August 2011
64 posts
8 tags
July 2011
67 posts
6 tags
A Case for Pseudonyms →
There are myriad reasons why individuals may wish to use a name other than the one they were born with. They may be concerned about threats to their lives or livelihoods, or they may risk political or economic retribution. They may wish to prevent discrimination or they may use a name that’s easier to pronounce or spell in a given culture. Online, the reasons multiply. Internet culture has long...
6 tags
10 tags
7 tags
WASP: The Linux-powered flying spy drone that... →
The Black Hat Security Conference and DEFCON bring together the world’s professional hackers, security researchers, goverment representatives, journalists, and just about anyone who thinks of themselves as a hacker. They listen to talks about security, show off the latest novel hacks, and generally share information about the state of computer security. Every year there’s a highlight to the...
5 tags
House Committee Passes Bill to Force ISPs to... →
A controversial bill that would force ISPs to retain records for up to 12 months that would allow them to identify users by IP address has cleared a key hurdle and passed the House Judiciary Committee by a wide margin, setting it up for passage by the full House. The bill was introduced with the purported intention of protecting children from online pornography, but it has become a lightning rod...
2 tags
The Next Security Scandal Will Be An Attack on... →
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission voted on Tuesday to impose new rules to help oversee what experts warn is a burgeoning and little understood shadow market of ultra high-speed, computer based trading. But one security expert warns that new reporting rules are only part of the problem. High frequency trading systems are also dangerously insecure, with few protections against...
3 tags
When Hacks Attack: The Computer Security Textbook... →
A crusader from Attrition.org has found that an alarmingly high number of books written by computer security experts are nearly 100% copied from other sources. What does that say about the industry? Borrowing code is standard operating procedure for those who work with software. All modern computer program languages use what is known as an “object oriented” model, which means code is...
6 tags
3 tags
Wiretapping and Cryptography Today →
The 2010 U.S. Wiretap Report was released a couple of weeks ago, the latest in a series of puzzles published annually, on and off, by congressional mandate since the Nixon administration. The report, as its name implies, summarizes legal wiretapping by federal and state law enforcement agencies. The reports are puzzles because they are notoriously incomplete; the data relies on spotty reporting,...
3 tags
Scotland Yard Busts Suspected LulzSec Spokesman →
The London Metropolitan Police on Wednesday arrested a 19-year-old Shetland Islands man who they say is “Topiary,” the most visible figure in LulzSec. The police news release doesn’t name the suspect. The bust is the second high-profile arrest of an alleged member of the six-man hacking gang. British police last week arrested a 16-year-old they say is “T-Flow” — another prominent member. In June...
4 tags
Legal Threat Pushes Former HBGary Federal CEO Out... →
Former HBGary Federal CEO Aaron Barr says he will withdraw from a planned appearance at the DEFCON conference in the face of threatened legal action over his plans to take part in a panel discussion there. Barr notified DEFCON organizers on Wednesday that he was withdrawing from the Aug. 6 panel discussion after attorneys representing HBGary Federal threatened to file an injunction against him...
8 tags
2 tags
So sue me: are lawyers really the key to computer... →
If your code gets hacked, are you the one on the hook? In the early decades of the software industry, the answer was usually “no.” Software licenses routinely disclaimed liability, and until recently, security flaws were considered to be just another fact of life. When problems were discovered, companies were expected to fix them quickly, but they were rarely on the hook for the...
5 tags
DHS Fears a Modified Stuxnet Could Attack U.S.... →
One year after the discovery of a sophisticated worm that was used to attack centrifuges in Iran’s nuclear program, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security told Congress it fears the same attack could now be used against critical infrastructures in the U.S. DHS “is concerned that attackers could use the increasingly public information about the code to develop variants targeted at broader...
4 tags
U.S. Says Cybercrime a Major National Security... →
A new report from the National Security Council warns that international cybercrime has reached the upper echelon of threats of to the security of the United States and is responsible for as much as $1 billion in losses in just one year in the U.S. The report, which focuses on a number of broad threats presented by organized crime groups around the world, says cybercrime poses a...
