US should 'corner' hacks market

7 August 2014 Last updated at 17:20

The US government should pay hackers who indentify significant cybersecurity threats, a respected risk analyst has proposed.

Dan Geer said large bounties would prevent the vulnerabilities from ending up in the hands of criminal gangs or hostile authorities.

Mr Geer, whose tech firm assists the CIA, was referring to previously unknown security flaws, for which a patch is not yet available.

They are often used in cyber-warfare.

Tech news site the Register reported that Mr Geer, who made the suggestion in a keynote address at the Black Hat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas, said the tactic would only work if there were few vulnerabilities in existence.

"If there are many vulnerabilities, then we've wasted our money," he reportedly said.

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Could airport security be hacked?

"But if there are a limited number, by making them not weaponisable have we not contributed to world peace?

"The US can corner the market in this in a way few other countries can."

Mr Geer added that the government should consider paying 10 times more than anyone else would for the vulnerabilities.

Once a patch was found, authorities should make the vulnerabilities public, he advised.

Hotel take-over

Other cybersecurity experts unveiled their research at the annual conference.

Jesus Molina explained how he had taken over a hotel in Shenzhen, China, after hacking into the central system via a guest iPad in his room.

Mr Molina said he was able to control the rooms' temperature, lighting and even the hotel doors.

Another cybersecurity professional, Billy Rios, claimed to have found multiple vulnerabilities in the tech used by the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in airports.

He said he could gain access to the TSA's X-ray machines, as well as a system that tracks employees' shift changes and the scanners used to detect hazardous materials in luggage or clothing.

"They all have major issues," Mr Rios told the BBC.

However a representative of the company that develops the airport technology, Morpho, denied the devices were vulnerable to attack.

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Russia gang in 'largest data breach'

6 August 2014 Last updated at 16:39

A Russian group has hacked 1.2 billion usernames and passwords belonging to more than 500 million email addresses, according to Hold Security - a US firm specialising in discovering breaches.

Hold Security described the hack as the "largest data breach known to date".

It claimed the stolen information came from more than 420,000 websites, including "many leaders in virtually all industries across the world".

Hold Security did not give details of the companies affected by the hack.

"They didn't just target large companies; instead, they targeted every site that their victims visited," Hold Security said in its report.

"With hundreds of thousands of sites affected, the list includes many leaders in virtually all industries across the world, as well as a multitude of small or even personal websites."

Continue reading the main story

These databases were used to attack e-mail providers, social media, and other websites to distribute spam to victims and install malicious redirections on legitimate systems"

End Quote Hold Security

The New York Times, which first reported the findings, said that on its request "a security expert not affiliated with Hold Security analysed the database of stolen credentials and confirmed it was authentic".

"Another computer crime expert who had reviewed the data, but was not allowed to discuss it publicly, said some big companies were aware that their records were among the stolen information," the paper said.

The paper added: "Hold Security would not name the victims, citing nondisclosure agreements and a reluctance to name companies whose sites remained vulnerable."

The Wall Street Journal later revealed that Hold Security intended to offer website owners the ability to check whether they had been affected, but only if they paid a fee.

The firm has since posted a message on its site saying it will charge $120 (£71) a month for a "breach notification service".

One computer security expert said he was surprised by this approach.

"This situation is quite unusual in that the company has decided to charge for this information," Dr Steven Murdoch from University College London's computer science department told the BBC.

"Usually they would do an initial disclosure [of who had been affected] for free and then offer their services for a fee at a later stage.

"The company rightly points out that there is going to be a huge amount of work to securely contact all the affected websites, but a common solution to this is to partner with a government or industry-funded organisation to help with that."

Despite the large amount of credentials said to have been compromised, Dr Murdoch added that it would be premature to advise the public to reset all their passwords.

"Although there's a large amount of passwords involved, a lot of them could be irrelevant and many of the websites tiny," he said.

"It's not necessarily the case that a large proportion of internet users have been affected. Until we get more statistics we won't know that.

