Underground Search Engine "Dark Internet"

Governments are forcing search engines to show wrong results. It's time for search engines to go rogue so they can be right.

In the 1990s and 2000s, the limitation was technical. The so-called "deep web" and "dark Internet/Dark Web" -- which sound shady and mysterious, but simply refer to web sites inaccessible by conventional means -- have always existed.

Many parts of the Internet are hard to index, or are blocked from being indexed by their owners.
Companies like Google have worked hard to surface and bring light to the "deep, dark web" recesses of the global web on a technical level.

But in the past few years, a disturbing trend has emerged where governments -- either through law or technical means or by the control of the companies that provide access -- have forced inaccuracy, omissions and misleading results on the world's major search engines.

The reasons for these requests vary, and often sound reasonable -- national security, law and order, national pride, religious sensitivity, social order, suppression of hate speech, privacy, protection of children -- you name it. But when you add them up and allow them to grow in number over time, the cumulative effect is that increasingly, search results don't reflect the real Internet. 

Until recently, search engine censorship was not on the list of first-world problems. But in the last few years, governments in the United States, Europe and elsewhere in the industrialized world have discovered that, although they're prevented by free-speech laws from actually blocking or banning content where it lives, censoring search engine results is a kind of "loophole" they can get away with. In an increasingly digitized, search-engine discoverable world of content, censoring search results is a way to censor without technically violating free speech protections.

Starting in 2011, companies like Google started reporting a disturbing rise in government requests for search engine results to lie -- to essentially tell users that existing pages and content on the Internet do not exist when in fact they do. Requests for such removals by the U.S. government, for example, rose 718% from the first half of 2011 to the last half. And they've continued to rise since.

And such requests weren't just coming from the U.S., but from "Western democracies not typically associated with censorship," according to the Google policy analyst who reported the trend on behalf of the company and talked about Google's Transparency Report.

Worse, the ruling required search engines to offer a process by which any European could request similar treatment, and ordered Google, Microsoft and other search engine companies to judge whether those requests were valid and to take action on the valid ones.
At last count, Google had received some 70,000 requests for changes to search results under the ruling in the past month. Microsoft only this week launched its process for censoring results.

Useful Underground Web Search Engines

Most Internet users are so familiar with the major search engines that they don't realize there are other options out there. While it might sound silly to say, there are plenty of underground web search engines for you to choose from if the larger ones aren't cutting it for you. Some only deal with a single subject, and others offer more detailed options, but either way they will help you find what you are looking for.

We often talk about Underground communities, illegal websites or black markets, but as they are ‘Underground’ in nature i.e. Hidden websites running under Onion Network, many of us don't know how to reach the one we are searching for and if hopefully found, then its difficult to figure out a trustworthy vendor

Duck Duck Go

On the surface, Duck Duck Go doesn't seem like an underground web search engine. When you actually use it, you'll notice your search results look different. This is because Duck Duck Go augments its searches with information from crowd sourced websites, such as Wikipedia, and does this without collecting private information.

Duck Duck Go

Deep Dyve

While the deep web is often a concept applied to bogus conspiracy theories and science fiction fantasies, it is an actual thing. The deep web is made up of sites and pages that otherwise are unreachable by traditional search engines. Deep Dyve is an underground web search engine that finds information from hundreds of thousands of scholarly and research articles.

Deep Dyve

Prospector

Prospector is an underground web search engine that focuses on finding you free things. It aggregates information from across the Internet about freeware programs, free samples and free offers from businesses in almost every category. While it isn't a place to go for general information, it is a place to go if you need free alternatives to Microsoft Office, or shampoo samples.

Prospector

Torrent Finder

While other sites act as torrent aggregation and search engines, Torrent Finder is considered to be the king of them all. It allows you to search almost every one of the largest torrent sites on the Internet using one search term, and even allows you to pick and choose which sites you want to download from.

Torrent Finder

UFO Seek

If you are looking for underground search engines, it doesn't get much more underground than UFO Seek. This search engine is dedicated entirely to finding information about the paranormal. UFOs, ghosts and bigfoot. As usual, take anything you find with a large grain of salt.

UFO Seek

Grams

Not any More! As the first search engine, ‘Grams’ (http://grams7enufi7jmdl.onion) for online underground Black Markets has been launched in Beta last week, that lets anyone to easily find illegal drugs and other contraband online in an easier way ever and it's pretty fast like Google Search Engine.

