Fed Website Hacked - Banker's Info Accessed

Story first appeared on USA Today -

More than 4,000 bank executives had their personal information published on the Internet by hackers who accessed the data on an internal Federal Reserve website, according to a Reuters report.

The Federal Reserve says no critical functions were affected by the breach, which the activist group Anonymous is taking credit for. `

"Exposure was fixed shortly after discovery and is no longer an issue. This incident did not affect critical operations of the Federal Reserve system," a spokeswoman for the U.S. central bank told Reuters. All of the bankers affected by the breach had been contacted, Reuters said.

The information posted by Anonymous included mailing addresses, business and personal phone numbers and e-mail addresses.

Anonymous is a ragtag group of activist hackers who've launched scores of attacks on government and business sites.

The Fed did not identify the hacked website. But Reuters said bankers were told that the site was a contact database for use during natural disasters.

Wednesday afternoon, Fed spokeswoman Lisa Oliva said the hackers had exploited a "temporary vulnerability." She says the exposure has been fixed, the executives have been informed of the breach and it is no longer an issue.

Anonymous has been involved in an increasing number of hack attacks on business and government websites in retaliation for the seizure of Megaupload, a popular Internet service that allowed users to transfer large files of movies and music. The FBI has charged several people connected with Megaupload with copyright infringement and running an international criminal enterprise.

Cybersecurity Bill Up In The Air

Story first appeared in The Wall Street Journal.

Congress moved toward gridlock over how to improve the security of the nation's computer networks when the House of Representatives approved a measure opposed by the White House and at odds with Senate efforts on the issue.

House passage of its measure, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, came on a 248-168 vote Thursday and was supported by both Republicans and Democrats.

The House vote came despite a warning by the White House that senior advisers would recommend a presidential veto if the measure also passed the Senate, which is considered unlikely.

The White House prefers a Senate bill that would concentrate cybersecurity efforts in the Department of Homeland Security and would require companies to bolster security for critical infrastructure, such as electrical and water systems. The House bill only facilitates the swapping of threat data between private companies and the National Security Agency and other government departments.

The House version also was criticized by civil-liberties groups that said its provisions allowing businesses to share information with the government to improve cybersecurity could compromise American citizens' privacy. The American Civil Liberties Union called it "a dangerously overbroad bill that would allow companies to share our private and sensitive information with the government without a warrant and without proper oversight."

The Obama administration says cybersecurity and IT security solutions should be overseen by civilian agencies. The Senate bill favored by the White House and supported by Democrats would place Homeland Security officials in charge of the effort.

However, the Senate measure is opposed by business groups because of requirements that businesses adopt measures to improve security, steps executives see as burdensome.

The twin controversies—whether to regulate security and whether a civilian agency should head up the effort—seem likely to snarl efforts to plug the growing gaps in network security.

Earlier attempts at cybersecurity legislation drew broad, bipartisan support but little momentum. In the past year, the debate has grown more polarized over whether government should play a larger role in requiring businesses to strengthen their cybersecurity.

House sponsors of the legislation cast it as a necessary first step in the process to protect American networks from groups in places like China and Russia who are pilfering intellectual property from U.S. businesses. Government and industry experts warn that as cyberattack tools become more widely available, capabilities once reserved for governments could extend to rogue states, terrorists or so-called hacktivist groups.

Setting aside the criticism, the House put together a strong bill that will help stop cyberattacks that threaten our economy and our privacy while keeping the Internet free from government control.

But sponsors of the leading Senate measure said Friday that the House should have included provisions to protect computer systems running critical infrastructure, as the Senate bill does.


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Infected PCs May Lose Internet in July

Story first appeared in USA Today.

For computer users, a few mouse clicks could mean the difference between staying online and losing Internet connections this summer.  For some corporations without security measures in place, this could also mean the loss of important business intellectual property, according to Sacramento IP Lawyers.

