Naavi.org

When some spamming is detected by web hosting companies or spam filters, the concerned IP addresses are blocked automatically. At present I have observed that BSNL ip addresses are frequently found in the blocked lists.

When a particular IP address is blocked by a web host, the users of the dynamic IP addresses of the subject ISP experience a “Denial of Service”.

Web server administrators should exercise some due diligence before they block a given IP address since blindly blocking the IP address tantamounts to a “Denial of Access offence” under ITA 2008.

It is possible that some competitors of BSNL in the ISP business may be targetting BSNL by getting the BSNL addresses blocked by undertaking an organized spam attack from BSNL IP addresses.

BSNL should do a study of how many of their IP addreses are now in the blocked list of major spam filters.

I have been experiencing such blocking of addresses in the range 117.192.128.0/20 during my site maintenance activities. In such cases I need to use an alternate ISP to log in and request the web host manager to unblock my IP address.

Though on my specific request my web host manager removes it from the IP block list since I am maintaining my site with them, the visitors have no such choice to get their IP addresses unblocked and the site therefore remains blocked for them.

A solution needs to be found to this problem. Comments are welcome.

Naavi

Simulating visitors to a website who click on advertisements, a botnet named “Chameleon” is reported to have stolen around US$ 6 million in the form of false clicks on advertisements. The botnet used about 120000 hosts simulating the ad-clicking.

Report: 

About 5000 IP addresses participating in the botnet have now been disabled.

South Korean networks were down in what is believed to be a Cyber Attack from North Korea.

The attack has crippled Bank transactions including the ATM networks.

Report here:

Delhi High Court has recently held that “Dissemination of ball by ball information of a cricket match” is not included in “Press Freedom”. In a strange decision the Court has held that Press should confine its activities to report only after 15 minutes.

Report

The order grants “A limited interim injunction restraining the defendants from disseminating contemporaneous match information in the form of ball-by-ball or minute-by-minute score updates/match alerts for a premium, without obtaining a license from the plaintiff”

However “There shall be no restriction upon the defendants to report noteworthy information or news from cricket matches as and when they arise, because stale news is no news.”

also, “There shall be no requirement for the license if the defendants do it gratuitously or after a time lag of 15 minutes”

The judgement also has many other debatable decisions such as distinguishing the rights of the “Free” vs “Premium” recipients of information.

According to observers, STAR has already issued notices to service providers as if they have “Absolute Rights” instead of the 15 minutes rights.

The decision is a set back for “Press Freedom” and in particular for digital media including SMS, Blogging etc and needs a serious review.

Copy of Judgement

Naavi