wholesale collection of information about where people go online and what they are interested in.



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Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Cataclysm hits Warcraft&#39;s world

Thousands of people around the world queued into the night to get hold of the latest expansion for World of Warcraft (WoW).

The expansion, called Cataclysm, is the first for two years and makes big changes to the game.

The expansion re-makes the world in which WoW is set and rips up the geography of many familiar places.

It also introduces two new races to the game, increases the level cap and makes many other changes.

Shops around the world stayed open at midnight on 6 December to let eager players get their hands on Cataclysm. In Germany the MediaMarkt shop in Berlin ran a competition for the best WoW-themed costume worn by those queuing outside the store.

The Cataclysm expansion revolves around the emergence into Azeroth, the world in which WoW is set, of Deathwing the dragon. The seismic activity accompanying his emergence causes changes to almost every part of the game world.

Many of the geographical changes to Azeroth have already been applied to the game via a patch applied in late November. The expansion pack lets subscribers create worgen (wolfmen) and goblin characters. The level cap for players is also increased to 85 from 80.

Alongside the geographic changes go many alterations to the quests players must do to progress to higher levels. Many are themed around helping regions recover from the devastation wrought by Deathwing.

"Cataclysm is probably a far bigger deal for Warcraft-makers Blizzard than they're letting on," said journalist Alec Meer who writes for the Rock Paper Shotgun gaming blog.

"It's about transforming the World of Warcraft from something that could arguably be seen as winding down back into very much a going concern," he said.

Mr Meer said the expansion "rebooted, reimagined and reinvigorated" the many zones in the game in a bid to make it appealing to both veterans and new players.

"If Blizzard's plan works, the bulk of the game's population will spend the next few months adventuring through fresh-but-familiar lands together," he said, "making Cataclysm quite the opposite of what its apocalyptic title implies: a rebirth for the world's most successful videogame, and for its community."



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Google debuts second Nexus phone

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A look at how the Nexus S works

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Google has made its second bid for a slice of the mobile phone market, with the launch of its Nexus S phone.

The Samsung-built device comes less than 12 months after the launch of the firm's Nexus One, built by HTC, which failed to win over many consumers.

The Nexus S will initially be launched in the UK and US, and will be available "from the end of the month".

It is the first phone to feature the latest version of Google's Android operating system known as Gingerbread.

It also comes with new hardware such as Near Field Communications (NFC).

This short-range wireless technology is used predominantly in places like Japan and allows people to use their phone as a travel ticket, make small payments and scan their phone over adverts, for example, to get more information about a product.

"NFC allows the Nexus S to read smart objects" said David Burke of Google's mobile division.

These objects must have a small, unpowered NFC chip in them that is activated when the phone is held near.

"When you put the phone on top, it energises the circuit," explained Mr Burke. "It can echo information back to the phone and the phone can send information to the chip.

"So, you can swipe a movie poster and watch the trailer automatically," he said.

NFC is a growing trend in mobiles and will start to become more pervasive in the New Year, said Shaun Collins, managing director of research firm CCS Insight.

"NFC is going to be the technology of 2011, in my opinion," he told BBC News. "Most of the BlackBerries will have it and a big swathe of mid to high-level Nokias will have it."

The next version of the iPhone is also rumoured to contain the technology.

Net calls

The Nexus S was first shown off by Google boss Eric Schmidt at the Web 2.0 summit in San Francisco in November.

The 16GB, touchscreen device has been built in cooperation with Samsung and is part of its Galaxy S family of phones and tablets.

Mr Collins said it would compete with other "flagship devices" such as Nokia's N8, the BlackBerry Torch and the HTC Desire HD.

"Start Quote

In the US, one in four searches done on Android devices is done with voice"

End Quote David Burke

"This is great news for Samsung," said Mr Collins. "It becomes the de-facto flagship product for Android."

The search giant dismissed claims that it was showing any favouritism towards Samsung or that it was going into competition with other handset manufacturers that produce phones using Android.

"Our objective is not to compete with partners," said Mr Burke. "Our goal is to push the mobile ecosystem forward."

Mr Collins said that Samsung's window of opportunity with the device was small.

The phone claims to have the "world's first" 4in (10cm) curved display and has front and rear-facing cameras.

Inside it has the same processor as the Nexus One, but with increased memory bandwidth to make it more responsive, according to Mr Burke.

The phone is also the first handset to introduce the latest version of Android - known as Gingerbread.