This image provided by The DNS Changer Working Group (DCWG) shows the checkup webpage. It will only take a few clicks of the mouse. But for hundreds of thousands of computer users, those clicks could mean the difference between staying online and losing their connections this July.

Unknown to most of them, their problem began when international hackers ran an online advertising scam to take control of infected computers around the world. In a highly unusual response, the FBI set up a safety net months ago using government computers to prevent Internet disruptions for those infected users. But that system is to be shut down.  Denver IP Lawyers caution users to investigate their security protocols to avoid loss of important trade secrets.

The FBI is encouraging users to visit a website run by its security partner, http://www.dcwg.org, that will inform them whether they're infected and explain how to fix the problem. After July 9, infected users won't be able to connect to the Internet.

Most victims don't even know their computers have been infected, although the malicious software probably has slowed their web surfing and disabled their antivirus software, making their machines more vulnerable to other problems.  Many corporations have found themselves in need of legal protection, in addition to IT security measures, stated Boston IP Lawyers.

Last November, the FBI and other authorities were preparing to take down a hacker ring that had been running an Internet ad scam on a massive network of infected computers.

The FBI started to realize that there might have a little bit of a problem on our hands because if they just pulled the plug on their criminal infrastructure and threw everybody in jail, the victims of this were going to be without Internet service. The average user would open up Internet Explorer and get 'page not found' and think the Internet is broken.

On the night of the arrests, the agency brought in the chairman and founder of Internet Systems Consortium, to install two Internet servers to take the place of the truckload of impounded rogue servers that infected computers were using. Federal officials planned to keep their servers online until March, giving everyone opportunity to clean their computers. But it wasn't enough time. A federal judge in New York extended the deadline until July.

Now, the full court press is on to get people to address this problem. And it's up to computer users to check their PCs.

Hackers infected a network of probably more than 570,000 computers worldwide. They took advantage of vulnerabilities in the Microsoft Windows operating system to install malicious software on the victim computers. This turned off antivirus updates and changed the way the computers reconcile website addresses behind the scenes on the Internet's domain name system.

The DNS system is a network of servers that translates a web address — such as www.ap.org — into the numerical addresses that computers use. Victim computers were reprogrammed to use rogue DNS servers owned by the attackers. This allowed the attackers to redirect computers to fraudulent versions of any website.

The hackers earned profits from advertisements that appeared on websites that victims were tricked into visiting. The scam netted the hackers at least $14 million, according to the FBI. It also made thousands of computers reliant on the rogue servers for their Internet browsing.

When the FBI and others arrested six Estonians last November, the agency replaced the rogue servers with clean ones. Installing and running the two substitute servers for eight months is costing the federal government about $87,000.

The number of victims is hard to pinpoint, but the FBI believes that on the day of the arrests, at least 568,000 unique Internet addresses were using the rogue servers. Five months later, FBI estimates that the number is down to at least 360,000. The U.S. has the most, about 85,000, federal authorities said. Other countries with more than 20,000 each include Italy, India, England and Germany. Smaller numbers are online in Spain, France, Canada, China and Mexico.

Most of the victims are probably individual home users, rather than corporations that have technology staffs who routinely check the computers.  Many corporations utilize Managed IT Services that provide quality control and Security Solutions to avoid situations such as these.

FBI officials said they organized an unusual system to avoid any appearance of government intrusion into the Internet or private computers. And while this is the first time the FBI used it, it won't be the last.

Until there is a change in legal system, both inside and outside the United States, to get up to speed with the cyber problem, the FBI will have to go down these paths, trail-blazing if you will, on these types of investigations.

Now, every time the agency gets near the end of a cyber case, they get to the point where they say, how are we going to do this, how are we going to clean the system" without creating a bigger mess than before.

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Companies Doll Out Internet Access Where Needed Only

Story first appeared on USA Today.

Companies are stepping up their efforts to slice and dice their data network's bandwidth to ensure that critical work flow isn't hampered by employees' ceaseless demand for greater Internet access.