 ‘Grams’

While the underground web may not be as titillating as many people wish it to be, using search engines that scrape below the surface help you find the information you need for almost any subject.


Dark Web
The “dark web” is a part of the world wide web that requires special software to access. One these, the most popular is Tor (originally called The Onion Router), partly because it is one of the easiest software packages to use. Tor downloads as a bundle of software that includes a version of Firefox configured specifically to use Tor.

Once inside, web sites and other services can be accessed through a browser in much the same way as the normal web.

However, some sites are effectively “hidden”, in that they have not been indexed by a search engine and can only be accessed if you know the address of the site. Special markets also operate within the dark web called, “darknet markets”, which mainly sell illegal products like drugs and firearms, paid for in the cryptocurrency Bitcoin.

Now Dark Web is not Dark anymore because of FBI and NSA

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Dutch govt pays £5.5m for XP support extension

Dutch authorities announced on Friday that the government had signed a multi-million deal with Microsoft to extend support for the discontinued Windows XP operating system, following on from the British who spent AUD$10 million to do the same.

Dutch language publication Webwereld reported that the contract, which is worth millions of euros, will extend support for XP into early next year.

Webwereld reported that a Dutch government spokesperson said the number of PCs running Windows XP is between 34,000 and 40,000, but declined to provide an exact value for the deal.

As part of the contract, Microsoft is then required to migrate the Windows XP PCs to either Windows 7 or Windows 8, as per the government agencies' choice.

The number of users running Windows XP worldwide continues to decline as customers switch to newer versions of the operating system.

However usage remains high in some areas: estimates of Windows XP usage vary, but metrics company Net Applications Market Share pegs it at over 27 percent of PCs worldwide as of March this year.

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Microsoft Security Update Advisory 2982792 Block Fake SSL Certificates

Microsoft is aware of improperly issued SSL certificates that could be used in attempts to spoof content, perform phishing attacks, or perform man-in-the-middle attacks. The SSL certificates were improperly issued by the National Informatics Centre (NIC), which operates subordinate CAs under root CAs operated by the Government of India Controller of Certifying Authorities (CCA), which are CAs present in the Trusted Root Certification Authorities Store. This issue affects all supported releases of Microsoft Windows. Microsoft is not currently aware of attacks related to this issue.

The subordinate CA has been misused to issue SSL certificates for multiple sites, including Google web properties. These SSL certificates could be used to spoof content, perform phishing attacks, or perform man-in-the-middle attacks against web properties. The subordinate CAs may also have been used to issue certificates for other, currently unknown sites, which could be subject to similar attacks.
To help protect customers from potentially fraudulent use of this digital certificate, Microsoft is updating the Certificate Trust list (CTL) for all supported releases of Microsoft Windows to remove the trust of certificates that are causing this issue. For more information about these certificates, see the Frequently Asked Questions section of this advisory.

Recommendation. An automatic updater of revoked certificates is included in supported editions of Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows RT, Windows RT 8.1, Windows Server 2012, and Windows Server 2012 R2, and for devices running Windows Phone 8 or Windows Phone 8.1. For these operating systems or devices, customers do not need to take any action because the CTL will be updated automatically.

 A week after the search engine giant Google spotted and blocked unauthorized digital certificates for a number of its domains that could result in a potentially serious security and privacy threat, Microsoft has responded back to block the bogus certificates from being used on its software as well.

"Today, we are updating the Certificate Trust List (CTL) for all supported releases of Microsoft Windows to remove the trust of mis-issued third-party digital certificates," said Dustin Childs, group manager of response communications.

 

The fake digital certificates, issued by the National Informatics Centre (NIC) of India - a unit of India’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, were uncovered at the beginning of this month by Google's security team.

 

Microsoft officials warned the country's certification authorities as well as Microsoft, because the certificates issued by NIC are included in the Microsoft Root Store and so are trusted by a large number of applications running on Windows, including Internet Explorer and Chrome.

Yet, Microsoft is not aware of any kind of attack leveraging this issue, but millions of websites operated by banks, e-commerce companies and other types of online services make use of such kind of cryptographic credentials to encrypt the web traffic and prove the authenticity of their servers.

 

source: https://technet.microsoft.com/

 

 

 

 

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IBM rethinking redesign future computer chips don't have silicon with $3 billion investment

The computer design initiative could pave the way for functional quantum and cognitive computers that mimic brain functionality.

