Mars Phoenix Lander Set for Touchdown on Sunday

Via nationalgeographic.com -

After years of planning followed by a ten-month journey, the Mars Phoenix Lander is slated to touch down Sunday near the red planet's north pole.

If successful, the probe will be the first lander to reach a Martian pole and the first to actually touch the planet's water ice.

What's more, it could settle the debate over whether Mars was once suitable for life.

As Phoenix closed in on the last miles of its journey, NASA scientists were gearing up for the "seven minutes of terror" that could make or break the U.S. $420-million mission.

"Approximately 14 minutes before touchdown, the vehicle separates from its cruise stage," Barry Goldstein, Phoenix project manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, said at a recent press conference.

"At this point we lose communication from the vehicle."

Once the craft reaches Mars's atmosphere, the next critical seven minutes make up what's known as the Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL) phase.

Screaming down at about 12,600 miles (20,270 kilometers) an hour, the craft must open a parachute to slow itself for a three-minute glide to the surface about 70 miles (113 kilometers) below.

The craft's landing sequence then includes steps such as jettisoning its heat shield, extending its legs, and firing its landing thrusters.

"There are 26 pyrotechnic events, and each of those have to work perfectly for this to go as planned," Goldstein said. "Getting EDL communication [at touchdown]—that'll be the three seconds that I am really biting my nails over."

Facebook Vulnerable to XSS - 70 Million Users At Risk.

Via XSSed.com -

Mox has submitted a critical cross-site scripting vulnerability affecting Facebook.com - according to Alexa is currently ranked the 7th most used site on the web.

Malicious people can exploit this issue to execute script code in the context of Facebook or obtain sensitive information from its users, such us cleartext authentication credentials with a fake login form.

It should be noted that this XSS vuln leaves millions of unsuspecting Facebook users vulnerable to malware, spyware and adware infection.

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Check the link above for the actually XSS attack vectors...

Refurbished iPhones Could Hold User Data

Via Engadget -

It looks like you might have to think twice before flipping that old iPhone on eBay when the 3G version finally hits -- it appears that restoring the phone doesn't actually erase the contents of the flash, meaning that your data is available to anyone with the proper tools until it's overwritten. Making matters worse, it appears that Apple doesn't do a low-level format when refurbishing iPhones either -- an Oregon State Police detective was able to use forensic software to pull files, emails, and screenshots off an out-of-the-box refurbished iPhone. This actually shouldn't be surprising to anyone -- we've seen several utilities that access "deleted" portions of storage -- but since Apple doesn't provide users direct access to the iPhone's filesystem, it's basically impossible to clear your personal data off the device short of restoring and filling the disk with junk data. Hopefully iPhone 2.0's Exchange-based "remote wipe" feature is a bit more secure, eh?

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Yet another reason to show why using iPhones in corporate situations is a bad idea...

Retired Professor Accused of Providing Military Data to Chinese

Via FoxNews -

A 70-year-old retired professor has been charged with plotting to defraud the U.S. Air Force and illegally disclose restricted data about military drones to foreign nationals, including persons in China.

A federal grand jury in Tennessee returned a 18-count indictment Tuesday charging J. Reece Roth, a professor emeritus at the University of Tennessee, as well as Atmospheric Glow Technologies, or AGT, a Knoxville, Tenn.-based technology company.

The indictment accuses Roth and AGT of conspiring between January 2004 to May 2006 to convey information about an Air Force contract to foreign nationals, including a citizen of China who was attending the University of Tennessee as a graduate research assistant.

Prosecutors also say Roth traveled to China in May 2006 with multiple documents related to the contract to build the drones, and he is accused of electronic transmission of a military document containing restricted data to a person in China.

The investigation was conducted by the FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Air Force and the Department of Commerce's Office of Export Enforcement, with the cooperation of the University of Tennessee.

"Whenever restricted U.S. military data is illegally disclosed to foreign nationals, America's security is put at risk. Today's indictment demonstrates just how seriously we view such violations," Assistant Attorney General Patrick Rowan said.

Roth, who lives in Knoxville, faces maximum penalties of 5-20 years in prison and fines of up to $1 million for each count.

