TorrentFreak has gained access to a lawsuit filed by San Francisco-based Tranz-Send Broadcasting Network against BitTorrent, Inc. claiming that uTorrent and the BitTorrent Mainline client infringes on a file-sharing related patent. The lawsuit was filed at a U.S. District Court this week and seeks monetary compensation for losses the ongoing patent infringement has caused the plaintiff.

According to the lawsuit, BitTorrent is infringing on a patent originally filed back in April 1999. “By making, operating, using and/or selling [uTorrent and BitTorrent Mainline] and or other software, BitTorrent has infringed and continues to infringe, contribute to the infringement, or induce the infringement of at least claim 1 of the ’944 patent,” the complaint reads.

Tranz-Send’s patent, “Media file distribution with adaptive transmission protocols” which was finally granted in November 2007, describes a file-sharing system consisting of a file database, a transfer client and a distribution server that doesn’t necessarily describe the way BitTorrent tosses data around between clients. Read more…

Kinky news we have here today. It is official, cars rule. We love driving them, talking about them, working on them and we even love having sex in them. According to a U.S. Sex Census produced by none other than Trojan condoms, automobiles are the most exciting place to have sex. Trojan surveyed 3,000 adults (across two studies), and 48 percent of those polled felt that having sex in a car was more exciting than doing the deed in:

• Someone else’s bed (33 percent)
• The woods (27 percent)
• The beach or sea (23 percent)
• A hot tub (22 percent)

Check out the USA Today link for more interesting sex survey results from Trojan, and don’t forget that parking brake…

These two months looks like it’s been a nightmare for those who own an internet service, first it was Sony PlayStation, then it was Sony again but a different division, let’s not mention our local government websites, and now, it’s Sega’s turn to get its Sega Pass, the company’s web portal, hacked. Now, the attackers may not be the same group of people, but the trend on the internet of late seems to be hacking. Sega was reported to have leaked almost 1.3 million user information including usernames, real names, birth dates, passwords, email addresses and well, pretty much everything including credit/debit card details.

While Sega is keeping Pass offline while the team is probably hard at work right this moment to fix the problem, if you have an account, you’d better change your passwords used on other internet services, especially if your bank account share the same password. I wonder whose turn it will be next; if this is going to keep itself up, Nintendo, EA, Ubisoft, and Microsoft better watch their back.

Lulzsec and Anonymous have just declared full open war against all governments, banks and big corporations in the world. They are calling all hackers in the world to unite. Their objective is to fully expose all corruption and dark secrets:

Salutations Lulz Lizards,

As we’re aware, the government and whitehat security terrorists across the world continue to dominate and control our Internet ocean. Sitting pretty on cargo bays full of corrupt booty, they think it’s acceptable to condition and enslave all vessels in sight. Our Lulz Lizard battle fleet is now declaring immediate and unremitting war on the freedom-snatching moderators of 2011.

Welcome to Operation Anti-Security (#AntiSec) – we encourage any vessel, large or small, to open fire on any government or agency that crosses their path. We fully endorse the flaunting of the word “AntiSec” on any government website defacement or physical graffiti art. We encourage you to spread the word of AntiSec far and wide, for it will be remembered. To increase efforts, we are now teaming up with the Anonymous collective and all affiliated battleships.

Whether you’re sailing with us or against us, whether you hold past grudges or a burning desire to sink our lone ship, we invite you to join the rebellion. Together we can defend ourselves so that our privacy is not overrun by profiteering gluttons. Your hat can be white, gray or black, your skin and race are not important. If you’re aware of the corruption, expose it now, in the name of Anti-Security.

Top priority is to steal and leak any classified government information, including email spools and documentation. Prime targets are banks and other high-ranking establishments. If they try to censor our progress, we will obliterate the censor with cannonfire anointed with lizard blood.

It’s now or never. Come aboard, we’re expecting you…

History begins today.

Lulz Security

How will this end up? Thus far plenty of big shot gaming developer companies have fallen victim to LulzSec, while Anonymous has been heavily participating in “freedom of speech” and “human right” causes. But how will this actually change the world?

Opening the vaults of dark secrets and exposing corruption everywhere would certainly help towards that goal: Real change. Perhaps this is just the beginning of a quiet and angry revolution that will make the world a better place. Maybe making that information public will be instrumental to wake everyone up.

That said, exposing emails and private information from normal people or sinking ships that are neutral in this battle will not help towards that cause. That’s not good and will not help anyone but those who they declare their enemies.

Minecraft, Eve Online, League of Legends, and The Escapist are the most recent high-profile games industry targets to get hit by hackers. All three of the sites went down at some point yesterday. At the time of writing, all are back online.