4 tags
Why Spotify Will Kill iTunes →
iTunes as we know it is over. It is walking, talking, and continuing to pretend it’s alive, but Spotify, Europe’s outrageously successful streaming music product, has just shown us the future. Though you might not even be aware of the competitor that is attacking the music titan of the past decade, that iTunes business model is about to be blown up completely and swiftly. And it could even be...
3 tags
Google On The Nortel Loss, Patents As... →
Back in early April, Kent Walker, Google’s Senior Vice President & General Counsel, wrote a post on the Google blog titled “Patents and innovation“. The reason behind the post was clear: Google was feeling the pressure in the patent space after multiple attacks against them and their partners. And now they were going to do something about it. In his post, Walker noted that Google had laid...
6 tags
9 tags
3 tags
Higgs boson 'hints' also seen by US lab →
A US particle machine has seen possible hints of the Higgs boson, it has emerged, after reports this week of similar glimpses at Europe’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) laboratory.
Full Article
6 tags
5 tags
4 tags
The Politics of Surveillance: The Erosion of... →
While most Latin American countries have democratically-elected governments, many still fail to respect human rights, including the right to privacy. Across the region, there have been multiple scandals involving government officials and intelligence agencies engaged in illegal surveillance of communications. These include numerous chilling examples of how interception technologies are being...
7 tags
1 tag
Robber who broke into hair salon beaten up by... →
A Russian man who tried to rob a hair salon ended up as the victim when the female shop owner overpowered him, tied him up naked and then used him as a sex slave for three days. Viktor Jasinski, 32, admitted to police that he had gone to the salon in Meshchovsk, Russia, with the intention of robbing it.
Full Article
4 tags
A pound of flesh: how Cisco's "unmitigated gall"... →
High-tech entrepreneur Peter Adekeye’s yearlong nightmare began after he dropped his wife off at the Vancouver International airport and headed downtown to The Wedgewood, a posh boutique hotel. Inside a tasteful boardroom adorned with gilt-framed mirrors, the US District Court for Northern California, San Jose division, had convened a special sitting to hear Adekeye’s deposition as...
3 tags
Sony insurer says it's not liable for... →
Computerworld - One of Sony’s insurers has asked a New York court to absolve it of any responsibility for defending or indemnifying Sony against claims arising from the recent data breaches at the company. In a lawsuit filed Wednesday, Zurich American Insurance Company argued that Sony’s insurance policies did not cover liabilities arising from incidents such as data breaches. Zurich...
1 tag
Fatter and fewer German nudists as numbers dwindle →
The naked sunbathers who once crowded Germany’s Baltic beaches and city parks are becoming an endangered species due to shifting demographics, the fall of the Berlin Wall, growing prosperity and widening girths.
Full Article
7 tags
4 tags
Anonymous shut down! Ringleaders brought to... →
As many readers would no doubt already be aware, the FBI has just arrested 16 “members” of Anonymous in relation to DDoS attacks and intrusions. The US Department of Justice swiftly issued a press release with the catchy, ALL CAPS title of “SIXTEEN INDIVIDUALS ARRESTED IN THE UNITED STATES FOR ALLEGED ROLES IN CYBER ATTACKS”. So this is a massive blow to...
5 tags
EFF Campaign Increases the Number of Tor Relays by... →
Watching the revolutions unfolding in the Arab world this springtime – and learning details first-hand from our friends on the ground – we at EFF struggled to find meaningful ways to support democratic activists and promote online freedom of expression. But we didn’t just want to lend a helping hand –we wanted to create a pathway so that anyone, anywhere in the world, could contribute to making...
2 tags
Comcast Hijacks Firefox Homepage: “We’ll Fix” →
Comcast says it is revamping the software that new customers need to install to start service with the ISP. The software is unfriendly to Mac users running Firefox: It changes the browser’s homepage to comcast.net, and blocks users from changing it to anything else.
Full Article
9 tags
3 tags
Google: Your Computer Appears to Be Infected →
Google today began warning more than a million Internet users that their computers are infected with a malicious program that hijacks search results and tries to scare users into purchasing fake antivirus software. Google security engineer Damian Menscher said he discovered the monster network of hacked machines while conducting routine maintenance at a Google data center. Menscher said when...