"So, there's no reason to panic now, but perhaps it's a good reminder to follow best practice of not using the same password on multiple websites, because this will not be the last time such a breach happens."

Multi-pronged attack?

Hold Security, which has previously reported about hacks on Adobe and Target, said it took more than seven months of research to discover the extent of the latest hack.

The firm claimed the gang initially acquired databases of stolen credentials from fellow hackers on the black market.

"These databases were used to attack e-mail providers, social media, and other websites to distribute spam to victims and install malicious redirections on legitimate systems," Hold Security said.

The hackers also got access to data from botnets - a network of computers infected with malware to trigger online fraud.

Hold Security said the botnets helped the hacking group - which it dubbed CyberVor - identify more than 400,000 websites that were vulnerable to cyber attacks.

"The CyberVors used these vulnerabilities to steal data from these sites' databases," the firm said.

"To the best of our knowledge, they mostly focused on stealing credentials, eventually ending up with the largest cache of stolen personal information, totalling over 1.2 billion unique sets of e-mails and passwords."

The firm is now marketing its breach notification service as a way to "stay ahead of the hackers ".

But one of its rivals expressed surprise at this approach.

"For a long time the security industry has freely shared information on breaches within its own community," said Vanja Svajcer, principal security researcher at Sophos.

"Researchers discovering credentials breaches usually help end users either by making the information about compromised accounts public or by working with the company whose servers were compromised to inform all affected users.

"In this case, the credentials were harvested from thousands of servers and it would be difficult to work with every server owner to inform the compromised users. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to expect the company to make the information freely available so everybody can check that none of their email addresses have been compromised."

Password tips

The University of Surrey's Prof Alan Woodward suggests the following rules should be observed when picking a new password.

Don't choose one obviously associated with you

Hackers can find out a lot about you from social media so if they are targeting you specifically and you choose, say, your pet's name you're in trouble.

Choose words that don't appear in a dictionary

Hackers can precalculate the encrypted forms of whole dictionaries and easily reverse engineer your password.

Use a mixture of unusual characters

You can use a word or phrase that you can easily remember but where characters are substituted, eg, Myd0gha2B1g3ars!

Have different passwords for different sites and systems

If hackers compromise one system you do not want them having the key to unlock all your other accounts.

Keep them safely

With multiple passwords it is tempting to write them down and carry them around with you. Better to use some form of secure password vault on your phone.

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Ransomware victims given free fix

6 August 2014 Last updated at 09:01 By Mark Ward Technology correspondent, BBC News

All 500,000 victims of Cryptolocker can now recover files encrypted by the malware without paying a ransom.

The malicious program encrypted files on Windows computers and demanded a substantial fee before handing over the key to the scrambled files.

Thanks to security experts, an online portal has been created where victims can get the key for free.

The portal was created after security researchers grabbed a copy of Cryptolocker's database of victims.

"This time we basically got lucky," said Michael Sandee, principal analyst at Fox-IT - one of the security firms which helped tackle the cyber-crime group behind Cryptolocker.

Cash call

In late May, law enforcement agencies and security companies seized a worldwide network of hijacked home computers that was being used to spread both Cryptolocker and another strain of malware known as Gameover Zeus.

This concerted action seems to have prompted an attempt by the gang to ensure one copy of their database of victims did not fall into police hands, said Mr Sandee.

What the criminals did not know, he said, was that police forces and security firms were already in control of part of the network and were able to grab the data as it was being sent.

The action also involved the FBI charging a Russian man, Evgeniy Bogachev, aka "lucky12345" and "slavik", who is accused of being the ring leader of the gang behind Gameover Zeus and Cryptolocker.

The Gameover Zeus family of malware targets people who bank online, and is thought to have racked up millions of victims.

Cryptolocker was created by a sub-group inside the larger gang, said Mr Sandee, and first appeared in September 2013, since when it has amassed about 500,000 victims.

Those infected were initially presented with a demand for $400 (£237), 400 euros ($535; £317) or an equivalent amount in the virtual Bitcoin currency. Victims had 72 hours to pay up or face the keys that would unlock their files being destroyed.

