security Archives | Page 5 of 17

Tagsecurity

NSA and Raytheon Team-Up for Cybersnooping Project

July 8, 2010 / Klint Finley

Nuclear Power Plant in Limerick, Pa.

A piece I wrote for RWW today:

The Wall Street Journal reports, citing unnamed sources, that the NSA is launching a program to help protect critical infrastructure – including private enterprises – from cyber attacks. According to the paper, defense contractor Raytheon has received the contract for the project, which would rely on a series of sensors to detect “unusual activity suggesting an impending cyber attack.” This follows the Lieberman-Collins bill passing committee in the Senate.

The Orwellian nature of the name was alledgedly not lost on Raytheon: The Wall Street Journal claims to have seen an internal Raytheon e-mail saying “Perfect Citizen is Big Brother.”

ReadWriteEnterprise: Do Private Enterprises Need the NSA to Protect Them From Cyber Attacks?

First human ‘infected with computer virus’

May 26, 2010 / Klint Finley

The University of Reading Cybernetic Intelligence Research Group‘s Dr. Mark Gasson – the infected man

OK, so the headline is exaggerated, but this is extremely interesting:

A British scientist says he is the first man in the world to become infected with a computer virus.

Dr Mark Gasson from the University of Reading contaminated a computer chip which was then inserted into his hand.

The device, which enables him to pass through security doors and activate his mobile phone, is a sophisticated version of ID chips used to tag pets.

In trials, Dr Gasson showed that the chip was able to pass on the computer virus to external control systems.

If other implanted chips had then connected to the system they too would have been corrupted, he said.

Dr Gasson admits that the test is a proof of principle but he thinks it has important implications for a future where medical devices such as pacemakers and cochlear implants become more sophisticated, and risk being contaminated by other human implants.

BBC: First human ‘infected with computer virus’

(via The Edge of Tomorrow)

Worst-Case Thinking

May 13, 2010 / Klint Finley

mushroom cloud

Worst-case thinking means generally bad decision making for several reasons. First, it’s only half of the cost-benefit equation. Every decision has costs and benefits, risks and rewards. By speculating about what can possibly go wrong, and then acting as if that is likely to happen, worst-case thinking focuses only on the extreme but improbable risks and does a poor job at assessing outcomes.

Second, it’s based on flawed logic. It begs the question by assuming that a proponent of an action must prove that the nightmare scenario is impossible.

Third, it can be used to support any position or its opposite. If we build a nuclear power plant, it could melt down. If we don’t build it, we will run short of power and society will collapse into anarchy. If we allow flights near Iceland’s volcanic ash, planes will crash and people will die. If we don’t, organs won’t arrive in time for transplant operations and people will die. If we don’t invade Iraq, Saddam Hussein might use the nuclear weapons he might have. If we do, we might destabilize the Middle East, leading to widespread violence and death.

Of course, not all fears are equal. Those that we tend to exaggerate are more easily justified by worst-case thinking. So terrorism fears trump privacy fears, and almost everything else; technology is hard to understand and therefore scary; nuclear weapons are worse than conventional weapons; our children need to be protected at all costs; and annihilating the planet is bad. Basically, any fear that would make a good movie plot is amenable to worst-case thinking.

Schneier: Worst-Case Thinking

The other extreme is militant positive thinking. The modern condition seems to be a constant fluctuation between these two extremes: irrational fear and irrational optimism.

Facebook steps up lobbying, deepens ties with intelligence agencies, FTC

April 27, 2010 / Klint Finley

Facebook has been gradually boosting its profile in Washington D.C. over the past year and is on the hunt for a second senior lobbyist to add to its office of four. Disclosures released a few days ago show that, on top of lobbying the usual suspects Internet companies reach out to like the Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. senators and representatives, the fast-growing social network has also been busy deepening ties to government intelligence and homeland security agencies. […]

At the very top of Facebook’s agenda in D.C. is privacy, he said. There’s much at stake. The ease of data collection and sharing on the web is on a collision course with privacy. The suite of projects the company unveiled yesterday at its f8 conference in San Francisco may spark further privacy concerns about the mass of data it will now be tracking on users as they traverse the web. To head off concerns that it is too cavalier with pushing users to be more public, Facebook made a savvy move when it brought longtime privacy advocate Tim Sparapani from the American Civil Liberties Union on-board last year.

Venturebeat: Facebook steps up lobbying, deepens ties with intelligence agencies, FTC

This is all a very big deal if it’s successful. Bigger than you think. And It makes Facebook a direct competitor to Google. Facebook has managed to succeed where Google has failed — turning your social behavior into actionable intelligence. Google’s major attempts at insights into web-wide consumer behavior (Orkut, FriendConnect, Checkout, Buzz) have not had anything close to the success that the Facebook platform has had. The intelligence collected from relationships with others, social micro-interactions (e.g., “likes,” “shares,” comments, updates), location (yup, Facebook’s working on that) and even transactions (see Facebook Credits) will be inherently more valuable to advertisers than click-through and search behavior (as advertisers get smarter themselves about what those kinds of behaviors mean to their bottom lines). And make no mistake, this data will be collected en masse. Facebook expects to serve 1 billion “likes” in just 24 hours. By applying this kind of statistically significant intelligence to its Engagement Ads, Facebook can deliver even more efficient, impression-generating advertising for its customers.

