Cybercriminals were out in full force over the Independence Day weekend, launching attacks on some of the world’s most popular online destinations: YouTube and iTunes.

Attackers on Sunday exploited a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in YouTube’s comment system to embed HTML code on a portion of the social networking site’s pages that caused pop-up messages and redirected users to pornographic websites, according to reports and security experts.

Those behind the attack primarily targeted videos of Canadian pop star Justin Bieber and posted messages stating that the 16-year-old singer died in a car crash. Pages unrelated to Bieber were also affected.

One pop-up on a Bieber video read, “BREAKING NEWS: Justin bieber died in a horrific car accident earlier this morning, please visit the CNN homepage for more info.”

Google temporarily hid comments by default within an hour of the attack and fixed the issue in about two hours, Jay Nancarrow, a spokesman at Google, YouTube’s parent company, said in a statement.

“We’re continuing to study the vulnerability to help prevent similar issues in the future,” Nancarrow said.

Full Story ~ SC Magazine

Romanian iPhone developer Alexandru Brie was among the first to wonder how Thuat Nguyen’s Vietnamese-language comic books had come to occupy 41 of the top 50 spots in the App Store’s paid books category (in the process, booting Brie’s own app from its usual top-20 perch). In a blog post, Brie put together such evidence as Nguyen’s poor showing in the store’s Vietnamese categories and multiple reviews of his titles alleging fraud to suggest one explanation:

The issue is that it seems people’s iTunes accounts have been hacked, with mass purchases of one developer’s apps being made using their accounts.

Other sites picked up the news and added details; for instance, Apple Insider passed on a tip from a reader about a Chinese cottage industry in iTunes Store account hacking.

Tuesday morning, Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller e-mailed that Apple had resolved the situation:

The developer Thuat Nguyen and his apps were removed from the App Store for violating the developer Program License Agreement, including fraudulent purchase patterns.

Muller added that developers, fraudulent or otherwise, “do not receive any iTunes confidential customer data” when somebody downloads one of their apps. She suggested that anybody who sees fraudulent purchases on their iTunes account should have their credit card issuer cancel the stolen number and issue a chargeback for the unauthorized purchases.

Full Story ~ Washington Post

The U.S. Justice Department is making preliminary inquiries into whether Apple Inc unfairly dominates the digital music market, according to three people whose companies have been contacted by regulators.

They said the Justice Department contacted some music labels and digital music providers earlier this month.

DoJ staff have mostly asked the companies broad questions about the nature of the digital music market, according to two of the three sources, who all spoke on condition of anonymity as the talks were confidential.

“It was a very preliminary conversation,” said one person.

Given Apple’s leading market share the broad questions inevitably involved iTunes, these people said.

Billboard magazine reported on March 6 that Apple had used its market dominance to prevent labels from agreeing to let Amazon.com exclusively debut new songs.

Spokespersons for Apple, Amazon and the Justice Department declined to comment.

Full Story ~ Reuters

iTunes is a free application for your Mac or PC. It organizes and plays your digital music and video on your computer. It syncs all your media with your iPod, iPhone, and Apple TV. And it’s a store on your computer, iPod touch, iPhone, and Apple TV that has everything you need to be entertained. Anywhere. Anytime.

• iTunes no longer ignores your “Remember password for purchases” setting.
• Addresses problems with syncing some Smart Playlists and Podcasts with iPod.
• Resolves a problem recognizing when iPod is connected.
• Addresses issues that affect stability and performance.

Download iTunes 9.03

iTunes LP
The visual experience of the record album returns with iTunes LP. Download select albums and experience a beautifully designed, interactive world right in your iTunes library on a Mac or PC — many are created by the artists.

Home Sharing
With Home Sharing, you can browse the iTunes libraries of up to five authorized computers in your house, import what you like, and automatically add new purchases made on any of the computers to your own library.

The Redesigned iTunes Store
With a beautiful redesign and refined navigation, the new iTunes Store makes it easy to explore songs, movies, TV shows, and more.

iTunes Extras
When you buy select movies from the iTunes Store, you won’t get just a movie. You’ll get iTunes Extras — a world of special features you can experience right in your iTunes library. Watch interviews and trailers, view photos, and more on your Mac or PC.

Genius Mixes
This new feature searches your iTunes library, finds songs that go great together, and creates multiple mixes you’ll love. All automatically.

Improved Syncing
iTunes brings new, more flexible ways to sync your media from your computer to your iPhone or iPod. And it’s easier to organize all the apps on your iPhone or iPod touch, because now you can do it right in iTunes, right from your computer. Shop the App Store on your computer, iPhone, or iPod touch. Then go to your iTunes library to arrange (and rearrange) your apps and add (or delete) Home screens. iTunes automatically syncs your new Home screens with your iPhone or iPod touch.

Many Other Improvements
iTunes brings you even better ways to manage and share everything in your library. You can make your Smart Playlists even smarter. You can save iTunes Store items you want to purchase later in a new wish list. You can buy ringtones of your favorite songs directly from the iTunes Store on your iPhone and assign a specific song to a contact. And if you’re an avid social networker, it’s easy to tout your favorite music, movies, and TV shows on Facebook and Twitter right from the iTunes Store.

Download iTunes 9.0

Universal Music Group has plans to sell DRM free music until January as a test to see how good the consumer demand is. That is really good news, except they have chosen to not use iTunes which sounds strange as iTunes is currently the largest online music store. The New York Times is reporting that the decision to not include iTunes could be part of a push to give iTunes some increased competition. The decision from Universal Music to sell DRM free comes after EMI has seen success. EMI currently has DRM free tracks available in iTunes for $1.29 with DRM tracks at $.99. Universal plans to sell at least some of their tracks at $.99.

