NEW YORK - Instead of trying to take down all copyright-protected videos that its members post, MySpace will let certain clips stay — and give the creators of the original content a cut of the revenue from advertising that will be attached to the snippets.
MySpace and online video ad technology company Auditude planned to announce a partnership Monday with Viacom Inc.-owned MTV Networks that will let ads be placed in clips of the network's shows that users upload to MySpace. These include Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report" and MTV's reality show "The Hills."
MySpace generally tries to keep such clips off its social network along with other copyright-protected content that users post. The News Corp.-owned site will remove clips at the request of the videos' copyright owners. Google Inc.'s YouTube has a similar policy, although Viacom is suing YouTube for allegedly profiting from clips of Viacom shows posted online.
Now MySpace will take a different approach with videos produced by partners it makes in its new ad deal.
Under this first partnership, MySpace users will be allowed to upload videos of MTV Networks shows. Technology from Auditude will detect and identify the clip, and overlay an ad on it. Revenue generated from the ads will be shared by MySpace, Auditude and the content copyright holders.
Auditude's chief executive, Adam Cahan, said the system will tag videos with a so-called "attribution overlay" — a semitransparent bar across the bottom of a video that give viewers information like the episode's original air date and a link to buy the episode.
One of these will appear for about 10 to 15 seconds near the start of a video, and be followed by an ad.
The social network's plans are similar to moves made by YouTube. The site launched its Video ID content identification system in October 2007, which automatically alerts content owners to unauthorized videos that users post.
Then, the participating content owners — which include Universal Music, CBS Corp. and Electronic Arts Inc. — can block the videos from YouTube, leave them alone, or have YouTube run ads with them. In 90 percent of cases, participating content owners choose the third option.
Over on MySpace, the overlays and ads are expected to start showing up in the coming weeks, and MySpace and Auditude predicted that new ad formats and ad partners will soon follow.
But will users be bothered by having ads tacked to videos they post to their MySpace pages?
Jeff Berman, MySpace's president of marketing and sales, thinks people will prefer that to having copyright-protected content filtered out entirely.
Monday, November 3, 2008
Apple debunks Mac Mini, iMac rumor (CNET)
Apple has quashed the rumor mill's latest obsession, declaring that no new Macs will be released before the holidays.
Earlier Monday, reports surfaced that Apple was getting ready to release an updated version of the iMac and the Mac Mini next week. But a company representative told Macworld, "our holiday lineup is set," in a rare move to dampen the speculation regarding the new products.
As Macworld's Jim Dalrymple points out, the iMac and Mac Mini seem overdue for a hardware update, making it quite plausible that new versions would be along some time soon. But Apple appears to be saving those updates for a later date, perhaps at the annual Macworld conference in January.
Apple did just release new MacBooks and MacBook Pros to bolster the Mac lineup heading into the holiday season, which is generally the busiest time of the year for the computer industry.
Earlier Monday, reports surfaced that Apple was getting ready to release an updated version of the iMac and the Mac Mini next week. But a company representative told Macworld, "our holiday lineup is set," in a rare move to dampen the speculation regarding the new products.
As Macworld's Jim Dalrymple points out, the iMac and Mac Mini seem overdue for a hardware update, making it quite plausible that new versions would be along some time soon. But Apple appears to be saving those updates for a later date, perhaps at the annual Macworld conference in January.
Apple did just release new MacBooks and MacBook Pros to bolster the Mac lineup heading into the holiday season, which is generally the busiest time of the year for the computer industry.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Beatles music to be in new video game
NEW YORK – The Beatles are coming to a game console near you.
For the first time, the legendary group's music will be featured in the lucrative video game market in a deal with MTV Games and Harmonix, creators of the "Rock Band" series. The game is scheduled to make its debut in time for next year's holiday season.
"The project is a fun idea which broadens the appeal of The Beatles and their music. I like people having the opportunity to get to know the music from the inside out," Paul McCartney said in a statement.
The game will not be titled "Rock Band," but will work with the existing instruments — a guitar, drums and microphone.
Game developers also plan to introduce a keyboard, which would be a first in the music game market.
"That is the plan," said Marty Bandier, chief executive of Sony/ATV, a joint venture between Sony Corp. and trusts benefiting Michael Jackson, which owns the copyright on Beatles songs by John Lennon and McCartney.