Analysis of the back-up database indicates that only 1.3% of all the people hit by the malware paid the ransom.

Despite the low response rate, the gang is believed to have netted about $3m from Cryptolocker. Many of those caught out did not pay because they were able to restore files from back-ups.

However, others are believed to have lost huge amounts of important files and business documents to the cyber-thieves.

"There's a bit of guesswork in that figure because some of it was paid in bitcoins and that does not have a fixed exchange rate," said Mr Sandee.

Now, security firms Fox-IT and FireEye - which aided the effort to shut down the Gameover Zeus group - have created a portal, called Decrypt Cryptolocker, via which any of the 500,000 victims can find out the key to unlock their files.

"All they have to do is submit a file that's been encrypted from that we can figure out which encryption key was used," said Greg Day, chief technology officer at FireEye.

Mr Day said people wishing to use the portal should submit a file that did not contain sensitive information to help it verify which key they needed.

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Wikipedia names deleted search links

6 August 2014 Last updated at 13:11

Wikipedia has begun naming links to its online encyclopaedia that have been removed from EU search results under "right to be forgotten" rules.

The deleted links include pages about European criminals, a musician and an amateur chess player.

The Wikimedia Foundation, which operates the site, said the internet was being "riddled with memory holes" as a result of such takedowns.

The action follow a European Court of Justice ruling in May.

The judges involved decided that citizens had the right to have links to "irrelevant" and outdated data erased from search engine results.

A fortnight ago Google briefed data regulators that it had subsequently received more than 91,000 requests covering a total of 328,000 links that applicants wanted taken down, and had approved more than 50% of those processed.

The search engine is critical of the court's decision, but has set up a page that people can use to request removals.

At a press conference in London, the Wikimedia Foundation revealed that Google had notified it of five requests involving Wikipedia that it had acted on, affecting more than 50 links to its site.

A dedicated page on Wikipedia states that they include:

"We only know about these removals because the involved search engine company chose to send notices to the Wikimedia Foundation," the organisation's lawyers wrote in a blog.

"Search engines have no legal obligation to send such notices. Indeed, their ability to continue to do so may be in jeopardy.

"Since search engines are not required to provide affected sites with notice, other search engines may have removed additional links from their results without our knowledge. This lack of transparent policies and procedures is only one of the many flaws in the European decision."

EU regulators have expressed concern that Google is notifying website administrators of the links it removes, suggesting this undermines the point of the law.

While the links do not appear on Google.co.uk and other versions of the search engine created for specific EU countries, they do still appear on Google.com, which can be accessed in Europe.

Data requests

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Wikipedia has refused to remove photos of a monkey from its site

The Wikimedia Foundation has also published its first transparency report - following a similar practice by Google, Twitter and others.

It reveals that the organisation received 304 general content removal requests between July 2012 and June 2014, none of which it complied with.

They included a takedown request from a photographer who had claimed he owned the copyright to a series of selfies taken by a monkey.

Gloucestershire-based David Slater had rotated and cropped the images featured on the site.

But the foundation rejected his claim on the grounds that the monkey had taken the photo, and was therefore the real copyright owner.

The foundation also revealed it had received 56 requests for data about its users.

It said it had complied with eight of these requests, affecting 11 accounts. All of these resulted in information being passed to US-based bodies.

"If we must produce information due to a legally valid request, we will notify the affected user before we disclose, if we are legally permitted and have the means to do so," the foundation said.

"In certain cases, we may help find assistance for users to fight an invalid request."

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Facebook sued by 25,000 members

6 August 2014 Last updated at 15:56

A data privacy campaigner has signed up 25,000 people to a "class action lawsuit" being taken against Facebook.

Max Schrems alleges that the way the social network monitors its members' activity on and off the site puts it in breach of EU laws.

As part of the claim, he also alleges that the company co-operated with Prism, a US surveillance scheme.

