Wikileaks hit by second DDoS

Wikileaks was hit by a second denial of service attack on Tuesday. The assault followed attempts to blitz the site off the web on Sunday night in the run-up to the controversial release of hundreds of thousands of US diplomatic cables.

Analysis of the first attack by DDoS mitigation experts Arbor Networks shows that the assault ran at a relatively modest 2-4Gbps for several hours. The attack, modest by the standards of other attacks this year that have hit 10Gbps and above, was nonetheless severe enough for Wikileaks to move its systems back back over to Amazon's cloud infrastructure in order to seek shelter from the storm.

The source or sources of the attack remain unclear, but Arbor's early analysis lends credence to the theory that more sophisticated application-level attacks targeting vulnerabilities in Wikileak's server rather than a simple packet flood were behind its brief outage on Sunday.

Whoever launched the attack, or whatever method they used, the assault had no effect on stemming the flow of information from the leaked cables.

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Acer releases Android, Windows tablets

Acer plans to offer three tablet options with two supporting Google's Android OS and one running Microsoft's Windows 7. The difference among the Android based options is primarily size: one will be a 7 inch version and the other 10.1-inches.

Both of the Android models offer HDMI support and wireless connectivity through Wi-Fi and 3G. Expect them to be available in April of next year.

The Windows 7 version will be offered as a 10.1 model only. It features both front- and rear facing 1.3MP cameras, and a docking station that includes a full-size physical keyboard. This model will be 15mm, slightly thicker than the 10.1-inch Android version. It will also have support for both Wi-Fi and 3G connections. It will be available in February of 2011, sooner than the Android models.

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RIM Denies BlackBerry Data-Sharing Deal with India

Research in Motion denied that it struck a deal with Indian officials to provide them with access to information from its BlackBerry Enterprise servers. The denial came after an Indian newspaper published a story in which an interior ministry official was quoted as saying that RIM had "in principle agreed to provide us recorded data from their servers."

RIM said its discussions with India "have been and continue to be productive and fully consistent with the four core principles we follow in addressing lawful access matters around the world."

The company pointed to the four core principals it follows when addressing lawful access requirements with governments around the world. One of those principles says there will be "no changes to the security architecture for BlackBerry Enterprise Server."

At issue is a July request from the Indian government that RIM allow it to monitor activity on BlackBerry services; India threatened to shut down BlackBerry services in the country by August 31 if its demands were not met, but that deadline was eventually delayed. Officials want access to content traveling over the BlackBerry network for security purposes.

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Facebook unveils new messaging system

Facebook has unveiled a new messaging system that will envelope e-mail, instant messages, Facebook messages and SMS.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg launched what he calls a "modern messaging system" to handle the convergence of different kinds of messages and bring them together under one social umbrella.

Although people will now be able to have a facebook.com e-mail address, Andrew Bosworth, a software engineer at Facebook, noted that the new system will work with other e-mail systems, such as Gmail and Yahoo mail. Zuckerberg and Bosworth also pointed out that the messaging system doesn't exclude non-Facebook users. Users will be able to send and receive messages from people who aren't on Facebook.

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Mozilla Releases Faster Firefox 4 Beta

The new version provides a significant boost in running JavaScript and displaying graphics, Mozilla said. The JavaScript performance boost stems from the addition of the JagerMonkey just-in-time compiler and more support for hardware-accelerated graphics, as well as hardware acceleration for Windows XP and Mac OS X. Mozilla says Firefox 4 Beta also includes support for WebGL, a standard technology for running 3D graphics in a browser without the use of a plug-in.

The JagerMonkey JIT compiler has been added to the Firefox SpiderMonkey JavaScript engine, which also includes enhancements to the existing TraceMonkey JIT and SpiderMonkey's interpreter. The improvements bring a faster startup time and better performance to Web apps and games, Mozilla says. Benchmark tests show the browser runs JavaScript from three to five times faster than Firefox 3.6.

In delivering hardware-accelerated graphics, Firefox 4 Beta takes advantage of DirectX technology in Windows and OpenGL in Mac OS X.

Mozilla plans to release additional betas before the final version of Firefox 4. The company had planned to release the browser this month. However, development delays pushed back the release to early 2011.

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Google adds Instant Preview to search

Google announced Instant Preview, which give users a previewable image of each search result. As of today, the graphics will appear if users click on magnifying glass icons to the right of individual search results, said Raj Krishnan, a Google product manager.

While Instant Preview is designed to provide graphical previews of all search results, it will also at times highlight the most relevant parts, as well as where the search term appears on the page. If a user is looking for a chart or list, they'll be able to see if one appears in the preview.

Krishnan said a Google survey showed that people who tried using Instant Preview reported being 5% more likely to be satisfied with the search results they clicked on.

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How Smartphone Users See Each Other

YouTube Banned In Turkey (Again)

The battle between YouTube and Turkish officials continued this week as Turkey reportedly unblocked and then re-blocked the site in the country over unflattering videos of the country's political leaders.

A Turkish court banned YouTube again, this time over an old video purportedly showing former opposition leader Deniz Baykal in a hotel room with someone other than his wife. Baykal was forced to resign over the video in May. Turkish authorities first imposed a ban on YouTube for two days in 2007 over four videos that were deemed insulting to Turkey's founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Another ban was put into place in May 2008 over the same issue, which lasted for more than two years.

YouTube refused to remove the videos from its site but made them inaccessible to users in Turkey. "We refused because we do not believe that Turkish law can or should be applied outside Turkey," Google said in a previous statement. Many Turkish people got around the ban via proxy Web sites.

Turkish president Abdullah Gul condemned the YouTube ban on his Twitter page, The Guardian reported, saying he did not approve of the bans and had asked officials to examine legal ways of reopening access.

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