"The basic architecture of the computer has remained unchanged since the 1940s. We feel, given the kinds of problems we see today, [that] this is the time to start looking for new forms of computing," said Supratik Guha, director of physical sciences for IBM Research.

IBM will pour US$3 billion into computing and chip materials research over the next five years, as it rethinks computer design and looks to a future that may not involve silicon chips.

Silicon design has stalled and the ability to shrink chips is reaching its limit. IBM is looking at graphene, carbon nanotubes and other materials to replace silicon in computers, and will try to develop chips that can be scaled down to the atomic level.

IBM's goal is to provide the building blocks for systems that can intelligently process vast amounts of data while consuming less power, said Tom Rosamilia, senior vice president for Systems and Technology Group at IBM.
Such computers could benefit areas such as cancer research, weather modeling and providing more intelligent services over the cloud. Accelerators like graphics processors are improving computer performance in the short term, but shrinking silicon-based processors to boost performance and reduce power is becoming more complex, Rosamilia said.

The investment comes as Moore's Law runs its course. Intel co-founder Gordon Moore posited that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit would double every two years and while that has held steady, it is expected to be outdated within the next decade. Engineers are rethinking chip design to increase performance, especially as chips go into smaller geometries. Intel is preparing to ship PC chips made using the 14-nanometer process and has plans to move to the 10-nanometer process in the coming years.

Chip making was revolutionized when scientists purified silicon in 1950, but it will be harder to etch more features on chips when the 7-nanometer process and beyond, as the industry moves toward the atomic level, Guha said.

"What will replace it at this point is unclear," Guha said.
Carbon nanotubes, which are cylinders made of carbon atoms, show the most promise as a silicon replacement. IBM researchers are shrinking the size of carbon nanotubes, but challenges remain in cooling them down and there is considerable debate around safety concerns. However, there is consensus that technical problems could be solved, Guha said.

Brain and quantum computers also involve research on computer behavior.
IBM is developing computers that mimic brain-like functionality as part of its Synapse program. The computer makes an approximation of how the brain processes information in parallel via trillions of connections, which are the synapses. IBM in 2011 demonstrated a neural chip with programmable and learning synapses that have navigation and pattern recognition abilities. IBM's goal is to build a neural chip that mimics the human brain, with 10 billion neurons and 100 trillion synapses but that uses just 1 kilowatt of power.
At the heart of quantum computers are quantum bits (qubits), which hold values of 1 and 0, which are unlike bits in conventional computers that are at a state of 1 or 0 at any given time. By storing and sharing data in more states, the qubits could speed up calculations.

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Samsung Factory Suffers Massive Robbery in Brazil Approximately $36M Worth of Products

A Samsung factory in Brazil was robbed of at least $6.3 million in hardware by a gang of about 20 armed people at around midnight on Monday, according to reports from local media.

The Samsung facility is located in Campinas, a city of roughly 1 million people located about 60 miles northwest of São Paulo. Brazilian police told O Globo that the criminals stopped a van full of employees on the way to the facility, used their stolen ID badges to gain entry, and kept two of the victims as hostages.

Is like a Movie : In an operation that resembled the 1978 Lufthansa heist made famous in Martin Scorsese's film Goodfellas, one of Samsung's key manufacturing plants has suffered a massive raid by criminals on Monday that has resulted in reported losses of about R$80 million ($36m).

Hundreds of workers on-site went about their jobs during three hours in which the gang was essentially in charge of the factory. The thieves eventually left, in seven separate trucks, with 40,000 items mostly phones, tablets and laptops taken from the facility's distribution center. Samsung said the value of the stolen goods is about $6.3 million, although police said that the value was actually more like $36 million.

Early indications are that the thieves may have had inside help police told ZDNet that the gang was well-informed as to the location of particularly valuable goods.

According to Folha da São Paulo, this isn't the first time that Samsung has been the target of this type of theft an incident last year saw 900 cell phones, worth about $630,000, stolen. That load was partially recovered, however. That same report noted that the Campinas area is apparently a popular one for cargo thieves, with São Paulo police dubbing it "the Bermuda Triangle."

Law and order has been difficult for Brazilian authorities to maintain of late, with widespread street protests against governmental policy and the World Cup, which is currently in its final stages. Discontent has spread online as well, in the form of DDoS attacks against the World Cup's sponsors and organizers.

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Xbox One can Speak with an Accent

The latest update July 2014 also provides a quicker way to see your achievements and "like" game clips captured through the SmartGlass app.