Facebook has previously denied knowing about Prism before it was mentioned in leaked US government documents.

The company has, however, acknowledged complying with national security requests from US government agencies.

Facebook has not commented on the wider case being brought against it.

Continue reading the main story

We complain, then go home and drink beer"

End Quote Max Schrems Europe versus Facebook

The BBC understands it does not plan to respond until it has been served the relevant papers.

Facebook search

Mr Schrems asked Facebook users based outside the US and Canada who wished to take part in the case to sign up via an app.

The case is targeted against the company's Irish subsidiary, which is responsible for all accounts belonging to users outside of North America. It has been filed with the Commercial Court for Vienna, the 26 year old's home city.

Among the allegations are that Facebook broke EU privacy laws by introducing:

• Graph Search - a facility allowing users to find out about other members' activities on the social network
• External website tracking - monitoring members through the Like buttons embedded into third-party webpages
• Big data analysis - the ability to gain insights into Facebook members' by data-crunching the billions of interactions people have with the site every year

Model case

Mr Schrems is demanding 500 euros ($667, £396) in damages for each of the first 25,000 people who signed up to the case.

While the Austrian legal system does not make provision for US-style class actions, Mr Schrems is working round this by getting the other participants to transfer their financial claims to him, which is permitted.

If he wins he intends to share the money after delivering a 20% cut to a German firm that is funding the case.

While the promised payout might have helped him attract support, Mr Schrems says the money is a side-issue.

Instead, he explains, the dispute with Facebook is intended to be a "model case" that sets a precedent addressing the wider problem of tech firm developing products that comply with US laws, but are not adapted for other countries' rules.

"It is not an epic fight with Facebook but more of a general question of where we are going and if we respect our fundamental rights in Europe," he told the BBC.

"Right now I have the feeling that we love to point the finger at the US in Europe, and say they are not respecting our privacy. But the reality is that we don't really do anything about it - we complain, then go home and drink beer."

Risk to reputation

This is not the first action Mr Schrems has taken against the social network.

In 2011 he forced the firm to reveal all the information it was holding on him.

When he discovered the 1,222 pages of information included details he thought he had deleted or had not consented to being shared, he lodged a complaint with the Irish data protection commissioner.

The case has since been referred to the European Court of Justice, but has already resulted in the firm restricting its use of facial recognition software and making it easier for members to find out more about the data held on them.

One of the UK's leading data protection lawyers, who is not involved in the case, suggested the latest action could deliver a landmark ruling.

"The current climate of data protection enforcement in the EU in the courts and by the data protection regulators, coupled with an increasing awareness by consumers of their rights means that this case could well run its course in the Court in Vienna and achieve a result for Max Schrems and Facebook users," said Robert Bond, a partner at the law firm Speechly Bircham.

"Of course it remains to be seen whether or not Facebook will try to settle as reputational damage may be worse than a financial penalty."

Mr Schrems has limited the number of people involved in the case to 25,000 because each participant's submissions must be vetted.

However, he says other Facebook users wishing to take part can still register their interest in case he later decides to expand the legal action.

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Microsoft alerts police to child porn

6 August 2014 Last updated at 21:07 By Leo Kelion Technology desk editor

A tip-off from Microsoft has led to the arrest of a man in Pennsylvania who has been charged with receiving and sharing child abuse images.

It flagged the matter after discovering that an image involving a young girl had been allegedly saved to the man's OneDrive cloud storage account.

According to court documents, the man was subsequently detected trying to send two illegal pictures via one of Microsoft's live.com email accounts.

Police arrested him on 31 July.

The man, in his twenties, has since been placed in a county correctional facility and has yet to enter a plea. A preliminary court appearance is scheduled for next week.

A copy of the affidavit detailing the case against the defendant has been published online by a news site specialising in leaked law enforcement documents.

It claims that the man acknowledged acquiring the pictures through Kik Messenger, a chat app, as well as "trading and receiving images of child pornography on his mobile cellular device".