With heavier files jamming the network, some employees in need of critical business applications are given more capacity on the data network than those with less pressing business need. Organizations see it as a necessity in order to achieve the right type of experience.

The problem of clogged networks has been exacerbated by the widespread use of streaming sites, such as Netflix and Pandora, and by employees tapping into corporate Wi-Fi to listen to music, watch video and use social networking sites on their personal devices — even if it's during breaks.

The issue is particularly urgent for global or national companies with far-flung branches. Candy maker Cadbury, a Kraft subsidiary, chose to manage the network used by its global offices more extensively after an audit found that 55% of its traffic was recreational, says the chief marketing officer at Exinda, which was a consultant to Cadbury. Each office now gets prioritization based on size or contribution, says a local Houston IT Services company.

At Georgia Southern University, game videos used by the football team or video-based student learning applications get priority over videos shared by students. Almost every company has a heat map of what it considers is important.

XO worked with a movie studio that has marked special network priority for video files that are delivered from movie production sites to post-production digitization studios. Another XO client sends its buy and sell orders on an entirely dedicated network so that they are processed in a timely way.

While some companies even manage their bandwidth based on hours — more and faster Internet access for those who work at night — others lower the amount of bandwidth assigned for phone calls in the evening. That way, large data files can be transmitted quickly and seamlessly when fewer people are making calls on the corporate network. Companies want to ensure that data delivery takes preference over trivial internet processes, like buying shoes at Zappos.


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The Spread of Malicious Internet Ads

Story first appeared in USA TODAY.

The online-advertising industry is scrambling to quell a long-standing problem that has taken a turn for the worse: the spread of malicious ads on the Internet's top commercial websites.

Several new twists have made so-called malvertisements a fast-rising threat to consumers — and a big headache for publishers, advertisers and ad networks, say technologists and security researchers.

The spread of infected online ads has spiked tenfold over the past year, according to research disclosed by security intelligence firm RiskIQ at a recent Online Trust Alliance conference in Washington, D.C.

RiskIQ documented a peak of 14,694 occurences of malvertisements in May of this year, up from 1,533 in May 2010. Each corrupted ad could have infected the PCs of thousands or millions of website visitors, based on how long the ad ran, says Elias Manousos, CEO of RiskIQ.


Organized crime gangs have streamlined the process of sneaking viral ads into the distribution system run by advertising networks, causing billions of tainted ad impressions to appear on the top 500 websites over the past 12 months, say technologists and security researchers.


Website security firm Armorize recently discovered criminals selling tutorials, tool kits and ad placement services to anyone who wants to get into the malvertising game. "There is a whole ecosystem designed to do this," says Matt Huang, Armorize's chief operating officer.

A recent rash of infections have been triggering bogus security warnings, followed by an offer for fake antivirus protection.

Last month, SpeedTest.net, a site that measures home broadband connection speeds, began displaying legit ads carrying instructions to load pitches for Security Sphere 2012. Simply navigating to the site launched the promos, which locked up the visitor's PC until he or she purchased worthless "protection" for $35.

Doug Suttles, chief operating officer of Web diagnostics firm Ookla, SpeedTest's parent, says his engineers spotted the attack and cleaned it up within three hours. The criminals, in this case, pioneered a novel technique. They corrupted legit advertisements as they arrived in the ad-handling program, called OpenX, used by the SpeedTest site.


However, tens of thousands of other websites that use the free OpenX ad-handling platform are wide open to this new type of attack, says Armorize's Huang.

In another twist, consumers bedeviled by bogus anti-virus pitches have started bad-mouthing websites they believe triggered the fake promos. Armorize has documented numerous consumer complaints that have gone viral on Twitter and other social networks, causing a drop in visits to the sites in question.


Some ad networks have begun participating in a working group discussing "information-sharing about malvertisers and their ads," says Steve Sullivan, the Interactive Advertising Board's vice president of digital supply chain solutions.