"I would say that there will be interactive performances of The Beatles' music as well as new dimensions that you haven't seen from us before," Harmonix Chief Executive Alex Rigopulos told reporters Thursday.
The video game has become a key and profitable market for established musical acts such as Metallica and Aerosmith to expose their music to a new generation of fans; some bands have even debuted their music via video games.
"The Beatles continue to evolve with the passing of time and how wonderful that The Beatles' legacy will find its natural progression into the 21st century through the computerized world we live in," said Beatles drummer Ringo Starr in a release. "Let the games commence."
Grammy winner Giles Martin, son of The Beatles' producer, George Martin, will serve as music producer, with input from McCartney, Starr, Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison.
The game will feature sampling of music and imagery from throughout the band's career, from "Please Please Me" (1963) through "Let It Be" (1970).
Talks on the game between Viacom Inc.'s MTV and Harmonix units, master recordings owner EMI Group PLC and The Beatles' company, Apple Corps Ltd., have been in the works for almost a year and a half, said Paul DeGooyer, MTV's senior vice president of electronic games and music.
But the news doesn't mean that long-awaited digital downloads of the band's music would be available anytime soon.
"We're still working out the details," said Jeff Jones, Apple Corps' chief executive. "We have no announcement to make."
Hundreds queue for new Nintendo console
TOKYO (AFP) – Hundreds of people queued to be among the first to buy Nintendo's latest games console on Saturday, as the Japanese electronic giant unveiled the DSi, featuring a built-in camera and enhanced sound.
Around 300 video game fans queued before opening hours at an electronics store in Tokyo's shipping district of Yurakucho to buy the third and latest model in Nintendo's DS line.
The first shipments of the DSi sold out before lunchtime at many shops in the capital's electronics district of Akihabara, retailers said, forcing them to place orders for more.
The new console, which sells for 18,900 yen (178 dollars), has a similar design to its predecessor the DS Lite, but is slimmer and has a slightly larger 3.25-inch screen.
It can be used as a photo album and enables users to change the facial expressions of the people in the pictures or draw flowers or other graphics into images.
The launch comes ahead of the crucial holiday season amid fears the global financial crisis is tipping Japan into a recession, where sales of consoles have been sluggish compared to the US and Europe.
The DSi will be launched overseas as early as next spring, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata said Friday, adding that the company plans to introduce different coloured models alongside the current options of black and white.
Nintendo's net profit rose 9.4 percent to 144.8 billion yen in the six months to September. Operating profit jumped 34 percent to 252.2 billion yen as revenue increased by 20 percent to 836.9 billion yen.
WMIC windows
Introduction to WMIC
It’s quite possible you’ve never heard of the Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line (WMIC), but this well kept secret command-line tool is immensely powerful for
gathering information from Windows-based systems. Because it can be used both locally and over the network and is installed by default on most Windows-based systems since
Windows 2000, it’s exceedingly useful for both penetration testing and forensics tasks.
What is WMIC?
If you’ve done any scripting for the Windows platform, you’ve probably bumped into the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) scripting API, which can be used to enumerate
all kinds of information. The WMIC command-line tool is basically another front-end to access the WMI framework, with the added bonus that numerous queries are pre-defined. The
pre-defined queries mean that you won’t necessarily need to spend any time learning the WMI Query Language (WQL), which is syntactically similar to SQL.
WMIC is included in the default installation of Windows XP (excluding Home edition) and Windows Server 2003. Although WMIC is not included on Windows 2000, you can still use
a Windows XP or Server 2003 client to remotely query Windows 2000 systems and receive similar results. The first time you run WMIC you’ll see a message that WMIC is being
installed, but no media is required for installation, nor will anything appear in the Add/Remove Programs list.
Basic WMIC Usage
There are two modes of usage for WMIC, from the command line directly and from within its own shell, similar to nslookup. As the features are nearly identical, we won’t cover the
WMIC shell in this article. However, note that the interactive version does include a failsafe mode that asks for confirmation before modifying or deleting objects, but it isn’t on by
default.