Xbox One owners will see a handful of tweaks in an update about to arrive on their consoles.
One of the changes -- revealed in June and confirmed Monday by Xbox Live programming director Larry Hryb, aka Major Nelson -- will give you more control over your console's spoken language by offering accents. For example, beyond just choosing United States as your location, you can pick English Australian as your language if you'd like your console to sound like a bloke from Down Under.

Following the debut of the Xbox One in November, owners initially complained about certain features not working properly or missing. Since then, Microsoft has been diligent with regular updates to either correct issues or enhance features. Xbox One sales have also been slower than expected, so Microsoft keeps pushing out more features not simply to satisfy existing owners but also to entice prospective buyers.

The July update will also include a new snap mode for achievements, which means you can track and view your achievements without having to exit your current game. You simply double-tap your controller's Xbox One button to access the Snap Center and view your achievements.
Finally, you will be able to "like" game clips and other items recorded through the SmartGlass app. And for those who watch Blu-ray discs via your Xbox One, the console will now support the BD-R and BD-RE formats.

source

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Lowbat Mobile Device Under Higher Security Risk at Airport

The new security measures have been put in place to address concerns that mobile phones, tablets, laptops and other electronic devices could be used as an explosive device. 

The U.S. Transportation Security Administration has said it may ask air travelers headed to the U.S. on direct flights to power up some electronic devices, including cell phones, as part of enhanced security measures at certain airports abroad.

International passengers travelling on American airlines from certain airports will need to prove their devices are charged before being allowed to board, in a new security effort aimed at preventing acts of terrorism.

The US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) this morning announced uncharged mobile devices would not be allowed through to planes heading to the United States at a number of overseas airports.

TSA agents will ask travellers at checkpoints to prove their devices are powered by asking for the device to be turned on. Devices lacking power will not be allowed through.

"During the security examination, officers may also ask that owners power up some devices, including cell phones," the TSA advised in a notice on its website.
"Powerless devices will not be permitted onboard the aircraft. The traveller may also undergo additional screening."

The new measures come in the wake of reports that terrorists are working on using electronic devices as bombs. TSA did not provide specific reasons why the new measures were being introduced. "As the traveling public knows, all electronic devices are screened by security officers," it said in a statement.

Jeh Johnson, secretary of Homeland Security, said last week that the TSA had been directed to introduce enhanced security measures in the coming days at certain overseas airports with direct flights to the U.S. "DHS continually assesses the global threat environment and reevaluates the measures we take to promote aviation security," Johnson said in a statement.

The TSA did not disclose the airports abroad where the restriction on powerless electronic devices will come into force.

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Java support for Windows XP Ends This July 2014

Oracle has ended support for the Java platform running on Windows XP, and has advised customers continuing use of the product will be “at their own risk”.

Windows XP hold-outs pay attention. If you run the Java runtime on XP, it looks as if the current version is about as good as it gets. The next version, 7u65 and 8u11, due to ship in the middle of July, will not support or run on XP.

The next versions of Java 7 and Java 8 plug ins, 7u65 and 8u11, which are due for general availability later this month, will not support Windows XP.
Oracle confirmed the cessation of support on its FAQ support site, and referenced its third party support terms as the basis for the cancellation.

“Microsoft stopped supporting Windows XP and therefore it is no longer an officially supported platform."

Windows XP users are unable to install Java 8 on their systems without receiving error messages, and are being asked to upgrade to Windows Vista or later to install the product.

According to Danish security firm Heimdal, which first noticed the issue after being tipped off by partners, XP users will be able to download and install the new version of Java but it won't load correctly. Oddly, when the firm tried to confirm this with Oracle it got no reply.

Techworld asked Oracle for a comment and was met with a similarly chilly silence. It seems that the firm has made its position as clear as it wants to and that's the end of the matter.

"Windows XP still accounts for approximately 20 percent of the PC's in use, according to global market data. Of those XP users some 82 percent also use Oracle Java according to our intelligence.

This means that millions of PC users, who still run Microsoft XP, are being left in the dark with a piece of software that is known to be very vulnerable," said Heimdal's CEO, Morten Kjaersgaard.

Java had experienced 131 CVE reports in 2013, more than in XP itself, meaning that running Java on the latest version (Java 7 update 60, 7 June) represented a huge risk going forward, he said.
"This is a huge security problem."

Given that vulnerabilities for this version will accumulate over time, XP users determined to continue using Java should disable and then de-install all versions on their computers as soon as possible.

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