Via the Official Google Blog -
It's been an exciting nine months since we launched the Google Chrome browser. Already, over 30 million people use it regularly. We designed Google Chrome for people who live on the web — searching for information, checking email, catching up on the news, shopping or just staying in touch with friends. However, the operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web. So today, we're announcing a new project that's a natural extension of Google Chrome — the Google Chrome Operating System. It's our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be.
Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we're already talking to partners about the project, and we'll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve.
Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We're designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don't have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.
Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips and we are working with multiple OEMs to bring a number of netbooks to market next year. The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.
[...]
We have a lot of work to do, and we're definitely going to need a lot of help from the open source community to accomplish this vision. We're excited for what's to come and we hope you are too. Stay tuned for more updates in the fall and have a great summer.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
US & German Intel: Al Qaeda Plots Multiple Attacks on US & Israel-bound Airliners
Via Debka.com -
Western anti-terror agencies have warned that a large group of 15-20 al Qaeda terrorists, trained in Pakistan and Algeria to hijack and blow up airliners, deployed secretly in at least six European and Middle East countries in early July. They are standing ready to carry out multiple terrorist attacks.
The terrorists are believed to have landed in Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Turkey and Egypt.
The dates to watch, local authorities were warned, were July 4, July 7, the fourth anniversary of the 7/7 attacks on the British transport system in which 52 people died, and July 8-9, when the G8 summit meets in the Italian town of L'Aqila. US president Barack Obama will fly in from talks with Russian leaders in Moscow.
Al Qaeda planners, say the Western sources, know it is extremely hard to break through the massive security cordons protecting summit leaders. They are therefore planning to hijack passenger planes of airlines belonging to the targeted states and blow them up in mid-air.
DEBKAfile's counter-terror sources report the first specific red alert on Saturday, July 4, referred to the possible hijack of Turkish Airways planes taking of from Turkish airports for US destinations or Tel Aviv. Special precautionary measures were put in place at both ends of their routes.
The alert is still in force.
Western anti-terror agencies have warned that a large group of 15-20 al Qaeda terrorists, trained in Pakistan and Algeria to hijack and blow up airliners, deployed secretly in at least six European and Middle East countries in early July. They are standing ready to carry out multiple terrorist attacks.
The terrorists are believed to have landed in Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Turkey and Egypt.
The dates to watch, local authorities were warned, were July 4, July 7, the fourth anniversary of the 7/7 attacks on the British transport system in which 52 people died, and July 8-9, when the G8 summit meets in the Italian town of L'Aqila. US president Barack Obama will fly in from talks with Russian leaders in Moscow.
Al Qaeda planners, say the Western sources, know it is extremely hard to break through the massive security cordons protecting summit leaders. They are therefore planning to hijack passenger planes of airlines belonging to the targeted states and blow them up in mid-air.
DEBKAfile's counter-terror sources report the first specific red alert on Saturday, July 4, referred to the possible hijack of Turkish Airways planes taking of from Turkish airports for US destinations or Tel Aviv. Special precautionary measures were put in place at both ends of their routes.
The alert is still in force.
Taliban Launches Operation ‘Iron Net’ Against US Marines in Afghanistan
Via Daily Times (Pakistan) -
The Taliban said on Monday they have launched a guerrilla operation to thwart a major assault by the newly-deployed US Marines on their Helmand strongholds.
Operation Foladi Jal would teach the Marines “a lesson”. Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi told AFP by telephone from an unknown location.
About 4,000 Marines poured into the southern province on Thursday in an operation called Khanjar (dagger) to tackle the Taliban in the region.
“In response to Operation Khanjar by the invading forces, we have launched the operation,” Ahmadi said. The operation would include improvised bomb explosions and “hit-and-run guerrilla attacks”, Ahmadi said.
“We will not engage them in front battles. We would rather hit them by mines and guerrilla attacks,” he said
The Taliban said on Monday they have launched a guerrilla operation to thwart a major assault by the newly-deployed US Marines on their Helmand strongholds.
Operation Foladi Jal would teach the Marines “a lesson”. Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi told AFP by telephone from an unknown location.