The Online Publishers Association, the industry group of major website publishers, has yet to closely examine malvertising. Obviously, stuff like this is disconcerting to the industry, says Pam Horan, OPA's president. They haven't done any research in this area, and she has not specifically heard anything from the members about this.

Even so, validating ads has become a major conundrum. Web publishers trust the ad networks to continually rotate ads to their Web pages. Meanwhile, the big ad networks, such as Google, Adobe, Microsoft and Yahoo, use automation to pull ads into rotation from a series of smaller networks and agencies.


Malvertisements are also used to spread stealthy infections that quietly take full control of the victim's PC, which is then used to steal data, probe deeper into corporate networks and pilfer from online financial accounts.

Consumers can protect themselves by making sure anti-virus programs and all updates for their Web browsers and popular applications, especially Adobe Flash and Adobe PDF, are current. Consumers who want to protect themselves further can use browser plug-ins, such as NoScript and AdBlock, that block all online ads.

Craig Spiezle, the Online Trust Association's executive director, says publishers, advertisers and the ad networks realize what's at stake.

The good news there is growing interest of some of the key stakeholders — including Yahoo, Microsoft and Google — on the need to employ countermeasures. It's clear that validating the ads everyone depends on is a shared responsibility. If consumers don't trust ads, they may not go to the site, or they'll start running ad blockers, and that will compromise everyone's ability to monetize.

China Vows to Continue Blocking Internet Content

Chicago Tribune

 

BEIJING (AP) — China vowed Tuesday to keep a tight grip on the Internet, saying it would continue to block anything considered subversive or threatening to "national unity."

The "white paper" statement of government policy was released three months after a public dispute over censorship prompted Google Inc. to shut its mainland-based search engine.

It said there were 384 million Internet users in China at the end of 2009, about 29 percent of the population. The government aims to boost that to 45 percent in the next five years by pushing into rural areas where the white paper said there was a "digital gap."

It said the Internet had taken an "irreplaceable role in accelerating the development of the national economy" and would continue to impact daily work, education and lifestyles.

But China, which routinely blocks websites such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, gave no sign there would be an easing of the "Great Firewall" — the nickname for the network of filters that keep mainland Web surfers from accessing material the government deems sensitive.

The official English translation of the white paper favorably mentions Twitter — an apparent glitch since the U.S. microblogging service has been banned in China since last year. The English version named Twitter as an example of a fast-growing service that allows people to express themselves, while the Chinese version mentions only micro-blogs.

The 31-page white paper did not give specific examples of what content would be banned, saying Chinese laws prohibit the spread of "contents subverting state power, undermining national unity, infringing upon national honor and interests, inciting ethnic hatred and secession" as well as such things as pornography and terror.

The white paper also put the onus on companies to block content deemed sensitive, saying China required Internet service providers to set up "Internet security management systems and utilize technical measures to prevent the transmission of all types of illegal information."

Google ran afoul of the government when it accused Chinese hackers of trying to plunder its software coding and of hijacking the Gmail accounts of human rights activists, and said it would stop self-censoring its search results in line with Chinese regulations.

It moved its search service to the freer Chinese territory of Hong Kong in March.

The white paper did not mention Google, but said anyone using the Internet in China had to respect its laws. "Within Chinese territory the Internet is under the jurisdiction of Chinese sovereignty. The Internet sovereignty of China should be respected and protected," it said.

U.S. Concerned by Australian Internet Filter Plan

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) - The United States has raised concerns with Australia about the impact of a proposed Internet filter that would place restrictions on Web content, an official said Monday.

The concerns of Australia's most important security ally further undermine plans that would make Australia one of the strictest Internet regulators among the world's democracies.

"Our main message of course is that we remain committed to advancing the free flow of information which we view as vital to economic prosperity and preserving open societies globally," a U.S. State Department spokesman Michael Tran told The Associated Press by telephone from Washington.

Tran declined to say when or at what level the U.S. State Department raised its concerns with Australia and declined to detail those concerns.