Most WMIC commands are issued in the following format:
wmic [credentials] [area] [querystring]
For example, you can collect a list of groups on the local system using the following command:
wmic group list brief
which will return output similar to this:
Caption Domain Name SID
Lab7\Administrators Lab7 Administrators S-1-5-32-544
Lab7\Backup Operators Lab7 Backup Operators S-1-5-32-551
Lab7\Guests Lab7 Guests S-1-5-32-546
Lab7\Network Configuration Operators Lab7 Network Configuration Operators S-1-5-32-556
Lab7\Power Users Lab7 Power Users S-1-5-32-547
Lab7\Remote Desktop Users Lab7 Remote Desktop Users S-1-5-32-555
Lab7\Replicator Lab7 Replicator S-1-5-32-552
Lab7\Users Lab7 Users S-1-5-32-545
Lab7\Debugger Users Lab7 Debugger Users S-1-5-21-577561410-1864853564-3972553872-1006
You can also perform the same data collection over the network without ever logging into the remote machine provided you know have some administrative credentials that the remote
system will accept. The same command issued against a remote system in another domain looks like this:
wmic /user:"FOREIGN_DOMAIN\Admin" /password:"Password" /node:192.168.33.25 group list brief
Caption Domain Name SID
REMOTE-DESK\Administrators REMOTE-DESK Administrators S-1-5-32-544
REMOTE-DESK\Backup Operators REMOTE-DESK Backup Operators S-1-5-32-551
REMOTE-DESK\Guests REMOTE-DESK Guests S-1-5-32-546
REMOTE-DESK\Network Configuration Operators REMOTE-DESK Network Configuration Operators S-1-5-32-556
REMOTE-DESK\Power Users REMOTE-DESK Power Users S-1-5-32-547
REMOTE-DESK\Remote Desktop Users REMOTE-DESK Remote Desktop Users S-1-5-32-555
REMOTE-DESK\Replicator REMOTE-DESK Replicator S-1-5-32-552
REMOTE-DESK\Users REMOTE-DESK Users S-1-5-32-545
REMOTE-DESK\HelpServicesGroup REMOTE-DESK HelpServicesGroup S-1-5-21-789336058-1078081533-839522115-1001
REMOTE-DESK\__vmware__ REMOTE-DESK __vmware__ S-1-5-21-789336058-1078081533-839522115-1004
FOREIGN_DOMAIN\Cert Publishers FOREIGN_DOMAIN Cert Publishers S-1-5-21-1948120765-2568877423-583830540-517
FOREIGN_DOMAIN\RAS and IAS Servers FOREIGN_DOMAIN RAS and IAS Servers S-1-5-21-1948120765-2568877423-583830540-553
FOREIGN_DOMAIN\HelpServicesGroup FOREIGN_DOMAIN HelpServicesGroup S-1-5-21-1948120765-2568877423-583830540-1000
FOREIGN_DOMAIN\TelnetClients FOREIGN_DOMAIN TelnetClients S-1-5-21-1948120765-2568877423-583830540-1002
FOREIGN_DOMAIN\DnsAdmins FOREIGN_DOMAIN DnsAdmins S-1-5-21-1948120765-2568877423-583830540-1117
FOREIGN_DOMAIN\DnsUpdateProxy FOREIGN_DOMAIN DnsUpdateProxy S-1-5-21-1948120765-2568877423-583830540-1118
FOREIGN_DOMAIN\Domain Admins FOREIGN_DOMAIN Domain Admins S-1-5-21-1948120765-2568877423-583830540-512
FOREIGN_DOMAIN\Domain Computers FOREIGN_DOMAIN Domain Computers S-1-5-21-1948120765-2568877423-583830540-515
FOREIGN_DOMAIN\Domain Controllers FOREIGN_DOMAIN Domain Controllers S-1-5-21-1948120765-2568877423-583830540-516
FOREIGN_DOMAIN\Domain Guests FOREIGN_DOMAIN Domain Guests S-1-5-21-1948120765-2568877423-583830540-514
FOREIGN_DOMAIN\Domain Users FOREIGN_DOMAIN Domain Users S-1-5-21-1948120765-2568877423-583830540-513
FOREIGN_DOMAIN\Enterprise Admins FOREIGN_DOMAIN Enterprise Admins S-1-5-21-1948120765-2568877423-583830540-519
FOREIGN_DOMAIN\Group Policy Creator Owners FOREIGN_DOMAIN Group Policy Creator Owners S-1-5-21-1948120765-2568877423-583830540-520
FOREIGN_DOMAIN\Schema Admins FOREIGN_DOMAIN Schema Admins S-1-5-21-1948120765-2568877423-583830540-518
FOREIGN_DOMAIN\Shared FOREIGN_DOMAIN Shared S-1-5-21-1948120765-2568877423-583830540-1113
Note that you can issue ANY of the of the WMIC commands over the network in this fashion as a means of gathering information about the host. Now that we’ve seen the basics, let’s
move to specific applications.
WMIC in Vulnerability and Penetration Testing
In vulnerability and penetration testing, system footprinting is key. The more information that can be collected about a specific system or group of systems, the greater the likelihood that
those systems can be compromised.
Granted, using WMIC requires administrative access on the remote host, but since most IT departments maintain standard images for each collection or group of workstations and
servers, information you can obtain from one host is likely to be applicable to other similar systems. Furthermore, for default configurations of the event log and auditing processes,
WMIC requests won’t be logged, so all of your enumerations can be undertaken in stealth mode.
The following are examples of useful information we can collect through WMIC:
Process Listings
WMIC can collect a list of the currently running processes similar to what you’d see in “Task Manager” using the following command:
wmic process list
Note that some of the WMIC built-ins can also be used in “brief” mode to display a less verbose output. The process built-in is one of these, so you could collect more refined output
using the command:
wmic process list brief
About half of the pre-defined WMIC queries that I’ve used seem to have a brief version available, but I use the full versions almost exclusively.
It’s quite possible you’ve never heard of the Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line (WMIC), but this well kept secret command-line tool is immensely powerful for
gathering information from Windows-based systems. Because it can be used both locally and over the network and is installed by default on most Windows-based systems since
Windows 2000, it’s exceedingly useful for both penetration testing and forensics tasks.
What is WMIC?
If you’ve done any scripting for the Windows platform, you’ve probably bumped into the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) scripting API, which can be used to enumerate
all kinds of information. The WMIC command-line tool is basically another front-end to access the WMI framework, with the added bonus that numerous queries are pre-defined. The
pre-defined queries mean that you won’t necessarily need to spend any time learning the WMI Query Language (WQL), which is syntactically similar to SQL.
WMIC is included in the default installation of Windows XP (excluding Home edition) and Windows Server 2003. Although WMIC is not included on Windows 2000, you can still use
a Windows XP or Server 2003 client to remotely query Windows 2000 systems and receive similar results. The first time you run WMIC you’ll see a message that WMIC is being
installed, but no media is required for installation, nor will anything appear in the Add/Remove Programs list.
Basic WMIC Usage
There are two modes of usage for WMIC, from the command line directly and from within its own shell, similar to nslookup. As the features are nearly identical, we won’t cover the
WMIC shell in this article. However, note that the interactive version does include a failsafe mode that asks for confirmation before modifying or deleting objects, but it isn’t on by
default.
Most WMIC commands are issued in the following format:
wmic [credentials] [area] [querystring]
For example, you can collect a list of groups on the local system using the following command:
wmic group list brief
which will return output similar to this:
Caption Domain Name SID
Lab7\Administrators Lab7 Administrators S-1-5-32-544
Lab7\Backup Operators Lab7 Backup Operators S-1-5-32-551
Lab7\Guests Lab7 Guests S-1-5-32-546
Lab7\Network Configuration Operators Lab7 Network Configuration Operators S-1-5-32-556
Lab7\Power Users Lab7 Power Users S-1-5-32-547
Lab7\Remote Desktop Users Lab7 Remote Desktop Users S-1-5-32-555
Lab7\Replicator Lab7 Replicator S-1-5-32-552
Lab7\Users Lab7 Users S-1-5-32-545
Lab7\Debugger Users Lab7 Debugger Users S-1-5-21-577561410-1864853564-3972553872-1006
You can also perform the same data collection over the network without ever logging into the remote machine provided you know have some administrative credentials that the remote