Conservative UK Lawmakers Pledge to Curb Use of CCTV Cameras

Via Telegraph UK -

A Conservative government would put strict new limits on the use of surveillance cameras, David Davis, the shadow home secretary, pledged on Tuesday night.

Mr Davis told the Society of Conservative Lawyers that the widespread use of closed circuit television (CCTV) risks infringing civil liberties.

He proposed new rules on the use of CCTV and penalties for people and bodies that use the cameras to invade the privacy of the public. He also promised measures to improve the quality of CCTV footage to aid prosecutions.

Mr Davis said: "There is no argument for having CCTV which both infringes on our civil liberty but is of such poor quality it does nothing to protect us or provide evidence to bring perpetrators of crime to justice - as happens now.

"Conservatives would ensure any CCTV has to be maintained at sufficiently high standard to provide evidence admissible in court.

"We would also strictly limit access to these images to the police and other relevant agencies until they get to court, and set a mandatory punishment for breaches of these rules that infringe the privacy of the individual."

Britain is one of the heaviest users of CCTV in the world, with more than 4.2 million CCTV cameras across the country, one for every 14 people.

But there are growing questions about the cameras' value.

Det Chief Insp Mick Neville, the officer in charge of CCTV for the Metropolitan Police, last month warned that the surveillance systems are often ineffective because they are badly maintained or sited, or their footage is not properly monitored and used.

Graeme Gerrard, the head of CCTV at the Association of Chief Police Officers, has said cameras often fail to act as a deterrent for drunken yobs in town centres.

About £200 million has been spent on erecting more CCTV cameras across the country over the past 10 years, leading the Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas, recently to refer to "surveillance Britain".

UK Gov Considers Phone Call & E-mail Database

Via BBC -

Ministers are to consider plans for a database of electronic information holding details of every phone call and e-mail sent in the UK, it has emerged.

The plans, reported in the Times, are at an early stage and may be included in the draft Communications Bill later this year, the Home Office confirmed.

A Home Office spokesman said the data was a "crucial tool" for protecting national security and preventing crime.

Ministers have not seen the plans which were drawn up by Home Office officials.

A Home Office spokesman said: "The Communications Data Bill will help ensure that crucial capabilities in the use of communications data for counter-terrorism and investigation of crime continue to be available.

"These powers will continue to be subject to strict safeguards to ensure the right balance between privacy and protecting the public."

The spokesman said changes need to be made to the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 "to ensure that public authorities can continue to obtain and have access to communications data essential for counter-terrorism and investigation of crime purposes".

But the Information Commission, an independent authority set up to protect personal information, said the database "may well be a step too far" and highlighted the risk of data being lost, traded or stolen.

Assistant information commissioner Jonathan Bamford said: "We are not aware of any justification for the state to hold every UK citizen's phone and internet records. We have real doubts that such a measure can be justified, or is proportionate or desirable.

"Defeating crime and terrorism is of the utmost importance, but we are not aware of any pressing need to justify the government itself holding this sort of data."

Permanent Denial-of-Service Attack Sabotages Hardware

Via DarkReading -

You don’t have to take an ax to a piece of hardware to perform a so-called permanent denial-of-service (PDOS) attack. A researcher this week will demonstrate a PDOS attack that can take place remotely.

A PDOS attack damages a system so badly that it requires replacement or reinstallation of hardware. Unlike the infamous distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attack -- which is used to sabotage a service or Website or as a cover for malware delivery -- PDOS is pure hardware sabotage.

“We aren't seeing the PDOS attack as a way to mask another attack, such as malware insertion, but [as] a logical and highly destructive extension of the DDOS criminal extortion tactics seen in use today,” says Rich Smith, head of research for offensive technologies & threats at HP Systems Security Lab.

Smith says a PDOS attack would result in a costly recovery for the victim, since it would mean installing new hardware. At the same time, it would cost the attacker much less than a DDOS attack. “DDOS attacks require investment from an attacker for the duration of the extortion -- meaning the renting of botnets, for example,” he says.

