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FCC Asks Amazon & eBay to Help Eliminate Pirate Media Box Sales

2018-05-30 Andy

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/fcc-asks-amazon-ebay-to-help-eliminate-pirate-media-box-sales-180530/

Over the past several years, anyone looking for a piracy-configured set-top box could do worse than search for one on Amazon or eBay.

Historically, people deploying search terms including “Kodi” or “fully-loaded” were greeted by page after page of Android-type boxes, each ready for illicit plug-and-play entertainment consumption following delivery.

Although the problem persists on both platforms, people are now much less likely to find infringing devices than they were 12 to 24 months ago. Under pressure from entertainment industry groups, both Amazon and eBay have tightened the screws on sellers of such devices. Now, however, both companies have received requests to stem sales from a completetey different direction.

In a letter to eBay CEO Devin Wenig and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos first spotted by Ars, FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly calls on the platforms to take action against piracy-configured boxes that fail to comply with FCC equipment authorization requirements or falsely display FCC logos, contrary to United States law.

“Disturbingly, some rogue set-top box manufacturers and distributors are exploiting the FCC’s trusted logo by fraudulently placing it on devices that have not been approved via the Commission’s equipment authorization process,” O’Rielly’s letter reads.

“Specifically, nine set-top box distributors were referred to the FCC in October for enabling the unlawful streaming of copyrighted material, seven of which displayed the FCC logo, although there was no record of such compliance.”

While O’Rielly admits that the copyright infringement aspects fall outside the jurisdiction of the FCC, he says it’s troubling that many of these devices are used to stream infringing content, “exacerbating the theft of billions of dollars in American innovation and creativity.”

As noted above, both Amazon and eBay have taken steps to reduce sales of pirate boxes on their respective platforms on copyright infringement grounds, something which is duly noted by O’Rielly. However, he points out that devices continue to be sold to members of the public who may believe that the devices are legal since they’re available for sale from legitimate companies.

“For these reasons, I am seeking your further cooperation in assisting the FCC in taking steps to eliminate the non-FCC compliant devices or devices that fraudulently bear the FCC logo,” the Commissioner writes (pdf).

“Moreover, if your company is made aware by the Commission, with supporting evidence, that a particular device is using a fraudulent FCC label or has not been appropriately certified and labeled with a valid FCC logo, I respectfully request that you commit to swiftly removing these products from your sites.”

In the event that Amazon and eBay take action under this request, O’Rielly asks both platforms to hand over information they hold on offending manufacturers, distributors, and suppliers.

Amazon was quick to respond to the FCC. In a letter published by Ars, Amazon’s Public Policy Vice President Brian Huseman assured O’Rielly that the company is not only dedicated to tackling rogue devices on copyright-infringement grounds but also when there is fraudulent use of the FCC’s logos.

Noting that Amazon is a key member of the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) – a group that has been taking legal action against sellers of infringing streaming devices (ISDs) and those who make infringing addons for Kodi-type systems – Huseman says that dealing with the problem is a top priority.

“Our goal is to prevent the sale of ISDs anywhere, as we seek to protect our customers from the risks posed by these devices, in addition to our interest in protecting Amazon Studios content,” Huseman writes.

“In 2017, Amazon became the first online marketplace to prohibit the sale of streaming media players that promote or facilitate piracy. To prevent the sale of these devices, we proactively scan product listings for signs of potentially infringing products, and we also invest heavily in sophisticated, automated real-time tools to review a variety of data sources and signals to identify inauthentic goods.

“These automated tools are supplemented by human reviewers that conduct manual investigations. When we suspect infringement, we take immediate action to remove suspected listings, and we also take enforcement action against sellers’ entire accounts when appropriate.”

Huseman also reveals that since implementing a proactive policy against such devices, “tens of thousands” of listings have been blocked from Amazon. In addition, the platform has been making criminal referrals to law enforcement as well as taking civil action (1,2,3) as part of ACE.

“As noted in your letter, we would also appreciate the opportunity to collaborate further with the FCC to remove non-compliant devices that improperly use the FCC logo or falsely claim FCC certification. If any FCC non-compliant devices are identified, we seek to work with you to ensure they are not offered for sale,” Huseman concludes.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

Detecting Lies through Mouse Movements

2018-05-25 Bruce Schneier

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/05/detecting_lies_.html

Interesting research: “The detection of faked identity using unexpected questions and mouse dynamics,” by Merulin Monaro, Luciano Gamberini, and Guiseppe Sartori.

Abstract: The detection of faked identities is a major problem in security. Current memory-detection techniques cannot be used as they require prior knowledge of the respondent’s true identity. Here, we report a novel technique for detecting faked identities based on the use of unexpected questions that may be used to check the respondent identity without any prior autobiographical information. While truth-tellers respond automatically to unexpected questions, liars have to “build” and verify their responses. This lack of automaticity is reflected in the mouse movements used to record the responses as well as in the number of errors. Responses to unexpected questions are compared to responses to expected and control questions (i.e., questions to which a liar also must respond truthfully). Parameters that encode mouse movement were analyzed using machine learning classifiers and the results indicate that the mouse trajectories and errors on unexpected questions efficiently distinguish liars from truth-tellers. Furthermore, we showed that liars may be identified also when they are responding truthfully. Unexpected questions combined with the analysis of mouse movement may efficiently spot participants with faked identities without the need for any prior information on the examinee.

Boing Boing post.

masscan, macOS, and firewall

2018-05-21 Robert Graham

Post Syndicated from Robert Graham original https://blog.erratasec.com/2018/05/masscan-macos-and-firewall.html

One of the more useful features of masscan is the “–banners” check, which connects to the TCP port, sends some request, and gets a basic response back. However, since masscan has it’s own TCP stack, it’ll interfere with the operating system’s TCP stack if they are sharing the same IPv4 address. The operating system will reply with a RST packet before the TCP connection can be established.

The way to fix this is to use the built-in packet-filtering firewall to block those packets in the operating-system TCP/IP stack. The masscan program still sees everything before the packet-filter, but the operating system can’t see anything after the packet-filter.

Note that we are talking about the “packet-filter” firewall feature here. Remember that macOS, like most operating systems these days, has two separate firewalls: an application firewall and a packet-filter firewall. The application firewall is the one you see in System Settings labeled “Firewall”, and it controls things based upon the application’s identity rather than by which ports it uses. This is normally “on” by default. The packet-filter is normally “off” by default and is of little use to normal users.

Also note that macOS changed packet-filters around version 10.10.5 (“Yosemite”, October 2014). The older one is known as “ipfw“, which was the default firewall for FreeBSD (much of macOS is based on FreeBSD). The replacement is known as PF, which comes from OpenBSD. Whereas you used to use the old “ipfw” command on the command line, you now use the “pfctl” command, as well as the “/etc/pf.conf” configuration file.

What we need to filter is the source port of the packets that masscan will send, so that when replies are received, they won’t reach the operating-system stack, and just go to masscan instead. To do this, we need find a range of ports that won’t conflict with the operating system. Namely, when the operating system creates outgoing connections, it randomly chooses a source port within a certain range. We want to use masscan to use source ports in a different range.

To figure out the range macOS uses, we run the following command:

sysctl net.inet.ip.portrange.first net.inet.ip.portrange.last

On my laptop, which is probably the default for macOS, I get the following range. Sniffing with Wireshark confirms this is the range used for source ports for outgoing connections.

net.inet.ip.portrange.first: 49152
net.inet.ip.portrange.last: 65535

So this means I shouldn’t use source ports anywhere in the range 49152 to 65535. On my laptop, I’ve decided to use for masscan the ports 40000 to 41023. The range masscan uses must be a power of 2, so here I’m using 1024 (two to the tenth power).

To configure masscan, I can either type the parameter “–source-port 40000-41023” every time I run the program, or I can add the following line to /etc/masscan/masscan.conf. Remember that by default, masscan will look in that configuration file for any configuration parameters, so you don’t have to keep retyping them on the command line.

source-port = 40000-41023

Next, I need to add the following firewall rule to the bottom of /etc/pf.conf:

block in proto tcp from any to any port 40000 >< 41024

However, we aren’t done yet. By default, the packet-filter firewall is off on some versions of macOS. Therefore, every time you reboot your computer, you need to enable it. The simple way to do this is on the command line run:

pfctl -e

Or, if that doesn’t work, try:

pfctl -E

If the firewall is already running, then you’ll need to load the file explicitly (or reboot):

pfctl -f /etc/pf.conf

You can check to see if the rule is active:

pfctl -s rules

An easier way to control access to AWS resources by using the AWS organization of IAM principals

2018-05-17 Sulay Shah

Post Syndicated from Sulay Shah original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/control-access-to-aws-resources-by-using-the-aws-organization-of-iam-principals/

AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) now makes it easier for you to control access to your AWS resources by using the AWS organization of IAM principals (users and roles). For some services, you grant permissions using resource-based policies to specify the accounts and principals that can access the resource and what actions they can perform on it. Now, you can use a new condition key, aws:PrincipalOrgID, in these policies to require all principals accessing the resource to be from an account in the organization. For example, let’s say you have an Amazon S3 bucket policy and you want to restrict access to only principals from AWS accounts inside of your organization. To accomplish this, you can define the aws:PrincipalOrgID condition and set the value to your organization ID in the bucket policy. Your organization ID is what sets the access control on the S3 bucket. Additionally, when you use this condition, policy permissions apply when you add new accounts to this organization without requiring an update to the policy.

In this post, I walk through the details of the new condition and show you how to restrict access to only principals in your organization using S3.

Condition concepts

Before I introduce the new condition, let’s review the condition element of an IAM policy. A condition is an optional IAM policy element you can use to specify special circumstances under which the policy grants or denies permission. A condition includes a condition key, operator, and value for the condition. There are two types of conditions: service-specific conditions and global conditions. Service-specific conditions are specific to certain actions in an AWS service. For example, the condition key ec2:InstanceType supports specific EC2 actions. Global conditions support all actions across all AWS services.

Now that I’ve reviewed the condition element in an IAM policy, let me introduce the new condition.

AWS:PrincipalOrgID Condition Key

You can use this condition key to apply a filter to the Principal element of a resource-based policy. You can use any string operator, such as StringLike, with this condition and specify the AWS organization ID for as its value.

Condition key	Description	Operator(s)	Value
aws:PrincipalOrgID	Validates if the principal accessing the resource belongs to an account in your organization.	All String operators	Any AWS organization ID

Example: Restrict access to only principals from my organization

Let’s consider an example where I want to give specific IAM principals in my organization direct access to my S3 bucket, 2018-Financial-Data, that contains sensitive financial information. I have two accounts in my AWS organization with multiple account IDs, and only some IAM users from these accounts need access to this financial report.

To grant this access, I author a resource-based policy for my S3 bucket as shown below. In this policy, I list the individuals who I want to grant access. For the sake of this example, let’s say that while doing so, I accidentally specify an incorrect account ID. This means a user named Steve, who is not in an account in my organization, can now access my financial report. To require the principal account to be in my organization, I add a condition to my policy using the global condition key aws:PrincipalOrgID. This condition requires that only principals from accounts in my organization can access the S3 bucket. This means that although Steve is one of the principals in the policy, he can’t access the financial report because the account that he is a member of doesn’t belong to my organization.




{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "AllowPutObject",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Principal": ["arn:aws:iam::094697565664:user/Casey",
				"arn:aws:iam::094697565664:user/David",
				"arn:aws:iam::094697565664:user/Tom",
				"arn:aws:iam::094697565664:user/Michael",
				"arn:aws:iam::094697565664:user/Brenda",
				"arn:aws:iam::094697565664:user/Lisa",
				"arn:aws:iam::094697565664:user/Norman",
				"arn:aws:iam::094697565646:user/Steve",
				"arn:aws:iam::087695765465:user/Douglas",
				"arn:aws:iam::087695765465:user/Michelle"],
            "Action": "s3:GetObject",
            "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::2018-Financial-Data/*",
            "Condition": {"ForAnyValue:StringLike": 
                             {"aws:PrincipalOrgID": [ "o-xxxxxxxxxx" ]}
                         }
        }
    ]
}

In the policy above, I specify the principals that I grant access to using the principal element of the statement. Next, I add s3:GetObject as the action and 2018-Financial-Data/* as the resource to grant read access to my S3 bucket. Finally, I add the new condition key aws:PrincipalOrgID and specify my organization ID in the condition element of the statement to make sure only the principals from the accounts in my organization can access this bucket.

Summary

You can now use the aws:PrincipalOrgID condition key in your resource-based policies to more easily restrict access to IAM principals from accounts in your AWS organization. For more information about this global condition key and policy examples using aws:PrincipalOrgID, read the IAM documentation.

