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Their message may be having an impact in the P2P development community.

A trade group representing peer-to-peer file sharing providers next week will publish a report that finds P2P software companies are modifying their programs in an effort to make it harder for users to inadvertently share sensitive information.

For corporate IT administrators, that shift can’t come soon enough. The problem was highlighted by the recent news that avionics blueprints of President Obama’s helicopter had leaked through a peer-to-peer network used by a defense contractor to an IP (Internet Protocol) address in Iran.

This isn’t the first time sensitive data has trickled out via popular file sharing networks. Last summer, personal information of some 1,000 former patients of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center was believed to have been leaked via a peer-to-peer network. Sensitive health care and financial data has also been found on file sharing networks, according to studies from Dartmouth University and P2P network monitoring service provider Tiversa, which also uncovered the leaked presidential helicopter data.

Peer-to-peer use at ABN Amro and Pfizer led to the exposure of personally identifiable information of more than 20,000 consumers in 2007. And then there was the symbolic slap in the face when politicians called P2P networks a potential “national security threat” at a congressional hearing that summer.

This screenshot illustrates how a peer-to-peer file sharing network works. (Credit: Tiversa)

Employees: The weak link
The problem, experts say, is that employees are violating corporate policy by using P2P at work or on work laptops to download MP3 files, or they take the work laptop home and their children install file-sharing software on it.

Ninety-three percent of P2P disclosures in the enterprise are inadvertent, said Tiversa Brand Director Scott Harrer. “You can’t really guard against human error,” he said.

The problem is compounded by the fact that the employees also tend not to be savvy enough to configure the settings so as to protect files they don’t want to share from being distributed.

“The default settings tend to err on the side of being more open than more closed,” Mark Loveless, a research scientist at technology non-profit Mitre, said on Thursday. This mirrors the security-versus-usability trade-off that software and Web services providers, like Microsoft and Google, often find themselves making.

“The default settings (in P2P software) tend to err on the side of being more open than more closed.”

–Mark Loveless, research scientist, Mitre

If the P2P user isn’t careful in establishing a shared folder for other users of the file sharing network to access, sensitive files anywhere on the computer can be exposed. For instance, a user can inadvertently open up files in the “My Documents” folder or anywhere in the entire C: drive.

“There are methods to configure the software to only share from a particular directory,” said Loveless. “But you’re talking about someone who has problems, in many cases, using Microsoft Word or corporate e-mail, apps they’ve had training on. So I would not expect them to necessarily know how to go about that and correct it.”

Beyond having default settings that err on the side of openness and not security, the software is also designed to circumvent firewalls and other attempts to block it, Loveless said.

“P2P programs will use encrypted and sophisticated protocols to be able to talk to the Internet and evade (network monitoring) tools,” he said. “They’ll use multiple ways to try to get out on the Internet, undetected.”

Historically, P2P programs used one specific TCP/IP port for the traffic, but now they can pick a random port to use or they use Port 80, which is used for all kinds of Web traffic, thus thwarting administrator attempts to block P2P traffic by plugging the port, said Sam Hopkins, the co-founder and chief technology officer at Tiversa.

The software also has tricks to get access to files behind firewalls. If a user wants something that is on a computer that is located behind a firewall, the system can communicate behind the scenes to get a third computer to ask the firewall protected computer to send the file out to the seeking user, he said.

And some of the P2P programs can be buggy, particularly software written by young enthusiasts as opposed to paid professionals. Meanwhile, P2P files are being used to spread viruses and other malware to unsuspecting downloaders. For instance, a Trojan circulated on BitTorrent in January in pirated copies of iWorks 09.

There is also malware that can automatically scan a computer and when it finds a media file anywhere on the system it changes the P2P software configuration to share the entire drive the media file is in, Hopkins said.

Minimizing the risk
IT administrators need to have a written policy that specifies whether or not employees are allowed to use file sharing. And they need to use perimeter security software, including firewall and intrusion detection, “to lock down the ports used by P2P or to look for specific P2P network traffic,” said Tony Bradley, director of security at Evangelyze Communications, a unified communications software and service provider.

Corporations also might consider encrypting sensitive information and using data loss prevention tools to block data leakage, experts said. And if they want to see if any of their data has found its way onto a P2P network, they can hire Tiversa to probe Gnutella, eDonkey and FastTrack file-sharing networks.

Tiversa probes the networks, searching for specific terms and lets customers know when it finds any data out there specific to that firm and helps pinpoint the source of the leak and stop it.

After lawmakers accused them of being part of the problem nearly two years ago, P2P providers and their trade group–the Distributed Computing Industry Association (DCIA)–formed a working group to figure out ways to minimize the risk for P2P users and their networks. The DCIA prepared a report dated Thursday on the Inadvertent Sharing Protection Compliance that lists guidelines for better protecting P2P users and percentages of its members who are following them.