Smith will demonstrate how network-enabled systems firmware is susceptible to a remote PDOS attack -- which he calls “phlashing” -- this week at the EUSecWest security conference in London. He’ll also unveil a fuzzing tool he developed that can be used to launch such an attack as well as to detect PDOS vulnerabilities in firmware systems.

His so-called PhlashDance tool fuzzes binaries in firmware and the firmware’s update application protocol to cause a PDOS, and it detects PDOS weaknesses across multiple embedded systems.

D.O.M Defacement Group Members Arrested in Spain

Via Zone-H.org -

Members of D.O.M - group, that mirrored defacements in our defacement archive - were arrested by Spanish police. Five members are suspected of "hacking into or outright disabling thousands of Internet pages", AP informed recently.

Members of the group are at age 16 to 20. Investigation started as the group defaced website of a Spanish political party Izquierda Unida shortly after general election in March.List of D.O.M defacements from our archive can be viewed here.

Tang Bomb: Liquid Explosives Are the New 'Weapon of Choice'

Via FOX News -

Tang, peroxide and a disposable camera — items you may very well have in your home — can be a deadly mix.

Far-fetched as it sounds, bombs made from hydrogen peroxide and the breakfast powder drink Tang could have taken down seven planes bound for the U.S. and Canada — using flash cameras to trigger the explosions.

A British court saw video evidence this week of the "liquid explosives plot," an alleged terrorist cabal British police say they thwarted in August 2006. The suspects allegedly had planned to use common household chemicals to mix bombs while aboard jets flying over the Atlantic.

The alleged plot, and the excellent police work that went into busting it, resulted in the tough carry-on restrictions passengers face before boarding an airplane. Knowing the dangers of liquid explosives should make the hassle of tossing your bottles when traveling a lot easier to bear.
Peter Wright, a lawyer prosecuting the case in London against eight of the 18 accused suspects, called the bombs "a deadly cargo." It's a simple one, too.

Prosecutors say the alleged terrorists intended to carry the components on board each plane to form a bomb.

One was a mix of hydrogen peroxide and Tang. The citric acid in the Tang acts as a catalyst, making the mixture deadly.

The other component is a mixture known as HMTD — hexamethylene triperoxide diamine, a chemical cocktail made from readily available household and commercial ingredients. HMTD is extremely unstable and can be set off by heat, movement and even contact with metal.

Prosecutors say the suspects had planned to hide the Tang-and-bleach mixture in plastic soda bottles and the HMTD in hollowed-out AA batteries. The initial charge would have been set off in the HMTD, causing a larger explosion.

According to Erroll Southers, the chief of intelligence and counterterrorism at Los Angeles International Airport, peroxide-based bombs are on the rise all over the world.

"Peroxide-based explosives are the weapon of choice in the Middle East," he said. "They leave no residue, they’re extremely volatile, they’re easy to make and they’ve been quite effective."
Just one bottle-sized bomb could be powerful enough to rip a hole in a plane’s hull — certain tragedy for the passengers aboard the seven targeted flights.

Prosecutors say the attack was planned for between August and December, two of the busiest months of the year for air travel. Had the planes been full, nearly 2,000 people would have been killed.

Jurors in the trial were shown video of what those explosions would have looked like. Scientists at the Forensic Explosives Laboratory in London re-created the device, but as a precaution they left the testing area and had a robotic arm mix the deadly chemicals.

It was a smart move: The tiny bomb destroyed one of the video cameras and sprayed the lab with pieces of the protective walls meant to contain the blast.

Next time you're feeling inconvenienced because you can't take a bottle of shampoo or soda pop through security, think again. Those restrictions at the gate are there to ensure that you'll reach your destination safe and sound.

French Arrest Ten in Connection with Terror Probe

Via USAToday.com -

Authorities in France, Germany and the Netherlands on Friday detained at least 10 people suspected of helping to fund al-Qaeda-linked militants with roots in Uzbekistan, officials said.

One suspect was detained in Germany, another in the Netherlands, with the rest detained in France, said a senior French police official who was only authorized to discuss the arrests on condition of anonymity.