If you have comments about this post, submit them in the Comments section below. If you have questions about or suggestions for this solution, start a new thread on the IAM forum or contact AWS Support.

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Spring 2018 AWS SOC Reports are Now Available with 11 Services Added in Scope

2018-05-10 Chris Gile

Post Syndicated from Chris Gile original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/spring-2018-aws-soc-reports-are-now-available-with-11-services-added-in-scope/

Since our last System and Organization Control (SOC) audit, our service and compliance teams have been working to increase the number of AWS Services in scope prioritized based on customer requests. Today, we’re happy to report 11 services are newly SOC compliant, which is a 21 percent increase in the last six months.

With the addition of the following 11 new services, you can now select from a total of 62 SOC-compliant services. To see the full list, go to our Services in Scope by Compliance Program page:

• Amazon Athena
• Amazon QuickSight
• Amazon WorkDocs
• AWS Batch
• AWS CodeBuild
• AWS Config
• AWS OpsWorks Stacks
• AWS Snowball
• AWS Snowball Edge
• AWS Snowmobile
• AWS X-Ray

Our latest SOC 1, 2, and 3 reports covering the period from October 1, 2017 to March 31, 2018 are now available. The SOC 1 and 2 reports are available on-demand through AWS Artifact by logging into the AWS Management Console. The SOC 3 report can be downloaded here.

Finally, prospective customers can read our SOC 1 and 2 reports by reaching out to AWS Compliance.

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ISPs Win Landmark Case to Protect Privacy of Alleged Pirates

2018-05-08 Andy

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/isps-win-landmark-case-protect-privacy-alleged-pirates-180508/

With waves of piracy settlement letters being sent out across the world, the last line of defense for many accused Internet users has been their ISPs.

In a number of regions, notably the United States, Europe, and the UK, most ISPs have given up the fight, handing subscriber details over to copyright trolls with a minimum of resistance. However, there are companies out there prepared to stand up for their customers’ rights, if eventually.

Over in Denmark, Telenor grew tired of tens of thousands of requests for subscriber details filed by a local law firm on behalf of international copyright troll groups. It previously complied with demands to hand over the details of individuals behind 22,000 IP addresses, around 11% of the 200,000 total handled by ISPs in Denmark. But with no end in sight, the ISP dug in its heels.

“We think there is a fundamental legal problem because the courts do not really decide what is most important: the legal security of the public or the law firms’ commercial interests,” Telenor’s Legal Director Mette Eistrøm Krüger said last year.

Assisted by rival ISP Telia, Telenor subsequently began preparing a case to protect the interests of their customers, refusing in the meantime to comply with disclosure requests in copyright cases. But last October, the District Court ruled against the telecoms companies, ordering them to provide identities to the copyright trolls.

Undeterred, the companies took their case to the Østre Landsret, one of Denmark’s two High Courts. Yesterday their determination paid off with a resounding victory for the ISPs and security for the individuals behind approximately 4,000 IP addresses targeted by Copyright Collection Ltd via law firm Njord Law.

“In its order based on telecommunications legislation, the Court has weighed subscribers’ rights to confidentiality of information regarding their use of the Internet against the interests of rightsholders to obtain information for the purpose of prosecuting claims against the subscribers,” the Court said in a statement.

Noting that the case raised important questions of European Union law and the European Convention on Human Rights, the High Court said that after due consideration it would overrule the decision of the District Court. The rights of the copyright holders do not trump the individuals right to privacy, it said.

“The telecommunications companies are therefore not required to disclose the names and addresses of their subscribers,” the Court ruled.

Telenor welcomed the decision, noting that it had received countless requests from law firms to disclose the identities of thousands of subscribers but had declined to hand them over, a decision that has now been endorsed by the High Court.

“This is an important victory for our right to protect our customers’ data,” said Telenor Denmark’s Legal Director, Mette Eistrøm Krüger.

“At Telenor we protect our customers’ data and trust – therefore it has been our conviction that we cannot be forced into almost automatically submitting personal data on our customers simply to support some private actors who are driven by commercial interests.”

Noting that it’s been putting up a fight since 2016 against handing over customers’ data for purposes other than investigating serious crime, Telenor said that the clarity provided by the decision is most welcome.

“We and other Danish telecom companies are required to log customer data for the police to fight serious crime and terrorism – but the legislation has just been insufficient in relation to the use of logged data,” Krüger said.

“Therefore I am pleased that with this judgment the High Court has stated that customers’ legal certainty is most important in these cases.”

The decision was also welcomed by Telia Denmark, with Legal Director Lasse Andersen describing the company as being “really really happy” with “a big win.”

“It is a victory for our customers and for all telecom companies’ customers,” Andersen said.

“They can now feel confident that the data that we collect about them cannot be disclosed for purposes other than the terms under which they are collected as determined by the jurisdiction.

“Therefore, anyone and everybody cannot claim our data. We are pleased that throughout the process we have determined that we will not hand over our data to anyone other than the police with a court order,” Andersen added.

But as the ISPs celebrate, the opposite is true for Njord Law and its copyright troll partners.

“It is a sad message to the Danish film and television industry that the possibilities for self-investigating illegal file sharing are complicated and that the work must be left to the police’s scarce resources,” said Jeppe Brogaard Clausen of Njord Law.

While the ISPs finally stood up for users in these cases, Telenor in particular wishes to emphasize that supporting the activities of pirates is not its aim. The company says it does not support illegal file-sharing “in any way” and is actively working with anti-piracy outfit Rights Alliance to prevent unauthorized downloading of movies and other content.

The full decision of the Østre Landsret can be found here (Danish, pdf)

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

Infamous ‘Kodi Box’ Case Sees Man Pay Back Just £1 to the State

2018-05-07 Andy

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/infamous-kodi-box-case-sees-man-pay-back-just-1-to-the-state-180507/

In 2015, Middlesbrough-based shopkeeper Brian ‘Tomo’ Thompson shot into the headlines after being raided by police and Trading Standards in the UK.

Thompson had been selling “fully-loaded” piracy-configured Kodi boxes from his shop but didn’t think he’d done anything wrong.

“All I want to know is whether I am doing anything illegal. I know it’s a gray area but I want it in black and white,” he said.

Thompson started out with a particularly brave tone. He insisted he’d take the case to Crown Court and even to the European Court. His mission was show what was legal and what wasn’t, he said.

Very quickly, Thompson’s case took on great importance, with observers everywhere reporting on a potential David versus Goliath copyright battle for the ages. But Thompson’s case wasn’t straightforward.

The shopkeeper wasn’t charged with basic “making available” under the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Acts that would have found him guilty under the earlier BREIN v Filmspeler case. Instead, he stood accused of two offenses under section 296ZB of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, which deals with devices and services designed to “circumvent technological measures”.

In the end it was all moot. After entering his official ‘not guilty’ plea, last year Thompson suddenly changed his tune. He accepted the prosecution’s version of events, throwing himself at the mercy of the court with a guilty plea.

In October 2017, Teeside Crown Court heard that Thompson cost Sky around £200,000 in lost subscriptions while the shopkeeper made around £38,500 from selling the devices. But despite the fairly big numbers, Judge Peter Armstrong decided to go reasonably light on the 55-year-old, handing him an 18-month prison term, suspended for two years.

“I’ve come to the conclusion that in all the circumstances an immediate custodial sentence is not called for. But as a warning to others in future, they may not be so lucky,” the Judge said.

But things wouldn’t end there for Thompson.

In the UK, people who make money or obtain assets from criminal activity can be forced to pay back their profits, which are then confiscated by the state under the Proceeds of Crime Act (pdf). Almost anything can be taken, from straight cash to cars, jewellery and houses.

However, it appears that whatever cash Thompson earned from Kodi Box activities has long since gone.

During a Proceeds of Crime hearing reported on by Gazette Live, the Court heard that Thompson has no assets whatsoever so any confiscation order would have to be a small one.

In the end, Judge Simon Hickey decided that Thompson should forfeit a single pound, an amount that could increase if the businessman got lucky moving forward.

“If anything changes in the future, for instance if you win the lottery, it might come back,” the Judge said.

With that seeming particularly unlikely, perhaps this will be the end for Thompson. Considering the gravity and importance placed on his case, zero jail time and just a £1 to pay back will probably be acceptable to the 55-year-old and also a lesson to the authorities, who have gotten very little out of this expensive case.

Who knows, perhaps they might sum up the outcome using the same eight-letter word that Thompson can be seen half-covering in this photograph.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

Aussie Federal Court Orders ISPs to Block Pirate IPTV Service

2018-04-27 Andy

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/aussie-federal-court-orders-isps-to-block-pirate-iptv-service-180427/

After successful applying for ISP blocks against dozens of traditional torrent and streaming portals, Village Roadshow and a coalition of movie studios switched tack last year.

With the threat of pirate subscription IPTV services looming large, Roadshow, Disney, Universal, Warner Bros, Twentieth Century Fox, and Paramount targeted HDSubs+ (also known as PressPlayPlus), a fairly well-known service that provides hundreds of otherwise premium live channels, movies, and sports for a relatively small monthly fee.

The injunction, which was filed last October, targets Australia’s largest ISPs including Telstra, Optus, TPG, and Vocus, plus subsidiaries.

Unlike blocking injunctions targeting regular sites, the studios sought to have several elements of HD Subs+ infrastructure rendered inaccessible, so that its sales platform, EPG (electronic program guide), software (such as an Android and set-top box app), updates, and sundry other services would fail to operate in Australia.

After a six month wait, the Federal Court granted the application earlier today, compelling Australia’s ISPs to block “16 online locations” associated with the HD Subs+ service, rendering its TV services inaccessible Down Under.

“Each respondent must, within 15 business days of service of these orders, take reasonable steps to disable access to the target online locations,” said Justice Nicholas, as quoted by ZDNet.

A small selection of channels in the HDSubs+ package

The ISPs were given flexibility in how to implement the ban, with the Judge noting that DNS blocking, IP address blocking or rerouting, URL blocking, or “any alternative technical means for disabling access”, would be acceptable.

The rightsholders are required to pay a fee of AU$50 fee for each domain they want to block but Village Roadshow says it doesn’t mind doing so, since blocking is in “public interest”. Continuing a pattern established last year, none of the ISPs showed up to the judgment.

A similar IPTV blocking application was filed by Hong Kong-based broadcaster Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB) last year.

TVB wants ISPs including Telstra, Optus, Vocus, and TPG plus their subsidiaries to block access to seven Android-based services named as A1, BlueTV, EVPAD, FunTV, MoonBox, Unblock, and hTV5.

The application was previously heard alongside the HD Subs+ case but will now be handled separately following complications. In April it was revealed that TVB not only wants to block Internet locations related to the technical operation of the service, but also hosting sites that fulfill a role similar to that of Google Play or Apple’s App Store.

TVB wants to have these app marketplaces blocked by Australian ISPs, which would not only render the illicit apps inaccessible to the public but all of the non-infringing ones too.

Justice Nicholas will now have to decide whether the “primary purpose” of these marketplaces is to infringe or facilitate the infringement of TVB’s copyrights. However, there is also a question of whether China-focused live programming has copyright status in Australia. An additional hearing is scheduled for May 2 for these matters to be addressed.

Also on Friday, Foxtel filed yet another blocking application targeting “15 online locations” involving 27 domain names connected to traditional BitTorrent and streaming services.

According to ComputerWorld the injunction targets the same set of ISPs but this time around, Foxtel is trying to save on costs.

The company doesn’t want to have expert witnesses present in court, doesn’t want to stage live demos of websites, and would like to rely on videos and screenshots instead. Foxtel also says that if the ISPs agree, it won’t serve its evidence on them as it has done previously.

The company asked Justice Nicholas to deal with the injunction application “on paper” but he declined, setting a hearing for June 18 but accepting screenshots and videos as evidence.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

Store, Protect, Optimize Your Healthcare Data with AWS

2018-04-26 Stephen Jepsen

Post Syndicated from Stephen Jepsen original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/architecture/store-protect-optimize-your-healthcare-data-with-aws/

This blog post was co-authored by Ujjwal Ratan, a senior AI/ML solutions architect on the global life sciences team.

Healthcare data is generated at an ever-increasing rate and is predicted to reach 35 zettabytes by 2020. Being able to cost-effectively and securely manage this data whether for patient care, research or legal reasons is increasingly important for healthcare providers.

