Hackers claim to crack Kindle copyright armor
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
A not-so-merry holiday gift for Amazon.com: hackers say they've successfully cracked copyright protections on the company's Kindle e-reader, making it possible to export e-books to other devices.
One hack reportedly resulted from a Kindle DRM challenge issued on Israeli forum Hacking.org. On that site, an Israeli hacker known as Labba claims to have created a tool that lets e-books stored on the Kindle be transferred as PDF files.
A U.S. hacker has written a program to crack copyright protections on the Kindle for PC application.
(Credit: Amazon)
A U.S. hacker who goes by the name "i♥cabbages," meanwhile, created a program called Unswindle that promises to convert books stored in the Kindle for PC application into a different file format.
The free Kindle for PC app lets book buyers read their books right from their PCs without having to buy a Kindle reader. Unswindle has to be used in conjunction with MobiDeDRM, a program by another hacker named "darkreverser."
Posters on i♥cabbages' blog give Unswindle mixed reviews, ranging from "works like a charm" and "worked flawlessly" to descriptions of various errors.
Unswindle's creator originally detailed the tool on December 17, and posted two updates on the program Tuesday. One noted that Amazon has demonstrated that "it (unlike Adobe Systems) takes its digital rights management, or DRM, seriously: it has already pushed out a new version of K4PC, which breaks this particular script."
In a second update, the hacker notes that "the K4PC update may not actually have been targeted at Unswindle, as Amazon seems to have done nothing in particular to make the basic approach more difficult. In any case, I've updated Unswindle to handle the 20091222 version of the executable. We'll see if Amazon throws out another new build in short order."
CNET has contacted Amazon for comment and will update this post as soon as we hear back.
The Amazon hacks are, of course, just the latest DRM hacks. In 2005, a group of hackers that included a 17-year-old and a man noted for cracking the anticopying protections on DVDs released PyMusique, a program that essentially stripped DRM from iTunes' songs.
Each time Apple tried to plug the hole that the software exploited, the hackers would find another.
(Sources: BBC News, IDG News Service)
Web to drive holiday retail sales
Monday, November 2, 2009
It may not be happy holidays for the retail industry overall. But the Web should provide one bit of good cheer.
Retail sales will probably be flat this holiday season, but online sales are expected to reach $44.7 billion, an 8 percent jump over last year, according to the latest data from Forrester Research.
Among 4,000 online consumers surveyed, 94 percent have made a purchase online in the past three months and plan to do the same for the holidays. As for retailers, 72 percent of those questioned for the third-quarter Forrester report "The State of Retailing Online," said they expect holiday sales to increase over last year.
But to cope with the down economy, online stores will try to weigh customer demand against the need to boost profits, says the Forrester report "US Online Holiday Retail Forecast, 2009," released Monday.
"Despite the lingering effects of the recession, the online space remains the retail industry's growth engine," said Sucharita Mulpuru, Forrester Research vice president and principal analyst, in a statement. "What's different this holiday from past years is that online retailers will manage to the bottom line, which will change some of the tactics they have employed in the past."
Retailers on the Web will offer sales and discounts as always, but of a more limited time and quantity. Automatic free shipping may be jettisoned in favor of free shipping only above certain price levels, says Forrester.
To drive business, online sellers may also take advantage of new trends. More detailed product information will be available, as will social networking tools that let customers share purchasing advice with friends and family.
"Tighter offline inventories may benefit the online channel as consumers go to the Web looking for products--and prices--they can't find in stores this holiday," said Mulpuru. "Online retailers will be ready for them with a special focus this year on engagement and service."
-Lance Whitney, CNET.com
Hacked Web mail accounts used to send spam
Sunday, October 11, 2009
There has been a marked increase in the amount of spam e-mails being sent from Yahoo, Gmail, and Hotmail accounts, according to analysts at Websense Security Labs.
Websense said on Thursday that personalized spam e-mails had been sent from the compromised accounts to all of each user's contacts. The e-mails contain links to fake shopping sites, intended to capture sensitive information from the reader.
Earlier this week, Microsoft acknowledged that 30,000 Hotmail accounts had breached, and suggested the passwords for the accounts had been obtained in a phishing scam.
However, some security experts believe that the password breach cannot be attributed to phishing. Amichai Shulman, chief technology officer for security firm Imperva, told ZDNet UK on Friday that the information was likely to have been obtained through key logging.
"The quantity of people hit makes me think that it was key logging--the success rate for phishing is only about one in 1,000," said Shulman. "Secondly, when I went through the list of email account credentials...
-Carly Newman, CNET.com