The suspects' nationalities were not given but officials said they were Turkic-speaking.
French police suspect they collected funds for the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, a militant group said by the United States to have close ties to al-Qaeda.

The senior official described the arrests as "preventative" because the funds thought to have been collected were not known to have been used to carry out terror attacks.

MUTO: A Wall-Painted Animation by BLU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuGaqLT-gO4

Freaking awesome...

thanks to Katie B. for the link...

UK Shops Track Customers by Phone IMEI Code

Via Times Online -

Customers in shopping centres are having their every move tracked by a new type of surveillance that listens in on the whisperings of their mobile phones.

The technology can tell when people enter a shopping centre, what stores they visit, how long they remain there, and what route they take as they walked around.

The device cannot access personal details about a person’s identity or contacts, but privacy campaigners expressed concern about potential intrusion should the data fall into the wrong hands.

The surveillance mechanism works by monitoring the signals produced by mobile handsets and then locating the phone by triangulation – measuring the phone’s distance from three receivers.

It has already been installed in two shopping centres, including Gunwharf Quays in Portsmouth, and three more centres will begin using it next month, Times Online has learnt.

The company that makes the dishes, which measure 30cm (12 inches) square and are placed on walls around the centre, said that they were useful to centres that wanted to learn more about the way their customers used the store.

A shopping mall could, for example, find out that 10,000 people were still in the store at 6pm, helping to make a case for longer opening hours, or that a majority of customers who visited Gap also went to Next, which could useful for marketing purposes.

In the case of Gunwharf Quays, managers were surprised to discover that an unusually high percentage of visitors were German - the receivers can tell in which country each phone is registered - which led to the management translating the instructions in the car park.

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) expressed cautious approval of the technology, which does not identify the owner of the phone but rather the handset's IMEI code - a unique number given to every device so that the network can recognise it.

But an ICO spokesman said, "we would be very worried if this technology was used in connection with other systems that contain personal information, if the intention was to provide more detailed profiles about identifiable individuals and their shopping habits.”

PayPal XSS Vulnerability Undermines EV SSL Security

Via NetCraft -

A security researcher in Finland has discovered a cross-site scripting vulnerability on paypal.com that would allow hackers to carry out highly plausible attacks, adding their own content to the site and stealing credentials from users.

The vulnerability is made worse by the fact that the affected page uses an Extended Validation SSL certificate, which causes the browser's address bar to turn green, assuring visitors that the site – and its content – belongs to PayPal. Two years ago, a similar vulnerability was discovered on a different page of the PayPal site, which also used an SSL certificate.

Harry Sintonen discovered the vulnerability and announced it to other web application security specialists in an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel today. Sintonen told Netcraft that the issue was critical, adding that, "you could easily steal credentials," and, "PayPal says you can trust the URL if it begins with https://www.paypal.com," which is not true in this case.

While SSL certificates do indeed provide a higher level of assurance when it comes to site ownership, they cannot guarantee that a site is free from other security problems – including cross-site scripting. There are concerns that hackers may exploit misunderstandings in the significance of the green address bar for their own benefit, piggybacking off the trust that is instilled by EV certificates. Users need to be aware that a green address bar does not guarantee the origin of a page's contents if there is a cross-site scripting vulnerability on that page.

The vulnerability comes to light only a month after PayPal published a practical approach to managing phishing on their blog, which extols the use of Extended Validation certificates in preventing phishing. The document describes browsers that do not support EV certificates as "unsafe" and announces the company's plans to block customers from accessing their website from the most unsafe browsers.

PayPal was one of the first companies to adopt EV certificates and the company says it has seen noticeably lower abandonment rates on signup flows for Internet Explorer 7 users versus other browsers. According to the document, PayPal believe this correlates closely to user interface changes triggered by their use of EV certificates.

DNS Trouble Knocks NSA off Internet

Via PC World -

A server problem at the U.S. National Security Agency has knocked the secretive intelligence agency off the Internet.

The nsa.gov Web site was unresponsive at 7 a.m. Pacific time Thursday and continued to be unavailable throughout the morning for Internet users.

The problem was resolved at around 11 a.m. Pacific time, according to Web site measurement company Netcraft.