Healthcare providers must have the ability to ingest, store and protect large volumes of data including clinical, genomic, device, financial, supply chain, and claims. AWS is well-suited to this data deluge with a wide variety of ingestion, storage and security services (e.g. AWS Direct Connect, Amazon Kinesis Streams, Amazon S3, Amazon Macie) for customers to handle their healthcare data. In a recent Healthcare IT News article, healthcare thought-leader, John Halamka, noted, “I predict that five years from now none of us will have datacenters. We’re going to go out to the cloud to find EHRs, clinical decision support, analytics.”

I realize simply storing this data is challenging enough. Magnifying the problem is the fact that healthcare data is increasingly attractive to cyber attackers, making security a top priority. According to Mariya Yao in her Forbes column, it is estimated that individual medical records can be worth hundreds or even thousands of dollars on the black market.

In this first of a 2-part post, I will address the value that AWS can bring to customers for ingesting, storing and protecting provider’s healthcare data. I will describe key components of any cloud-based healthcare workload and the services AWS provides to meet these requirements. In part 2 of this post we will dive deep into the AWS services used for advanced analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning.

The data tsunami is upon us

So where is this data coming from? In addition to the ubiquitous electronic health record (EHR), the sources of this data include:

genomic sequencers
devices such as MRIs, x-rays and ultrasounds
sensors and wearables for patients
medical equipment telemetry
mobile applications

Additional sources of data come from non-clinical, operational systems such as:

human resources
finance
supply chain
claims and billing

Data from these sources can be structured (e.g., claims data) as well as unstructured (e.g., clinician notes). Some data comes across in streams such as that taken from patient monitors, while some comes in batch form. Still other data comes in near-real time such as HL7 messages. All of this data has retention policies dictating how long it must be stored. Much of this data is stored in perpetuity as many systems in use today have no purge mechanism. AWS has services to manage all these data types as well as their retention, security and access policies.

Imaging is a significant contributor to this data tsunami. Increasing demand for early-stage diagnoses along with aging populations drive increasing demand for images from CT, PET, MRI, ultrasound, digital pathology, X-ray and fluoroscopy. For example, a thin-slice CT image can be hundreds of megabytes. Increasing demand and strict retention policies make storage costly.

Due to the plummeting cost of gene sequencing, molecular diagnostics (including liquid biopsy) is a large contributor to this data deluge. Many predict that as the value of molecular testing becomes more identifiable, the reimbursement models will change and it will increasingly become the standard of care. According to the Washington Post article “Sequencing the Genome Creates so Much Data We Don’t Know What to do with It,”

“Some researchers predict that up to one billion people will have their genome sequenced by 2025 generating up to 40 exabytes of data per year.”

Although genomics is primarily used for oncology diagnostics today, it’s also used for other purposes, pharmacogenomics — used to understand how an individual will metabolize a medication.

Reference Architecture

It is increasingly challenging for the typical hospital, clinic or physician practice to securely store, process and manage this data without cloud adoption.

Amazon has a variety of ingestion techniques depending on the nature of the data including size, frequency and structure. AWS Snowball and AWS Snowmachine are appropriate for extremely-large, secure data transfers whether one time or episodic. AWS Glue is a fully-managed ETL service for securely moving data from on-premise to AWS and Amazon Kinesis can be used for ingesting streaming data.

Amazon S3, Amazon S3 IA, and Amazon Glacier are economical, data-storage services with a pay-as-you-go pricing model that expand (or shrink) with the customer’s requirements.

The above architecture has four distinct components – ingestion, storage, security, and analytics. In this post I will dive deeper into the first three components, namely ingestion, storage and security. In part 2, I will look at how to use AWS’ analytics services to draw value on, and optimize, your healthcare data.

Ingestion

A typical provider data center will consist of many systems with varied datasets. AWS provides multiple tools and services to effectively and securely connect to these data sources and ingest data in various formats. The customers can choose from a range of services and use them in accordance with the use case.

For use cases involving one-time (or periodic), very large data migrations into AWS, customers can take advantage of AWS Snowball devices. These devices come in two sizes, 50 TB and 80 TB and can be combined together to create a petabyte scale data transfer solution.

The devices are easy to connect and load and they are shipped to AWS avoiding the network bottlenecks associated with such large-scale data migrations. The devices are extremely secure supporting 256-bit encryption and come in a tamper-resistant enclosure. AWS Snowball imports data in Amazon S3 which can then interface with other AWS compute services to process that data in a scalable manner.

For use cases involving a need to store a portion of datasets on premises for active use and offload the rest on AWS, the Amazon storage gateway service can be used. The service allows you to seamlessly integrate on premises applications via standard storage protocols like iSCSI or NFS mounted on a gateway appliance. It supports a file interface, a volume interface and a tape interface which can be utilized for a range of use cases like disaster recovery, backup and archiving, cloud bursting, storage tiering and migration.

The AWS Storage Gateway appliance can use the AWS Direct Connect service to establish a dedicated network connection from the on premises data center to AWS.

Specific Industry Use Cases

By using the AWS proposed reference architecture for disaster recovery, healthcare providers can ensure their data assets are securely stored on the cloud and are easily accessible in the event of a disaster. The “AWS Disaster Recovery” whitepaper includes details on options available to customers based on their desired recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO).

AWS is an ideal destination for offloading large volumes of less-frequently-accessed data. These datasets are rarely used in active compute operations but are exceedingly important to retain for reasons like compliance. By storing these datasets on AWS, customers can take advantage of the highly-durable platform to securely store their data and also retrieve them easily when they need to. For more details on how AWS enables customers to run back and archival use cases on AWS, please refer to the following set of whitepapers.

A healthcare provider may have a variety of databases spread throughout the hospital system supporting critical applications such as EHR, PACS, finance and many more. These datasets often need to be aggregated to derive information and calculate metrics to optimize business processes. AWS Glue is a fully-managed Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) service that can read data from a JDBC-enabled, on-premise database and transfer the datasets into AWS services like Amazon S3, Amazon Redshift and Amazon RDS. This allows customers to create transformation workflows that integrate smaller datasets from multiple sources and aggregates them on AWS.

Healthcare providers deal with a variety of streaming datasets which often have to be analyzed in near real time. These datasets come from a variety of sources such as sensors, messaging buses and social media, and often do not adhere to an industry standard. The Amazon Kinesis suite of services, that includes Amazon Kinesis Streams, Amazon Kinesis Firehose, and Amazon Kinesis Analytics, are the ideal set of services to accomplish the task of deriving value from streaming data.

Example: Using AWS Glue to de-identify and ingest healthcare data into S3
Let’s consider a scenario in which a provider maintains patient records in a database they want to ingest into S3. The provider also wants to de-identify the data by stripping personally- identifiable attributes and store the non-identifiable information in an S3 bucket. This bucket is different from the one that contains identifiable information. Doing this allows the healthcare provider to separate sensitive information with more restrictions set up via S3 bucket policies.

To ingest records into S3, we create a Glue job that reads from the source database using a Glue connection. The connection is also used by a Glue crawler to populate the Glue data catalog with the schema of the source database. We will use the Glue development endpoint and a zeppelin notebook server on EC2 to develop and execute the job.

Step 1: Import the necessary libraries and also set a glue context which is a wrapper on the spark context:

Step 2: Create a dataframe from the source data. I call the dataframe “readmissionsdata”. Here is what the schema would look like:

Step 3: Now select the columns that contains indentifiable information and store it in a new dataframe. Call the new dataframe “phi”.

Step 4: Non-PHI columns are stored in a separate dataframe. Call this dataframe “nonphi”.

Step 5: Write the two dataframes into two separate S3 buckets

Once successfully executed, the PHI and non-PHI attributes are stored in two separate files in two separate buckets that can be individually maintained.

Storage

In 2016, 327 healthcare providers reported a protected health information (PHI) breach, affecting 16.4m patient records[1]. There have been 342 data breaches reported in 2017 — involving 3.2 million patient records.[2]

To date, AWS has released 51 HIPAA-eligible services to help customers address security challenges and is in the process of making many more services HIPAA-eligible. These HIPAA-eligible services (along with all other AWS services) help customers build solutions that comply with HIPAA security and auditing requirements. A catalogue of HIPAA-enabled services can be found at AWS HIPAA-eligible services. It is important to note that AWS manages physical and logical access controls for the AWS boundary. However, the overall security of your workloads is a shared responsibility, where you are responsible for controlling user access to content on your AWS accounts.

AWS storage services allow you to store data efficiently while maintaining high durability and scalability. By using Amazon S3 as the central storage layer, you can take advantage of the Amazon S3 storage management features to get operational metrics on your data sets and transition them between various storage classes to save costs. By tagging objects on Amazon S3, you can build a governance layer on Amazon S3 to grant role based access to objects using Amazon IAM and Amazon S3 bucket policies.

To learn more about the Amazon S3 storage management features, see the following link.

Security

In the example above, we are storing the PHI information in a bucket named “phi.” Now, we want to protect this information to make sure its encrypted, does not have unauthorized access, and all access requests to the data are logged.

Encryption: S3 provides settings to enable default encryption on a bucket. This ensures any object in the bucket is encrypted by default.

Logging: S3 provides object level logging that can be used to capture all API calls to the object. The API calls are logged in cloudtrail for easy access and consolidation. Moreover, it also supports events to proactively alert customers of read and write operations.

Access control: Customers can use S3 bucket policies and IAM policies to restrict access to the phi bucket. It can also put a restriction to enforce multi-factor authentication on the bucket. For example, the following policy enforces multi-factor authentication on the phi bucket:

"Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Id": "123",
    "Statement": [
      {
        "Sid": "",
        "Effect": "Deny",
        "Principal": "*",
        "Action": "s3:*",
        "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::phi/*",
        "Condition": { "Null": { "aws:MultiFactorAuthAge": true } }
      },
      {
        "Sid": "",
        "Effect": "Allow",
        "Principal": "*",
        "Action": ["s3:GetObject"],
        "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::phi/*"
      }
    ]
 }

Conclusion

In Part 1 of this blog, we detailed the ingestion, storage, security and management of healthcare data on AWS. Stay tuned for part two where we are going to dive deep into optimizing the data for analytics and machine learning.

Please visit Healthcare Providers and Insurers in the Cloud for additional information.

[1] “Largest Healthcare Data Breaches of 2016.” HIPAA Journal, 29 Aug. 2017
[2] “Largest Healthcare Data Breaches of 2017.” HIPAA Journal, 8 Mar. 2018

About the Author

Stephen Jepsen is a Global HCLS Practice Manager in AWS Professional Services.

TV Broadcaster Wants App Stores Blocked to Prevent Piracy

2018-04-16 Andy

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/tv-broadcaster-wants-app-stores-blocked-to-prevent-piracy-180416/

After first targeting torrent and regular streaming platforms with blocking injunctions, last year Village Roadshow and studios including Disney, Universal, Warner Bros, Twentieth Century Fox, and Paramount began looking at a new threat.

The action targeted HDSubs+, a reasonably popular IPTV service that provides hundreds of otherwise premium live channels, movies, and sports for a relatively small monthly fee. The application was filed during October 2017 and targeted Australia’s largest ISPs.

In parallel, Hong Kong-based broadcaster Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB) launched a similar action, demanding that the same ISPs (including Telstra, Optus, TPG, and Vocus, plus subsidiaries) block several ‘pirate’ IPTV services, named in court as A1, BlueTV, EVPAD, FunTV, MoonBox, Unblock, and hTV5.

Due to the similarity of the cases, both applications were heard in Federal Court in Sydney on Friday. Neither case is as straightforward as blocking a torrent or basic streaming portal, so both applicants are having to deal with additional complexities.

The TVB case is of particular interest. Up to a couple of dozen URLs maintain the services, which are used to provide the content, an EPG (electronic program guide), updates and sundry other features. While most of these appear to fit the description of an “online location” designed to assist copyright infringement, where the Android-based software for the IPTV services is hosted provides an interesting dilemma.

ComputerWorld reports that the apps – which offer live broadcasts, video-on-demand, and catch-up TV – are hosted on as-yet-unnamed sites which are functionally similar to Google Play or Apple’s App Store. They’re repositories of applications that also carry non-infringing apps, such as those for Netflix and YouTube.

Nevertheless, despite clear knowledge of this dual use, TVB wants to have these app marketplaces blocked by Australian ISPs, which would not only render the illicit apps inaccessible to the public but all of the non-infringing ones too. Part of its argument that this action would be reasonable appears to be that legal apps – such as Netflix’s for example – can also be freely accessed elsewhere.

It will be up to Justice Nicholas to decide whether the “primary purpose” of these marketplaces is to infringe or facilitate the infringement of TVB’s copyrights. However, TVB also appears to have another problem which is directly connected to the copyright status in Australia of its China-focused live programming.