"We don't discuss the details of specific diplomatic exchanges, but I can say that in the context of that ongoing relationship, we have raised our concerns on this matter with Australian officials," he added.

Internet giants Google and Yahoo have condemned the proposal as a heavy-handed measure that could restrict access to legal information.

The plan needs the support of Parliament to become law later this year.

Australian Communications Minister Stephen Conroy says the filter would block access to sites that include child pornography, sexual violence and detailed instructions in crime or drug use. The list of banned sites could be constantly updated based on public complaints. If adopted into law, the screening system would make Australia one of the strictest Internet regulators among the world's democracies.

Conroy declined to comment on the U.S. concerns.

"The Australian and U.S. governments liaise regularly on a broad range of issues. It would be inappropriate to discuss the details of these consultations," said his spokeswoman, Suzie Brady.

Some critics of Australia's filter have said it puts the nation in the same censorship league as China.

Clinton to Urge Uncensored Internet Amid Google-China Dispute

Business Week

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will call today for an uncensored global Internet where individuals and companies operate without fear of repression or computer attacks such as those Google Inc. says came from China.

Clinton will sketch out the Obama administration’s vision of promoting Internet freedom and security, highlighting how the U.S. is supporting organizations around the world to develop tools to circumvent firewalls and promote democracy and economic growth, officials said.

Alec Ross, Clinton’s adviser on technology, said her speech will frame the issue as a threat to the free flow of information and resources.

“Do we want to live in a world where there is one Internet, one knowledge commons from which we can all draw” or where the “knowledge you have access to is based on what country you live in and the whim of the censors?” Ross told a policy forum at the New America Foundation in Washington yesterday.

Clinton will underscore U.S. concerns about restrictions on information and hacking in countries including China. Internet censorship exists in almost a third of the world, Ross said.

Mountain View, California-based Google, which runs the most popular Internet search site, said Jan. 12 it would stop censoring its search results in China and might end operations there after what it described as an infiltration of its technology and the Gmail messaging accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Google said hackers also targeted the intellectual property of dozens of other U.S. companies.

The Chinese government has denied involvement in the cyber attacks. Both Google and the U.S. government have asked China for an investigation and explanation.

Human Rights

Clinton’s speech will assert that Internet freedom “exists at the convergence of economic issues, human rights issues and security issues,” Ross said. The Internet is a new platform to promote the U.S.’s “centuries-old values related to freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press,” he added, in characterizing her planned message.

The top U.S. diplomat will deliver the speech at the Newseum, an interactive museum on the news media located near the U.S. Capitol.

Leslie Harris, president of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a Washington-based advocacy group, said she hopes Clinton will call for “greater corporate responsibility” in markets such as China, where companies such as Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo! Inc. and Google had agreed to modify their products in order to do business.

‘Difficult Circumstances’

Harris said she hopes Clinton commits to “stand behind and support companies who are trying to operate in very difficult circumstances.” She praised the Obama administration for successfully “pushing back” when China tried to require filtering software to be installed in all laptops sold there.

Clinton plans to highlight the use of Internet tools including Twitter Inc., the short-message service, by dissidents in countries such as Iran, officials said.

In the aftermath of last June’s contested election and subsequent protests in Iran, “technology has obviously been a huge piece of how people within Iran stay connected and how they communicate to the rest of the world,” Michael Posner, assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, said in an interview.

Clinton’s speech will refer to defensive and offensive efforts by the State Department to protect Internet users who face online restrictions by their governments and companies confronting intrusions into their networks.

Firewall Funds

The State Department has $5 million available in funds appropriated by Congress last year for organizations that promote technologies to get around firewalls, for training Internet journalists and other online democracy promotion efforts. The department expects $10 million more from Congress in the coming fiscal year.

The department has already allocated $15 million to similar organizations, although officials say they can’t publicize the groups’ names without endangering them.