The Web site was unreachable because of a problem with the NSA's DNS (Domain Name System) servers, said Danny McPherson, chief research officer with Arbor Networks. DNS servers are used to translate things like the Web addresses typed into machine-readable Internet Protocol addresses that computers use to find each other on the Internet.

The agency's two authoritative DNS servers were unreachable Thursday morning, McPherson said.

Because this DNS information is sometimes cached by Internet service providers, the NSA would still be temporarily reachable by some users, but unless the problem is fixed, NSA servers will be knocked completely off-line. That means that e-mail sent to the agency will not be delivered, and in some cases, e-mail being sent by the NSA would not get through.

"We are aware of the situation and our techs are working on it," a NSA spokeswoman said at 9:45 a.m. PT. She declined to identify herself.

...

There are three possible reasons the DNS server was knocked off-line, McPherson said. "It's either an internal routing problem of some sort on their side or they've messed up some firewall or ACL [access control list] policy," he said. "Or they've taken their servers off-line because something happened."

That "something else" could be a technical glitch or a hacking incident, McPherson said.
In fact, the NSA has made some basic security mistakes with its DNS servers, according to McPherson. The NSA should have hosted its two authoritative DNS servers on different machines, so that if a technical glitch knocked one of the servers off-line, the other would still be reachable. Compounding problems is the fact that the DNS servers are hosted on a machine that is also being used as a Web server for the NSA's National Computer Security Center.

"Say there was some Apache or Windows vulnerability and hackers controlled that server, they would now own the DNS server for nsa.gov," he said. "That really surprised me. I wouldn't think that these guys would do something like that."

The NSA is responsible for analysis of foreign communications, but it is also charged with helping protect the U.S. government against cyber attacks, so the outage is an embarrassment for the agency.

"I am certain that someone's going to send an e-mail at some point that's not going to get through," McPherson said. "If it's related to national security and it's not getting through, then as a U.S. citizen, that concerns me."

Major Cyberterrorism Meeting Scheduled for Next Week

Via GCN.com -

A meeting next week in Malaysia being billed as the largest minister-level summit ever held on cyberterrorism will kick off an international partnership of more than 30 countries to study and respond to high-level cybersecurity threats.

The International Multilateral Partnership Against Cyber-Terrorism (IMPACT) is the brainchild of the prime minister of Malaysia, who saw the need for such an organization during the World Congress of Information Technology in Texas in 2005. Funded by a $30 million startup grant from Malaysia, the organization will hold a World Cyber Security Summit next week in conjunction with the WCIT in Kuala Lumpur.

More than 40 countries have been invited to attend, including Australia, Canada, India, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand and the United States.

“We still have not received confirmation of which agency will represent the U.S. government,” IMPACT Chairman Mohd Noor Amin said in a conference call announcing the formation of the group.

Amin said President Bush was one of the first world leaders informed of the creation of the organization and that the president was supportive and offered U.S. support.

Although the organization has not yet established a formal membership, its advisory board includes representatives from companies including Symantec, Trend Micro and Kaspersky Labs, in addition to former presidential adviser Howard Schmidt and Internet guru Vint Cerf.

A cooperative international approach to cyberthreats is essential because the threats themselves often are multi- or extra-national. “Typically, governments have approached cybersecurity as a domestic policy issue,” Amin said.

The U.S. National Strategy to Secure Cyber Space, multiple public-private partnerships and regional gatherings such as the G8 meetings are all helpful but inadequate, Schmidt said.

“This gives us a much broader perspective,” he said. “Just having North America or a European country doing their part to secure themselves does not make the world a more secure place.”

IMPACT’s focus will be on cyberterrorism rather than on the entire range of online crime and hacking activities.

“The term cyberterrorism means different things to different people,” Amin said. IMPACT will be focusing on what he called the upper end of cyberthreats, those with the potential or intention of causing significant damage, either economically or to life and limb — events that rise to the level of immediate security concerns for governments.

Among the countries that will be participating in the inaugural meeting are China and Russia, two nations that have posed cyberthreats to the United States. Russia apparently has been home to organized rings involved in the online theft of personally identifiable information used in identity theft, and China has been identified as a source of persistent attempts to breach U.S. information systems. China is believed to be pursuing a cyberwarfare capability.