Justice Nicholas questioned whether watching a stream in Australia of TVB’s live Chinese broadcasts would amount to copyright infringement because no copy of that content is being made.

“If most of what is occurring here is a reproduction of broadcasts that are not protected by copyright, then the primary purpose is not to facilitate copyright infringement,” Justice Nicholas said.

One of the problems appears to be that China is not a party to the 1961 Rome Convention for the Protection of Performers, Producers of Phonograms and Broadcasting Organisations. However, TVB is arguing that it should still receive protection because it airs pre-recorded content and the live broadcasts are also archived for re-transmission via catch-up services.

The question over whether unchoreographed live broadcasts receive protection has been raised in other regions but in most cases, a workaround has been found. The presence of broadcaster logos on screen (which receive copyright protection) is a factor and it’s been reported that broadcasters are able to record the ‘live’ action and transmit a copy just a couple of seconds later, thereby broadcasting an already-copyrighted work.

While TVB attempts to overcome its issues, Village Roadshow is facing some of its own in its efforts to take down HDSubs+.

It appears that at least partly in response to the Roadshow legal action, the service has undergone some modifications, including a change of brand to ‘Press Play Extra’. As reported by ZDNet, there have been structural changes too, which means that Roadshow can no longer “see under the hood”.

According to Justice Nicholas, there is no evidence that the latest version of the app infringes copyright but according to counsel for Village Roadshow, the new app is merely transitional and preparing for a possible future change.

“We submit the difference to be drawn is reactive to my clients serving on the operators a notice,” counsel for Roadshow argued, with an expert describing the new app as “almost like a placeholder.”

In short, Roadshow still wants all of the target domains in its original application blocked because the company believes there’s a good chance they’ll be reactivated in the future.

None of the ISPs involved in either case turned up to the hearings on Friday, which removes one layer of complexity in what appears thus far to be less than straightforward cases.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

IP Address Fail: ISP Doesn’t Have to Hand ‘Pirates’ Details to Copyright Trolls

2018-04-14 Andy

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/ip-address-fail-isp-doesnt-have-to-hand-pirates-details-to-copyright-trolls-180414/

On October 27, 2016, UK-based Copyright Management Services (CMS) filed a case against Sweden-based ISP, Tele2.

CMS, run by Patrick Achache of German-based anti-piracy outfit MaverickEye (which in turn is deeply involved with infamous copyright troll outfit Guardaley), claimed that Tele2 customers had infringed its clients’ copyrights on the movies Cell and IT by sharing them via BitTorrent.

Since Tele2 had the personal details of the customers behind those IP addresses, CMS asked the Patent and Market Court to prevent the ISP from deleting the data before it could be handed over. Once in its possession, CMS would carry out the usual process of writing to customers and demanding cash settlements to make supposed lawsuits go away.

Tele2 complained that it could not hand over the details of customers using NAT addresses since it simply doesn’t hold that information. The ISP also said it could not hand over details of customers if IP address information had previously been deleted.

Taking these objections into consideration, in November 2017 the Court approved an interim order in respect of the remaining IP addresses. But there were significant problems which led the ISP to appeal.

According to tests carried out by Tele2, many of the IP addresses in the case did not relate to Sweden or indeed Tele2. In fact, some IP addresses belonged to foreign companies or mere affiliates of the ISP.

“Tele2 thus lacks the actual ability to provide information regarding a large part of the IP addresses covered by the submission,” the Court of Appeal noted in a decision published this week.

The problem appears to lie with the way the MaverickEye monitoring system attributed monitored IP addresses to Tele2.

The Court notes that the company relied on the RIPE Database which stated that the IP addresses in question were allocated to the “geographic area of Sweden”. According to Tele2, however, that wasn’t the case and as such, it had no information to hand over.

CMS, on the other hand, maintained that according to RIPE’s records, Tele2 was indeed the controller of the IP addresses in question so must hand over the information as requested.

While the Patent and Market Court said that Tele2 didn’t object to the MaverickEye monitoring software in terms of the data it collects on file-sharers, it noted that CMS had failed to initiate an investigation in respect of the IP addresses allegedly not belonging to Tele2.

“CMS has not invoked any investigation showing how the identification of the IP addresses in question is made in this case or who at Maverickeye UG was responsible for this,” the Court writes.

“Nor did CMS use the opportunity to hear representatives of Tele2 or others with Tele2 in mind to discover if the company has access to any of the current IP addresses and, if so, which.”

Considering the above, the Court notes that Tele2’s statement, that it doesn’t have access to the data, must stand.

“In these circumstances, CMS, against Tele2’s appeal, has not shown that Tele2 holds the information requested by the disclosure order. CMS’ application for a disclosure order should therefore be rejected,” the Court concludes.

The decision cannot be appealed so Copyright Management Services won’t get its hands on the personal details of the people behind the IP addresses, at least through this process.

The decision (Swedish, pdf)

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

WHOIS Limits Under GDPR Will Make Pirates Harder to Catch, Groups Fear

2018-04-13 Andy

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/whois-limits-under-gdpr-will-make-pirates-harder-to-catch-groups-fear-180413/

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a regulation in EU law covering data protection and privacy for all individuals within the European Union.

As more and more personal data is gathered, stored and (ab)used online, the aim of the GDPR is to protect EU citizens from breaches of privacy. The regulation applies to all companies processing the personal data of subjects residing in the Union, no matter where in the world the company is located.

Penalties for non-compliance can be severe. While there is a tiered approach according to severity, organizations can be fined up to 4% of annual global turnover or €20 million, whichever is greater. Needless to say, the regulations will need to be taken seriously.

Among those affected are domain name registries and registrars who publish the personal details of domain name owners in the public WHOIS database. In a full entry, a person or organization’s name, address, telephone numbers and email addresses can often be found.

This raises a serious issue. While registries and registrars are instructed and contractually obliged to publish data in the WHOIS database by global domain name authority ICANN, in millions of cases this conflicts with the requirements of the GDPR, which prevents the details of private individuals being made freely available on the Internet.

As explained in detail by the EFF, ICANN has been trying to resolve this clash. Its proposed interim model for GDPR compliance (pdf) envisions registrars continuing to collect full WHOIS data but not necessarily publishing it, to “allow the existing data
to be preserved while the community discussions continue on the next generation of WHOIS.”

But the proposed changes that will inevitably restrict free access to WHOIS information has plenty of people spooked, including thousands of companies belonging to entertainment industry groups such as the MPAA, IFPI, RIAA and the Copyright Alliance.

In a letter sent to Vice President Andrus Ansip of the European Commission, these groups and dozens of others warn that restricted access to WHOIS will have a serious effect on their ability to protect their intellectual property rights from “cybercriminals” which pose a threat to their businesses.

Signed by 50 organizations involved in IP protection and other areas of online security, the letter expresses concern that in attempting to comply with the GDPR, ICANN is on a course to “over-correct” while disregarding proportionality, accountability and transparency.

A small sample of the groups calling on ICANN

“We strongly assert that this model does not properly account for the critical public and legitimate interests served by maintaining a sufficient amount of data publicly available while respecting privacy interests of registrants by instituting a tiered or layered access system for the vast majority of personal data as defined by the GDPR,” the groups write.

The letter focuses on two aspects of “over-correction”, the first being ICANN’s proposal that no personal data whatsoever of a domain name registrant will be made available “without appropriate consideration or balancing of the countervailing interests in public disclosure of a limited amount of such data.”

In response to ICANN’s proposal that only the province/state and country of a domain name registrant be made publicly available, the groups advise the organization that publishing “a natural person registrant’s e-mail address” in a publicly accessible WHOIS directory will not constitute a breach of the GDPR.

“[W]e strongly believe that the continued public availability of the registrant’s e-mail address – specifically the e-mail address that the registrant supplies to the registrar at the time the domain name is purchased and which e-mail address the registrar is required to validate – is critical for several reasons,” the groups write.

“First, it is the data element that is typically the most important to have readily available for law enforcement, consumer protection, particularly child protection, intellectual property enforcement and cybersecurity/anti-malware purposes.

“Second, the public accessibility of the registrant’s e-mail address permits a broad array of threats and illegal activities to be addressed quickly and the damage from such threats mitigated and contained in a timely manner, particularly where the abusive/illegal activity may be spawned from a variety of different domain names on different generic Top Level Domains,” they add.

The groups also argue that since making email addresses is effectively required in light of Article 5.1(c) ECD, “there is no legitimate justification to discontinue public availability of the registrant’s e-mail address in the WHOIS directory and especially not in light of other legitimate purposes.”

The EFF, on the other hand, says that being able to contact a domain owner wouldn’t necessarily require an email address to be made public.

“There are other cases in which it makes sense to allow members of the public to contact the owner of a domain, without having to obtain a court order,” EFF writes.

“But this could be achieved very simply if ICANN were simply to provide something like a CAPTCHA-protected contact form, which would deliver email to the appropriate contact point with no need to reveal the registrant’s actual email address.”

The groups’ second main concern is that ICANN reportedly makes no distinction between name registrants that are “natural persons versus those that are legal entities” and intends to treat them all as if they are subject to the GDPR, despite the fact that the regulation only applies to data associated with an “identified or identifiable natural person”.

They say it is imperative that EU Data Protection Authorities are made to understand that when registrants obtain a domain for illegal purposes, they often only register it as a “natural person” when registering as a legal person (legal entity) would be more appropriate, despite that granting them less privacy.

“Consequently, the test for differentiating between a legal and natural person should not merely be the legal status of the registrant, but also whether the registrant is, in fact, acting as a legal or natural person vis a vis the use of the domain name,” the groups note.

“We therefore urge that ICANN be given appropriate guidance as to the importance of maintaining a distinction between natural person and legal person registrants and keeping as much data about legal person domain name registrants as publicly accessible as possible,” they conclude.

What will happen with WHOIS on May 25 still isn’t clear. It wasn’t until October 2017 that ICANN finally determined that it would be affected by the GDPR, meaning that it’s been scrambling ever since to meet the compliance date. And it still is, according to the latest available documentation (pdf).

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

Build a house in Minecraft using Python

2018-04-12 Rob Zwetsloot

Post Syndicated from Rob Zwetsloot original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/build-minecraft-house-using-python/

In this tutorial from The MagPi issue 68, Steve Martin takes us through the process of house-building in Minecraft Pi. Get your copy of The MagPi in stores now, or download it as a free PDF here.

Minecraft Pi is provided for free as part of the Raspbian operating system. To start your Minecraft: Pi Edition adventures, try our free tutorial Getting started with Minecraft.

Writing programs that create things in Minecraft is not only a great way to learn how to code, but it also means that you have a program that you can run again and again to make as many copies of your Minecraft design as you want. You never need to worry about your creation being destroyed by your brother or sister ever again — simply rerun your program and get it back! Whilst it might take a little longer to write the program than to build one house, once it’s finished you can build as many houses as you want.

Co-ordinates in Minecraft

Let’s start with a review of the coordinate system that Minecraft uses to know where to place blocks. If you are already familiar with this, you can skip to the next section. Otherwise, read on.

Plan view of our house design

Minecraft shows us a three-dimensional (3D) view of the world. Imagine that the room you are in is the Minecraft world and you want to describe your location within that room. You can do so with three numbers, as follows:

How far across the room are you? As you move from side to side, you change this number. We can consider this value to be our X coordinate.
How high off the ground are you? If you are upstairs, or if you jump, this value increases. We can consider this value to be our Y coordinate.
How far into the room are you? As you walk forwards or backwards, you change this number. We can consider this value to be our Z coordinate.

You might have done graphs in school with X going across the page and Y going up the page. Coordinates in Minecraft are very similar, except that we have an extra value, Z, for our third dimension. Don’t worry if this still seems a little confusing: once we start to build our house, you will see how these three dimensions work in Minecraft.

Designing our house

It is a good idea to start with a rough design for our house. This will help us to work out the values for the coordinates when we are adding doors and windows to our house. You don’t have to plan every detail of your house right away. It is always fun to enhance it once you have got the basic design written. The image above shows the plan view of the house design that we will be creating in this tutorial. Note that because this is a plan view, it only shows the X and Z co-ordinates; we can’t see how high anything is. Hopefully, you can imagine the house extending up from the screen.

We will build our house close to where the Minecraft player is standing. This a good idea when creating something in Minecraft with Python, as it saves us from having to walk around the Minecraft world to try to find our creation.