The BBC spoke to one of the officers involved, Trooper Christopher Hill from the Pennsylvania State Police, who confirmed the affidavit was genuine and that Microsoft had instigated the investigation.

But he said he could not discuss any of the case's specifics because it was still an "open investigation".

He did, however, add that he was aware of other instances of "internet carriers" passing on similar details in other inquiries.

Automated image scans

The details have emerged a week after it was first reported that Google had handed over the identity of a Texas-based user after detecting suspected child abuse imagery in his Gmail account. The 41-year-old was arrested as a consequence of Google's action.

The cases highlight the fact that commonly-used internet services are not private.

One campaign group said tech firms must be explicit about how they monitor users' accounts.

"Microsoft must do all that it can to inform users about what proactive action it takes to monitor and analyse messages for illegal content, including details of what sorts of illegal activity may be targeted," commented Emma Carr, acting director of the campaign group Big Brother Watch.

"It is also important that all companies who monitor messages in this way are very clear about what procedures and safeguards are in place to ensure that people are not wrongly criminalised, for instance, when potentially illegal content is shared but has been done so legitimately in the context of reporting or research."

Microsoft's terms and conditions for its US users explicitly state that it has the right to deploy "automated technologies to detect child pornography or abusive behaviour that might harm the system, our customers, or others".

Disrupting photo trades

Neither Google nor Microsoft handed over the material directly to the police.

Instead both companies contacted the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's CyberTipline, which serves as the US's centralised reporting system for suspected child sexual exploitation.

Microsoft has openly discussed its use of image-processing software to detect suspected paedophiles in the past, including an interview with the BBC in 2012.

Following the most recent case, Mark Lamb from the company's Digital Crimes Unit released a statement.

"Child pornography violates the law as well as our terms of service, which makes clear that we use automated technologies to detect abusive behaviour that may harm our customers or others," he wrote.

"In 2009, we helped develop PhotoDNA, a technology to disrupt the spread of exploitative images of children, which we report to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children as required by law."

PhotoDNA creates a unique signature for each image, similar to a fingerprint, to help pictures be matched.

This is done by converting the picture into black-and-white, resizing it and breaking it into a grid. Each grid cell is then analysed to create a histogram describing how the colours change in intensity within it, and the information obtained becomes its "DNA".

The technique means that if a copy of a flagged photo appears in one of Microsoft's user's accounts, the firm can be alerted to the fact without its staff having to look at the picture involved.

Because the amount of data involved in the "DNA" is small, Microsoft can process and compare images relatively quickly.

"[It] allows us to find the needle in the haystack," says promotional material for the software.

Google also uses PhotoDNA, alongside its own in-house technologies, to detect child abuse images,

In addition, the software is used by Facebook and Twitter, among others.

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Tech activity 'overtakes sleeping'

7 August 2014 Last updated at 11:29 By Joe Miller Technology reporter

Britons spend more time using technology devices than they do sleeping, research suggests.

Communications regulator Ofcom said UK adults spend an average of eight hours and 41 minutes a day on media devices, compared with the average night's sleep of eight hours and 21 minutes.

Almost four hours a day are spent watching TV according to Ofcom's survey of 2,800 UK adults and children.

TV and radio remain popular despite the growth of digital media, it found.

One analyst said this proved that "it's still early in the digital revolution".

The annual Ofcom study also analysed the media habits of those between 12 and 15 years of age.

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UK adults spend an average of eight hours and 41 minutes on media devices

Only 8% said they used email, while just 3% said they communicated using a landline phone.

Younger people were also found to have an advanced understanding of technology devices, with six-year-olds having the same level of knowledge as the average 45-year-old.

Health concerns

The poll also indicated that those aged 16-24 are likely to do more than one task at a time, squeezing 14 hours and 7 minutes of media activity into each day, in just over 9 hours.

Dr Aric Sigman, a psychologist who focuses on childhood disease, says the Ofcom statistics are "another measure showing that children are spending more of their recreational time looking at screens, particularly in bedrooms by themselves".

