syria

Early this morning, Syria went offline.

Some more scary news is coming out of Syria early this morning. Apparently the entire country has gone dark, completely vanishing from the Internet over the course of just a few minutes. According to Renesys, a company that operates a real-time Internet-monitoring grid, all of Syria's IP connectivity has become unreachable.

Today Google has announced the acquisition of Incentive Targeting, a maker of coupon programs that tailor to users' behaviors and likes. The company has worked with retailers to design trackable coupons that help gauge their performance and usefulness.

CNET has a review of the Jawbone Up … Read more

The Middle Eastern country has been experiencing an Internet outage for several hours, and many people on Twitter are reporting that phone lines are down as well. In addition, some airlines are canceling flights to Damascus.

According to Renesys, which operates a real-time grid that continuously monitors Internet routing data, all 84 of Syria's IP address blocks have become unreachable, effectively removing the country from the Internet. The outage started at 10:26 UTC (12:26 p.m. in Damascus or 5:26 a.… Read more

Al-Jazeera has become the second news agency in a little more than a month to be targeted by pro-Syrian government hackers.

The Qatar-based satellite TV station revealed in a tweet this morning that its short messaging service had been compromised and used to send false news reports, including a report that Qatar's prime minister had been assassinated:

"We'd like to inform our subscribers that Aljazeera SMS service is being compromised by pirates and they've sent fake news with no basis," the news organization said, according to a translation by The Hacker News.

A group calling … Read more

Someone must have it out for Reuters. For the second time in two weeks, the blogging platform for the news source's Web site has been hacked into and false stories have been illicitly published.

Today's sham article reported that Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal had died, according to Reuters. The first bogus story, posted earlier this month, was about the rebel Free Syrian Army suffering setbacks in their battle against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

"Reuters did not report the false story and the post was immediately deleted," Reuters News' director of … Read more

As the Syrian civil war continues to escalate, pro-government forces are allegedly carrying out a cyberwar against local dissidents.

Syrian activists, journalists, and government opposition groups are under a barrage of targeted malware attacks, according to the watchdog group Electronic Frontier Foundation. What this malware does is deceptively install surveillance software into a computer under the guise of protecting the computer from viruses. Its name is AntiHacker.

Once the malware is installed in the computer, with promises to "Auto-Protect & Auto-Detect & Security & Quick scan and analysing [sic]," it actually begins to spy on the user. Using … Read more

The 19th century military theorist Carl von Clausewitz famously asserted that war was an expression of politics by other means. A 21st century postscript: add cyber hacking to the list of means.

With Syria in the midst of a raging civil war, somebody hacked the Reuters.com Web site on Friday with a phony post purporting to carry an interview with Free Syrian Army head Riad al-Asaad.

"Our blogging platform was compromised and fabricated blog posts were falsely attributed to several Reuters journalists," the company said in a statement and later tweeted. "We are working to address … Read more

Computer engineer Bassel Khartabil has dedicated himself to making software free and open for years, and now his friends are asking for his freedom from the Syrian government's detention.

Khartabil was reportedly taken in an ambush on March 15 -- the first anniversary of the Syrian uprising -- during massive arrests. And while it's unclear why Khartabil was detained, activists say the government is known to take people randomly and without reason. It is a scary time, particularly for those who are willing to gather and share information, according to activists.

The 16-month old Syrian crisis has claimed … Read more

WikiLeaks, the highly controversial whistleblowing group, has begun publishing more than two million emails from Syrian political figures, ministries, and associated companies.

WikiLeaks says the data derives from 680 Syria-related entities or domain names, including those from the ministries of presidential affairs, foreign affairs, finance, information, transport, and culture.

Today's publication of dozens of emails mark the first cache released, with more to be published over the coming months. A number of media outlets are working in partnership with Wikileaks, including the Associated Press.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said the Syrian government will not be the only ones facing … Read more

Web users in Iran and Syria attempting to use a proxy tool to freely surf the Internet are reportedly being tracked by a new Trojan.

The proxy software known as Simurgh is used by many Iranian and Syrian citizens to make it seem as if their secure Internet connections are coming from a different country. Such proxy programs are common ways to mask a user's PC and Internet information in order to circumvent local censorship restrictions.

But a back-doored verson of Simurgh discovered by researchers at the University of Toronto is carrying a payload of malware -- one designed … Read more