Insurgents Intercept Drone Video in King-Size Security Breach (Updated, with Video) | Danger Room In Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military depends on an array of drones to snoop on and stalk insurgents. Now it looks as if insurgents are tapping into those same drones’ broadcasts, to see what the flying robot spies see. If true — and widespread — it’s potentially one of the most serious military security breaches in years. “U.S. military personnel in Iraq discovered the problem late last year when they apprehended a Shiite militant whose laptop contained files of intercepted drone video feeds,” Wall Street Journal reports. How’d the militants manage to get access to such secret data? Using cheap, downloadable programs like SkyGrabber, militants were apparently able to watch and record the video feed — and potentially be tipped off when U.S. and coalition forces are stalking them. And here’s the real scandal: Military officials have known about this potential vulnerability since the Bosnia campaign. UPDATE: Check out this 2002 video from CBS, catching the intercept in the act…
THE EXILED 1973 NSA cryptography lectures For those with an interest in cryptography, and secure communication generally, a series of recently declassified lectures from the American National Security Agency are well worth reading. The moderately-to-heavily redacted documents from 1973 cover a number of engaging subjects. The first volume covers the importance and practicalities of secure communications, codes, one time pads, encryption systems for voice communication, various bits of specific American communication equipment, TEMPEST attacks (described as “the most serious technical security problem [the NSA] currently face[s] in the COMSEC world”), and more. The second volume includes lecture on operational security, issues around the number of sending and receiving stations, public (commercial) cryptography, the destruction of cryptographic equipment in emergency situations, and more. Originally classified Secret and ‘No Foreign,’ the lectures are well written, engaging, and illuminating. Report a typo or inaccuracy
Developments in Facial Recognition Eventually, it will work. You'll be able to wear a camera that will automatically recognize someone walking towards you, and a earpiece that will relay who that person is and maybe something about him. None of the technologies required to make this work are hard; it's just a matter of getting the error rate down low enough for it to be a useful system. The police want this sort of system. A small camera fitted to the glasses can capture 400 facial images per second and send them to a central computer database storing up to 13 million faces. In the future, this sort of thing won't be limited to the police. Of course, there are false positives -- as there are with any system like this. In Boston, someone erroneously had his driver's licence revoked: It turned out Gass was flagged because he looks like another driver, not because his image was being used to create a fake identity. IEEE Spectrum and The Economist have published similar articles.
Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones Statement from Jeremy Regarding His Plea Statement from Jeremy Regarding His Plea Today I pleaded guilty to one count of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. This was a very difficult decision. I hope this statement will explain my reasoning. I believe in the power of the truth. During the past 15 months I have been relatively quiet about the specifics of my case as I worked with my lawyers to review the discovery and figure out the best legal strategy. Now that I have pleaded guilty it is a relief to be able to say that I did work with Anonymous to hack Stratfor, among other websites. I have already spent 15 months in prison. I would like to thank all of my friends and supporters for their amazing and ongoing gestures of solidarity. Jeremy Hammond
Official site for programs SkyGrabber (accepting free to air satellite data by digital satellite TV tuner card (DVB-S/DVB-S2)), LanGrabber (save YouTube video), Tuner4PC (software for satellite internet) UniBeast: Install Mac OS X Lion Using an All-In-One Bootable USB Drive STEP 1: Purchase Mac OS X Lion The operating system is not free. There are two ways to purchase your copy of Mac OS X Lion. STEP 2: Create a Bootable USB Drive Using UniBeast Take a deep breath and take your time- this is pretty simple, but it's easy to miss things if you rush. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. The process will take about 10-15 minutes, depending on system and drive speed, but will show hours. STEP 3: Install Mac OS X Lion You're almost done! 1. 2. 3. You may have to type extra command line flags to reach the installer. 4. If updating an existing Snow Leopard install, skip 5-14. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 17. 18. 19. STEP 4: Post-Installation Using MultiBeastMultiBeast is an all-in-one post-installation tool designed to enable boot from hard drive, and install support for Audio, Network, and Graphics. 1. If your drive doesn't boot on its own, and you get an error referencing boot0, fix it using the methods listed here.
When You Don’t Own Yourself In the short time that Social Roulette was active, 393 people pulled the trigger. Given the 1 in 6 odds, approximately 65 people should have had their accounts deleted. In fact, all 393 people survived. One side of Social Roulette is about discomfort with social networks, or ambivalence about digital identity. This manifested in the tweets and posts from people bashing Facebook or daring each other to play. A few weeks ago, on April 20th, I saw Friend Fracker , a piece from Harper Reed and Rafael Lozano-Hemmer developed during Rhizome’s 7 on 7 conference. In 2009 the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine and Seuppukoo gave you the chance to delete all your social network activity and your account. Deleting an account is one thing, but playing games with it is another. I started researching the process of Facebook profile deletion, but was dismayed to discover how difficult the process was. This made me feel like my information was hardly mine to delete by hand, much less in an automated way.
Become a Programmer, Motherfucker If you don't know how to code, then you can learn even if you think you can't. Thousands of people have learned programming from these fine books: Learn Python The Hard Way Learn Ruby The Hard Way Learn Code The Hard Way I'm also working on a whole series of programming education books at learncodethehardway.org. Learn C The Hard Way Learn SQL The Hard Way Graphics Programming Language Agnostic NerdDinner Walkthrough Assembly Language Bash Clojure Clojure Programming ColdFusion CFML In 100 Minutes Delphi / Pascal Django Djangobook.com Erlang Learn You Some Erlang For Great Good Flex Getting started with Adobe Flex (PDF) Forth Git Grails Getting Start with Grails Haskell Java JavaScript JavaScript (Node.js specific) Latex The Not So Short Introduction to LATEX (perfect for beginners) Linux Advanced Linux Programming Lisp Lua Programming In Lua (for v5 but still largely relevant)Lua Programming Gems (not entirely free, but has a lot of free chapters and accompanying code) Maven Mercurial Nemerle Nemerle NoSQL Oberon Objective-C
Reporters use Google, find breach, get branded as “hackers” Call it security through absurdity: a pair of telecom firms have branded reporters for Scripps News as "hackers" after they discovered the personal data of over 170,000 customers—including social security numbers and other identifying data that could be used for identity theft—sitting on a publicly accessible server. While the reporters claim to have discovered the data with a simple Google search, the firms' lawyer claims they used "automated" means to gain access to the company's confidential data and that in doing so the reporters violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act with their leet hacker skills. The files were records of applicants for the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) Lifeline subsidized cell phone program for low-income consumers. Vcare and the telecom providers are explicitly required to not retain this data under the regulations of the FCC program. Scripps News' Isaac Wolf contacted the chief operating officer of TerraCom and YourTel for an interview.
Privacy on the Line: Security lapse exposes some Lifeline phone customers to ID theft risk Last fall, when Linda Mendez was offered discount phone service through a federal program for the poor, the San Antonio mom thought it was too good to be true. She signed up anyway. (PRIVACY ON THE LINE: Get additional information on investigation - Mendez, 51, works the graveyard shift at a university gym, where she keeps the building clean and stocked with towels. She uses many of her cellphone's allotted 250 minutes each month to call the family's modest house in the evening while she's at work, checking on her husband and four young children. Did you do your homework? Mendez's phone also comes in handy during the day. "I'm always telling my husband, ‘where's my phone?'" "I need it because something's usually happening." For all the convenience afforded by Lifeline, the federal program that subsidizes phone service for qualified low-income households, Mendez now says her initial doubts were justified. back to September were posted to the Internet, Scripps found.