About 4,000 Marines poured into the southern province on Thursday in an operation called Khanjar (dagger) to tackle the Taliban in the region.
“In response to Operation Khanjar by the invading forces, we have launched the operation,” Ahmadi said. The operation would include improvised bomb explosions and “hit-and-run guerrilla attacks”, Ahmadi said.
“We will not engage them in front battles. We would rather hit them by mines and guerrilla attacks,” he said
Interior Ministry Officials in Pakistan Arrested for Weapons Scam
Via Dawn.com (Pakistan) -
ISLAMABAD: Three officers from the interior ministry were arrested on Tuesday for illegally issuing weapons licenses, DawnNews reports.
The officials have been charged with issuing 161 weapons licenses despite a legal ban on the sale of arms.
Interior Ministry Secretary Syed Kamal Shah told a Senate sub-committee that these three officers pocketed Rs7.5 million by issuing the licenses illegally.
Meanwhile, a top security official also told the committee that they have intelligence a terrorist may strike Islamabad in the next forty eight hours.
ISLAMABAD: Three officers from the interior ministry were arrested on Tuesday for illegally issuing weapons licenses, DawnNews reports.
The officials have been charged with issuing 161 weapons licenses despite a legal ban on the sale of arms.
Interior Ministry Secretary Syed Kamal Shah told a Senate sub-committee that these three officers pocketed Rs7.5 million by issuing the licenses illegally.
Meanwhile, a top security official also told the committee that they have intelligence a terrorist may strike Islamabad in the next forty eight hours.
Federal Websites Knocked Out by DDoS Attack
Via Google (AP) -
A widespread and unusually resilient computer attack that began July 4 knocked out the Web sites of several government agencies, including some that are responsible for fighting cyber crime, The Associated Press has learned.
The Treasury Department, Secret Service, Federal Trade Commission and Transportation Department Web sites were all down at varying points over the holiday weekend and into this week, according to officials inside and outside the government. Some of the sites were still experiencing problems Tuesday evening. Cyber attacks on South Korea government and private sites also may be linked, officials there said.
U.S. officials refused to publicly discuss details of the cyber attack. But Amy Kudwa, spokeswoman for the Homeland Security Department, said the agency's U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team issued a notice to federal departments and other partner organizations about the problems and "advised them of steps to take to help mitigate against such attacks."
The U.S., she said, sees attacks on its networks every day, and measures have been put in place to minimize the impact on federal Web sites.
It was not clear whether other federal government sites also were attacked.
Others familiar with the U.S. outage, which is called a denial of service attack, said that the fact that the government Web sites were still being affected three days after it began signaled an unusually lengthy and sophisticated attack. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the matter.
Web sites of major South Korean government agencies, banks and Internet sites also were paralyzed in a suspected cyber attack Tuesday. Ahn Jeong-eun, a spokeswoman at the Korea Information Security Agency, said the U.S. and South Korean attacks appeared to be linked.
The South Korean sites included the presidential Blue House, the Defense Ministry, the National Assembly, Shinhan Bank, Korea Exchange Bank and top Internet portal Naver. They went down or had access problems since late Tuesday, Ahn said.
Kudwa had no comment on the South Korean attacks.
Two government officials acknowledged that the Treasury and Secret Service sites were brought down, and said the agencies were working with their Internet service provider to resolve the problem.
Ben Rushlo, director of Internet technologies at Keynote Systems, called it a "massive outage" and said problems with the Transportation Department site began Saturday and continued until Monday, while the FTC site was down Sunday and Monday.
Keynote Systems is a mobile and Web site monitoring company based in San Mateo, Calif. The company publishes data detailing outages on Web sites, including 40 government sites it watches.
According to Rushlo, the Transportation Web site was "100 percent down" for two days, so that no Internet users could get through to it. The FTC site, meanwhile, started to come back online late Sunday, but even on Tuesday Internet users still were unable to get to the site 70 percent of the time.
"This is very strange. You don't see this," he said. "Having something 100 percent down for a 24-hour-plus period is a pretty significant event."