Starting our program

Type in the code as you work through this tutorial. You can use any editor you like; we would suggest either Python 3 (IDLE) or Thonny Python IDE, both of which you can find on the Raspberry Pi menu under Programming. Start by selecting the File menu and creating a new file. Save the file with a name of your choice; it must end with .py so that the Raspberry Pi knows that it is a Python program.

It is important to enter the code exactly as it is shown in the listing. Pay particular attention to both the spelling and capitalisation (upper- or lower-case letters) used. You may find that when you run your program the first time, it doesn’t work. This is very common and just means there’s a small error somewhere. The error message will give you a clue about where the error is.

It is good practice to start all of your Python programs with the first line shown in our listing. All other lines that start with a # are comments. These are ignored by Python, but they are a good way to remind us what the program is doing.

The two lines starting with from tell Python about the Minecraft API; this is a code library that our program will be using to talk to Minecraft. The line starting mc = creates a connection between our Python program and the game. Then we get the player’s location broken down into three variables: x, y, and z.

Building the shell of our house

To help us build our house, we define three variables that specify its width, height, and depth. Defining these variables makes it easy for us to change the size of our house later; it also makes the code easier to understand when we are setting the co-ordinates of the Minecraft bricks. For now, we suggest that you use the same values that we have; you can go back and change them once the house is complete and you want to alter its design.

It’s now time to start placing some bricks. We create the shell of our house with just two lines of code! These lines of code each use the setBlocks command to create a complete block of bricks. This function takes the following arguments:

setBlocks(x1, y1, z1, x2, y2, z2, block-id, data)

x1, y1, and z1 are the coordinates of one corner of the block of bricks that we want to create; x1, y1, and z1 are the coordinates of the other corner. The block-id is the type of block that we want to use. Some blocks require another value called data; we will see this being used later, but you can ignore it for now.

We have to work out the values that we need to use in place of x1, y1, z1, x1, y1, z1 for our walls. Note that what we want is a larger outer block made of bricks and that is filled with a slightly smaller block of air blocks. Yes, in Minecraft even air is actually just another type of block.

Once you have typed in the two lines that create the shell of your house, you almost ready to run your program. Before doing so, you must have Minecraft running and displaying the contents of your world. Do not have a world loaded with things that you have created, as they may get destroyed by the house that we are building. Go to a clear area in the Minecraft world before running the program. When you run your program, check for any errors in the ‘console’ window and fix them, repeatedly running the code again until you’ve corrected all the errors.

You should see a block of bricks now, as shown above. You may have to turn the player around in the Minecraft world before you can see your house.

Adding the floor and door

Now, let’s make our house a bit more interesting! Add the lines for the floor and door. Note that the floor extends beyond the boundary of the wall of the house; can you see how we achieve this?

Hint: look closely at how we calculate the x and z attributes as compared to when we created the house shell above. Also note that we use a value of y-1 to create the floor below our feet.

Minecraft doors are two blocks high, so we have to create them in two parts. This is where we have to use the data argument. A value of 0 is used for the lower half of the door, and a value of 8 is used for the upper half (the part with the windows in it). These values will create an open door. If we add 4 to each of these values, a closed door will be created.

Before you run your program again, move to a new location in Minecraft to build the house away from the previous one. Then run it to check that the floor and door are created; you will need to fix any errors again. Even if your program runs without errors, check that the floor and door are positioned correctly. If they aren’t, then you will need to check the arguments so setBlock and setBlocks are exactly as shown in the listing.

Adding windows

Hopefully you will agree that your house is beginning to take shape! Now let’s add some windows. Looking at the plan for our house, we can see that there is a window on each side; see if you can follow along. Add the four lines of code, one for each window.

Now you can move to yet another location and run the program again; you should have a window on each side of the house. Our house is starting to look pretty good!

Adding a roof

The final stage is to add a roof to the house. To do this we are going to use wooden stairs. We will do this inside a loop so that if you change the width of your house, more layers are added to the roof. Enter the rest of the code. Be careful with the indentation: I recommend using spaces and avoiding the use of tabs. After the if statement, you need to indent the code even further. Each indentation level needs four spaces, so below the line with if on it, you will need eight spaces.

Since some of these code lines are lengthy and indented a lot, you may well find that the text wraps around as you reach the right-hand side of your editor window — don’t worry about this. You will have to be careful to get those indents right, however.

Now move somewhere new in your world and run the complete program. Iron out any last bugs, then admire your house! Does it look how you expect? Can you make it better?

Customising your house

Now you can start to customise your house. It is a good idea to use Save As in the menu to save a new version of your program. Then you can keep different designs, or refer back to your previous program if you get to a point where you don’t understand why your new one doesn’t work.

Consider these changes:

Change the size of your house. Are you able also to move the door and windows so they stay in proportion?
Change the materials used for the house. An ice house placed in an area of snow would look really cool!
Add a back door to your house. Or make the front door a double-width door!

We hope that you have enjoyed writing this program to build a house. Now you can easily add a house to your Minecraft world whenever you want to by simply running this program.

Get the complete code for this project here.

Continue your Minecraft journey

Minecraft Pi’s programmable interface is an ideal platform for learning Python. If you’d like to try more of our free tutorials, check out:

You may also enjoy Martin O’Hanlon’s and David Whale’s Adventures in Minecraft, and the Hacking and Making in Minecraft MagPi Essentials guide, which you can download for free or buy in print here.

The post Build a house in Minecraft using Python appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Fox Networks Obtains Piracy Blocking Injunction Against Rojadirecta

2018-04-05 Andy

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/fox-networks-obtains-piracy-blocking-injunction-against-rojadirecta-180405/

Twelve years ago this October, a court in Denmark ordered a local ISP to begin blocking unlicensed Russian music site AllofMP3. It was a landmark moment that opened the floodgates.

Although most countries took a few years to follow, blocking is now commonplace across Europe and if industry lobbyists have their way, it will soon head to North America. Meanwhile, other regions are getting their efforts underway, with Uruguay the latest country to reserve a place on the list.

The news comes via Fox Sports Latin America, which expressed satisfaction this week that a court in the country had handed down an interim injunction against local ISPs which compels them to block access to streaming portal Rojadirecta.

Despite a focus on Spanish speaking regions, Rojadirecta is one of the best known and longest-standing unauthorized sports in the world. Offering links to live streams of most spectator sports, Rojadirecta has gained a loyal and international following.

This has resulted in a number of lawsuits and legal challenges in multiple regions, the latest being a criminal copyright infringement complaint by Fox Sports Latin America. As usual, the company is annoyed that its content is being made available online without the proper authorization.

“This exemplary ruling marks the beginning of judicial awareness on online piracy issues,” said Daniel Steinmetz, Chief Anti-Piracy Officer of Fox Networks Group Latin America.

“FNG Latin America works constantly to combat the illegal use of content on different fronts and with great satisfaction we have found in Uruguay an important ally in the fight against this scourge. We are on our way to ending the impunity of these illegal content relay sites.”

Fox Sports says that with this pioneering action, Uruguay is now at the forefront of the campaign to tackle piracy currently running rampant across South America.

According to a NetNames report, there are 222 million Internet users in the region, of which 110 million access pirated content. This translates to 1,377 million TV hours per year but it’s hoped that additional action in other countries will help to stem the rising tide.

“We have already presented actions in other countries in the region where we will seek to replicate what we have obtained in Uruguay,” Fox said in a statement.

Local reports indicate that Internet providers have not yet taken action to block RojaDirecta but it’s expected they will do so in the near future.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

Classify sensitive data in your environment using Amazon Macie

2018-04-04 Alexander Watson

Post Syndicated from Alexander Watson original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/classify-sensitive-data-in-your-environment-using-amazon-macie/

In this post, I’ll show you how to create a sample dataset for Amazon Macie, and how you can use Amazon Macie to implement data-centric compliance and security analytics in your Amazon S3 environment. I’ll also dive into the different kinds of credentials, document types, and PII detections supported by Macie. First, I’ll walk through creating a “getting started” sample set of artificial, generated data that you can use to test Macie capabilities and start building your own policies and alerts.

Create a realistic data sample set in S3

I’ll use amazon-macie-activity-generator, which we call “AMG” for short, a sample application developed by AWS that generates realistic content and accesses your test account to create the data. AMG uses AWS CloudFormation, AWS Lambda, and Python’s excellent Faker library to create a data set with artificial—but realistic—data classifications and access patterns to help test some of the features and capabilities of Macie. AMG is released under Amazon Software License 1.0, and we’ll accept pull requests on our GitHub repository and monitor any issues that are opened so we can try to fix bugs and consider new feature requests.

The following diagram shows a high level architecture overview of the components that will be created in your AWS account for AMG. For additional detail about these components and their relationships, review the CloudFormation setup script.

Depending on the data types specified in your JSON configuration template (details below), AMG will periodically generate artificial documents for the specified S3 target with a PutObject action. By default, the CloudFormation stack uses a configuration file that instructs AMG to create a new, private S3 bucket that can only be accessed by authorized AWS users/roles in the same account as the bucket. All the S3 objects with fake data in this bucket have a private ACL and inherit the bucket’s access control configuration. All generated objects feature the header in the example below, and AMG supports all fake data providers offered by https://faker.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html, as well as a few of AMG‘s own custom fake data providers requested by our customers: aws_creds, slack_creds, github_creds, facebook_creds, linux_shadow, rsa, linux_passwd, dsa, ec, pgp, cert, itin, swift_code, and cve.

# Sample Report - No identification of actual persons or places is # intended or should be inferred


74323 Julie Field
 Lake Joshuamouth, OR 30055-3905
 1-196-191-4438x974
 53001 Paul Union
 New John, HI 94740
 Mastercard
 Amanda Wells
 5135725008183484 09/26
 CVV: 550
354-70-6172
 242 George Plaza
 East Lawrencefurt, VA 37287-7620
 GB73WAUS0628038988364
 587 Silva Village
 Pearsonburgh, NM 11616-7231
 LDNM1948227117807
 American Express
 Brett Garza
 347965534580275 05/20
 CID: 4758

599.335.2742 JCB 15 digit Michael Arias 210069190253121 03/27 CVC: 861

Create your amazon-macie-activity-generator CloudFormation stack

You can deploy AMG in your AWS account by using either these methods:

Use the CloudFormation Template: https://s3.amazonaws.com/amazon-macie-activity-generator-us-east-1-fb58a9df3468/CloudFormationTemplate.yml
Or use this One-click CloudFormation launch stack.

Follow these steps:

Log in to the AWS Console in a region supported by Amazon Macie, which currently includes US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon).
Select the One-click CloudFormation launch stack, or launch CloudFormation using the template above.
Read our terms, select the Acknowledgement box, and then select Create.

Creating the data takes a few minutes, and you can periodically refresh CloudWatch to track progress.

Add the new sample data to Macie

Now, I’ll log into the Macie console and add the newly created sample data buckets for analysis by Macie.

Note: If you don’t explicitly specify a bucket for S3 targets in CloudFormation, AMG will use the S3 bucket that’s created by default for the stack, which will be printed out in the CloudFormation stack’s output.

To add buckets for data classification, follow these steps:

Log in to Amazon Macie.
Select Integrations, and then select Services.
Select your account, and then select Details from the Amazon S3 card.
Select your newly created buckets for Full classification, including existing data.

For additional details on configuring Macie, refer to our getting started documentation.

Macie classifies all historical and newly created data in the buckets created by AMG, and the data will be available in the Macie console as it’s classified. Typically, you can expect the data in the sample set to be classified within 60 minutes of the time it was selected for analysis.

Classifying objects with Macie

To see the objects in your test sample set, in Macie, open the Research tab, and then select the S3 Objects index. We’ll use the regular expression search capability in Macie to find any objects written to buckets that start with “amazon-macie-activity-generator-defaults3bucket”. To search for this, type the following text into the Macie search box and select the magnifying glass icon.

filesystem_metadata.bucket:/amazon-macie-activity-generator-defaults3bucket.*/

From here, you can see a nice breakdown of the kinds of objects that have been classified by Macie, as well as the object-specific details. Create an advanced search using Lucene Query Syntax, and save it as an alert to be matched against any newly created data.

Analyzing accesses to your test data

In addition to classifying data, Macie tracks all control plane and data plane accesses to your content using CloudTrail. To see accesses to your generated environment (created periodically by AMG to mimic user activity), on the Macie navigation bar, select Research, select the CloudTrail data index, and then use the following search to identify our generated role activity:

sessionName.key:/amazon-macie-activity-generator-LambdaFunction-.*/

From this search, you can dive into the user activity (IAM users, assumed roles, federated users, and so on), which is summarized in 5-minute aggregations (user sessions). For example, in the screen shot you can see that one of our AMG-generated users listed objects one time (ListObjects) and wrote 56 objects to S3 (PutObject) during a 5-minute period.

