Revealed: Air Force ordered software to manage army of fake virtual people By Stephen C. WebsterFriday, February 18, 2011 15:07 EDT Update (below): HBGary Federal among bidders These days, with Facebook and Twitter and social media galore, it can be increasingly hard to tell who your “friends” are. But after this, Internet users would be well advised to ask another question entirely: Are my “friends” even real people? In the continuing saga of data security firm HBGary, a new caveat has come to light: not only did they plot to help destroy secrets outlet WikiLeaks and discredit progressive bloggers, they also crafted detailed proposals for software that manages online “personas,” allowing a single human to assume the identities of as many fake people as they’d like. The revelation was among those contained in the company’s emails, which were dumped onto bittorrent networks after hackers with cyber protest group “Anonymous” broke into their systems. Government involvement Update: The contract has since been taken off FBO.gov. Manufacturing consent “That’s me.
How To Set Up An Open Mesh Network in Your Neighborhood Mesh networks can share web connections throughout a neighborhood, spreading the reach of a broadband connection. They're an excellent way to improve a community’s web access, and could also serve a role in the infrastructure for the Next Net that Douglas Rushkoff envisions. Open Mesh is a company that offers mesh network solutions for businesses and communities. They provided Shareable with this guide to how to set up a mesh network in your own neighborhood. It is now easy for anyone to extend their wireless coverage throughout a hotel, apartment, office, neighborhood, village, coffee shop, shopping mall, campground, marina or just about anywhere else you need to extend wireless coverage. It should take you no more than a few minutes to do it, even if you consider the extent of your technical skills to be no more than turning on your computer and checking your email. Some basic terminology: Network: A group of computers that can talk to each other – in our case, wirelessly. Gateway: Node:
Darknet Black ops: how HBGary wrote backdoors for the government On November 16, 2009, Greg Hoglund, a cofounder of computer security firm HBGary, sent an e-mail to two colleagues. The message came with an attachment, a Microsoft Word file called AL_QAEDA.doc, which had been further compressed and password protected for safety. Its contents were dangerous. "I got this word doc linked off a dangler site for Al Qaeda peeps," wrote Hoglund. "I think it has a US govvy payload buried inside. The attached document, which is in English, begins: "LESSON SIXTEEN: ASSASSINATIONS USING POISONS AND COLD STEEL (UK/BM-154 TRANSLATION)." It purports to be an Al-Qaeda document on dispatching one's enemies with knives (try "the area directly above the genitals"), with ropes ("Choking… there is no other area besides the neck"), with blunt objects ("Top of the stomach, with the end of the stick."), and with hands ("Poking the fingers into one or both eyes and gouging them."). But the poison recipes, for ricin and other assorted horrific bioweapons, are the main draw.
The Spy files WikiLeaks: The Spy Files Mass interception of entire populations is not only a reality, it is a secret new industry spanning 25 countries It sounds like something out of Hollywood, but as of today, mass interception systems, built by Western intelligence contractors, including for ’political opponents’ are a reality. Today WikiLeaks began releasing a database of hundreds of documents from as many as 160 intelligence contractors in the mass surveillance industry. International surveillance companies are based in the more technologically sophisticated countries, and they sell their technology on to every country of the world. But the WikiLeaks Spy Files are more than just about ’good Western countries’ exporting to ’bad developing world countries’. Selling Surveillance to Dictators Trovicor, previously a subsidiary of Nokia Siemens Networks, supplied the Bahraini government with interception technologies that tracked human rights activist Abdul Ghani Al Khanjar. Orwell’s World
TaoSecurity US Paid Millions For Bogus (Patented) Intelligence Software; Now Trying To Cover It Up Claiming 'National Security' There are so many ridiculous aspects to a NY Times story from this weekend about a nearly decade-long relationship between the US government and what appears to be a con man who conned them out of tens of millions of dollars that it's hard to know where to start, so let's break it down in sections: Conned First off, the crux of the story is that a guy named Dennis Montgomery seems to have concocted an elaborate con on the US government that worked for years. He created some software, supposedly originally designed to help colorize movies, but it was later pitched for its capability to (I'm not joking) read coded messages in the "crawl bar" on Al Jazeera which (it was claimed) provided clues to planned terrorist attacks. Various US government agencies basically kept handing over millions and millions of dollars to Mr. Montgomery and partners. Some of those former partners now admit that Montgomery's technology was a hoax, and his presentations included doctored videos and test results.
