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It was revealed by Trend Micro, on Friday that the recent cyber attacks aimed to penetrate were not only aimed the online email services of Google, but also Microsoft and Yahoo! According to the investigation of a US federal agent, these Gmail spying efforts were successfully countered by Google. Trend Micro made another allegation that both Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail were also subjected to the same hack attacks. The senior threat researcher at Trend Micro, Nart Villeneuve, stated in an online post that "there has been a variety of recent attacks on popular Webmail platforms." He declared that "in addition to Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail have also been targeted. While the attacks appear to have been separately conducted, these have some significant similarities." Google made the announcement this Wednesday that a cyber spying attack, which was allegedly originated from somewhere in China, was aimed to target the Gmail accounts of several senior US officials, military personnel, journalists, Chinese political activists, along with the officials of several Asian countries, mainly in South Korea. Eric Grosse, the head of Google’s security division stated in his official blog post that "We recently uncovered a campaign to collect user passwords, likely through phishing." He added that "The goal of this effort seems to have been to monitor the contents of these users' emails, with the perpetrators apparently using stolen passwords." Allegedly the campaign was technically traced back to be originated from Jinan, the capital of eastern Chinese province of Shandong. Grosse reported that these attacks were aimed to penetrate the personal Gmail accounts of hundreds of Gmail users.
Finally the Chinese military has responded to the on-going accusations made against it, it rather blamed U.S. on Friday, alleging that the U.S. is attempting to launch a worldwide "Internet war." China asserted that this internet war is aimed to target the Arab and other governments, and it is just framing China to be responsible for these Western hack attacks just to provide cover for its own actions. This declaration was made by the Chinese military academy scholars on Friday, as they pleaded to have an even tougher policing of Internet. These actions are a result of an accusation made by Google Inc., regarding hack attacks on its emailing system being originated from within China, aimed to acquired personal information by hacking the accounts of government officials, military personnel and political activists of the U.S. Precisely Google stated that it has traced the hack attacks to be originated from the city of Jinan, which is actually also housing a military vocational school. China immediately denied the all the allegations, imposing that it was not responsibility for either of the two alleged attacks. It was written in one of the Communist Party-controlled China newspapers, Youth Daily: "Of late, an Internet tornado has swept across the world ... massively impacting and shocking the globe. Behind all this lays the shadow of America." This article was signed by both Ye Zheng and Zhao Baoxian, identified scholars at the Academy of Military Sciences, also mentioning that "Faced with this warmup for an Internet war, every nation and military can't be passive but is making preparations to fight the Internet war."
Cover of Eminem
The famous American rapper, considered to be the king of rap, Eminem, has acquired a cease-and-desist order against the German automobile company, Audi. Allegedly Audi has used the rapper’s Oscar winning song tune of ‘Lose Yourself’ illegally without permission, in its recent upcoming advert commercial for the new 2012 Audi A6 Avant model. This is the same tune which was previously contracted with Eminem by Chrysler, for using in the "Imported from Detroit" campaign for the new Chrysler 200 model. Eminem personally acted in a spot for the campaign, which was first released as a commercial at the Super Bowl, resulting in record breaking audience of 10 million people and above online views. Furthermore, even after using the same song, the actual commercial shaped by Audi also uses somewhat the same similar visuals and idea in the Chrysler spot. In the commercial of Chrysler, Eminem is driving the car across several Detroit's key landmarks, whereas in the commercial designed by Audi, the driver is passing across the key landmarks of Berlin. Just this past week the publisher of Eminem, Eight Mile Style, has officially filed a lawsuit against the commercial made by Audi in a Hamburg regional court. The company did not only identify the offence, but also demanded compensation in order to meet the damages caused by the act. Though this lawsuit just mentioned the unauthorized use of the song by Audi and not really makes any claim regarding the suspicion of copying the idea or format of Chrysler’s campaign. Still when giving a statement, the spokesman for Eight Mile Style, Joel Martin, said "we believe Audi not only used ‘Lose Yourself’ to sell their product without permission, but their spot actually feels inspired by elements of Chrysler's commercial campaign."