The software is the fifth major revision of the firm's software and will be rolled out to most Android phones in the "coming weeks or months", said Mr Burke.

It includes a new user interface, support for new hardware such as gyroscope - used for gaming, for example, and internet calling.

This allows anyone to set up a VOIP account that can be used to place and receive calls over the internet.

The phone can be configured to use this feature as soon as it is in range of a wi-fi hotspot, allowing people to by pass the network operators.

Mr Burke said that he didn't expect any resistance to this feature from the networks, particularly as many of them customise the android software and could " remove the feature if they want to".

Phone promise

The phone also has a greater emphasis on voice control.

"In the US, one in four searches done on Android devices is done with voice," said Mr Burke.

The phone comes with existing software that allows people to control navigation on the phone with their voice as well as conduct searches.

A new set of commands also allows people to send text messages, e-mails and set alarms on their phone, amongst other things.

These will initially only be available in the US, whilst the firm build the voice models needed for its software to cope with other regional accents.

The phone will initially offered for sale by Carphone Warehouse in the UK and Best Buy in the US. It will not have its own Google web store like the Nexus One, which was shut after less than 5 months after Google admitted that it "remained a niche channel for early adopters".

"That didn't work out for Google," said Mr Collins. "But Carphone Warehouse is a different ball game - they have the distribution, brand and presence."

Mr Collins said that Carphone Warehouse was "setting themselves up as the place to go to for Android".

"They see that the operating system is increasingly becoming the differentiating factor for consumers and they are aligning themselves with Android," he said.

Mr Burke admitted the firm was "going for volume" by partnering with Carphone Warehouse.

In the UK, the Nexus S will come free with �35 per month contracts or will be offered unlocked - to be used on any carrier - for �549.

The Google blog said it would be available after 16 December in the US and 20 December in the UK.

However, a spokesperson for Carphone Warehouse said that it would take pre-orders from 1600 GMT today, but it would not be on sale "until later in the month".

The firm said it was still negotiating contracts with "all of the UK operators" and could not say when a phone ordered today would be delivered.

"We don't want to promise anything to customers that we can't deliver," she said.



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Cloud computing &#39;could boost EU&#39;

Widespread adoption of cloud computing could give the top five EU economies a 763bn-euro (�645bn; $1tn) boost over five years, a report has said.

The CEBR said it could also create 2.4m jobs. The technology gives software and computing power on demand over the net.

But experts warn that cloud computing can be very disruptive to business, and companies could end up "disillusioned".

"Nothing kills a new technology better than a poor user experience," said Damian Saunders of Citrix.

The report, by the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR), was commissioned by EMC, a data storage and IT solutions firm that provides cloud computing services. The company is just one of many pushing into the sector, all saying that 2011 will be the year of the cloud, when the technology will find mainstream adoption.

When a company uses cloud computing, it does not build all IT infrastructure by itself. Instead, it rents storage, computing power or software services from other companies. The services are accessed via the internet, which in network diagrams is shown as a cloud, hence the name.

The cloud turns information technology into a utility, consumed like electricity or outsourced payroll services, says Chuck Hollis, EMC's chief technology officer.

However, moving IT services to the cloud is more than just a technical upgrade. "Moving to the cloud is a cultural shift as well as a technology shift," warns Dave Coplin, until recently national technology officer at Microsoft UK. "The cloud is a tool, it's an enabler, but you have to think about the outcome: what is it that you are trying to do?"

Biggest winners

Cloud computing does indeed help companies drive down IT costs; studies by technology analysts such as Nucleus Research have shown that using the cloud sharply cuts the energy used by computing. Cloud computing also makes it easier to use fewer computers to do the same amount of IT work, while the workload itself can be scaled up or down at an instant.

The CEBR report suggests that the rapid uptake of "cloud computing service offerings [will make them] progressively cheaper as economies of scale take hold and service offerings increasingly mature".

The authors of the CEBR study acknowledge that their estimates depend on numerous assumptions and uncertainties, but they forecast that by 2015 the European Union's top five economies - Germany, France, UK, Italy and Spain - could get an annual boost of 177bn euro, and create net new jobs of 466,000 a year.

"Start Quote

The UK is the only country to show a disproportionately smaller share of the cloud computing benefits than the size of its economy might suggest."

End Quote CEBR

The biggest winner in absolute numbers could be Germany, followed by the UK. However, if the gains are measured in relation to the size of the economy, Spain comes out on top while the UK comes bottom as "the only country to show a disproportionately smaller share of the cloud computing benefits than the size of its economy might suggest," the authors of the CEBR report say.

Cloud disruption

While the cloud is "a really cheap place to do business," according to Microsoft's Dave Coplin, it forces companies to change their IT culture and learn that it comes at a price. "People lose full control and flexibility, but get scalability and power in return," he says.

Damian Saunders, in charge of the data centre and cloud group at software company Citrix, says there are four key drivers that are now accelerating the rate of cloud adoption.

For starters, technology has improved, with better connectivity, higher internet speeds and virtualisation technologies that allow the more efficient use of servers. Then there are new business models, with companies not charging a big lump sum per software licence but on an "as-you-consume" basis.

"Start Quote

Nothing kills the successful adoption of new technology better than a poor user experience."

End Quote Damian Saunders Citrix

Consumerisation of IT is another driver. Mr Saunders calls it the "IT civil war" whereby every January "employees get a gadget for Christmas and then take it to work and don't understand why they can't use it". The move towards mobile computing, he says, is also driving the move towards cloud computing, which in turn is giving companies a competitive edge.

Arguably the biggest driver is the state of the economy. Cloud computing allows companies to invest in growth while spreading the cost. Instead of a big up-front costs, IT investment becomes a continuing operating expenditure that rises and falls with demand.

Until recently, says Mr Saunders, the risks of cloud computing "always overwhelmed the potential reward". This has changed now, he says, but also warns that "cloud is just reaching the peak of hype" that will soon end in disillusionment for those not prepared for the disruption it brings.

Echoing Mr Coplin's warnings about a cultural shift, Mr Saunders says companies will have to learn that "cloud computing will never replace everything that went on before". Companies will have to work hard to make cloud computing user-friendly, because "nothing kills the successful adoption of new technology better than a poor user experience".

And if companies get their roll-out of cloud solutions wrong, then all the optimistic forecasts - whether from the CEBR or others - will come to nought.



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Sunday, December 5, 2010

China &#39;orchestrated Google hack&#39;

Senior Chinese figures were behind the hacking of Google earlier this year which forced the search engine to quit the country, leaked US cables suggest.

One cable, released by whistle-blowing site Wikileaks, cites a "well-placed" contact as saying the action against Google was "100% political".

A politburo member is said to have been angered after Googling his name and finding critical comments online.

The cable says it is unclear whether China's top leaders were involved.

Other cables show Beijing has been "extremely concerned" about the use of high-resolution satellite imagery on Google's mapping software, Google Earth.

In January, Google said it had been subjected to a "sophisticated cyber attack originating from China" - it said the e-mail accounts of human rights activists were among those hacked.

In the ensuing row over internet censorship, Google abandoned mainland China and moved its Chinese-language operations to Hong Kong.

The company did not say who it thought was responsible but the cables, released by Wikileaks and published on the Guardian website, show the company had repeatedly raised concerns about the issue.

'Forbidden fruit'

The BBC's Nick Childs says the allegations contained in the cables will reinforce both the perception that the Chinese government is highly sensitive about the internet and suspicions that it was behind the hacking attacks on Google.

One cable from the US embassy in Beijing cites a "well-placed contact" as claiming "that the Chinese government coordinated the recent intrusions of Google systems".

"According to our contact, the closely held operations were directed at the Politburo Standing Committee level," it says.

The source, whose name is deleted from the text, told the US that the operations against Google were "100%" political in nature, not an attempt to reduce Google's influence in China in favour of domestic search engines, such as Baidu.

But the writer of the cable notes that it is "unclear whether President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao were aware of these actions" before Google publicly announced its concerns.

The cable also reports on alleged concern in the Chinese government that, by challenging official censorship of the internet, Google had made itself seem more appealing to Chinese net users and given the impression that the US and Google were working together "to undermine Chinese government controls of the internet".

"All of a sudden, XXXXXXXXXXXX continued, Baidu looked like a boring state-owned enterprise while Google "seems very attractive, like the forbidden fruit," it says.

In cable dated 18 May 2009, US diplomats quote a Chinese source as saying that "the root of the problem" was an unnamed member of the politburo standing committee who wanted Google to stop linking to its international site from its sanitised version, google.cn.

