Amazon Dumps Wikileaks From Its Servers, US Gov't Tightens Security - DailyTech

Wikileaks accuses Amazon of violating free speech

As reported earlier this week, following its leak of 250,000 classified U.S. State Department diplomatic cables, Wikileaks was targeted by a distributed denial of service attack.  The site, which had been hosted primarily on Swedish hosting service Bahnhof, went down for a while on Sunday following the leak.

By Monday it was back up again.  According to details newly released from the site, its restoration came as it switched to Amazon's EC2 cloud computing platform, a service that allows users to rent as many virtual servers as they want.

Wikileaks Gets Dumped

The bad news for Wikileaks is that Amazon apparently dumped it sometime yesterday.

Wikileaks posted on Twitter:

WikiLeaks servers at Amazon ousted. Free speech the land of the free--fine our $ are now spent to employ people in Europe.

And then...

If Amazon are so uncomfortable with the first amendment, they should get out of the business of selling books.

The quote represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the first amendment, which is perhaps understandable given that the Wikileaks folks by and large aren't from the U.S.  The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects the government from infringing on your free speech, but it's perfectly legal in the U.S. for businesses to kick you out and deny you access to their property if they don't like what your saying.

According to The Seattle Times, Amazon was contacted by a Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee official who pressured the company to dump the site.  Much as it might have agreed to ditch an Al Qaeda site, Amazon agreed to dump Wikileaks, a site whose primary focus over the last several years has been against the U.S. government.

Moved back to Bahnhof, Wikileaks appears to be up and responsive at the present.

Government Beefs up Security

U.S. President Barack Obama has set up a special panel to assess the fallout of the leaked cables and determine steps to secure confidential government data better in the future.  The embarrassing deluge of private diplomatic observations of the government has convinced many that some sort of shake up is necessary.

The relative insecurity of classified government data is largely a result of post-9/11 efforts to share more information between various intelligence and defense agencies.  That effort resulted in low level military analysts having access to a wealth of confidential information.  One such analyst, a disgruntled soldier name Bradley Manning, was responsible for the recent leaks to Wikileaks, a move he made after he was demoted.

One problem, though, is that officials can't seem to agree on how to enhance security.  The National Counterintelligence Executive, part of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the most senior U.S. intelligence official was going to set up teams of inspectors to assess each agency's security policies.  However, the U.S. military apparently complained, fearful of interference from intelligence agents.  As a result the idea has been scrapped.

What is clear is that the U.S. government needs to do something to secure its information from malicious governments like China or organizations like Wikileaks.  What is less clear is how that should be accomplished exactly.

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Report: Apple, Android Win Big in Q3 - DailyTech

Android makes up a quarter of all smartphone sales worldwide, Apple surpasses RIM

Yesterday, Gartner released its Q3 2010 mobile and smartphone sales data, and the results show particularly strong gains for Android-based devices and Apple's iPhone.

In the third quarter of 2010, worldwide mobile phone sales rose 35 percent over the same quarter last year, with a total of 417 million units sold. Smartphone sales continued their meteoric growth, with a 96 percent increase over the same period last year, accounting for 19.3 percent of all mobile phone sales in Q3.

“This quarter saw Apple and Android drive record smartphone sales. Apple's share of the smartphone market surpassed Research In Motion (RIM) in North America to put it second behind Android while Android volumes also grew rapidly making it the No. 2 operating system worldwide.” said Carolina Milanesi, VP of research at Gartner. The quarter marked the third consecutive double-digit increase in sales year-on-year.

In all, nearly 81 million smartphones were sold last quarter. Android made up slightly more than a quarter of all smartphone sales worldwide, with 20.5 million units sold, positioning it as the second-most popular operating system behind Symbian, which moved nearly 30 million units. In the same quarter last year, only 1.4 million Android-based devices were sold.

Android was particularly dominant in North America, where Gartner estimates it made up 75 to 80 percent of all of Verizon's smartphone sales. It was also bolstered by the launch of the multi-carrier Galaxy S line from Samsung. Gartner also noted that the OS's move into low- to mid-level devices helped it globally. This tactic could continue in the U.S. with Android's coming holiday spree.

