It's amusing to see how much the term "State Sponsored" is thrown around regarding these variants. Sooner or later, everything will be labeled as such to the point where truly "state sponsored" won't even matter. Further disturbing is the annoying mechanisms in which companies like Kaspersky wildly and broadly word their articles often allowing for insane inferences to be made. For example, floating around is news that the US did this to follow the money trail for terrorists. Really? Because a national security letter to Visa, Mastercard and Paypal wouldn't get them the data quicker? Not to mention SWIFT, PROMIS and other controls are in place and have been for years
If you follow the verbiage from Kaspersky over the last few years, one may infer he outright hates the US, is working for the FSB or something way out there. So I quote what I saw on Twitter: World according to Kaspersky: 's:^:US developed (Gauss\|Stuxnet\|Flame):g' || if [ -e $MALICE ]|\then|\ echo USA|\ fi
Let's be realistic about these storage services: Sure they offer a good way to store data for those who use it for the right purposes but the reality is that far too many of them KNOWINGLY allow users to upload pirated software, music and so forth. No matter what country a provider is located at, when it starts affecting the homebase (that country's finances come into play), is the only time law enforcement takes note.
As for the shutdown over "malware" ads, doubtful this was the case. There are far too many complaints against entire AS's to RIPE, APNIC, ARIN and so forth that most providers conveniently ignore them as the penalty for doing nothing is usually non-existent. Now, I can see someone moderating this down but ask yourself an honest question, if you spent money and time developing something, how would you feel (honestly) if you saw someone STEALING from you because they posted free copies on RapidShare or MediaFire or any one of these other filesharing sites.
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You could always hex-edit the code, muck it up, creating a gaussian blur
It's amusing to see how much the term "State Sponsored" is thrown around regarding these variants. Sooner or later, everything will be labeled as such to the point where truly "state sponsored" won't even matter. Further disturbing is the annoying mechanisms in which companies like Kaspersky wildly and broadly word their articles often allowing for insane inferences to be made. For example, floating around is news that the US did this to follow the money trail for terrorists. Really? Because a national security letter to Visa, Mastercard and Paypal wouldn't get them the data quicker? Not to mention SWIFT, PROMIS and other controls are in place and have been for years
If you follow the verbiage from Kaspersky over the last few years, one may infer he outright hates the US, is working for the FSB or something way out there. So I quote what I saw on Twitter: World according to Kaspersky: 's:^:US developed (Gauss\|Stuxnet\|Flame):g' || if [ -e $MALICE ]|\then|\ echo USA|\ fi
Let's be realistic about these storage services: Sure they offer a good way to store data for those who use it for the right purposes but the reality is that far too many of them KNOWINGLY allow users to upload pirated software, music and so forth. No matter what country a provider is located at, when it starts affecting the homebase (that country's finances come into play), is the only time law enforcement takes note.
As for the shutdown over "malware" ads, doubtful this was the case. There are far too many complaints against entire AS's to RIPE, APNIC, ARIN and so forth that most providers conveniently ignore them as the penalty for doing nothing is usually non-existent. Now, I can see someone moderating this down but ask yourself an honest question, if you spent money and time developing something, how would you feel (honestly) if you saw someone STEALING from you because they posted free copies on RapidShare or MediaFire or any one of these other filesharing sites.
I'm just happy they were given until 08/30 this way come 8/30 they can be given another n*-$DAYS_TILL_ELECTION to resolve this mess