Continue reading the main story

• 8hrs 41mins texting, talking, typing, gaming, listening or watching

• 8hrs 21mins sleeping

This, Dr Sigman says, is "health and development issue", with some of the adverse effects associated with prolonged screen time including obesity and diabetes.

"We need to think of recreational screen time as a form of consumption in the way that we thing of sugar, fat alcohol, hours in the sun - measured in units of hours per day," he added.

Analysis: Rory Cellan-Jones, BBC technology correspondent

If you want to see the future, look at the media habits of Britain's 14 and 15 year olds.

That's the message from Ofcom's research - and that could be scary for some old media companies.

The techie teens are watching less live TV, and much less live radio than adults - and turning to YouTube and streaming music services for their entertainment.

They are giving up on voice calls and email in favour of text- based communication, flitting from Instagram to WhatsApp to Snapchat in a constant search for what's new.

What we don't know is what the teen techies will do when they grow up. Will they settle down in front of their own living-room TV, tune into a radio station, even buy a daily newspaper? Or will they continue to multi-task and experiment with every new thing? If that does turn out to be the case, then all kinds of media businesses will struggle to survive.

TV 'still king'

In line with previous Ofcom studies, the report showed that live TV and radio is still strongly resilient, despite the many alternative methods of consuming content on offer.

The average amount of time people spent watching TV each day - three hours and 52 minutes - was more than the combined time spent on mobile phones, landlines and the internet.

But this is the first time daily TV viewing has dropped below four hours since 2010.

Ian Maude, from media research firm Enders Analysis, said: "Television is still king when it comes to media consumption but an increasing share is viewed via catch-up or on-demand especially amongst the YouTube generation."

But he added that "it's still early in the digital revolution".

Almost 80% of TV viewing is done without simultaneously using another device, and the vast majority of TV is watched live, rather than via recording devices or playback services, such as BBC iPlayer or 4oD.

Books still popular

The rise of digital formats has also not convinced the vast majority of Britons to get rid of their physical media collections.

Continue reading the main story

• 3hrs 52mins watching television

• 2hrs 46mins listening to radio

• 1hr 8mins on the internet (PC/laptop)

• 28mins using a mobile phone

• 9mins talking on a fixed phone

BBC

Some 84% of UK adults surveyed by Ofcom said they had a book collection and a similar number said they owned music CDs.

Meanwhile, four out of every five people said they had a DVD library - a figure that has stayed roughly the same since 2005.

Even the post has not been rendered obsolete. Approximately a third of adults questioned said they had sent a personal letter in the past month.

However some forms of traditional media are suffering from the rise of digital.

When asked which form of media they would miss most, just 2% of those aged 16 or older said they would feel the absence of newspapers or magazines.

To coincide with the release of its report, Ofcom also launched an online quiz, where users can find out how tech savvy they are and are offered advice on how to improve their understanding of the digital world.

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Google to prioritise secure websites

7 August 2014 Last updated at 11:52

Google has said it will give preference to more secure websites in its search rankings from now on.

The search engine has been testing highlighting pages that have HTTPS encryption by default, and will now roll out across its algorithms.

"We've seen positive results, so we're starting to use HTTPS as a ranking signal," Google said.

The decision could encourage more sites to turn on encryption, which makes them less vulnerable to hacking.

Encryption is used to digitally scramble data as it passes between a user's device and an online service in order to prevent others eavesdropping on the information.

It is used by many, but not all, sites that show a little padlock and use a web address beginning HTTPS. The "S" stands for secure.

But for many firms across the web, adding encryption has to this point been an additional burden in terms of time and costs.

'Best interest'

"Previously organisations have shied away from encryption due to cost concerns or fears of slowing website response times," said Jason Hart, of the data protection consultancy SafeNet.

"But there are now high-speed encryption technologies available that mean cost and speed need no longer be an issue.

"So there really is no excuse for any data to be transmitted or stored in plain text.

"Every company wants to rank favourably on Google, so it's in their best interest to ensure web pages are encrypted."