“Rather than view it as a one-size-fits-all approach to breaking down the firewall, we view this as an exploratory period where we’re working with a range of individuals and organizations in 40 countries,” Posner said.

Clinton will also cite innovations the U.S. is developing to help people use mobile phones and the Internet to share information and resources.

One example is the State Department’s text-messaging campaign to raise money for Red Cross relief efforts in Haiti, which has already garnered more than $25 million in individual $10 donations from mobile phone users in the U.S.

Afghanistan And The Left
Originally Posted to The Wall Street Journal

It was probably inevitable that the American left would turn sharply against the war in Afghanistan the moment it was politically opportune. Still, the speed with which it has done so has been breathtaking.

Time was when the received bipartisan and trans-Atlantic wisdom about Afghanistan was that it was the necessary war, the good war, the no-choice-but-to-fight and can't-afford-to-lose war, and that not least of everything that made the invasion and occupation of Iraq such arrant folly was that it distracted us from "finishing the job" in the place where the attacks of 9/11 were conceived and planned.

This was the wisdom candidate Barack Obama was merely regurgitating when, in an August 2007 speech, he promised that his priority as president would be "getting out of Iraq and on to the right battlefield in Afghanistan and Pakistan." True to his word, he has now ordered the deployment of 17,000 additional soldiers to that battlefield.

So why are the people who cheered Mr. Obama then (or offered no objection) now running for the exit signs? Why, for example, is New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, the paper's reliably liberal tribune, calling Afghanistan a "quagmire" -- after denouncing the Bush administration in 2006 for "taking its eye off the real enemy in Afghanistan"?

Call it another instance of that old logic, reductio ad Vietnam. That's the view that every U.S. military action lasting more than the flight time of a cruise missile is likely to descend into a bloody, stalemated, morally and politically intolerable Sartrean nightmare.

Tellingly, the phrase "another Vietnam" seems to have first appeared under the byline of New York Times reporter C.L. Sulzberger, who opined on August 31, 1969, that "chances are" that the only kind of war in which the U.S. could become involved in the future "is another Vietnam." Times change, but not at the Times.

Since then, "another Vietnam" has served as the left's ideological totem for military interventions in Lebanon, the Falklands (for Britain), Nicaragua and Central America generally, the first Iraq war, Somalia, the Balkans, Afghanistan right after 9/11, the second Iraq war, and now Afghanistan again. Maybe Grenada and Panama, too.

Of course, none of these interventions was "another Vietnam." Some turned out well, some badly, some had mixed results and for some the verdict isn't yet in. Each was its own circumstance. At the height of the Vietnam War in 1968, the U.S. was losing soldiers at a rate of 1,300 a month. At the height of the Iraq war in 2007, losses averaged 75 a month. In Afghanistan, the U.S. is currently losing about 15 a month. A body count should never be the decisive metric of failure, but if this is what now constitutes "quagmire" then the U.S. may as well declare itself a neutral power, vote the Ron Paul/Dennis Kucinich ticket in 2012 and never fight another foreign war for any reason.

What are the circumstances that define Afghanistan today? Yes, the Taliban is "resurgent," but mainly in the sense that militarily it is marginally more effective now than four years ago. Yes, much of the countryside is unsafe, but the cities, for the most part, are not unsafe.

Corruption is rampant and President Hamid Karzai is feckless, but he is legitimate and Afghanistan has seen far worse. The system of electing representatives and appointing governors is dysfunctional, but at least there's a system. NATO was much too slow in training and equipping the Afghan army and police with technical support and internet in Afghanistan, but now they are being trained and equipped. The poppy trade is flourishing and provides the Taliban leadership with considerable income, but they are as unpopular as ever.

And so on. The real heart of our Afghan problem lies in our expectations of what this primitive and riven country is ever likely to become. The achievement of the past seven years lies mainly in what Afghanistan has not become: To wit, a safe haven for some of the worst people on earth.