Competition is generally a good thing for the consumer, so we cannot really complain about that. Hopefully Universal Music will see enough of a demand for DRM free music during their test and decide to continue. With or without Universal Music selling DRM free in iTunes its still nice to see more DRM free music becoming available.

Source

iTunes 7.3.1 addresses a minor problem with iTunes 7.3 accessing the iTunes Library.

Download

If absolute privacy is a concern critics are voicing against Apple’s latest move with DRM-less tracks from EMI, they should have filed their complaints over four years ago when the iTunes Store first opened.

As the story goes, many users and industry pundits have announced their disappointment with the discovery that DRM-less iTunes Store tracks contain the owner’s name and email address embedded in the file. Even Cory Doctorow and his merry band of EFF compatriots have added their ubiquitous $.0.02 to the mix, calling this an a privacy blunder on Apple’s part. A key example cited for how bad this perceived breach of privacy can get is the theft of an iPod: if someone steals your DMP (iPod or otherwise, if you consider the fact that DRM-less iTunes Store tracks will play on any AAC-enabled device, including the Zune now), they could easily check through your files to scrape out your name and email address from any of the new DRM-less tracks. Fortunately, Geeks R Us nails the problem with this line of thinking in this So What post: “Apple embedded your personal information in content that only you should have is no different than them saving your email address in a Mail application preferences.” If a thief stole a typical computer user’s notebook – Mac, Windows or otherwise – they would easily have full access to quite a bit more information than the owner’s name and email address. So why haven’t Cory and his fellow perpetual protesters spoken out against this egregious privacy flaw in the wider scope of computing?

The fault with these complaints against Apple’s latest non-DRM move runs more than skin deep, however, as this embedding of personal information didn’t merely begin last week. Since the first day it was opened over four years ago, the iTunes Store has embedded an owner’s email address in purchased files. You can easily verify this by importing a non-EMI iTunes Store track from a friend – iTunes will immediately notify you that your machine must be authorized to play the track, prompting you with a dialog requesting a password and the email address of the file’s owner already filled in.

Watch out Cory – all your email addresses are belong to anyone who steals your iTunes Store files; just as they have been for the last four years.

The moral of the story is the same as ever, only a few of the details change this time around: While Apple certainly isn’t the first to offer a DRM-free commercial digital download service (In the mainstream that title probably goes to eMusic), they are the first of the major services to take the leap of faith and offer a premium music catalog completely free of DRM. In all likelihood, if you aren’t sharing your personally identifiable files over P2P networks, you don’t have anything to worry about, and an email address is the last thing you have to fret over if someone steals your iPod. The thief is after your DMP because they want your gadget, not because they want to email you a great offer on viagra.

There is no more of a privacy issue with iTunes Store files (non-DRM or otherwise) than there is with the theft of your computer or mobile phone. Files bought from the store are supposed to remain just as private as the personal information embedded in them. Now, can we all go back to buying high quality, DRM free tracks – and not vindicating the RIAA by sharing them – so more record labels finally invest in DRM-free digital distribution channels like we’ve been asking for?

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Microsoft has stated that it may be close to reaching a deal with EMI to sell songs without anti-piracy protection via the Zune platform. This, from comments made by head of marketing for Zune Jason Reindorp. They come hard on the heels of EMI’s announcement that a deal with Apple to sell songs without DRM protection through the iTunes Music Store has been struck. Mr Reindorp said: ‘We’ve been saying for a while that we are aware that consumers want to have unprotected content. This does open things up a little bit. It potentially makes the competition more of a device-to-device or service-to-service basis, and will force the various services to really innovate.’

Source

Major record companies are forcing Apple to curtail access to iTunes online stores across borders, leading to higher prices and less choice, the European Commission said Tuesday.

The EU executive sent formal charges to Apple and the major record companies last week because consumers can only buy iTunes in their own countries and cannot shop around for cheaper prices and a broader catalogue in other states.

“Our current view is that this is an arrangement which is imposed on Apple by the major record companies and we do not see a justification for it,” Commission spokesman Jonathan Todd told reporters.

The world’s major record companies are Vivendi’s Universal Music Group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, EMI Group and Warner Music Group.

Universal Music said it was “completely satisfied that we have complied with all applicable laws and will respond in due course on the issues raised in the document.”

EMI said it would co-operate fully with the Commission, adding: “We do not believe we have breached European competition law, and we will be making that case strongly.”

Warner had no comment and Sony-BMG was unavailable for comment. The four companies have until early June to respond to the Commission.

“Apple are the managers of the iTunes store. It’s true that the focus is the major record companies,” Todd said.

The investigation grew out of a 2005 complaint by the British consumer group, which said iTunes tracks in France and Germany were only 99 euro cents ($1.32) for each download, compared with the 79 British pence ($1.56) paid by UK residents.

The Commission does not dispute Apple’s right to use digital rights management in its downloads, which critics say is unfair because it makes Apple downloads generally incompatible with MP3 downloads from competing formats.

The probe is mostly unrelated to a deal announced on Monday, under which EMI agreed to make its music available online without a key anti-piracy measure, becoming the first major music group to take the risk in a bid to grow digital sales.

Todd said that under the new arrangement there was still a price differentiation between Britain and the euro zone countries, and consumers may not choose the cheapest place to buy.

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