Amin said all governments have a vested interest in a secure cyberspace, and he expects a high level of international cooperation.

How Information Escapes From a Black Hole

Via newscientist.com -

If a black hole eats a book, what happens to the information? The latest work from a team of physicists says that in the distant future, the black hole eventually spits out the book's full contents. Even a black hole can't destroy information.

...

Now Ashtekar and colleagues Victor Taveras and Madhavan Vadararajan at Pennsylvania State have put that idea on a firmer footing. They set up quantum equations for the space-time geometry of a black hole, but in a "flatland" universe with just one space and one time dimension. "The equations are similar, and fortunately also much simpler," Ashtekar told New Scientist.

He and his team have traced the quantum state of their simplified black hole as it forms and evolves. In their model, there is no singularity, no edge to space-time, so all the information is preserved.

Eventually the black hole will slowly evaporate in a process called Hawking radiation, and the information will re-emerge. By collecting and analysing that radiation it would be possible in theory to find out what went into the black hole, and even to read any books that fell in.
"If we know the details of quantum gravity, then theoretically we will be able to run the movie backwards and say exactly how the black hole formed," says Ashtekar.

In practice, there would be a few snags. For any reasonable-sized black hole, Hawking radiation is so weak that it will take an immense amount of time to evaporate, vastly longer than the current age of the universe. And although the information would be there in principle, decoding it is liable to be unimaginably complicated.

Journal reference: Physical Review Letters (forthcoming)

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I have been reading a lot about information theory recently and it is truly a amazing idea. Computer science and cryptanalysis were born from information theory.

In the world of information security, we routinely quantify information to assess security risk. However, it isn't easy sometimes....to look around and understand that information is everywhere and contained in everything. It is measurable, just like weight or height.

Every atom, every light ray...every breath is controlled by information...quantum information.

If you are new to information theory, I would highly recommend "Decoding the Universe: How the New Science of Information Is Explaining Everything in the Cosmos, from Our Brains to Black Holes".

Rootkits Coming to Cisco ISO Routers

Via The Register UK -

Security researchers have devised a rootkit capable of covertly monitoring and controlling Cisco routers.

Sebastian Muniz, of Core Security, plans to demo Cisco IOS rootkit software he developed during a presentation at the EuSecWest conference in London on 22 May.

Muniz's is reckoned to be the first researcher to apply rootkits to systems running Cisco IOS software. His work builds on the pioneering work of security researcher Michael Lynn, who controversially demonstrated interactive shell code for Cisco’s proprietary Internetworking Operating System (IOS) during Blackhat 2005.

Muniz has developed techniques for applying rootkit technology to embedded systems, such as routers running Cisco IOS. He is due to repeat a demo of his software at the Black Hat conference in Vegas in August, as an abstract for his proposed talk explains.

Different ways to infect a target IOS will be shown like run-time patching and image binary patching. To discuss the binary patching technique from a practical point of view, a set of Python scripts that provides a the methods to insert a generic rootkit implementation called DIK (Da Ios rootKit) will be introduced and it's done in plain C for IOS. Also other techniques like run-time image infection will be discussed in detail.

"An IOS rootkit is able to perform the tasks that any other rootkit would do on desktop computer operating systems," Muniz told IDG. Hackers hoping to plant the rootkit would first need to obtain admin login credentials so that they could install software on networking devices, perhaps by using a separate exploit. But once planted such rootkits could be used to carry out all sorts of mischief.

Muniz doesn't intend to release his software. He hopes his talk will dispel the belief that rootkits for networking kit are impossible in the same way that Lynn's talk showed how it might be possible to plant malware onto routers. Muniz explained: "I've done this with the purpose of showing that IOS rootkits are real, and that appropriate security measures must be taken".

Anonymous Mail Relay: We Do it For the Lulz

Non-Secure relaying Sendmail servers are fun....

Note: I know we misspelled "house", but that stuff happens when you are sending mail by hand with telnet....plus it was pretty early in the morning.