That's no small thing, though selling Americans on what amounts to a negative achievement will not be easy. (Just ask George Bush about all the credit he gets for no new 9/11s.) Nor will it be easy for Mr. Obama to sell his rank and file on an Afghan surge after he did such a terrific job as a candidate of trashing the Iraq surge. Congratulations, Mr. President: You've got a war to sell.

Which brings us back to the left. Much will never go right in Afghanistan, but that doesn't mean things couldn't be a lot worse. For instance, Joe Biden can continue to trash Hamid Karzai, as Jack Kennedy trashed Ngo Dinh Diem. Or we could pursue a talk-and-fight approach to the Taliban, as Lyndon Johnson did with North Vietnam. Or the antiwar movement of the present could give encouragement to our enemies in the Middle East that they can bleed America into withdrawal, as a previous generation of peace activists encouraged Ho Chi Minh.

In that case, Afghanistan really will turn out to be another Vietnam and the prophesies of the left will be (self-) fulfilled. The sequel to this movie, by the way, is called "The Killing Fields."

Internet-Ready TVs Usher Web Into Living Room

AS posted by: Wall Street Journal

After more than a decade of disappointment, the goal of marrying television and the Internet seems finally to be picking up steam.

A key factor in the push are new TV sets that have networking connections built directly into them, requiring no additional set-top boxes for getting online. Meanwhile, many consumers are finding more attractive entertainment and information choices on the Internet -- and have already set up data networks for their PCs and laptops that can also help move that content to their TV sets.

On Monday, Netflix Inc. is expected to announce a deal with Korea's LG Electronics Inc. that will make a Netflix online-video service available on a new line of high-definition TV sets from LG due out this spring. The online service offers 12,000 movie and television titles.

Amid other developments pegged to this week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Yahoo Inc. and Intel Corp. plan to announce support from several major consumer-electronics companies to sell TV sets that come with software, dubbed widgets, that make it easier to call up Web content on TV sets using ordinary remote controls rather than computer keyboards.

"You are going to see very broad adoption of this open technology by the best brands in the TV industry -- not just for specialty products but deeply penetrated in their product lines," says Patrick Barry, Yahoo's vice president of connected TV.

Of course, similarly optimistic statements have been made by industry executives since the mid-1990s, when efforts to combine Internet technology with TV sets first emerged. The current economic climate could be another stumbling block, deterring consumers from upgrading their existing TV sets.

Still, the topic remains a hot one in high-tech circles because of the potential impact on existing business models in the entertainment industry. Instead of the often expensive packages of video content from cable and satellite providers, the Internet could theoretically deliver a much wider array of entertainment and information choices -- many of them free.

Intel, Apple Inc. and others have promoted specially tailored PCs, set-top boxes and other new devices for bringing video from the Internet to living-room TV sets. Few people bought them, but industry executives believe users will be more receptive as Internet connections become a standard feature of more ordinary gadgets -- such as TV sets, high-definition movie players and videogame consoles.

Putting such Internet services in TV sets, in theory, could make them even simpler for consumers to access. "The symbolism of being directly in the TV is very high," says Netflix Chief Executive Reed Hastings.

Netflix, based in Los Gatos, Calif., has cut deals that make its library of online videos available on Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox 360, TiVo Inc.'s digital video recorders and Blu-ray players from Samsung Electronics Co. and LG.

The technology required to include Internet capabilities in TV sets adds to consumer costs: for example, LG predicts its plasma and LCD Internet TV sets will cost roughly $300 more than comparably-sized sets without online capabilities.

"I think this will be a big, growing sub category in TVs," says Tim Alessi, director of product planning at LG's U.S. division.

Over the past year, Panasonic Corp., Sharp Corp. and Samsung have come out with HD TVs that can access services such as Google Inc.'s YouTube and Picasa photo albums, along with online weather forecasts and stock tickers. Kurt Scherf, an analyst with Parks Associates, estimates the number of Web-enabled TV sets will grow to 14% of the projected 26 million-28 million TV sets to be sold in the U.S. in 2012 from 1% last year.