Google said that - for the time being - whether a site was encrypted or not would not be a crucial factor in how they ranked sites.

"For now it's only a very lightweight signal - affecting fewer than 1% of global queries, and carrying less weight than other signals such as high-quality content - while we give webmasters time to switch to HTTPS," Google's Zineb Ait Bahajji and Gary Illyes said in the blog post.

"But over time, we may decide to strengthen it, because we'd like to encourage all website owners to switch from HTTP to HTTPS to keep everyone safe on the web."

David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer, has previously said the US needed to change its approach to intelligence to restore trust in the internet.

In 2011, Google introduced HTTPS by default on its popular Gmail service.

Yahoo moved all its users' data to secure servers in March 2014, and Facebook committed to secure browsing by default since July 2013.

The move of larger tech companies to encourage encryption comes after the leaks from Edward Snowden alleged that the National Security Agency (NSA) and GCHQ used various technologies to spy on citizens, which prompted a global debate about cyber-security and privacy.

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Piracy police arrest 20-year-old

7 August 2014 Last updated at 14:54

A man who allegedly ran a service that provided roundabout access to pirated films and music files has been arrested by City of London Police.

The 20-year-old from Nottingham is believed to have been running a proxy server that connected to addresses banned by service providers in the UK.

Several popular proxy sites have been taken down in the past few days, but no connection has been made to the arrest.

The police have placed warning notices on the sites concerned.

The operation was carried out by the Intellectual Property Crime Unit (Pipcu), and supported by the UK's Federation Against Copyright Theft (Fact).

Pipcu announced last week it had started placing banner advertisements on websites believed to be offering pirated content illegally.

The messages, which appear instead of paid-for ads, ask users to close their web browsers.

The film and music industries have consistently pushed for court orders to ban access to piracy sites in the UK, and many popular torrent sites are now blocked by the major UK internet service providers (ISPs).

However, the sites continue to operate outside the UK, and surfers often find ways to circumvent the ISPs' restrictions, using proxy servers or other identity-disguising services.

The sites taken down by City of London Police do not offer pirated content themselves, but rather offer tools that allow users to connect to illegal services such as the Pirate Bay and similar torrent sites.

"Internet users have sought ways to continue to access the sites by getting round the blocking put in place by the ISPs," said Kieron Sharp, director general of Fact.

"This operation is a major step in tackling those providing such services."​​

Det Ch Insp Andy Fyfe, head of Pipcu, said the operation highlights how it is "working in partnership with the creative and advertising industries" on targeting "every aspect of how copyrighting material is illegally being made available to internet users".

He added: "We will come down hard on people believed to be committing or deliberately facilitating such offences."

The man was questioned at a local police station before being released on bail.

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Clothes drive online shopping growth

7 August 2014 Last updated at 15:54

Clothes have been the most popular items bought on the internet this year, according to official figures.

Some 74% of adults had bought goods or services online this year, according to a snapshot of the way the internet is used in our daily lives.

Almost half had bought clothing, with 64% of 25 to 34-year-olds buying clothes online, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said.

Internet activity has risen significantly in recent years.

The ONS said that 38 million, or 76%, of British adults accessed the internet every day. This total had risen by 21 million since 2006.

Internet shopping had grown in popularity, rising from 53% of adults buying goods and services online in 2008 to 74% now, it added.

Younger age groups have been regular users of online shopping, notably on smartphones, with nine out of 10 people aged 25 to 34 having shopped online. But the ONS has noted that people of pension age have increased their online shopping activities.

Some 40% of those aged 65 and over bought online in 2014. This was more than double the 2008 estimate of 16%.

Other financial transactions have also risen in popularity online. Internet banking is used by 53% of British adults in 2014 compared with 30% in 2007.

The figures come on the same day as the communications regulator Ofcom said UK adults now spent more time using technology devices than they did sleeping.

It said UK adults spent an average of eight hours and 41 minutes a day on media devices, compared with the average night's sleep of eight hours and 21 minutes.

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