The latest version of popular file sharing software, released earlier this year, LimeWire 5, includes a number of the suggested changes and served as a “poster child for compliance,” said Marty Lafferty, chief executive of the DCIA.

The report shows 100 percent compliance with the guideline that recommends that default settings prohibit the sharing of user-originated files, while 57 percent of the respondents said they were complying with the guideline to offer a simple way for the user to disable the file-sharing functionality.

Other guidelines, with compliance percentages ranging from 29 percent to 71 percent, included requiring users to select individual files within a folder to share rather than sharing the entire folder, requiring the user to take affirmative steps to share sensitive folders and preventing the sharing of a complete network or external drive or user-specific system folder, such as “Documents and Settings.” Among the guidelines are requirements for warnings to the user when particular settings might jeopardize security.

“We were concerned about user error in earlier versions of file sharing software where it was easier for users to make those mistakes,” Hopkins said. “But a lot has been done to close those loopholes for the new versions.”

Build 7048 of Windows 7 includes Internet Explorer as one of many Windows components that can be turned on or off via a Windows Features dialog box. In the public beta version, IE8 is not on that list. (Credit: Chris123nt.com)

Microsoft has included in recent Windows 7 test versions an option to turn off the Internet Explorer 8 Web browser, according to testers who have used the recent builds.

According to Chris Holmes, build 7048 of Windows 7 includes Internet Explorer as one of many Windows components that can be turned on or off via a “Windows Features” dialog box. The control panel exists in the public beta version of Windows 7, but IE8 is not listed among the features that can be turned on and off.

Microsoft declined to comment on the feature’s inclusion as well as the reasons behind the move. Others are speculating it might have something to do with the European Union’s objection to the inclusion of a browser within Windows.

The software maker has cautioned that the EU may seek to have Microsoft allow PC buyers to choose their browser and then require Microsoft to disable certain IE code if a user chooses a non-Microsoft browser.

Enthusiast site AeroXperience has more detail on how IE can be toggled on and off and what exactly that might mean.

As we’ve already noted, Microsoft is making a number of changes to Windows 7 as it moves from the beta to “release candidate” stage. However, the IE change was not one that was called out in a recent Microsoft blog posting on the topic.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg talks about changes in the stream of information. (Credit: CNET Networks / Josh Lowensohn)

Launch partners for the new public pages. (Credit: CNET Networks / Josh Lowensohn)

Facebook is updating its home page and giving profile pages to big brands. (Credit: Facebook)

PALO ALTO, Calif.–On Wednesday Facebook announced major changes to the ways users could filter information, along with an overhaul to its pages feature. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg started out the morning by noting that one of the biggest trends in social networking is organizing streams of information. He noted that sites like Twitter and MySpace were making strides in helping to organize these streams, and that Facebook needed to do a better job at it.

“We’re at a point now of expecting this information sharing to keep moving faster and faster,” he said. “Today we’re taking a few steps to move in that direction. This isn’t something we’ve been working on for a long time … we’re not sure exactly where this is going to end up.”

To that end, Facebook’s director of product Chris Cox gave a quick tour of Facebook’s past including changes in privacy features and branching out from the closed, college system to one where even his mom could join. All this was leading up to a new option where, as Cox puts it “profiles and pages become the same thing.”

“Now users can open up their profiles to other users to subscribe to,” Cox said.”That means pages will become more like the profile. They’re going to have a presence that looks and feels just like my mom.” (Cox was referring to his mother’s Facebook profile)

Some of the launch partners include CNN, U2, Barack Obama, The Today Show, Michael Phelps and others.

Zuckerberg also says that it will open up new avenues for revenue for advertising. “Even with our current models of advertising, those are the drivers that make it go up.” he said. “In this there are new models that people will think about…. Once you have a connection through streams and different ways to communicate, [and] over the lifetime of that connection there are many impressions, many clicks. People will think of connecting with people as a metric.”

A new look for the home page
Along with the privacy update, Facebook is rolling out a new Homepage next Wednesday that Cox says is “focused on organizing the stream from everywhere and everyone you care about.”

It now features filters that give you a granular control over the types of information it displays. This moves some of the navigation from the top, back to the left where it was before the last re-design. This includes filters for specific applications so you can see only updates from those apps. Previously these appeared in a drop down menu.

Prosecutors have accused the defendants of making available copyrighted material in violation of the law, and in their closing arguments on Monday, said each of the four defendants should be sentenced to a year in prison,according to news reports.