Tinfoil Hat Linux TrendLabs Content added to Folio Research, News, and Perspectives Subscribe Add Filters Filter by: Threats Environments Article Type Medium Attacks Abound in Tricky Threat Terrain: 2021 Annual Cybersecurity Report The digital transformations that had enabled many enterprises to stay afloat amid the Covid-19 health crisis also brought about major upheavals in cybersecurity, the impact of which was still widely felt in 2021. March 17, 2022 Trending Topics Cyclops Blink Sets Sights on Asus Routers Cyber Threats Cyberattacks are Prominent in the Russia-Ukraine Conflict Ransomware New Nokoyawa Ransomware Possibly Related to Hive CVE-2022-22965: Analyzing the Exploitation of Spring4Shell Vulnerability in Weaponizing and Executing the Mirai Botnet Malware We discovered active exploitation of a vulnerability in the Spring Framework designated as CVE-2022-22965 that allows malicious actors to download the Mirai botnet malware. Research Apr 08, 2022 Save to Folio Compliance & Risks Latest News Apr 07, 2022 Research Apr 06, 2022
Exclusive: Military’s ‘persona’ software cost millions, used for ‘classified social media activities’ By Stephen C. WebsterTuesday, February 22, 2011 17:49 EDT Most people use social media like Facebook and Twitter to share photos of friends and family, chat with friends and strangers about random and amusing diversions, or follow their favorite websites, bands and television shows. But what does the US military use those same networks for? Well, we can’t tell you: That’s “classified,” a CENTCOM spokesman recently informed Raw Story. One use that’s confirmed, however, is the manipulation of social media through the use of fake online “personas” managed by the military. These “personas” were to have detailed, fictionalized backgrounds, to make them believable to outside observers, and a sophisticated identity protection service was to back them up, preventing suspicious readers from uncovering the real person behind the account. When Raw Story first reported on the contract for this software, it was unclear what the Air Force wanted with it or even if it had been acquired. Mystery bidder
How To [Read/Tip Off] Zero Hedge Without Attracting The Interest Of [Human Resources/The Treasury/Black Helicopters] It seems prudent to make some suggestions about contacting the Zero Hedge team.1. Don't email us directly from work. Somewhere out there, there is a log with your address and ours on it. 2. If you must email from work, after being sure you aren't violating your employer's network usage policies, use a good webmail provider that allows SSL encrypted browsing. Yes, we want to hear from you yesterday. Before Maria Stengart resigned and sued Loving Care, her employer, she e-mailed her lawyer through her personal web-based account from her company-issued computer with Loving Care’s Internet access. If this isn't enough, remember that if you are using your employer's hardware you have no idea what sort of snooping services they have installed for you. 4. We like PGP and have taken great pains to make it easy to email us securely. Our PGP keys were generated and are held on FIPS 140-1 compliant tokens and we use irritatingly long passwords. 5. 6. Finally, PGP Keys: Tyler:
Red Team Journal So, Why Does the Air Force Want Hundreds of Fake Online Identities on Social Media? [Update] | BNET Last Updated Feb 19, 2011 8:05 AM EST Bad enough that spammers are creating fake Facebook accounts that acquire connections with unsuspecting people, then inundate them with crap. Now, though, the U.S. military is looking for software and services to manage upwards of 500 fake online personas designed to interact with social media, presumably including such sites as Facebook and Twitter. Here's the description of the basic service sought: 0001- Online Persona Management Service. 50 User Licenses, 10 Personas per user. In normal language, the Air Force wants software to create and control fictitious online identities, with up to 50 users controlling as many as 10 identities each. As the rest of the contract explains, the Air Force would be able to manipulate IP addresses to make these "individuals" appear to be located in any part of the world. In 2005, the U.S. military was involved in a multimillion covert operation to plant propaganda in the Iraqi media. Related: