a Quinta 's weblog : un Blog di Stefano Quintarelli

German regulator orders Facebook to allow pseudonyms | Reuters

Facebook may not prevent its users from using fake names, a German privacy watchdog said on Tuesday, in the latest privacy setback for the U.S. company in Europe.

The Hamburg data protection authority, which is responsible for policing Facebook in Germany, said the social network firm could not unilaterally change users' chosen usernames to their real names, nor could it ask them for official ID.

The German order comes after the Belgian privacy watchdog took Facebook to court in June over the way it tracks the activities of its users. The two authorities are working with their Spanish, Dutch and French counterparts to investigate Facebook's new privacy policy.

via uk.reuters.com

Su Motherboard dicono che le auto visualizzate da Uber sull'App non sono vere

There is speculation that it’s more likely that this is intentional on Uber’s part, rather than a bug in the system. If a potential passenger opened up the app and saw no cars around, she might take another cab service. But if she saw a cluster of cars seemingly milling around on the same street, she’s more likely to request a ride.

When asked about this seeming discrepancy, an Uber spokesperson said that on the rider app, “The number of cars and their location are generally accurate.”

When Heather asked an Uber Help staff member, however, she was told that the rider map was just a “screen saver.”

“The app is simply showing there are partners on the road at the time,” the staffer wrote in an email. “This is not a representation of the exact numbers of drivers or their location. This is more of a visual effect letting people know that partners are searching for fares.”

“I know this seems a misleading to you but it is meant as more of a visual effect more than an accurate location of drivers in the area. It would be better of you to think of this as a screen saver on a computer. Once a rider request a trip there will be actual information about the partners [sic] location showing up in the app."

via motherboard.vice.com

Wearable marketing

L'erba del vicino: opera da 6Bn inutilizzata, costo 16M/mese, in Germania

As the EU’s self-appointed morality police, Germany publicly spanked Greece earlier this month for being so financially frivolous. Well, Germany has its own money troubles! Namely, a catastrophe-riddled $6 billion airport that the country continues to pour money into—with no opening date in sight. Scheiße!

This week’s Businessweek engages in some A+ finger-pointing to call out this German boondoggle that’s an affront to a culture known for its precision and efficiency.

Everything was going great with the design and construction of the Berlin Brandenburg International Willy Brandt Airport until some higher-ups caught wind of the Airbus A380—the fancy extra-large double-decker jetliner which requires much larger gate infrastructure. A mandate was issued to make the airport bigger, dammit, including tearing out an already finished terminal wall. Even though no airlines had committed to bringing the A380 to Berlin, the under-construction airport grew more and more ambitious, with the size—and costs—ballooning into a bureaucratic nightmare:

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The architecture and engineering teams fought to keep up. As the terminal ballooned from 200,000 to 340,000 square meters (dwarfing Frankfurt’s 240,000 and just shy of Heathrow Terminal 5’s 353,000), they parceled out the work to seven contractors. That soon grew to 35, and they brought in hundreds of subcontractors, says Delius. Several engineering and electronics companies, led by the German giants Siemens and Bosch, struggled to retain control over the complex fire protection system that included 3,000 fire doors, 65,000 sprinklers, thousands of smoke detectors, a labyrinth of smoke evacuation ducts, and the equivalent of 55 miles of cables.

via gizmodo.com

Perchè uso un telefono-telefono (senza dati ?): ecco un esempio: vulnerabilità per 950M di telefoni

Vulnerabilities discovered in the Stagefright media playback engine that is native to Android devices could be the mobile world’s equivalent to Heartbleed. Almost all Android devices contain the security and implementation issues in question; unpatched devices are at risk to straightforward attacks against specific users that put their privacy, data and safety at risk.

Google has patched internal code branches, but devices require over-the-air updates and given the shaky history of handset manufacturers and carriers pushing out security fixes, it’s unknown how long it will take to update vulnerable devices, or whether some will ever get fixed. Silent Circle has patched its Blackphone against the vulnerabilities, as has Mozilla, which uses Stagefright code in Firefox.

The flaws have been in Android since—and including—version 2.2; devices running Android versions older than Jelly Bean (4.2) are at greater risk since they lack exploit mitigations that have been built into newer versions of the OS.

Researcher Joshua Drake, vice president of platform research and exploitation at Zimperium zLabs, said exploits could be particularly insidious given the fact that an attacker need only use a malicious MMS message that could trigger the vulnerability without user interaction, and delete the message before the victim is aware. All an attacker would need, Drake said, is the device’s phone number.

“It’s a nasty attack vector,” he said.

The problem is that Stagefright is an over-privileged application with system access on some devices, which enables privileges similar to apps with root access. Stagefright is used to process a number of common media formats, and it’s implemented in native C++ code, making it simpler to exploit.

“On some devices, [Stagefright] has access to the system group, which is right next to root—very close to root—so it should be easy to get root from system,” Drake said. “And system runs a lot of stuff. You’d be able to monitor communicat

via threatpost.com

Chissà se e in che misura questa notizia è correlata a quelle recenti di leak di software spia...

 

Tecnolaw. ‘Wikimedia è un hosting provider’, sentenza del Tribunale di Roma

Wikimedia Foundation “può essere qualificata, secondo quanto indicato dalla normativa di origine comunitaria, quale hosting provider nella gestione dell’enciclopedia online Wikipedia, da cui consegue, secondo i principi generali sanciti dalla predetta normativa, una generale esenzione di responsabilità del gestore, il quale si limita ad offrire ospitalità sui propri server ad informazioni fornite dal pubblico degli utenti”. È quanto si legge nella sentenza del 10 luglio scorso della Prima sezione civile del Tribunale di Roma.

Il giudice monocratico Damiana Colla ha dovuto pronunciarsi su una querela presentata dal Movimento Italiano Genitori (Moige) con una richiesta di risarcimento danni per diffamazione. In sostanza, la Onlus lamentava la presenza di “informazioni inesatte” sulla pagina ad essa dedicata, nella quale figuravano anche passaggi dai quali emergeva nel complesso un’immagine negativa dell’associazione. Il Moige, si legge nella sentenza, “ha infine evidenziato di avere invano inoltrato alla convenuta richieste scritte e diffide, nonchè tentato di effettuare, sia prima che dopo l’instaurazione del giudizio, la procedura di modifica della pagina in contestazione secondo quanto previsto dal sito stesso dell’enciclopedia, il tutto senza l’esito auspicato ed il conseguente blocco dell’account degli utenti che avevano proceduto in tal senso per conto del Moige”.

 

Per il Tribunale “occorre premettere che la convenuta, in quanto soggetto stabilito al di fuori dello spazio economico europeo (società avente sede in California), non risulta direttamente soggetta alle disposizioni del decreto legislativo n. 70/2003, espressamente riservate, ai sensi dell’art. 2 lett. c), ai soli servizi prestati da soggetti stabiliti in paesi UE, sebbene tali disposizioni – costituendo un sistema organico di norme volte a disciplinare nel nostro ordinamento i rapporti conseguenti alla libera circolazione dei servizi della società dell’informazione – possano essere considerate quali principi regolatori della materia al fine di valutare se la condotta della parte convenuta, pur esaminata sotto il profilo della normativa interna, possa o meno configurare un illecito diffamatorio”.

 

Wikimedia, qualificata come hosting provider, è dunque chiamata a rispondere degli illeciti commessi sulle pagine dell’enciclopedia “solo qualora, non appena a conoscenza di tali fatti su espressa comunicazione delle autorità competenti, non si attivi per rimuovere le informazioni illecite o per disabilitarne l’accesso, come previsto dall’art. 17, terzo comma, d.lgs. n. 70/2003, secondo il quale il provider è civilmente responsabile del contenuto di tali servizi nel caso in cui, richiesto dall’autorità giudiziaria o amministrativa avente funzioni di vigilanza, non ha agito prontamente per impedire l’accesso a detto contenuto, in tal modo risultando il provider sollevato, secondo la normativa europea, dall’obbligo di controllo”.

“Estremamente chiara, oltre che confermata dalla documentazione allegata – prosegue la sentenza – risulta infatti la descrizione delle modalità operative di Wikipedia, enciclopedia online dal conten

via www.key4biz.it

ADINA15: A Dive Into Network Anomalies

#ADINA15

Do you like playing with open data and producing some good looking graphics about them?

Would you fancy spending some time in the Italian Parliament in Rome hacking on internet censorship data and reports gathered by OONI?

Then submit an application to join us from the 1st of October to the 2nd of October 2015 at the OONI Open Data Hackfest!

All humans welcome!

OONI?

OONI is a platform for conducting and publishing measurements useful to study censorship and surveillance on the Internet. It consists of an open data format, an open source software implementation for several platforms, and a public archive of over 15000 measurements collected from about 70 countries worldwide.

via ooni.torproject.org

Telecom Italia taps Akamai for CDN services

Italian incumbent to offer Akamai's Web optimisation, security, content delivery services to business customers.

Telecom Italia has struck a deal with Akamai that will enable the Italian incumbent sell a range of content delivery network (CDN) services to corporate clients.

"Akamai's technology together with Telecom Italia's platforms and network, gives customers access to more efficient solutions for the use of content," said Simone Battiferri, executive vice president of business at Telecom Italia, in a statement on Tuesday.

via www.totaltele.com

sniff.
lacrimuccia..
(ma molto ragionevole, dal punto di vista business)

Big Internet providers must open fibre networks to competitors: CRTC (in canada)

Canada’s communications regulator is forcing the country’s big Internet service providers to offer competitors access to their fibre optic networks.The new requirement will give smaller Internet service providers, or ISPs, access to much higher speed networks.

via www.theglobeandmail.com

Ofcom puts BT breakup on the agenda

Ofcom confirmed on Thursday it is considering a full separation of Openreach from BT as part of its Strategic Review of Digital Communications.

However, BT warned that breaking up the U.K. incumbent would lead to years of uncertainty and could delay its G.fast deployment.

Ofcom marked the conclusion of stage one of its in-depth investigation – launched in March – with the publication of a discussion document seeking input on four areas of focus: investment and innovation; targeted deregulation; giving consumers and businesses the information and means to switch service provider; and competition.

Separating Openreach from BT falls under that last topic, and is one of the options on the agenda as Ofcom assesses the state of competition and identifies potential areas requiring improvement.

"Our priorities are clear. We want to promote competition, investment and innovation, so that everyone benefits from even better coverage, choice, price and quality of service in years to come," said Ofcom CEO Sharon White, in a statement.

As well as a full separation, Ofcom will also consider applying new rules to BT, such as wholesale price caps, incentives to improve service, or tougher penalties should BT fall short. Promoting competition from alternative network providers and cablecos like Virgin Media is also up for discussion, as is maintaining the status quo, where Openreach is functionally separate from BT.

via www.totaltele.com