It isn't clear how strongly consumers will respond. For one thing, many people, especially younger ones, have become comfortable using their PCs as TV sets, watching YouTube or streaming favorite TV shows.

"The number of people who watch an entire TV show on their laptops has tripled," says Genevieve Bell, an anthropologist who is director of the user experience group in Intel's digital-home group. But Ms. Bell says research by the company also suggests that many people also have extremely strong bonds to their TV sets. So any effort to add Internet content needs to be just as simple and not interfere with the experiences and behavior patterns the users enjoy. That means, she says, using a conventional remote control -- not some kind of computer keyboard, or a PC-style Web browser of the sort that emerged as a TV option in the 1990s.

Those findings are one reason that Intel -- which in 2007 abandoned an effort to promote living-room PCs under a brand called Viiv -- became a supporter of what Yahoo calls the Widget Channel. The collaboration is designed to create a standard way for Web services to be unobtrusively offered up on TV sets.

The software displays a strip of icons for Web offerings on the bottom of a TV screen, while traditional programming plays above. Click on one of the icons with the remote and content associated with the Web service expands into a larger view on the left side of the screen. Click again and the service can take up the entire screen. A user could pull up an Internet weather report, for example, or photos stored on Yahoo's Flickr service.

Yahoo and its hardware partners initially will act as gatekeepers in overseeing such offerings -- a bit like Apple does with its store for iPhone software -- but Mr. Barry expects that Web companies will find the process open and non-discriminatory. Intel plans to offer chips that could help manage the widget software in Internet-equipped TV sets and set-top boxes, but its hardware is not required.

The Internet's 100 Oldest Dot-Com Domains

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Internet Sites Arn't Always Immune to Local Laws

A judge in Kentucky seized the Web addresses of more than 140 Internet-gambling sites last week, the latest example of how local governments can affect online businesses with physical operations beyond their jurisdictions.

It is common to think of the Internet as a global network that transcends geography. But online entities are often forced to adhere to laws in the places where they do business. One iconic example is a ruling by a French court in 2000, where the court said a French law banning the sale of Nazi paraphernalia applied to U.S.-based Web site Yahoo Inc.

In the Kentucky case, Circuit Court Judge Thomas Wingate concluded that gambling Web sites were "virtual keys" that provided access to places where one could play online versions of gambling devices such as slot machines and roulette tables, which are illegal in the state.

None of the online businesses -- such as GoldenPalace.com, PokerStars.com and UltimateBet.com -- are based in Kentucky or rely on technical equipment located in the state. Still, the sites readily accept bets placed by users in Kentucky and process payments from banks based there. That is what triggered Judge Wingate to seize control of the Web addresses.

Seizing," it should be noted, sounds more ominous than it is when applied to the Internet realm. It prevents an Internet registrar that issues Web site names from transferring a Web address to a different registrar, even if the owner of the address, such as a gambling site, requests it. The gambling sites will remain operational until the judge issues a forfeiture order, at which point they will become state property.

The court said it will lift its seizure order for online casinos if they implement technology that would block Kentucky residents from accessing their sites.

Groups affiliated with the online casinos are worried about the precedent the ruling sets. "If you're a business operator, you should be subject to the laws where you do and pursue business, and not have to worry about a state halfway around the world taking away your storefront," says Jeremiah Johnston, president of the Internet Commerce Association, which monitors legal matters for online businesses. He adds that there is no reason that other governments couldn't use the same technique to challenge online businesses for whatever reason they choose.

In the Kentucky case, many of the registrars are based in the U.S. even if the Web sites aren't, meaning that they have to comply with the court's order, says Todd Greene, an attorney for Oversee.net, which has a subsidiary called Moniker Online Services LLC that is the registrar for two of the gambling sites.

J. Michael Brown, secretary of justice and public safety for Kentucky, who brought the lawsuit, says he only wants to stop what he considers an illegal activity.