The politician is said to have "recently discovered that Google's worldwide site is uncensored, and is capable of Chinese language searches and search results". He reportedly carried out a search for his own name and found sites personally critical of him.

Google consistently refused to remove the link, citing its own anti-censorship principles, and eventually left the Chinese mainland.

The cable says that while the US can neither confirm nor deny the allegations against Beijing, "the potential for continuing escalation by the Chinese, assuming Google sticks to its guns - and the likelihood of loud US Congressional and public outcry if it caves - suggest a high-level USG [US government] response may be in order".

The following January, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged China to fully investigate the hacking allegations.

"Countries or individuals that engage in cyber attacks should face consequences and international condemnation," she said.



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Saturday, December 4, 2010

Wikileaks forced to change domain

Whistle-blowing website Wikileaks has been forced to change its web address after the company providing its domain name cut off service.

EveryDNS.net said it had terminated services because Wikileaks.org had come under massive cyber attacks.

But Wikileaks has already reappeared using a Swiss web address.

Wikileaks has also used the micro-blogging site Twitter to urge its fans to redistribute its "raw" net address so it can be viewed at any time.

This numerical internet protocol (IP) address remains live and accessible even when web domains - the normal "www" addresses used to access most sites - are unavailable.

Experts say it is likely that Wikileaks has done deals with lots of web hosting companies, although many are likely to back away from dealing with the controversial site in the light of recent web attacks.

There is also a published list of mirror sites, which Wikileaks hopes will provide constant access to the site.

Some of these sites have simply copied Wikileaks' content and put it on a different web server, while others are using different domain names to point at the original content.

The more of these sites there are, the more difficult it will be to shut Wikileaks down, security analyst Paul Mutton told the BBC.

In France, Industry Minister Eric Besson has called for a ban of Wikileaks on French servers.

One of the mirror sites, Wikileaks.ch, is currently hosted on servers in France.

Downtime

In a post on Twitter, Wikileaks acknowledged that its domain had been "killed" by EveryDNS.net.

It was not clear how long disruption to the wikileaks.org site would last.

In a statement on its website, EveryDNS.net said it had issued a 24-hour termination notice to Wikileaks which ended at 0300 GMT on 2 December.

It said the domain wikileaks.org had become the target of "multiple distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks".

Analysis

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The net appears to be closing in on Wikileaks as more and more companies it relies on distance themselves from it.

Shutting down the main .org site will cause problems but it is by no means the end.

Its Twitter feed remains defiant, urging fans to log on via its IP address with the tweet "Free speech has a number: http://88.80.13.160".

In some ways, any attempts to cut off Wikileaks could be a case of too little, too late.

The thousands of secret US diplomatic cables at the heart of the controversy are already with media outlets.

A site as controversial and savvy as Wikileaks has plenty up its sleeve, like the mysterious encrypted file labelled 'insurance', which is believed to have been posted on Bit Torrent and is rumoured to contain all the leaks.

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"These attacks have, and future attacks would, threaten the stability of the EveryDNS.net infrastructure, which enables access to almost 500,000 other websites," it said.

"Any downtime of the wikileaks.org website has resulted from its failure to use another hosted DNS service provider," it added.

Websites use hosting firms such as EveryDNS.net to translate their raw IP addresses to a more memorable web address such as Wikileaks.org.

But the IP address of a website will also direct users to the site.

One web expert explained that Wikileaks had managed to re-establish web access via a different address.

"Users visiting the www.wikileaks.ch website appear to be directed via a Swedish website on to a server in France which is now hosting their main website," explained Sebastien Lahtinen, director of web hosting firm NetConnex.

In a surprising twist, the .ch address is also hosted by EveryDNS.

"It seems a strange choice given that they pulled the plug on the .org address just a few hours ago," said Paul Mutton, a security analyst at internet services firm Netcraft. "It could be that Wikileaks is quite happy to play a cat and mouse game with them," he added.

'Death threats'

Using a Swiss domain could be Wikileaks anticipating the next line of attack - having its IP address de-registered, thinks Mr Mutton.

"Moving to a non-US domain makes sense. Its previous domain was registered with a US company and as such has to work within US laws, with potential for the government to lean on it and get it suspended," said Mr Mutton.

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Stephen Sackur will be hosting a special programme debating the effect of the leaks - Wikileaks: Open Secret at 1630GMT on BBC World News & 1930GMT on the BBC World Service

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Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is currently reported to be staying at a secret address in the UK.