He added that, "The fact that it lasted for so long and that it was so significant in its ability to bring the site down says something about the site's ability to fend off (an attack) or about the severity of the attack."
A widespread and unusually resilient computer attack that began July 4 knocked out the Web sites of several government agencies, including some that are responsible for fighting cyber crime, The Associated Press has learned.
The Treasury Department, Secret Service, Federal Trade Commission and Transportation Department Web sites were all down at varying points over the holiday weekend and into this week, according to officials inside and outside the government. Some of the sites were still experiencing problems Tuesday evening. Cyber attacks on South Korea government and private sites also may be linked, officials there said.
U.S. officials refused to publicly discuss details of the cyber attack. But Amy Kudwa, spokeswoman for the Homeland Security Department, said the agency's U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team issued a notice to federal departments and other partner organizations about the problems and "advised them of steps to take to help mitigate against such attacks."
The U.S., she said, sees attacks on its networks every day, and measures have been put in place to minimize the impact on federal Web sites.
It was not clear whether other federal government sites also were attacked.
Others familiar with the U.S. outage, which is called a denial of service attack, said that the fact that the government Web sites were still being affected three days after it began signaled an unusually lengthy and sophisticated attack. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the matter.
Web sites of major South Korean government agencies, banks and Internet sites also were paralyzed in a suspected cyber attack Tuesday. Ahn Jeong-eun, a spokeswoman at the Korea Information Security Agency, said the U.S. and South Korean attacks appeared to be linked.
The South Korean sites included the presidential Blue House, the Defense Ministry, the National Assembly, Shinhan Bank, Korea Exchange Bank and top Internet portal Naver. They went down or had access problems since late Tuesday, Ahn said.
Kudwa had no comment on the South Korean attacks.
Two government officials acknowledged that the Treasury and Secret Service sites were brought down, and said the agencies were working with their Internet service provider to resolve the problem.
Ben Rushlo, director of Internet technologies at Keynote Systems, called it a "massive outage" and said problems with the Transportation Department site began Saturday and continued until Monday, while the FTC site was down Sunday and Monday.
Keynote Systems is a mobile and Web site monitoring company based in San Mateo, Calif. The company publishes data detailing outages on Web sites, including 40 government sites it watches.
According to Rushlo, the Transportation Web site was "100 percent down" for two days, so that no Internet users could get through to it. The FTC site, meanwhile, started to come back online late Sunday, but even on Tuesday Internet users still were unable to get to the site 70 percent of the time.
"This is very strange. You don't see this," he said. "Having something 100 percent down for a 24-hour-plus period is a pretty significant event."
He added that, "The fact that it lasted for so long and that it was so significant in its ability to bring the site down says something about the site's ability to fend off (an attack) or about the severity of the attack."
Novel H1N1 Flu Situation Update
http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/update.htm
Data reported to CDC by July 2, 2009, 11:00 AM ET.
33,902 confirmed and probable cases with 170 deaths in 53 US states / territories (including the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands)
NOTE: Because of daily reporting deadlines, the state totals reported by CDC may not always be consistent with those reported by state health departments. If there is a discrepancy between these two counts, data from the state health departments should be used as the most accurate number.
---------------------------------
WHO Pandemic (H1N1) 2009 - update 58
6 July 2009 09:00 GMT
The breakdown of the number of laboratory-confirmed cases is given in this map.
Cumulative number of global laboratory-confirmed cases = 94,512 (440 deaths)
Check out the July 7th virtual press briefing with Dr Keiji Fukuda, Assistant Director-General ai, Health Security and Environment [mp3 16Mb]
WHO has a very cool interface map as well...which requires Flash. The numbers are a little behind, but it gives a very cool overall.
----------------------------------
It is important to remember that the US CDC number includes both lab-confirmed cases and probable cases...the WHO only counts lab-confirmed cases.
Data reported to CDC by July 2, 2009, 11:00 AM ET.