And also: EFF sues CIA, DOJ, others over Facebook surveillance

(Photo by _Max-B / CC)

Tattooing Patients With UV Ink Could Protect Pacemakers From Hackers

April 19, 2010 / Klint Finley

UV Tattoo

More and more implantable devices, like pacemakers or defibrillators, are turning to wireless signals as a means to communicate with external devices, but in doing so they open themselves to security breaches. Several solutions are in the works that tackle this problem by upping device defenses, but by piling on security measures, yet another risk emerges: that at a critical time an authorized physician might not be able to access the device.

So Microsoft Research proposes putting a new technological spin on an old, time-tested security protocol: protect every device with a password, then tattoo the password right onto the patient in invisible UV ink.

(Thanks Wade)

The ’80s were right! Only absurd facial makeup can save you from the surveillance state

March 31, 2010 / Klint Finley

Makeup patterns

Gathering info from a variety of different face-tracking programs (all based on the rudimentary, yet effective Viola-Jones Method, Harvey alters and experiments with images to make them undetectable. His most recent run used women’s faces from “Figure Drawing for Fashion Design” and smeared each visage with, erm, Lady Gaga-esque weirdness. As one may suspect, the stranger, more asymmetrical designs evading the detecting software more readily. Identifying ‘Haar-like features’ for identification — or the pixels that cameras detect as belonging to face — Harvey attempted to confuse and contort the software, by confusing and contorting the face.

Switched: Abstract, Cyber Warrior Makeup May Hide Your Face From Surveillance

(via Fjennings)

Identifying People by their Bacteria

March 29, 2010 / Klint Finley

bacteria plate

The human body hosts hundreds of bacterial species that perform various salubrious housekeeping chores, from aiding digestion to helping the immune system identify foreign invaders. Every person—even an identical twin—has a unique distribution of bacteria on various body areas. Now some researchers are suggesting that these individual differences could lead to the development of new crime-solving tools.

Science: CSI’s Latest Clue—Bacteria

(via Schneier on Security)

US Army claims WikiLeaks is a security threat

March 19, 2010 / Klint Finley

Julian Assange

(Above: WikiLeaks spokesperson Julian Assange)

To the list of the enemies threatening the security of the United States, the Pentagon has added WikiLeaks.org, a tiny online source of information and documents that governments and corporations around the world would prefer to keep secret.

The Pentagon assessed the danger WikiLeaks.org posed to the Army in a report marked “unauthorized disclosure subject to criminal sanctions.” It concluded that “WikiLeaks.org represents a potential force protection, counterintelligence, OPSEC and INFOSEC threat to the U.S. Army” — or, in plain English, a threat to Army operations and information.

WikiLeaks, true to its mission to publish materials that expose secrets of all kinds, published the 2008 Pentagon report about itself on Monday.

Lt. Col. Lee Packnett, an Army spokesman, confirmed that the report was real. Julian Assange, the editor of WikiLeaks, said the concerns the report raised were hypothetical.

“It did not point to anything that has actually happened as a result of the release,” Mr. Assange said. “It contains the analyst’s best guesses as to how the information could be used to harm the Army but no concrete examples of any real harm being done.”

New York Times: Pentagon Sees a Threat From Online Muckrakers

See also this interview with Julian Assange.

(via Wade)

Car hacking: disgruntled ex-employee disables cars remotely

March 18, 2010 / Klint Finley

Payteck

More than 100 car owners in and around Austin, Texas recently discovered that their cars wouldn’t start. Or that their horns wouldn’t stop honking — all night long. Or that their vehicle leases were suddenly (and luckily, temporarily) transferred to deceased rapper Tupac Shakur.

All of these annoyances were thanks to a former collection agent for Austin-based car dealership Texas Auto Center, who is accused of taking revenge on his former employer by remotely disabling more than 100 customer cars. Twenty-year old Oscar Ramos-Lopez reportedly gained unauthorized access into the dealership’s remote vehicle immobilization system, which allowed him to stop customer vehicles from starting or cause their horns to honk continuously. Ramos-Lopez is also said to have deleted customer accounts and swapped celebrity names for the names of actual customers, according to a report by Austin NBC affiliate KXAN.

The vehicle disabling technology, powered by Cleveland-based Pay Technologies (PayTeck), is only supposed to be used when someone fails to meet their auto loan or lease obligations. Austin police arrested Lopez on Wednesday charging him with breach of computer security.

PC World: Ex-Employee Wreaks Havoc on 100 Cars — Wirelessly

(Thanks Bill!)

White House Cyber Czar: ‘There Is No Cyberwar’

March 5, 2010 / Klint Finley

White House Cyber Czar Howard Schmidt

Howard Schmidt, the new cybersecurity czar for the Obama administration, has a short answer for the drumbeat of rhetoric claiming the United States is caught up in a cyberwar that it is losing.

“There is no cyberwar,” Schmidt told Wired.com in a sit-down interview Wednesday at the RSA Security Conference in San Francisco.

“I think that is a terrible metaphor and I think that is a terrible concept,” Schmidt said. “There are no winners in that environment.”

Instead, Schmidt said the government needs to focus its cybersecurity efforts to fight online crime and espionage.

His stance contradicts Michael McConnell, the former director of national intelligence who made headlines last week when he testified to Congress that the country was already in the midst of a cyberwar — and was losing it.

Threat Level: White House Cyber Czar: ‘There Is No Cyberwar’

Technoccult

Mutate Your Mind