In a question-and-answer session on the website of the Guardian newspaper, he said there had been threats against his life.

"We are taking the appropriate precautions to the degree that we are able when dealing with a super power," Mr Assange wrote.

He also called for criminal charges to be brought against Tom Flanagan, a former adviser to Canada's prime minister Stephen Harper.

Mr Assange was referring to Mr Flanagan's comments that "Assange should be assassinated... I think Obama should put out a contract ... I wouldn't feel unhappy if Assange does disappear".

When asked about the alternatives for Wikileaks' cache of material if it were to be "taken out" technically, Mr Assange said: "The Cable Gate archive has been spread, along with significant material from the US and other countries to over 100,000 people in encrypted form.

"If something happens to us, the key parts will be released automatically. Further, the Cable Gate archives is in the hands of multiple news organisations. History will win. The world will be elevated to a better place. Will we survive? That depends on you."

Wikileaks says its website has been under attack since it began publishing more than 250,000 classified US diplomatic cables.

The memos, which discuss US diplomatic relations and military activities, have been causing controversy across the world.

It turned to the online store Amazon to host its site but the company ended the agreement on Wednesday - a move welcomed by US officials.

Amazon said that it had not removed Wikileaks because of a government inquiry. Instead it said Wikileaks had failed to adhere to its terms of service.

"It's clear that Wikileaks doesn't own or otherwise control all the rights to this classified content. Further it is not credible that the extraordinary volume of 250,000 classified documents that Wikileaks is publishing could have been carefully redacted in such a way as to ensure that they weren't putting innocent people in jeopardy," Amazon said on its website.

But freedom-of-speech campaigners remain defiant.

"The first serious info war is now engaged. The field of battle is Wikileaks. You are troops," tweeted John Perry Barlow, founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.



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BT to trial one gigabit broadband

BT has announced plans to trial one gigabit fibre broadband in Suffolk and add 40 rural market towns to its current fibre roll-out.

It said the move would support the UK government's plan to create the best broadband network in Europe by 2015.

It comes as regulator Ofcom reveals that less than 1% of UK homes have a super-fast broadband connection.

Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt is due to spell out the UK's broadband strategy next week.

The 1Gb trial in Kesgrave, Suffolk, will begin early next year and is intended to demonstrate the speed capabilities of BT's fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) technology.

BT has been criticised for not offering FTTH more widely. Most of its fibre roll-out will rely on slower fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) technology.

Only a quarter of the homes it intends to offer fibre to will be connected using FTTH.

The market towns earmarked for broadband upgrades have not yet be named but BT said it intended to begin offering services from late 2011.

The announcement comes ahead of a speech on the issue from Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt.

"I will be setting out on Monday how we can do even more to boost broadband roll-out - by stimulating competition and creating an environment in which business can flourish by removing barriers and cutting costs," he said in a statement.

The government is set to provide �830m for firms willing to offer fast broadband services in rural areas, which it will provide "over the course of this parliament and the next".

BT said that if it was to "win funds on that scale" it would be able to provide fibre to 90% of the UK.

Under current plans, its fibre will extend to 66% of the UK.

"We intend to continually push the limits of our super-fast broadband programme in terms of the technology and the geography," said Oliva Garfield, BT's director of strategy.



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Russian denies world spam scheme

A Russian man accused of operating an e-mail spam business that at times accounted for one third of global spam has pleaded not guilty in a federal court in the US state of Wisconsin.

Oleg Nikolaenko is charged with running a global network of more than 500,000 virus-infected personal computers, in violation of a US anti-spam law.

Mr Nikolaenko asked to be allowed a form of house arrest, pending a trial.

But the judge ordered him held without bail, ruling he was a flight risk.

"He is a citizen and resident of Russia and the government believes, if released, he would seek to return there and the government wouldn't be able to prosecute him," argued prosecutor Erica O'Neil.

The network Mr Nikolaenko is accused of running, called a botnet, used other people's computers infected with malicious code to send out billions of e-mails.

Prosecutors said the computers were capable of sending up to 10 billion e-mails per day.

Some experts say at one point the e-mails blasted out from the network accounted for one in every three spam e-mails sent in the world.

Mr Nikolaenko is charged with violating a seven-year-old anti-spam law, the CAN-SPAM Act, by intentionally falsifying information in commercial e-mail messages and sending a minimum of 2,500 spam e-mails per day.



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