Weekly review – WoW, Zombies, GoDaddy and mobile phone laws GoDaddy Video Review

Welcome Back to the MSNB Network’s Weekend Review

As always, my name is Christopher, and today we’re bringing you the latest news that shapes your internet world. Today, we’re talking about how Blizzard is tracking your World of Warcraft screenshots, what brought down GoDaddy.com all day yesterday, how following federal anti-zombie guidelines can label you a terrorist, and how a district judge is changing the face for electronic hobbyists everywhere.

The world’s most popular online game is, without a doubt, World of Warcraft. Blizzard has made it a fun experience for a lot of people all over the world for many, many years now. While people have been taking screenshots of their characters, locations, or personal story equipment and the like to post online and share with their friends, some security researchers have recently discovered that since maybe even 2008, these screenshots have all included personal information about you about your account and where you were when you took these pictures.

Blizzard Tracking Your World of Warcraft Screenshots

Presumably, World of Warcraft and Blizzard want to crack down on people using X exploits or hacks or breaking the game in ways they didn’t intend, and they are using these screenshots as ways to track down who the individual perpetrators are. Unfortunately, unfortunately, there’s never been any note in any change log or update or anything that says they’re going to be posting personally identifiable information such as your user ID, your server, the time and date, all kinds of stuff every time you post a screenshot. This has a lot of players worried that they are unintentionally posting a lot of private information out to the internet at large.

So, if you’re going to be playing World of Warcraft and you’re going to be taking screenshots, take a careful look and really consider whether or not you’re going to post up online for anyone to see. After all, it’s your account

GoDaddy.com is Down

Yesterday, GoDaddy.com, one of the world’s largest registry and website hosts, was completely down for about eight hours. Users couldn’t access their websites, couldn’t access their email, and all the support was down. Everything just went to a complete standstill. Not long after it went down, the independent and often derided group Anonymous claimed credit, saying that they disagreed with GoDaddy’s policies and were bringing attention to the fact that there were other web hosts elsewhere in the world.

After several hours, eight or so, GoDaddy was able to come back up, and this morning their CEO released a statement saying that it wasn’t hacked, there was no denial of service from outside, it was a misconfiguration on their part that took them down for so long. Speaking as a security guy, as an IT guy myself, if you’re going to make a big change that could affect almost a million users, all those websites, all that email, wouldn’t you test it first? To think that a bug like that could take down their entire network, one of the world’s largest website hosts, um, by accident, I have to worry about that policy

Federal Anti-Zombie Guidelines

On the other hand, it’s very unlikely that Anonymous or any other hacking group got in to terrorize their data or got any user information, anything like that. Very common, these groups just use what’s called a Denial of Service attack, which allows them to basically shut off an internet stream by flooding it with all kinds of traffic, and there’s no way for the servers to keep up that way. There’s no damage to the target systems, there is no data at risk, it just denies service and that’s all. Anonymous claim that they were doing, but GoDaddy says they weren’t hacked or anything like that

Zombie Apocalypse Seminars

Since the dawn of filmmaking, the threat of a zombie apocalypse has been a big draw for both directors and consumers. Recently, in order to get people to start thinking about disaster preparedness, FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has put together a webinar, a seminar, all about getting people to get ready for disasters by training them to handle a zombie apocalypse. The idea that people should stock up on matches, dry goods, you know other kinds of things like that. Unfortunately, most of their suggestions are also going to be things that might put you on the potential terrorist list from the Department of Justice.

This includes such common things as stocking up on meals, ready to eat, or MREs, matches, ammunition, spare fuel cans, bolt cutters, camouflage, axes, candles, sponges, all kinds of things. Especially if you buy any of those in bulk and especially if you buy any of that in cash. Now, their train, FEMA is training their organizers to train other people and get them ready for disasters by telling them to go out and buy all this stuff at the same time we have another branch of government saying, well, if you buy all this stuff, you might be a terrorist, and we might not let you on a plane from here on out. It’s very interesting to me to see two very different sides of what the government is trying to do, and they’re working pretty much diametrically opposed to one another.

Wiretapping Guidelines

So, if you’re going to be prepared, you’re going to go out and you’re going to try to take care of yourself and your family in the event of a zombie apocalypse, you might want to do so in small purchases or here and there, so you don’t raise any alarms in the Department of Justice. Because, I don’t think they’ll take the, I’m just following the fed’s uh orders too kindly in a real success for responsible Computing enthusiasts and electronic hobbyists everywhere, a district judge in Illinois has recently ruled that intercepting or listening in on unencrypted wireless traffic does not fall under the state or federal guidelines for wiretapping.

Now, this is a big deal because it’s a very popular hobby for people to drive around an urban area and check out what wireless networks are available, what’s unencrypted, what traffic are people passing and for unencrypted networks, that stuff is as free as turning on your radio and listening to some music. But a lot of these people have been punished under state or federal wiretapping laws for the unlawful interception of other people’s traffic. Well, this judge took a look at the law, took a look at the situation, and said, well, if it’s unencrypted, if it’s just out there, the same way that that radio signals are, how can there be any expectation of privacy? There’s absolutely no reason to believe that someone can’t listen in and, as such, no law has been broken.

Conclusion

That wraps up this week in review, as always, I’m Christopher for msnb networks, reminding you that every week we’re bringing you the latest news stories that are affecting your internet world. If there’s any particular story you find that you want to have us cover or have questions or comments, please feel free to leave them below right next to the video description, where we’ve included links to all of the stories we’ve talked about today. Feel free, of course, to like or subscribe to our page and check us out every week, where we bring you more information, have a good one, we are msnb networks, managing systems for managing Business, like us on Facebook, join us on Twitter, and of course, subscribe to this our new YouTube channel, thanks for watching.