Digital Criminal
"In startling revelations, convicted terrorist Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri admitted that Al Qaeda used public telephones, pre-paid calling cards, search engines and Hotmail. al-Marri 'used a "10-code" to protect the [phone] numbers — subtracting the actual digits in the phone numbers from 10 to arrive at a coded number.' The real story behind all this is that the terrorists weren't using sophisticated methods to avoid detection or monitoring — which tells us just how crappy SIGINT really is right now.
The Oklahoma Department of Human Services (DHS) is notifying more than one million state residents that their personal data was stored on an unencrypted laptop that was stolen from an agency employee. The computer file contained the names, Social Security numbers, birth dates and home addresses of Oklahoma's Human Services' clients receiving benefits from programs such as Medicaid, child care assistance, nutrition aid and disability benefits
Apple -- on the verge of celebrating its 1 billionth App Store download -- has pulled a controversial application called "Baby Shaker" from its virtual store shelves that generated public outrage. ... a game that involved shaking the iPhone vigorously to make a crying baby on the screen stop crying. Two red X's appear over the baby's eyes when you "win."
"Now programs with millions of lines of code are written by teams of programmers, none of whom knows the entire program; hence, no individual can predict the effect of a given command with absolute certainty since portions of programs may interact in unexpected, untested ways." That's what might have happened during an exercise in South Africa in 2007, when a robot anti-aircraft gun sprayed hundreds of rounds of cannon shell around its position, killing nine soldiers and injuring 14.
Add top-secret plans for the expensive, much-delayed Joint Strike Fighter to the list of victims of alleged Chinese and Russian hack attacks, or so the Wall Street Journal reports. The paper cites "current and former government officials familiar with the attacks," and claims that the Air Force's air traffic control system has also been compromised.
Social networks such as Twitter may blunt people's sense of morality, claim brain scientists. ... A study suggests rapid-fire news updates and instant social interaction are too fast for the 'moral compass' of the brain to process. [Oh, my!]
Two Democrats and a Republican — or perhaps I should say three "Democrats" in the Senate, have moved the ball further down the court to controlling and shutting down the Internet. What?! That's right. Senate Bill 773, the Cybersecurity Act of 2009 written by Jay Rockefeller, D-W. Va.; Bill Nelson, D-Fla.; and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, would give the president and the Commerce Department unlimited power to declare an emergency and pull the plug.
Minutes ago, Twitter confirmed that they have successfully closed the hole that allowed this worm to spread. You're safe to visit Twitter profiles again :)
A worm apparently infected Twitter on Saturday. The worm may originate with the StalkDaily.com site, and Twitter warned people against visiting the site or linking to it. "If you have been locked out of your acct due to the StalkDaily issue, pls do a p/w reset; we may have reset your p/w for safety,"
Cyberspies have penetrated the U.S. electrical grid and left behind software programs that could be used to disrupt the system, according to current and former national-security officials. The spies came from China, Russia and other countries, these officials said, and were believed to be on a mission to navigate the U.S. electrical system and its controls. The intruders haven't sought to damage the power grid or other key infrastructure, but officials warned they could try during a crisis or war.
The Pentagon spent more than $100 million in the last six months responding to and repairing damage from cyber attacks and other computer network problems, military leaders said Tuesday. Air Force Gen. Kevin Chilton, who heads U.S. Strategic Command, said the military is only beginning to track the costs, which are triggered by constant daily attacks against military networks ranging from the Pentagon to bases around the country.
The government of South Korea is drawing up a code of ethics to prevent human abuse of robots—and vice versa.
Symantec is warning Web users that searching for information on computer viruses such as Conficker could put them at risk of unintentionally downloading the virus on to their PC. ... searching for 'conficker' in a number of the Web's most popular search engines brings up a number of hoax Websites that actually host the virus and infect any users that navigate to the site....
April 1 is reportedly D-Day for the latest variant of the global worm, but is the hype living up to reality. Dire predictions for the wave of destruction coming with Conficker.C's activation may be grossly exaggregated, but that doesn't mean solution providers shouldn't help their customers prepare for this and many other security threats.
A tenacious computer worm which has wriggled its way onto machines worldwide is set to evolve on April Fool's Day, becoming harder to exterminate but not expected to wreak havoc. ... The worm is programmed to modify itself on Wednesday to become harder to stop....
A text-messaging hoax that apparently began making the rounds yesterday in at least 16 states warns women to stay away from Walmart stores or risk being killed. ... News reports from around the U.S. say police departments have been besieged by calls regarding the hoax texts, and Walmart has reached No. 5 on Twitter's list of trending topics. The text messages appear to be tailored to local conditions -- warning of gang activity in areas where gangs are active, but vaguer threats in areas, such as Walmart's home of Northwest Arkansas, where they aren't. ... A text rumor making the rounds in New Mexico says three women are to be killed in an initiation rite for a Mexican gang. ...