system will accept. The same command issued against a remote system in another domain looks like this:
wmic /user:"FOREIGN_DOMAIN\Admin" /password:"Password" /node:192.168.33.25 group list brief
Caption Domain Name SID
REMOTE-DESK\Administrators REMOTE-DESK Administrators S-1-5-32-544
REMOTE-DESK\Backup Operators REMOTE-DESK Backup Operators S-1-5-32-551
REMOTE-DESK\Guests REMOTE-DESK Guests S-1-5-32-546
REMOTE-DESK\Network Configuration Operators REMOTE-DESK Network Configuration Operators S-1-5-32-556
REMOTE-DESK\Power Users REMOTE-DESK Power Users S-1-5-32-547
REMOTE-DESK\Remote Desktop Users REMOTE-DESK Remote Desktop Users S-1-5-32-555
REMOTE-DESK\Replicator REMOTE-DESK Replicator S-1-5-32-552
REMOTE-DESK\Users REMOTE-DESK Users S-1-5-32-545
REMOTE-DESK\HelpServicesGroup REMOTE-DESK HelpServicesGroup S-1-5-21-789336058-1078081533-839522115-1001
REMOTE-DESK\__vmware__ REMOTE-DESK __vmware__ S-1-5-21-789336058-1078081533-839522115-1004
FOREIGN_DOMAIN\Cert Publishers FOREIGN_DOMAIN Cert Publishers S-1-5-21-1948120765-2568877423-583830540-517
FOREIGN_DOMAIN\RAS and IAS Servers FOREIGN_DOMAIN RAS and IAS Servers S-1-5-21-1948120765-2568877423-583830540-553
FOREIGN_DOMAIN\HelpServicesGroup FOREIGN_DOMAIN HelpServicesGroup S-1-5-21-1948120765-2568877423-583830540-1000
FOREIGN_DOMAIN\TelnetClients FOREIGN_DOMAIN TelnetClients S-1-5-21-1948120765-2568877423-583830540-1002
FOREIGN_DOMAIN\DnsAdmins FOREIGN_DOMAIN DnsAdmins S-1-5-21-1948120765-2568877423-583830540-1117
FOREIGN_DOMAIN\DnsUpdateProxy FOREIGN_DOMAIN DnsUpdateProxy S-1-5-21-1948120765-2568877423-583830540-1118
FOREIGN_DOMAIN\Domain Admins FOREIGN_DOMAIN Domain Admins S-1-5-21-1948120765-2568877423-583830540-512
FOREIGN_DOMAIN\Domain Computers FOREIGN_DOMAIN Domain Computers S-1-5-21-1948120765-2568877423-583830540-515
FOREIGN_DOMAIN\Domain Controllers FOREIGN_DOMAIN Domain Controllers S-1-5-21-1948120765-2568877423-583830540-516
FOREIGN_DOMAIN\Domain Guests FOREIGN_DOMAIN Domain Guests S-1-5-21-1948120765-2568877423-583830540-514
FOREIGN_DOMAIN\Domain Users FOREIGN_DOMAIN Domain Users S-1-5-21-1948120765-2568877423-583830540-513
FOREIGN_DOMAIN\Enterprise Admins FOREIGN_DOMAIN Enterprise Admins S-1-5-21-1948120765-2568877423-583830540-519
FOREIGN_DOMAIN\Group Policy Creator Owners FOREIGN_DOMAIN Group Policy Creator Owners S-1-5-21-1948120765-2568877423-583830540-520
FOREIGN_DOMAIN\Schema Admins FOREIGN_DOMAIN Schema Admins S-1-5-21-1948120765-2568877423-583830540-518
FOREIGN_DOMAIN\Shared FOREIGN_DOMAIN Shared S-1-5-21-1948120765-2568877423-583830540-1113
Note that you can issue ANY of the of the WMIC commands over the network in this fashion as a means of gathering information about the host. Now that we’ve seen the basics, let’s
move to specific applications.
WMIC in Vulnerability and Penetration Testing
In vulnerability and penetration testing, system footprinting is key. The more information that can be collected about a specific system or group of systems, the greater the likelihood that
those systems can be compromised.
Granted, using WMIC requires administrative access on the remote host, but since most IT departments maintain standard images for each collection or group of workstations and
servers, information you can obtain from one host is likely to be applicable to other similar systems. Furthermore, for default configurations of the event log and auditing processes,
WMIC requests won’t be logged, so all of your enumerations can be undertaken in stealth mode.
The following are examples of useful information we can collect through WMIC:
Process Listings
WMIC can collect a list of the currently running processes similar to what you’d see in “Task Manager” using the following command:
wmic process list
Note that some of the WMIC built-ins can also be used in “brief” mode to display a less verbose output. The process built-in is one of these, so you could collect more refined output
using the command:
wmic process list brief
About half of the pre-defined WMIC queries that I’ve used seem to have a brief version available, but I use the full versions almost exclusively.
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