33,902 confirmed and probable cases with 170 deaths in 53 US states / territories (including the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands)
NOTE: Because of daily reporting deadlines, the state totals reported by CDC may not always be consistent with those reported by state health departments. If there is a discrepancy between these two counts, data from the state health departments should be used as the most accurate number.
---------------------------------
WHO Pandemic (H1N1) 2009 - update 58
6 July 2009 09:00 GMT
The breakdown of the number of laboratory-confirmed cases is given in this map.
Cumulative number of global laboratory-confirmed cases = 94,512 (440 deaths)
Check out the July 7th virtual press briefing with Dr Keiji Fukuda, Assistant Director-General ai, Health Security and Environment [mp3 16Mb]
WHO has a very cool interface map as well...which requires Flash. The numbers are a little behind, but it gives a very cool overall.
----------------------------------
It is important to remember that the US CDC number includes both lab-confirmed cases and probable cases...the WHO only counts lab-confirmed cases.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Facebook's Own Estimates Show Declining Student Numbers
Via readwriteweb.com -
How fickle are kids these days? Just when all the grown ups started figuring out Facebook, college and high school users have declined in absolute number by 20% and 15% respectively in a mere six months, according to estimates Facebook provides to advertisers that were archived for tracking by an outside firm. Facebook users aged 55 and over have skyrocketed from under 1 million to nearly six million in the same time period. There are more Facebook users over 55 years old today than there are high school students using the site.
How fickle are kids these days? Just when all the grown ups started figuring out Facebook, college and high school users have declined in absolute number by 20% and 15% respectively in a mere six months, according to estimates Facebook provides to advertisers that were archived for tracking by an outside firm. Facebook users aged 55 and over have skyrocketed from under 1 million to nearly six million in the same time period. There are more Facebook users over 55 years old today than there are high school students using the site.
Grandma and Grandpa showed up to have a conversation, but Billy and Sally were gone. Facebook cannot be excited about this.
The dramatic change in user demographics was picked up by iStrategyLabs today. Anyone can go through Facebook's self-serve advertising program and see the user demographics numbers the company estimates now, iStrategyLabs captured that data six months ago and saved it for comparison. The changes have been dramatic.
According to this data, from Facebook's own ad platform, there are actually fewer high school and college users on Facebook today than there were six months ago.
Hizb ut-Tahrir Plotting Against the Pakistan Government
Via Times Online UK -
Followers of the fundamentalist group Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT) have called for a “bloodless military coup” in Islamabad and the creation of the caliphate in which strict Islamic laws would be rigorously enforced.
Followers of the fundamentalist group Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT) have called for a “bloodless military coup” in Islamabad and the creation of the caliphate in which strict Islamic laws would be rigorously enforced.
Members of the group, which describes itself as the Liberation party in Britain but is banned in Pakistan, revealed last week that it had targeted the country as a base from which to spread Islamic rule across the world.
The Sunday Times has obtained the names of a dozen British Hizb ut-Tahrir activists based in Lahore and Karachi, or commuting between Britain and Pakistan. There are believed to be many more.
Tayyib Muqeem, an English teacher from Stoke-on-Trent, said he had moved to Lahore to convert Pakistanis to the movement.
At Lahore’s Superior College, where Muqeem has set up a Hizb ut-Tahrir student group, he said the organisation’s aim was to subject Muslim and western countries to Islamic rule under sharia law, “by force” if necessary.
In a caliphate, “every woman would have to cover up” and stoning to death for adultery and the chopping off of thieves’ hands would be the law, he said.
He added that Islamic rule would be spread through “indoctrination” and by “military means” if non-Muslim countries refused to bow to it. “Waging war” would be part of the caliphate’s foreign policy.
One of Hizb ut-Tahrir’s strategies in Pakistan is to influence military officers, he revealed.
Shahzad Sheikh, a Pakistani recruit and the group’s official spokesman in Karachi, talked openly about persuading the army to instigate a “bloodless coup” against the present government who, he said, were “worse than the Taliban”.
“It is the military who hold the power (in Pakistan) and we are asking them to give their allegiance to Hizb ut-Tahrir,” he said. “I can’t explain to you in detail how we are trying to influence the military . . . We never disclose our methodology of change. You may say it’s a coup.”
