Digital Consequences
"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.
A mysterious email is showing up in the members' inboxes. The subject line says, "Remember Mary Cronin? Say hi to the newest class of '83 alum to join." Thing is, Mary Cronin, class of '83, didn't make it to her ten year reunion. Someone murdered her in April of 1992. Her killer has never been caught. Debbie McGrew, President of Westside's Alumni Association says, "It's extremely upsetting. You would think such a web service such as classmates.com would have a sophisticated data base or some sort of internal checks to make sure that the people trying to register with them are valid accurate grads of the high school they are representing ."
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,"
At some point around 2 a.m. PDT, a fiber optic line owned by AT&T but leased to Verizon became damaged. It was located in a manhole about 10 feet below the roadway. San Jose Police told KCBS-radio that they suspect vandalism and are treating the area as a crime scene. The damage to the line silenced landline phones, cell phone service and Internet access for many in the area. But it also impacted a number of Web sites, which have data centers in the Silicon Valley area that - apparently - are connected to that fiber optic line.
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...."
Earlier this week, the social networking site Twitter was rocked by a brief Tweet exchange which stirred up feelings all over the web. The widely reported on story is of a woman, Connor Riley, who Tweeted the following: "Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work." Shortly thereafter a Cisco employee spotted the Tweet and responded with: "Who is the hiring manager. I'm sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web." The exchange launched what really seemed to be the entire Internet into an uproar.
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."
Twitter has jumped the shark for the digerati attending South by Southwest here in Austin. Daniel Terdiman at CNET points out what everyone trying to follow the #sxsw tweets has discovered — there are just too many of them. It seems that, while Twitter's hardware can scale for the many millions of people who have joined the community, the actual service cannot. Twitter is still up and running, but the idea of generating a real time picture of what folks are doing, and extracting relevant information from that picture, is kind of like trying to pick out your grandma at the Washington Mall on the satellite image taken during President Barack Obama's inauguration.
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.
Cathay Pacific has apologized for embarrassing a customer whose anguish after missing her flight was captured on video by an airline employee and posted on the Internet. The Hong Kong airline said in a statement to The Associated Press on Thursday that the worker who filmed the video has been disciplined but that another person posted the footage on YouTube, a video-sharing Web site.
said the pump at the By-Pass Deli and Conoco service station at Stevens Drive and the Highway 240 Richland bypass registered only $26 for the fuel. But somehow the transaction was recorded on his debit card as totaling $81,400,836,908.... called customer service for PayPal, which is where he established the debit account.... "Somebody from a foreign country who spoke in broken English argued with me for 10 to 15 minutes.... Did you get the gas?' he asked. Like I had to prove that I didn't pump $81,400,836,908 in gas!"
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.
A White House decision to use a generic flash video player for hosting President Barack Obama's latest weekly video address on WhiteHouse.gov is being seen by some as a sign that the executive office is responding to previous concerns about the use of embedded YouTube videos on the site. The White House has denied that its use of a generic player signals any change in policy on using videos from YouTube and other third parties on WhiteHouse.gov.
The e-mail begins, "Racism still exists in this country." Attached to it is a photo of a window display at a bookstore in Coral Gables, Fla., featuring eight neatly placed tomes about President Obama and his family. Smack dab in the center of the display is a book titled "MONKEYS." The author of the e-mail then encourages a boycott of the store.
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