Defendants Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde Kolmsioppi, and Carl Lundstorm have argued that Pirate Bay does not host infringing content on its servers, but merely acts as a search engine for visitors searching for content–such as Hollywood movies or commercial software–available via the BitTorrent protocol.

“It is a completely legal technology that is offered by The Pirate Bay,” Jonas Nilsson, the defense attorney for Neij, said on Tuesday, according to Swedish news site The Local. “It is an open site where users themselves upload content… Bit torrent technology can be used for both legal and illegal means on Pirate Bay in the same way as by Google or MySpace.”

Prosecutors during the trial have claimed that the majority of the material available on The Pirate Bay is copyrighted and have argued that every MP3 file swapped online amounts to a lost record sale.

“There is certainly a lot of copyrighted material, but this is an Internet problem, not a Pirate Bay problem,” Nilsson said Tuesday.

Peter Danowsky, representing the International Federation of Phonographic Industries on Monday, said it was irrelevant that torrent files could be found using other sites like Google, The Local reported.

“To say that ‘so many others also commit the same crime and therefore we shouldn’t be convicted’ doesn’t hold, and that’s something to which courts never give any consideration,” he said.

The court is also hearing a civil claim from Warner Bros. Entertainment, MGM Pictures, Columbia Pictures Industries, Twentieth Century Fox Film, Sony BMG, Universal, and EMI.

A verdict is expected to be announced within a few weeks, according to news reports.

NewTeeVee‘s Liz Gannes, who moderated the latter half of the round table, asked the executives how the current economic climate had changed how their companies did business. The answer from many centered on advertising. Not necessarily how much the companies were getting from ads, but how the experimentation that had once opened up new ways to make money and draw attention had been stepped down dramatically.

Dan Beltramo, CEO of Vizu, which measures the advertising of brands, said that advertisers simply aren’t spending as much money, and as a result they can’t go out and try new things. Beltramo says the real losers in this situation end up being the smaller sites, as the ad companies then go with the safer ad bet on a bigger site.

What may come out of this lack of experimentation in 2009 is a more ubiquitous ad format for videos though. A much-discussed topic was that ad units inside videos has largely been a custom job, with sizes, shapes, and formats of all types. The end result is that advertisers have to spend more time trying to shape them to specific sites instead of offering something that could be used across the Web. With budgets stretched tight, and advertisers more wary, this may pave the way for new standards, which could benefit some of the smaller companies.

Over a dozen executives from various parts of the Web video industry meet to discuss where it's going in 2009. (Credit: CNET Networks / Josh Lowensohn)

Looking to the future

For YouTube, 2008 was a banner year which can be traced back to politics. More specifically the U.S. presidential election. The site saw a large surge in political content from 2007-2008, with YouTube’s News Manager Olivia Ma putting that number somewhere around 600 percent year-over-year.

Ma says YouTube’s big focus in 2009 is to let users stream video wherever they are from any device they use. Whether she was referring to the viewing of content, or broadcasting it was unclear. In late 2008 YouTube experimented with live broadcasting as part of its YouTube Live event, although the same technology has not been made available to its users, despite Steve Chen, co-founder of YouTube alluding to it last February.

Another focus of 2009 may be streaming costs and storage. For Motionbox, which offers video hosting specifically targeted at family and friends, costs are going up. Chris O’Brien, Motionbox’s chairman says that costs in both storage and streaming of HD files is pushing his company to raise prices this year. His company’s paid service, which normally costs $30 a year may see a bump to $40. “Storage has gotten cheaper, but not that much cheaper,” he says.

This same effect has already been seen on other sites. Last year Vimeo introduced its Plus service, which gives its paying users the capability to upload more HD footage, while at the same time noticeably limiting how much embedded HD playback and uploading its nonpaying members were doing. Flickr, which just introduced HD video on Monday could end up going the same route, as the price of its $25 a year pro subscription allows for uploading an unlimited number of HD clips (albeit small ones).

You can catch the entire three-hour roundtable, which has been split up into two parts, over on UStream.TV (part 1, part 2).

This test version includes numerous back-end improvements that users will probably notice only as performance enhancements, but there are two new major features worth noting.

There’s a new activity manager that records all interactions between your e-mail provider and Thunderbird, making it far simpler to track down errors when you send or receive mail. There’s also an entirely new system for archiving messages based on Gmail’s “archive and forget it” method. The new beta offers the traditional multiple-folder-based solution, as well as the new dumping-ground style, which can be activated via the “A” hot key.

A key part of Gmail’s success with its archive, though, has been its excellent searching ability. The newer, faster searching tool promised for Thunderbird is not yet ready, according to developers.

IMAP users now will see Thunderbird download their messages by default in the background. Mozilla hopes that this will improve offline operations and speed up message loading times, and the feature can be activated on a per-folder basis or for an entire account.