6 tags
FBI arrests AT&T insider for leaking information... →
In June, The Tech Herald reported on information given to us by Ryan Cleary shortly before his arrest. The story centered on an AT&T insider who handed sensitive information and a bootable USB disk over to Anonymous. On Tuesday, the FBI arrested an AT&T employee connected to the leak, during a nationwide sweep targeting Anonymous. An indictment unsealed in the District of New Jersey...
6 tags
Feds Arrest 14 ‘Anonymous’ Suspects Over PayPal... →
Federal agents arrested 14 suspected Anonymous members Tuesday on charges of participating in denial-of-service attacks against online payment service provider PayPal. Five additional suspects were arrested overseas — one in the United Kingdom and four in the Netherlands — for related crimes. The UK arrest was reportedly of “Tflow”, a former member of the hacker group LulzSec, identified by...
4 tags
5 tags
Who holds the copyright to a picture taken by a... →
Caters News Agency claims to have bought exclusive rights to the iconic self-portrait taken by a macaque that snatched a photographer’s camera while the latter was shooting on Sulawesi. Caters has sent copyright threats to some sites that reproduced the image, prompting Techdirt (one of the nastygram recipients) to delve deeply into the question of the copyrightability of works created...
8 tags
6 tags
Anticensorship in the Internet's Infrastructure →
I’m pleased to announce a research result that Eric Wustrow, Scott Wolchok, Ian Goldberg, and I have been working on for the past 18 months: Telex, a new approach to circumventing state-level Internet censorship. Telex is markedly different from past anticensorship efforts, and we believe it has the potential to shift the balance of power in the censorship arms race.
Full Article
6 tags
Researchers Develop 'End-to-Middle' Proxy System... →
As state-level censorship continues to grow in various countries around the globe in response to political dissent and social change, researchers have begun looking for news ways to help Web users get around these restrictions. Now, a group of university researchers has developed an experimental system called Telex that replaces the typical proxy architecture with a scheme that hides the fact...
6 tags
LulzSec Defaces Murdoch Paper With Mogul’s Fake... →
They’re back. The hacker gang LulzSec, after declaring retirement last month, cracked the Rupert Murdoch–owned New Times on Monday and used it to host a fake news story declaring that the embattled media mogul had been found dead at his home. The web defacement took the form of a mock article from Murdock’s The Sun, with the headline “Media moguls body discoverd” [sic]. The text goes on to claim...
8 tags
10 tags
6 tags
6 tags
McCain Pushes For Select Committee to Address... →
In the face of continued attacks on federal agencies and contractors such as Booz Allen Hamilton and IRC Federal that do highly sensitive security work for the U.S. government, Sen. John McCain has asked Senate leaders to appoint a select committee to look into the attacks and data leaks that have plagued Washington throughout 2011. In a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate...
4 tags
Hacker Who Turned in Bradley Manning Is a Bigger... →
Adrian Chen — Around a year after Bradley Manning was arrested for allegedly leaking to Wikileaks, Wired has finally published the full chat logs between the Army private and hacker Adrian Lamo, who turned him into authorities. Man, does Lamo come across as a scumbag. If you remember: Manning reached out to Lamo on May 21, 2010 over encrypted chat. He proceeded to spill his guts, confessing to...
5 tags
Study Finds Online Ad Firms Don't Abide By 'Do Not... →
A study by Stanford University Law School’s Center for Internet and Society has found that many online advertising networks are not adhering to their own privacy policies and continue to rely on and push out Web tracking cookies even after users have indicated that they do not wish to be tracked. Half of 64 online advertising firms did not remove their tracking cookies from...
2 tags
BKLYN: Red Lotus Room →
The Red Lotus Room is breathtaking. I’ve now been twice, for two radically different nights. The first was BANZAI!!!!!, a surreally crazy art and performance party, full of elaborate costumed revelers, an eclectic selection of multimedia art, and performances from drag acts to DJ sets. The second was the famous Shanghai Mermaid, for which the space is mostly known, an underground,...