Macie alerts

Macie features both predictive (machine learning-based) and basic (rule-based) alerts, including alerts on unencrypted credentials being uploaded to S3 (because this activity might not follow compliance best practices), risky activity such as data exfiltration, and user-defined alerts that are based on saved searches. To see alerts that have been generated based on AMG‘s activity, on the Macie navigation bar, select Alerts.

AMG will continue to run, periodically uploading content to the specified S3 buckets. To stop AMG, delete the AMG CloudFormation stack and associated resources here.

What are the costs?

Macie has a free tier enabling up to 1GB of content to be analyzed per month at no cost to you. By default, AMG will write approximately 10MB of objects to Amazon S3 per day, and you will incur charges for data classification after crossing the 1GB monthly free tier. Running continuously, AMG will generate about 310MB of content per month (10MB/day x 31 days), which will stay below the free tier. Any data use above 1GB will be billed at the Macie public price of $5/GB. For more detail, see the Macie pricing documentation.

If you have feedback about this blog post, submit comments in the Comments section below. If you have questions about this blog post, start a new thread on the Amazon Macie forum or contact AWS Support.

Why Did The World’s Largest Streaming Site Suddenly Shut Down?

2018-04-01 Andy

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/why-did-the-worlds-largest-streaming-site-suddenly-shut-down-180401/

With sites like The Pirate Bay still going great guns in the background, streaming sites are now all the rage. With their Netflix style interfaces and almost instant streaming, these platforms provide the kind of instant fix impatient pirates long for.

One of the most successful was 123Movies, which over the past 18 months and several rebrandings (123movieshub, GoMovies) later managed to build a steady base of millions of users.

Had such a site made its base in the US or Europe, it’s likely that authorities would’ve been breathing down its neck somewhat sooner. However, the skyrocketing platform was allegedly based in Vietnam, a country not exactly known for its staunch support of intellectual property rights. Nevertheless, the tentacles of Hollywood and its friends in government are never far away.

In March 2017, US Ambassador to Vietnam Ted Osius called on the local Government to criminally prosecute the people behind movie streaming site 123movies, Kisscartoon, and a Putlocker variant.

Osius had a meeting with Truong Minh Tuan, Vietnam’s Minister of Information and Communications, after which the Minister assured the Ambassador that Vietnam wanted to protect copyrights. He reportedly told Osius that a decision would soon be made on how to deal with the pirate streaming sites. Perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, during the discussions 123Movies suffered a significant period of downtime.

Almost exactly a year later, the MPAA piled on the pressure again when it branded 123Movies as the “most popular illegal site in the world”, noting that its 98 million monthly visitors were being serviced from Vietnam.

Then, around March 19, 2018, 123Movies announced that it would be shutting down for good. A notice on the site was accompanied by a countdown timer, predicting the end of the site in five days. When the timer ran out, so did the site and it remains down to this day. But was its closure entirely down to the MPAA?

For the past couple of years, Vietnam has been seeking to overhaul its intellectual property laws, not least due to pressure from countries like the United States. Then, last October, Vietnamese Ambassador Duong Chi Dung was voted in as chairman of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) General Assembly for the 2018-19 tenure.

It was the first time in 12 years that the Asia-Pacific region had had one of its representatives serving as chairperson of the WIPO General Assembly. Quite an honor considering the diplomat enjoyed the backing of 191 member nations during the Assembly’s 49th session in Geneva, Switzerland.

Then in February, local media began publishing stories detailing how Vietnam was improving its stance towards intellectual property. Citing the sixth annual International IP Index released that month by the US Chamber of Commerce Global Innovation Policy Center (GIPC), it was noted that Vietnam’s score was on the increase.

“Vietnam has taken some positive steps forward towards strengthening its IP framework to compete more closely with its Southeast Asian peers, increasing its score,” said Patrick Kilbride, vice president of GIPC.

“With continued investment in strong IP rights, Vietnam can harness this positive momentum to become a leader in the region, stimulate its domestic capacity for innovation, and enhance its global competitiveness.”

The Vietnam government was also credited with passing legislation to “strengthen the criminal standards for IP infringement”, a move set to “strengthen the enforcement environment” in the country.

Amid the positive developments, it was noted that Vietnam has a way to go. Early March a report in Vietnam News cited a deputy chief inspector of the Ministry of Science and Technology as saying that while an intellectual property court is “in sight”, it isn’t yet clear when one will appear.

“There needs be an intellectual property court in Vietnam, but we don’t know when it will be established,” Nguyễn Như Quỳnh said. That, it appears, is happily being exploited, both intentionally and by those who don’t know any better.

“Several young people are making tonnes of money out of their online businesses without having to have capital, just a few tricks to increase the number of ‘fans’ on their Facebook pages,” she said. “But a lot of them sell fake stuff, which is considered an infringement.”

Come April 10, 2018, there will be new IP regulations in place in Vietnam concerning local and cross-border copyright protection. Additionally, amendments made last year to the Penal Code, which took effect this year, mean that IP infringements carried out by businesses will now be subject to criminal prosecution.

“Article 225 of the Penal Code stipulates that violations of IPR and related rights by private individuals carries a non-custodial sentence of three years or a jail term of up to three years,” Vietnamnet.vn reports.

“Businesses found guilty will be fined VND300 million to VND1 billion (US$13,000-43,800) for the first offense. If the offense is repeated, the penalty will be a fine of VND3 billion ($130,000) or suspension of operations for up to two years.”

The threshold for criminality appears to be quite low. Previously, infringements had to be carried out “on a commercial scale” to qualify but now all that is required is an illicit profit of around US$500.

How this soup of intellectual property commitments, legislative change, hopes, dreams and promises will affect the apparent rise and fall of streaming platforms in Vietnam is unclear. All that being said, it seems likely that all of these factors are playing their part to ratchet up the pressure.

And, with the US currently playing hardball with China over a lack of respect for IP rights, Vietnam will be keen to be viewed as a cooperative nation.

As for 123Movies, it’s unknown whether it will reappear anytime soon, if at all, given the apparent shifting enthusiasm towards protecting IP in Vietnam. Perhaps against the odds its sister site, Animehub, which was launched in December 2017, is still online. But that could be gone in the blink of an eye too, if recent history is anything to go by.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

Russia Blocked 8,000 Pirate Sites in 2017, “Visits to Cinemas Up 11%”

2018-03-25 Andy

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/russia-blocked-8000-pirate-sites-in-2017-visits-to-cinemas-up-11-180325/

Blocking sites is one of the most popular anti-piracy mechanisms of recent times. The practice is now commonplace in the UK, Europe, and Australia and, if entertainment industry groups get their way, it’ll soon be installed in Canada too.

While most regions with blocking legislation carry out their work with enthusiasm, perhaps surprisingly it’s Russia setting the standards. With almost constant amendments to copyright law, the country is able to block pirate sites, mirrors, and proxies in a very short timeframe indeed. And it has been doing so, in huge numbers.

According to data shared with Izvestia by local telecoms watchdog Rozcomnadzor, in 2017 Russia blocked a staggering 8,000 pirate sites, more than any other country on the planet. In a clear sign of the way things are going, that figure represents a four-fold increase over the 2,000 sites that were blocked on copyright grounds in 2016.

While blocks can be authorized for infringement of copyright on everything from music to software and from books to TV shows, it is the movie industry leading the way in volume terms. In 65% of cases of site-blocking in 2017, the requests came from companies involved in the production and distribution of films.

Sheer volume aside, there’s nothing really surprising about the site-blocking movement in Russia. However, it differs from most other regions when it comes to assessing its usefulness.

Groups in many other countries have claimed that site-blocking is effective in reducing visits to pirate sites and even reducing piracy itself, but the majority steer clear of claiming that it actually does anything to increase sales. Not so Russia.

According to data from Russia’s Cinema Foundation cited by Rozcomnadzor alongside site-blocking statistics, last year “the aggregate box office of the national film distribution” grew by 10.9% amounting to 53.6 billion rubles [US$927.3m], up from 48.4 billion rubles [US$837.3m] in 2016.

In addition, the telecoms regulator said that cinema attendance across the country had increased by 11.4% over the previous year.

A court process is required to block infringing sites that fail to cooperate when rightsholders ask for content to be taken down. Those that push the boundaries by refusing to remove content on multiple occasions can find themselves blocked on a permanent basis.

In 2017, a total of 530 sites were added to Russia’s permanent blacklist, up from ‘just’ 107 sites in 2017. In addition, 459 pirate site “mirrors” were blocked by ISPs with no hope of reprieve. Following changes to the law last October, permanently blocked sites are also removed from search engine results.

But while the current system presents no significant obstacles to having many thousands of sites blocked during the course of a year, Russian authorities want more anti-piracy tools in their arsenal. New proposals would see pirate sites blocked without the need for any court process at all.

It’s already possible to have mirror sites blocked without a separate process but if the Ministry of Culture has its way, copyright complaints issued to hosting services and sites that go completely unanswered without deletion of content could suffer the same fate.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

Raspberry Jam Big Birthday Weekend 2018 roundup

2018-03-13 Ben Nuttall

Post Syndicated from Ben Nuttall original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/big-birthday-weekend-2018-roundup/

A couple of weekends ago, we celebrated our sixth birthday by coordinating more than 100 simultaneous Raspberry Jam events around the world. The Big Birthday Weekend was a huge success: our fantastic community organised Jams in 40 countries, covering six continents!

We sent the Jams special birthday kits to help them celebrate in style, and a video message featuring a thank you from Philip and Eben:

Raspberry Jam Big Birthday Weekend 2018

To celebrate the Raspberry Pi’s sixth birthday, we coordinated Raspberry Jams all over the world to take place over the Raspberry Jam Big Birthday Weekend, 3-4 March 2018. A massive thank you to everyone who ran an event and attended.

The Raspberry Jam photo booth

I put together code for a Pi-powered photo booth which overlaid the Big Birthday Weekend logo onto photos and (optionally) tweeted them. We included an arcade button in the Jam kits so they could build one — and it seemed to be quite popular. Some Jams put great effort into housing their photo booth:

Here are some of my favourite photo booth tweets:

RGVSA on Twitter

PiParty photo booth @RGVSA & @ @Nerdvana_io #Rjam

Denis Stretton on Twitter

The @SouthendRPIJams #PiParty photo booth

rpijamtokyo on Twitter

PiParty photo booth

Preston Raspberry Jam on Twitter

Preston Raspberry Jam Photobooth #RJam #PiParty

If you want to try out the photo booth software yourself, find the code on GitHub.

The great Raspberry Jam bake-off

Traditionally, in the UK, people have a cake on their birthday. And we had a few! We saw (and tasted) a great selection of Pi-themed cakes and other baked goods throughout the weekend:

Raspberry Jams everywhere

We always say that every Jam is different, but there’s a common and recognisable theme amongst them. It was great to see so many different venues around the world filling up with like-minded Pi enthusiasts, Raspberry Jam–branded banners, and Raspberry Pi balloons!

Europe

Sergio Martinez on Twitter

Thank you so much to all the attendees of the Ikana Jam in Krakow past Saturday! We shared fun experiences, some of them… also painful 😉 A big thank you to @Raspberry_Pi for these global celebrations! And a big thank you to @hubraum for their hospitality! #PiParty #rjam

NI Raspberry Jam on Twitter

We also had a super successful set of wearables workshops using @adafruit Circuit Playground Express boards and conductive thread at today’s @Raspberry_Pi Jam! Very popular! #PiParty

Suzystar on Twitter

My SenseHAT workshop, going well! @SouthendRPiJams #PiParty

Worksop College Raspberry Jam on Twitter

Learning how to scare the zombies in case of an apocalypse- it worked on our young learners #PiParty @worksopcollege @Raspberry_Pi https://t.co/pntEm57TJl

Africa

Rita on Twitter

Being one of the two places in Kenya where the #PiParty took place, it was an amazing time spending the day with this team and getting to learn and have fun. @TaitaTavetaUni and @Raspberry_Pi thank you for your support. @TTUTechlady @mictecttu ch

GABRIEL ONIFADE on Twitter

@TheMagP1

GABRIEL ONIFADE on Twitter

@GABONIAVERACITY #PiParty Lagos Raspberry Jam 2018 Special International Celebration – 6th Raspberry-Pi Big Birthday! Lagos Nigeria @Raspberry_Pi @ben_nuttall #RJam #RaspberryJam #raspberrypi #physicalcomputing #robotics #edtech #coding #programming #edTechAfrica #veracityhouse https://t.co/V7yLxaYGNx

North America

Heidi Baynes on Twitter

The Riverside Raspberry Jam @Vocademy is underway! #piparty

Brad Derstine on Twitter

The Philly & Pi #PiParty event with @Bresslergroup and @TechGirlzorg was awesome! The Scratch and Pi workshop was amazing! It was overall a great day of fun and tech!!! Thank you everyone who came out!

Houston Raspi on Twitter

Thanks everyone who came out to the @Raspberry_Pi Big Birthday Jam! Special thanks to @PBFerrell @estefanniegg @pcsforme @pandafulmanda @colnels @bquentin3 couldn’t’ve put on this amazing community event without you guys!

Merge Robotics 2706 on Twitter

We are back at @SciTechMuseum for the second day of @OttawaPiJam! Our robot Mergius loves playing catch with the kids! #pijam #piparty #omgrobots

South America

Javier Garzón on Twitter

Así terminamos el #Raspberry Jam Big Birthday Weekend #Bogota 2018 #PiParty de #RaspberryJamBogota 2018 @Raspberry_Pi Nos vemos el 7 de marzo en #ArduinoDayBogota 2018 y #RaspberryJamBogota 2018

Asia

Fablab UP Cebu on Twitter

Happy 6th birthday, @Raspberry_Pi! Greetings all the way from CEBU,PH! #PiParty #IoTCebu Thanks @CebuXGeeks X Ramos for these awesome pics. #Fablab #UPCebu

福野泰介 on Twitter

ラズパイ、6才のお誕生日会スタート in Tokyo PCNブースで、いろいろ展示とhttps://t.co/L6E7KgyNHFとIchigoJamつないだ、こどもIoTハッカソンmini体験やってます at 東京蒲田駅近 https://t.co/yHEuqXHvqe #piparty #pipartytokyo #rjam #opendataday

Ren Camp on Twitter

Happy birthday @Raspberry_Pi! #piparty #iotcebu @coolnumber9 https://t.co/2ESVjfRJ2d

Oceania

Glenunga Raspberry Pi Club on Twitter

PiParty photo booth

Personally, I managed to get to three Jams over the weekend: two run by the same people who put on the first two Jams to ever take place, and also one brand-new one! The Preston Raspberry Jam team, who usually run their event on a Monday evening, wanted to do something extra special for the birthday, so they came up with the idea of putting on a Raspberry Jam Sandwich — on the Friday and Monday around the weekend! This meant I was able to visit them on Friday, then attend the Manchester Raspberry Jam on Saturday, and finally drop by the new Jam at Worksop College on my way home on Sunday.

Ben Nuttall on Twitter

I’m at my first Raspberry Jam #PiParty event of the big birthday weekend! @PrestonRJam has been running for nearly 6 years and is a great place to start the celebrations!

Ben Nuttall on Twitter

Back at @McrRaspJam at @DigInnMMU for #PiParty

Ben Nuttall on Twitter

Great to see mine & @Frans_facts Balloon Pi-Tay popper project in action at @worksopjam #rjam #PiParty https://t.co/GswFm0UuPg

Various members of the Foundation team attended Jams around the UK and US, and James from the Code Club International team visited AmsterJam.

hackerfemo on Twitter

Thanks to everyone who came to our Jam and everyone who helped out. @phoenixtogether thanks for amazing cake & hosting. Ademir you’re so cool. It was awesome to meet Craig Morley from @Raspberry_Pi too. #PiParty

Stuart Fox on Twitter

Great #PiParty today at the @cotswoldjam with bloody delicious cake and lots of raspberry goodness. Great to see @ClareSutcliffe @martinohanlon playing on my new pi powered arcade build:-)

Clare Sutcliffe on Twitter

Happy 6th Birthday @Raspberry_Pi from everyone at the #PiParty at #cotswoldjam in Cheltenham!

Code Club on Twitter

It’s @Raspberry_Pi 6th birthday and we’re celebrating by taking part in @amsterjam__! Happy Birthday Raspberry Pi, we’re so happy to be a part of the family! #PiParty

For more Jammy birthday goodness, check out the PiParty hashtag on Twitter!

The Jam makers!

A lot of preparation went into each Jam, and we really appreciate all the hard work the Jam makers put in to making these events happen, on the Big Birthday Weekend and all year round. Thanks also to all the teams that sent us a group photo:

Lots of the Jams that took place were brand-new events, so we hope to see them continue throughout 2018 and beyond, growing the Raspberry Pi community around the world and giving more people, particularly youths, the opportunity to learn digital making skills.

Philip Colligan on Twitter

So many wonderful people in the @Raspberry_Pi community. Thanks to everyone at #PottonPiAndPints for a great afternoon and for everything you do to help young people learn digital making. #PiParty

Special thanks to ModMyPi for shipping the special Raspberry Jam kits all over the world!

Don’t forget to check out our Jam page to find an event near you! This is also where you can find free resources to help you get a new Jam started, and download free starter projects made especially for Jam activities. These projects are available in English, Français, Français Canadien, Nederlands, Deutsch, Italiano, and 日本語. If you’d like to help us translate more content into these and other languages, please get in touch!

PS Some of the UK Jams were postponed due to heavy snowfall, so you may find there’s a belated sixth-birthday Jam coming up where you live!

S Organ on Twitter

@TheMagP1 Ours was rescheduled until later in the Spring due to the snow but here is Babbage enjoying the snow!

The post Raspberry Jam Big Birthday Weekend 2018 roundup appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Trump Promises Copyright Crackdown as DoJ Takes Aim at Streaming Pirates

2018-03-08 Andy

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/trump-promises-copyright-crackdown-as-doj-takes-aim-at-streaming-pirates-180308/

For the past several years most of the world has been waking up to the streaming piracy phenomenon, with pre-configured set-top boxes making inroads into millions of homes.

While other countries, notably the UK, arrested many individuals while warning of a grave and looming danger, complaints from the United States remained relatively low-key. It was almost as if the stampede towards convenient yet illegal streaming had caught the MPAA and friends by surprise.

In October 2017, things quickly began to change. The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment sued Georgia-based Tickbox TV, a company selling “fully-loaded” Kodi boxes. In January 2018, the same anti-piracy group targeted Dragon Media, a company in the same line of business.

With this growing type of piracy now firmly on the radar, momentum seems to be building. Yesterday, a panel discussion on the challenges associated with piracy from streaming media boxes took place on Capitol Hill.

Hosted by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), ‘Unboxing the Piracy Threat of Streaming Media Boxes’ went ahead with some big name speakers in attendance, not least Neil Fried, Senior Vice President, Federal Advocacy and Regulatory Affairs at the MPAA.

ITIF and various industry groups tweeted many interesting comments throughout the event. Kevin Madigan from Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property told the panel that torrent-based content “is becoming obsolete” in an on-demand digital environment that’s switching to streaming-based piracy.

While there’s certainly a transition taking place, 150 million worldwide torrent users would probably argue against the term “obsolete”. Nevertheless, the same terms used to describe torrent sites are now being used to describe players in the streaming field.

“There’s a criminal enterprise going on here that’s stealing content and making a profit,” Fried told those in attendance.

“The piracy activity out there is bad, it’s hurting a lot of economic activity & creators aren’t being compensated for their work,” he added.

Tom Galvin, Executive Director at the Digital Citizens Alliance, was also on the panel. Unsurprisingly, given the organization’s focus on the supposed dangers of piracy, Galvin took the opportunity to underline that position.

“If you go down the piracy road, those boxes aren’t following proper security protocols, there are many malware risks,” he said. It’s a position shared by Fried, who told the panel that “video piracy is the leading source of malware.”

Similar claims were made recently on Safer Internet Day but the facts don’t seem to back up the scare stories. Still, with the “Piracy is Dangerous” strategy already out in the open, the claims aren’t really unexpected.

What might also not come as a surprise is that ACE’s lawsuits against Tickbox and Dragon Media could be just a warm-up for bigger things to come. In the tweet embedded below, Fried can be seen holding a hexagonal-shaped streaming box, warning that the Department of Justice is now looking for candidates for criminal action.

Neil Fried of @MPAA with one of the streaming Kodi boxes leading to big piracy problems during Capitol Hill panel talk. Says DOJ looking at ‘variety of candidates’ for criminal action. @Comm_Daily pic.twitter.com/aYIRA4wgTC

— Matt Daneman (@mdaneman) March 7, 2018

What form this action will take when it arrives isn’t clear but when the DoJ hits targets on home soil, it tends to cherry-pick the most blatant of infringers in order to set an example with reasonably cut-and-dried cases.

Of course, every case can be argued but with hundreds of so-called “Kodi box” sellers active all over the United States, many of them clearly breaking the law as they, in turn, invite their customers to break the law, picking a sitting duck shouldn’t be too difficult.

And then, of course, we come to President Trump. Not usually that vocal on matters of intellectual property and piracy, yesterday – perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not – he suddenly delivered one of his “something is coming” tweets.

The U.S. is acting swiftly on Intellectual Property theft. We cannot allow this to happen as it has for many years!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 7, 2018

Given Trump’s tendency to focus on problems overseas causing issues for companies back home, a comment by Kevin Madigan during the panel yesterday immediately comes to mind.

“To combat piracy abroad, USTR needs to work with the creative industries to improve enforcement and target the source of pirated material,” Madigan said.

Interesting times and much turmoil in the streaming world ahead, it seems.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN discounts, offers and coupons

How to Use Bucket Policies and Apply Defense-in-Depth to Help Secure Your Amazon S3 Data

2018-03-07 Rajat Ravinder Varuni

Post Syndicated from Rajat Ravinder Varuni original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/how-to-use-bucket-policies-and-apply-defense-in-depth-to-help-secure-your-amazon-s3-data/

Amazon S3 provides comprehensive security and compliance capabilities that meet even the most stringent regulatory requirements. It gives you flexibility in the way you manage data for cost optimization, access control, and compliance. However, because the service is flexible, a user could accidentally configure buckets in a manner that is not secure. For example, let’s say you uploaded files to an Amazon S3 bucket with public read permissions, even though you intended only to share this file with a colleague or a partner. Although this might have accomplished your task to share the file internally, the file is now available to anyone on the internet, even without authentication.

In this blog post, we show you how to prevent your Amazon S3 buckets and objects from allowing public access. We discuss how to secure data in Amazon S3 with a defense-in-depth approach, where multiple security controls are put in place to help prevent data leakage. This approach helps prevent you from allowing public access to confidential information, such as personally identifiable information (PII) or protected health information (PHI).

Preventing your Amazon S3 buckets and objects from allowing public access

Every call to an Amazon S3 service becomes a REST API request. When your request is transformed via a REST call, the permissions are converted into parameters included in the HTTP header or as URL parameters. The Amazon S3 bucket policy allows or denies access to the Amazon S3 bucket or Amazon S3 objects based on policy statements, and then evaluates conditions based on those parameters. To learn more, see Using Bucket Policies and User Policies.

With this in mind, let’s say multiple AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) users at Example Corp. have access to an Amazon S3 bucket and the objects in the bucket. Example Corp. wants to share the objects among its IAM users, while at the same time preventing the objects from being made available publicly.

To demonstrate how to do this, we start by creating an Amazon S3 bucket named examplebucket. After creating this bucket, we must apply the following bucket policy. This policy denies any uploaded object (PutObject) with the attribute x-amz-acl having the values public-read, public-read-write, or authenticated-read. This means authenticated users cannot upload objects to the bucket if the objects have public permissions.

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "DenyPublicReadACL",
            "Effect": "Deny",
            "Principal": {
                "AWS": "*"
            },
            "Action": [
                "s3:PutObject",
                "s3:PutObjectAcl"
            ],
            "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::examplebucket/*",
            "Condition": {
                "StringEquals": {
                    "s3:x-amz-acl": [
                        "public-read",
                        "public-read-write",
                        "authenticated-read"
                    ]
                }
            }
        },
        {
            "Sid": "DenyPublicReadGrant",
            "Effect": "Deny",
            "Principal": {
                "AWS": "*"
            },
            "Action": [
                "s3:PutObject",
                "s3:PutObjectAcl"
            ],
            "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::examplebucket/*",
            "Condition": {
                "StringLike": {
                    "s3:x-amz-grant-read": [
                        "*http://acs.amazonaws.com/groups/global/AllUsers*",
                        "*http://acs.amazonaws.com/groups/global/AuthenticatedUsers*"
                    ]
                }
            }
        },
        {
            "Sid": "DenyPublicListACL",
            "Effect": "Deny",
            "Principal": {
                "AWS": "*"
            },
            "Action": "s3:PutBucketAcl",
            "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::examplebucket",
            "Condition": {
                "StringEquals": {
                    "s3:x-amz-acl": [
                        "public-read",
                        "public-read-write",
                        "authenticated-read"
                    ]
                }
            }
        },
        {
            "Sid": "DenyPublicListGrant",
            "Effect": "Deny",
            "Principal": {
                "AWS": "*"
            },
            "Action": "s3:PutBucketAcl",
            "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::examplebucket",
            "Condition": {
                "StringLike": {
                    "s3:x-amz-grant-read": [
                        "*http://acs.amazonaws.com/groups/global/AllUsers*",
                        "*http://acs.amazonaws.com/groups/global/AuthenticatedUsers*"
                    ]
                }
            }
        }
    ]
}

To better understand what is happening in this bucket policy, we’ll explain each statement. Let’s start with the first statement.