The networks powering industrial control systems have been breached more than 125 times in the past decade, with one resulting in U.S. deaths.... evidence of more than 125 control systems breaches involving systems in nuclear power plants, hydroelectric plants, water utilities, the oil industry and agribusiness.... a June 1999 gasoline pipeline rupture near Bellingham, Washington. That rupture spilled more than 200,000 gallons of gasoline into two creeks, which ignited and killed three people. Investigators found several problems that contributed to the rupture, but Weiss has identified a computer failure in the pipeline's central control room as part of the problem. ... It could take the U.S. a long time to dig out from coordinated attacks on infrastructure using control systems.... The industrial control system industry is years behind the IT industry in protecting cybersecurity, and some of the techniques used in IT security would damage control systems...
The government is working on a new Smart Grid that would use computer technologies to make the country's energy infrastructure more efficient. But the government's plans for increased technology research and a smart electric grid could be compromised if cybersecurity is not improved.... "Unfortunately, if the new smart meters are not secure, they can be hacked, taken over by attackers and used to disrupt the delivery of electricity.... If the smart grid is built to existing standards, however, it will not be secure. ... The real risk lies in the long-term damage to our economic competitiveness and our technological leadership...."
An urban legend about a gang initiation at Wal-Mart that included a killing spree was being spread once again in Salt Lake County on Thursday. But law enforcers wanted to assure the public that there was no truth behind the myth. ... But enough people have received the rumor through text messages that the sheriff's office was forced to spend much of Thursday morning answering phone calls from concerned residents. The text tells people, "Do not go to any Wal-Mart tonight. Gang initiation to shoot three women tonight. Not sure which Wal-Mart, so please pass this on."
arrested on charges of online solicitation, promotion of kiddie porn and sexual performance of a child. ... playing Warhawk on PS3s when O'Shea convinced the girl to take nude photos of herself and send them to him
* Governments, corporations snooping on website visits... * Next big thing on Web is linked data...* Berners-Lee says future of Web is on mobile phones Surfers on the Internet are at increasing risk from governments and corporations tracking the sites they visit to build up a picture of their activities, the founder of the World Wide Web said on Friday.
As text messaging has boomed in recent years, it has also given rise to so-called "textual harassment." Text messages antagonize recipients in a way that is not easily ignored: Most people are never far from their cell phones, and the gadgets tend to blink and chirp until unopened messages are acknowledged. Adding another sting, the victims are often charged by their cell phone companies for receiving the messages. ... 23 percent of stalking or harassment victims reported in 2006 that the stalker had used some form of cyberstalking, such as cell phone texting or e-mail, to harass them.
An Internet security company claims that Iran has taken advantage of a computer security breach to obtain engineering and communications information about Marine One
Autonomous military robots that will fight future wars must be programmed to live by a strict warrior code, or the world risks untold atrocities at their steely hands. The stark warning — which includes discussion of a "Terminator"-style scenario in which robots turn on their human masters — is part of a hefty report funded by and prepared for the U.S. Navy's high-tech and secretive Office of Naval Research. The report, the first serious work of its kind on military robot ethics, envisages a fast-approaching era where robots are smart enough to make battlefield decisions that are at present the preserve of humans. Eventually, it notes, robots could come to display significant cognitive advantages over Homo sapiens soldiers.
TelTech Systems is offering mobile telephone users the power to unmask callers who block their numbers or names from being displayed. The US-based firm launched a TrapCall service this month with an online posting thanking its development team and declaring "Get ready for the site to go ballistic." To use the service, people register mobile telephone numbers at a TrapCall.com website without having to download software to devices. Calls from unidentified sources can then be bounced to TelTech computers, which reveal points of origin.
French fighter planes were unable to take off after military computers were infected by a computer virus
Google this week admitted that its staff will pick and choose what appears in its search results. It's a historic statement - and nobody has yet grasped its significance. Not so very long ago, Google disclaimed responsibility for its search results by explaining that these were chosen by a computer algorithm. ... A few years ago, Google's apparently unimpeachable objectivity got some people very excited, and technology utopians began to herald Google as the conduit for a new form of democracy. Google was only too pleased to encourage this view. ... what was once Googlewashing by a select few now has Google's active participation.
The country's broadcasters were summoned Friday by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting to deal with charges that the live saturation coverage had helped the terrorists. At the same time, however, traditional media were criticized as too slow and inaccurate by legions of "citizen journalists" using Internet services such as Twitter and photo site Flickr. The deputy commissioner of police argued that the terrorists, who were holed up in two major hotels and became involved in floor-by-floor firefights with police, were gaining tactical information from TV. Using powers under Section 19 of the country's Cable Television Networks Act, he ordered a blackout of TV news channels.
By 2010 the US will have invested $4 billion in a research programme into "autonomous systems", the military jargon for robots, on the basis that they would not succumb to fear or the desire for vengeance that afflicts frontline soldiers. A British robotics expert has been recruited by the US Navy to advise them on building robots that do not violate the Geneva Conventions. [Anything that can be programmed can be hacked and re-programmed. And no program can encompass every moral possibility.]
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