Apple also did considerably well, thanks to the iPhone 4. Not only did Apple surpass RIM globally with almost 13.5 million units sold to RIM's 11.9 million -- putting it in third place behind Android -- it also jumped ahead of the Blackberry manufacturer in the important U.S. market. Apple is now second only to Android in the U.S., and third in Europe (still behind Nokia and Samsung).

“Smartphone OS providers have entered a period of accelerated platform evolution, stimulated by more regular product releases, new platform entrants and new device types,” said Roberta Cozza, principal research analyst at Gartner. “Any platform that fails to innovate quickly — either through a vibrant multi-player ecosystem or clear vision of a single controlling entity — will lose developers, manufacturers, potential partners and ultimately users.” (Perhaps a veiled reference to RIM?)

Rounding out total mobile market, Nokia held on to its top spot, moving 117.5 million units in the quarter, but saw a market share decline of 8.5 percentage points over the same period last year. This was mostly caused by components shortages that affected the stock of low-end devices, which forced consumers to buy higher-end one instead. This resulted in better-than-expected financial results for the Finnish mobile company. 

Samsung came in second globally, but was nearly 50 million units behind Nokia with a total of 71.7 million units (up 18.2 percent), and LG was even further behind with 27.5 million (down 6.6 percent). 

The most impressive feat in the mobile market was the appearance of Apple in the top five manufacturers. Its 13.5 million units landed it in fourth place, ahead of RIM. Gartner posits that it could have sold more, but was hampered by ongoing supply constraints. The firm also noted that enterprise adoption of the iPhone and iPad has grown, despite Apple's focus on individual consumers.

Looking forward, Gartner expects 2011 to be a big year for media tablets like Apple's iPad. It projects nearly 55 million tablet devices to be sold next year. It also predicts that it will be another big year for Apple, in general. “To a developer, the iPod Touch and iPhone (and to a lesser extent the iPad) are effectively the same device and a single market opportunity. While Android is increasingly available on media tablets and media players like the Galaxy Player, it lags far behind iOS's multi-device presence," Milanesi said. "Apple claims it is activating around 275,000 iOS devices per day on average — that's a compelling market for any developer. And developers' applications in turn attract users.”

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Geohot Releases iOS 4.1 Jailbreak, Chronic Dev Team Forced to Delay GreenPois0n - DailyTech

Two bootrom exploits, two jailbreak solutions; only one can survive

Today was supposed to be the big day for GeenPois0n, an iOS 4.1 jailbreak tool based on the SHAtter exploit. However, Geohot dropped in to steal the show yesterday with the release of his own Limera1n tool.

The problem comes from the fact that Geohot's Limera1n tool uses a different bottom exploit than the one that was supposed to be released today based the work of the Chronic Dev Team and the iPhone Dev Team. Since Apple likely wouldn't release a new hardware revision for current generation devices to block the bootrom exploit, it would be useable until Apple releases its next generation iOS devices.

Instead of releasing two separate bootrom exploits in short succession, giving Apple the opportunity to kill both of them at once when the latest crop of iOS devices are released, the Chronic Dev Team has made the decision to delay its SHAtter-based exploit and instead release a new tool based on Geohot's implementation according to Redmond Pie.

The Chronic Dev Team states:

Thanks to the irresponsible antics of geohot, we will have to delay the release of greenpois0n (new ETA = as soon as possible), so that we have time to clean up his little mess and integrate the exploit he uses in limera1n into greenpois0n. This way, we can save SHAtter for future devices that may still be vulnerable to it.

We know that this is not what some people want to hear, but due to geohot needing to feed his ego (as usual) and revealing his limera1n exploit, we do not have any other responsible options.

The Chronic Dev Team seems especially peeved that Geohot's Limera1n is simply a beta release and has plenty of bugs in it, and that it was seemingly released a day before GreenPois0n just to steal the spotlight. In addition, Geohot's jailbreak only works on Windows-based machines -- for now.

But the good news is that a jailbreak solution for the iPhone 4 and iPod touch 4G is now available, albeit in less than optimum form. If you want to take your chances and use Geohot's solution, you can grab it here (Windows-only). However, it may be a safer bet until GreenPois0n is updated to take advantage of Geohot's exploit.

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