{
    "Sid": "DenyPublicReadACL",
    "Effect": "Deny",
    "Principal": {
        "AWS": "*"
    },
    "Action": [
        "s3:PutObject",
        "s3:PutObjectAcl"
    ],
    "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::examplebucket/*",
    "Condition": {
        "StringEquals": {
            "s3:x-amz-acl": [
                "public-read",
                "public-read-write",
                "authenticated-read"
            ]
        }
    }
}

This statement accomplishes the following:

“Deny any Amazon S3 request to PutObject or PutObjectAcl in the bucket examplebucket when the request includes one of the following access control lists (ACLs): public-read, public-read-write, or authenticated-read.”

Remember that IAM policies are evaluated not in a first-match-and-exit model. Instead, IAM evaluates first if there is an explicit Deny. If there is not, IAM continues to evaluate if you have an explicit Allow and then you have an implicit Deny.

The above policy creates an explicit Deny. Even when any authenticated user tries to upload (PutObject) an object with public read or write permissions, such as public-read or public-read-write or authenticated-read, the action will be denied. To understand how S3 Access Permissions work, you must understand what Access Control Lists (ACL) and Grants are. You can find the documentation here.

Now let’s continue our bucket policy explanation by examining the next statement.

{
    "Sid": "DenyPublicReadGrant",
    "Effect": "Deny",
    "Principal": {
        "AWS": "*"
    },
    "Action": [
        "s3:PutObject",
        "s3:PutObjectAcl"
    ],
    "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::examplebucket/*",
    "Condition": {
        "StringLike": {
            "s3:x-amz-grant-read": [
                "*http://acs.amazonaws.com/groups/global/AllUsers*",
                "*http://acs.amazonaws.com/groups/global/AuthenticatedUsers*"
            ]
        }
    }
}

This statement is very similar to the first statement, except that instead of checking the ACLs, we are checking specific user groups’ grants that represent the following groups:

AuthenticatedUsers group. Represented by http://acs.amazonaws.com/groups/global/AuthenticatedUsers, this group represents all AWS accounts. Access permissions to this group allow any AWS account to access the resource. However, all requests must be signed (authenticated).
AllUsers group. Represented by http://acs.amazonaws.com/groups/global/AllUsers, access permissions to this group allow anyone on the internet access to the resource. The requests can be signed (authenticated) or unsigned (anonymous). Unsigned requests omit the Authentication header in the request.

For more information about which parameters you can use to create bucket policies, see Using Bucket Policies and User Policies.

Now that you know how to deny object uploads with permissions that would make the object public, you just have two statement policies that prevent users from changing the bucket permissions (Denying s3:PutBucketACL from ACL and Denying s3:PutBucketACL from Grants).

Below is how we’re preventing users from changing the bucket permisssions.

{
  "Sid": "DenyPublicListACL",
  "Effect": "Deny",
  "Principal": {
    "AWS": "*"
  },
  "Action": "s3:PutBucketAcl",
  "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::examplebucket",
  "Condition": {
    "StringEquals": {
      "s3:x-amz-acl": [
        "public-read",
        "public-read-write",
        "authenticated-read"
      ]
    }
  }
},
{
  "Sid": "DenyPublicListGrant",
  "Effect": "Deny",
  "Principal": {
    "AWS": "*"
  },
  "Action": "s3:PutBucketAcl",
  "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::examplebucket",
  "Condition": {
    "StringLike": {
      "s3:x-amz-grant-read": [
        "*http://acs.amazonaws.com/groups/global/AllUsers*",
        "*http://acs.amazonaws.com/groups/global/AuthenticatedUsers*"
      ]
    }
  }
}

As you can see above, the statement is very similar to the Object statements, except that now we use s3:PutBucketAcl instead of s3:PutObjectAcl, the Resource is just the bucket ARN, and the objects have the “/*” in the end of the ARN.

In this section, we showed how to prevent IAM users from accidently uploading Amazon S3 objects with public permissions to buckets. In the next section, we show you how to enforce multiple layers of security controls, such as encryption of data at rest and in transit while serving traffic from Amazon S3.

Securing data on Amazon S3 with defense-in-depth

Let’s say that Example Corp. wants to serve files securely from Amazon S3 to its users with the following requirements:

The data must be encrypted at rest and during transit.
The data must be accessible only by a limited set of public IP addresses.
All requests for data should be handled only by Amazon CloudFront (which is a content delivery network) instead of being directly available from an Amazon S3 URL. If you’re using an Amazon S3 bucket as the origin for a CloudFront distribution, you can grant public permission to read the objects in your bucket. This allows anyone to access your objects either through CloudFront or the Amazon S3 URL. CloudFront doesn’t expose Amazon S3 URLs, but your users still might have access to those URLs if your application serves any objects directly from Amazon S3, or if anyone gives out direct links to specific objects in Amazon S3.
A domain name is required to consume the content. Custom SSL certificate support lets you deliver content over HTTPS by using your own domain name and your own SSL certificate. This gives visitors to your website the security benefits of CloudFront over an SSL connection that uses your own domain name, in addition to lower latency and higher reliability.

To represent defense-in-depth visually, the following diagram contains several Amazon S3 objects (A) in a single Amazon S3 bucket (B). You can encrypt these objects on the server side or the client side. You also can configure the bucket policy such that objects are accessible only through CloudFront, which you can accomplish through an origin access identity (C). You then can configure CloudFront to deliver content only over HTTPS in addition to using your own domain name (D).

Defense-in-depth requirement 1: Data must be encrypted at rest and during transit

Let’s start with the objects themselves. Amazon S3 objects—files in this case—can range from zero bytes to multiple terabytes in size (see service limits for the latest information). Each Amazon S3 bucket includes a collection of objects, and the objects can be uploaded via the Amazon S3 console, AWS CLI, or AWS API.

You can encrypt Amazon S3 objects at rest and during transit. At rest, objects in a bucket are encrypted with server-side encryption by using Amazon S3 managed keys or AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) managed keys or customer-provided keys through AWS KMS. You also can encrypt objects on the client side by using AWS KMS managed keys or a customer-supplied client-side master key.

If you choose to use server-side encryption, Amazon S3 encrypts your objects before saving them on disks in AWS data centers. To encrypt an object at the time of upload, you need to add the x-amz-server-side-encryption header to the request to tell Amazon S3 to encrypt the object using Amazon S3 managed keys (SSE-S3), AWS KMS managed keys (SSE-KMS), or customer-provided keys (SSE-C). There are two possible values for the x-amz-server-side-encryption header: AES256, which tells Amazon S3 to use Amazon S3 managed keys, and aws:kms, which tells Amazon S3 to use AWS KMS managed keys.

The following code example shows a Put request using SSE-S3.

PUT /example-object HTTP/1.1
Host: myBucket.s3.amazonaws.com
Date: Wed, 8 Jun 2016 17:50:00 GMT
Authorization: authorization string
Content-Type: text/plain
Content-Length: 11434
x-amz-meta-author: Janet
Expect: 100-continue
x-amz-server-side-encryption: AES256
[11434 bytes of object data]

If you choose to use client-side encryption, you can encrypt data on the client side and upload the encrypted data to Amazon S3. In this case, you manage the encryption process, the encryption keys, and related tools. You encrypt data on the client side by using AWS KMS managed keys or a customer-supplied, client-side master key.

Defense-in-depth requirement 2: Data must be accessible only by a limited set of public IP addresses

At the Amazon S3 bucket level, you can configure permissions through a bucket policy. For example, you can limit access to the objects in a bucket by IP address range or specific IP addresses. Alternatively, you can make the objects accessible only through HTTPS.

The following bucket policy allows access to Amazon S3 objects only through HTTPS (the policy was generated with the AWS Policy Generator). Here the bucket policy explicitly denies ("Effect": "Deny") all read access ("Action": "s3:GetObject") from anybody who browses ("Principal": "*") to Amazon S3 objects within an Amazon S3 bucket if they are not accessed through HTTPS ("aws:SecureTransport": "false").

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Id": "Policy1504640911349",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "Stmt1504640908907",
            "Effect": "Deny",
            "Principal": "*",
            "Action": "s3:GetObject",
            "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::/*",
            "Condition": {
                "Bool": {
                    "aws:SecureTransport": "false"
                }
            }
        }
    ]
}

Defense-in-depth requirement 3: Data must not be publicly accessible directly from an Amazon S3 URL

Next, configure Amazon CloudFront to serve traffic from within the bucket. The use of CloudFront serves several purposes:

CloudFront is a content delivery network that acts as a cache to serve static files quickly to clients.
Depending on the number of requests, the cost of delivery is less than if objects were served directly via Amazon S3.
Objects served through CloudFront can be limited to specific countries.

Access to these Amazon S3 objects is available only through CloudFront. We do this by creating an origin access identity (OAI) for CloudFront and granting access to objects in the respective Amazon S3 bucket only to that OAI. As a result, access to Amazon S3 objects from the internet is possible only through CloudFront; all other means of accessing the objects—such as through an Amazon S3 URL—are denied. CloudFront acts not only as a content distribution network, but also as a host that denies access based on geographic restrictions. You apply these restrictions by updating your CloudFront web distribution and adding a whitelist that contains only a specific country’s name (let’s say Liechtenstein). Alternatively, you could add a blacklist that contains every country except that country. Learn more about how to use CloudFront geographic restriction to whitelist or blacklist a country to restrict or allow users in specific locations from accessing web content in the AWS Support Knowledge Center.

Defense-in-depth requirement 4: A domain name is required to consume the content

To serve content from CloudFront, you must use a domain name in the URLs for objects on your webpages or in your web application. The domain name can be either of the following:

The domain name that CloudFront automatically assigns when you create a distribution, such as d111111abcdef8.cloudfront.net
Your own domain name, such as example.com

For example, you might use one of the following URLs to return the file image.jpg:

http://d111111abcdef8.cloudfront.net/images/image.jpg
http://example.com/images/image.jpg

You use the same URL format whether you store the content in Amazon S3 buckets or at a custom origin, like one of your own web servers.

Instead of using the default domain name that CloudFront assigns for you when you create a distribution, you can add an alternate domain name that’s easier to work with, like example.com. By setting up your own domain name with CloudFront, you can use a URL like this for objects in your distribution: http://example.com/images/image.jpg.

Let’s say that you already have a domain name hosted on Amazon Route 53. You would like to serve traffic from the domain name, request an SSL certificate, and add this to your CloudFront web distribution. The SSL offloading occurs in CloudFront by serving traffic securely from each CloudFront location. You also can configure CloudFront to deliver your content over HTTPS by using your custom domain name and your own SSL certificate. Serving web content through CloudFront reduces response from the origin as requests are redirected to the nearest edge location. This results in faster download times than if the visitor had requested the content from a data center that is located farther away.

Summary

In this post, we demonstrated how you can apply policies to Amazon S3 buckets so that only users with appropriate permissions are allowed to access the buckets. Anonymous users (with public-read/public-read-write permissions) and authenticated users without the appropriate permissions are prevented from accessing the buckets.

We also examined how to secure access to objects in Amazon S3 buckets. The objects in Amazon S3 buckets can be encrypted at rest and during transit. Doing so helps provide end-to-end security from the source (in this case, Amazon S3) to your users.

If you have feedback about this blog post, submit comments in the “Comments” section below. If you have questions about this blog post, start a new thread on the Amazon S3 forum or contact AWS Support.

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Preventing your Amazon S3 buckets and objects from allowing public access

Securing data on Amazon S3 with defense-in-depth

Defense-in-depth requirement 1: Data must be encrypted at rest and during transit

Defense-in-depth requirement 2: Data must be accessible only by a limited set of public IP addresses

Defense-in-depth requirement 3: Data must not be publicly accessible directly from an Amazon S3 URL

Defense-in-depth requirement 4: A domain name is required to consume the content

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