Mac users should see improved Growl notifications too.

One major setback to Thunderbird 3 was announced earlier in February: the Lightning plug-in, which adds calendaring options to the e-mail client, will not be baked into the next major release.

Citing numerous concerns, including continuing interface adjustments and internal debates about the importance of the calendar to e-mail, Mozilla has decided to let Thunderbird be more flexible for now. An updated Lightning extension will be available for Thunderbird 3.

For more details on Thunderbird 3 beta 2, you can read the release notes or peruse the full list of bug fixes.

Symantec is showing a demo on Tuesday at the Demo 2009 conference in Palm Desert, Calif., of a Web-based tool that allows tech savvy people to provide remote support to friends and family having computer problems.

Project Guru allows a user to connect remotely to another computer to troubleshoot and correct problems, with the connection secured using encryption and authentication. The tool offers diagnostic tools for network monitoring and identifying software installed on the remote computer.

The software uses that same internally developed technology as Symantec’s Software as a Service Online Remote Access offering and is complementary to NortonLive PC help services, which offers round-the-clock phone support.

Project Guru is in pilot release with select partners and is planned for pilot release to customers in the second half of the year, Symantec said.

Project Guru lets people diagnose problems on remote computers over the Web. (Credit: Symantec)

Those legal opinions came in a series of memorandums written by U.S. Department of Justice lawyers, including deputy assistant attorney general John Yoo, which were disclosed by the Obama administration on Monday.

Although the broad outlines of the Bush administration’s claims to sweeping executive powers were previously known, the newly released memorandums provide a glimpse at both the legal arguments used and the scope of the claims.

An October 2001 memorandum (PDF) by Yoo and special counsel Robert Delahunty, for instance, says that “the president has the legal and constitutional authority to use military force within the United States to respond to and combat future acts of terrorism, and that the Posse Comitatus Act does not bar deployment.”

It also envisions the possibility of censorship restrictions that could be slapped on newspapers and the Internet, saying “First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully.”

A September 2001 memorandum (PDF) previews what would become an extensive debate over the National Security Administration’s warrantless surveillance program, saying “the president must be able to use whatever means necessary to prevent attacks on the United States; this power, by implication, includes the authority to collect information necessary for its effective exercise.”

Yoo is now a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley. Salon columnist Glenn Greenwald hassuggested that Yoo could be prosecuted for war crimes; he has been sued by Jose Padilla, the American citizen who detained by the U.S. military for more than three years as an enemy combatant and was subsequently convicted by the criminal justice system.

Some of the Bush administration’s sweeping claims to unchecked executive branch powers were struck down by federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court–a fact that lawyers from the outgoing administration noted at the last minute in a set of memorandums that explicitly backed away from the earlier claims.

On January 15, just days before Barack Obama took office, Steven Bradbury, principal deputy assistant attorney general, informed federal agencies that the 2001-era memos were no longer valid.

Bradbury’s memo (PDF) revised the Office of Legal Counsel’s opinions on topics including treaties, torture, and wiretapping, saying those “do not reflect the current views of this office.”

One 2002 memorandum (PDF) hinted at how a suspect could be tortured: “So long as the United States does not intend for a detainee to be tortured post-transfer, however, no criminal liability will attach to a transfer, even if the foreign country receiving the detainee does torture him.”

“Americans deserve a government that operates with transparency and openness,” said Attorney General Eric Holder in a statement on Monday. “It is my goal to make OLC opinions available when possible while still protecting national security information and ensuring robust internal executive branch debate and decision-making.”

This adds another option to Skype’s messaging notifications for both Windows and Mac, and it includes a free e-mail notification or a simple SMS notification when a contact leaves a message.

Converting the messages from voice to text won’t be cheap, however. Users will pay 25 cents per message, not including the standard Skype text message rate, and long voicemails could be spread out over as many as three messages. If the entire voicemail won’t fit into three texts, then the message will be cut off. Also, if the message is garbled or otherwise unconvertible–because of poor signal quality, for example–SpinVox and Skype will still charge you for the failed conversion effort.

Words that cannot be understood will be converted into question marks or spaces in the body of the message. Fortunately for the cost-conscious, there are several options for cutting down on quickly running up a massive bill. Users can configure which of their Skype contacts will have their voice messages converted, so it’s not an all-or-nothing deal. Messages will also only be sent after a 10-minute delay, so you don’t have to worry about getting a text if you walk away from your desk for a few minutes. You’ll have the option of configuring a maximum number of voicemail conversions per day, too. An obvious problem with that is missing that must-get voicemail, but at least the option will be there.

SpinVox with Skype will support English, Spanish, French, and German, and there are plans to incorporate SpinVox’s current support for Italian and Portuguese, as well.