LulzSec has claimed responsibility for the attacks. The hacking group started taking requests for targets via Twitter, but the exact criteria for the choices are unclear.

Aside from the game devs and website, LulSec also claim to have targeted IT security company Finfisher saying “apparently they sell monitoring software to the government or some shit like that.” The group claim to have received over 3500 calls and over 1500 voicemails pointing out potential victims. They proclaimed yesterday TitanicTakeoverTuesday.

The developers and website join Codemasters, Epic, Bethesda, Nintendo, Square Enix and Sony on the list of industry figureheads to get hacked this year.

LulzSec’s most recent tweet implies that the group are taking a break from the criminal activity, saying: “The Lulz Boat must sail off and organise itself.”

Are you having a lol with LulzSec, or are they just making you sad? PC gamers got to play fewer games than usual last night – that’s not cool.

Anonymous has posted yet another video regarding their #OpMalaysia regarding their attack on Malaysia government’s site. The first wave, which was conducted last week, result in a reported 41 government information site being taken down, though how true is that we do not know. However, this second wave targets the Prime Minister Office site, and the hacktivist group also claim to cripple the national infrastructure down. How true is this and how it will turn out, we’ll only know by 4th of July at 13:37 GMT (21:37 MYT). Read more…

Tired of getting swamped with spam and malware? Then just pack your things and catch the next flight to Japan, where computer viruses are now considered illegal. Under the country’s new legislation, anyone convicted of creating or distributing viruses could face up to three years in prison, or a maximum fine of ¥500,000 (about $6,200).

It’s all part of Japan’s efforts to comply with the Convention on Cybercrime — an international treaty that requires member governments to criminalize hacking, child pornography, and other terrible things. Privacy advocates, however, have already raised concerns over some stipulations that would allow investigators to seize data from PCs hooked up to allegedly criminal networks, and to retain any suspicious e-mail logs for up to 60 days.

In an attempt to quell these fears, the Judicial Affairs Committee tacked a resolution on to the bill calling for police to exercise these powers only when they really, really need to.

SOURCE via The Mainichi Daily News

Hacking group LulzSec today came forward and stated that they are not responsible for the network attack on Sega’s online gaming network, Sega Pass. In a twist of events, LulzSec issued a statement to Sega, claiming that they will help Sega take down whoever initiated the attack, saying this on their Twitter page:

“@Sega – contact us. We want to help you destroy the hackers that attacked you. We love the Dreamcast, these people are going down.”

So far, no hacker groups are coming forward to claim credit for the attack. However, a number of recent attacks on game companies and their online services are credited with LulzSec, which publicly lists their attacks. But LulzSec denies that it was ever involved with the breach at Sega.

Earlier yesterday, Sega’s online gaming network Sega Pass was attacked, which brought the service completely down. Sega’s response team confirmed the attack and mentioned that critical customer information is compromised.

Customer details such as names, DOBs, email addresses, and passwords were taken, but Sega says that passwords are encrypted. On the other hand, officials at the company stated that financial information is safe, as those details do not reside on Sega’s own servers. Sega is still investigating the breach today, but have not identied new information.

Company officials recommend Sega Pass users change their login credentials as soon as possible.

Keeping track of all accusations flying back and forth in the ongoing patent brouhaha between Apple and Samsung? Looks like you’ll have to update your scorecards again, as Apple has now amended its complaint with some even stronger language than before, and broadened the scope of the devices involved in the suit.

According to Apple, the Droid Charge, Infuse 4G, Nexus S 4G, Galaxy Tab 10.1, Galaxy S II and a handful of other Samsung devices are all also infringing on the patents in question, which now total eight in all (two previously included have been thrown out, but three new ones have been added).

As for that stronger language, Apple’s now saying that Samsung “has been even bolder” than other competitors in copying its products, and that it’s created “products that blatantly imitate the appearance of Apple’s products to capitalize on Apple’s success.” Looks like the catfight is really heating up!

SOURCE via Slashgear

Oh Google, you didn’t think you were going to have all the mobile payment fun did you? While you’re beta testing in New York and San Francisco some big names across the pond are looking to dominate the entire UK. Vodafone, Telefonica, and Everything Everywhere (a joint venture between Orange and T-Mobile) are combining forces to create a mobile payment and marketing system that will take on Google Wallet and Offers before they even get off the ground in the British isles. The platform will be open to all comers, including Google, (you know, in case it decides to make Wallet a US only affair) and the companies have pledged to keep customer data out of the hands of third parties. The project is still in the very early stages of development, but the mobile providers aren’t dilly dallying — they expect their efforts to bear NFC fruit before the end of the year.

SOURCE via Wall Street Journal