-------------------
Hizb ut-Tahrir (Arabic: حِزْبُ التَحْرِير; English: Party of Liberation) is an international pan-Islamist, Sunni, vanguard political party whose goal is to combine all Muslim countries in a unitary Islamic state or caliphate, ruled by Islamic law and with a caliph head of state elected by Muslims.
HT is not designated as a terrorist organization in the United States, however many consider it to be a stepping stone to more militant organizations.
GlobalSecurity.org - Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami
Jamestown - Hizb-ut-Tahrir's Activities in the United States
Official Hizb ut-Tahrir website (English)
Synthetic-aperture Radar Might Perform Double Duty as High-Speed Data Links
Via DefenseSystems.com -
Synthetic aperture radars have used radio frequency technology to give aircraft, ships and ground troops highly detailed tracking data. Now, they might provide a way to share that data in real time. Contractors Raytheon and L-3 Communications have combined efforts in a joint development program that might turn synthetic aperture radar systems into nodes on a high-speed, mobile ad hoc network.
Using the radar’s antennas simultaneously for radar sensing and as a high-speed data link, fighter aircraft would be able to transmit full sensor data — previously only available within the aircraft — to other aircraft and ground stations more than 100 miles away. If successful, the capability that Raytheon and L-3 are developing might transform fighter aircraft and other vehicles equipped with Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radars into powerful intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) platforms, sending synthetic aperture radar images at speeds as fast as 4 gigabits/sec.
“The data that [fighter aircraft have] gathered, which is extremely valuable, has been limited to use in that cockpit because there was no way to offload that amount of data,” said Lucas Bragg, Raytheon’s senior manager of advanced programs. “By now enabling their radar to act as a communications device, you're now able to offload this highly valuable data that's been gathered on the aircraft.”
“The big thing with this technology is that fighters have been limited in getting large amount of data off the vehicle, because you'd have to add an aperture, an antenna,” said James Perry, L-3's director of international business development.
“With the sleek skin of the aircraft, there's no way to add an antenna that will give you the throughput to do wideband communications.”
Synthetic aperture radars have used radio frequency technology to give aircraft, ships and ground troops highly detailed tracking data. Now, they might provide a way to share that data in real time. Contractors Raytheon and L-3 Communications have combined efforts in a joint development program that might turn synthetic aperture radar systems into nodes on a high-speed, mobile ad hoc network.
Using the radar’s antennas simultaneously for radar sensing and as a high-speed data link, fighter aircraft would be able to transmit full sensor data — previously only available within the aircraft — to other aircraft and ground stations more than 100 miles away. If successful, the capability that Raytheon and L-3 are developing might transform fighter aircraft and other vehicles equipped with Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radars into powerful intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) platforms, sending synthetic aperture radar images at speeds as fast as 4 gigabits/sec.
“The data that [fighter aircraft have] gathered, which is extremely valuable, has been limited to use in that cockpit because there was no way to offload that amount of data,” said Lucas Bragg, Raytheon’s senior manager of advanced programs. “By now enabling their radar to act as a communications device, you're now able to offload this highly valuable data that's been gathered on the aircraft.”
“The big thing with this technology is that fighters have been limited in getting large amount of data off the vehicle, because you'd have to add an aperture, an antenna,” said James Perry, L-3's director of international business development.
“With the sleek skin of the aircraft, there's no way to add an antenna that will give you the throughput to do wideband communications.”
When a Parent Steals Your Identity
Via MSN Money -
Danielle, 28, thought her credit was pretty good when she went to buy a new car a couple of years ago. And it would have been, had her credit report not been littered with unpaid accounts opened by her mother in Danielle's name.
Danielle, 28, thought her credit was pretty good when she went to buy a new car a couple of years ago. And it would have been, had her credit report not been littered with unpaid accounts opened by her mother in Danielle's name.
Now Danielle, a graduate student who also works full time, is struggling to pay off more than $20,000 in credit card debt her mother incurred. The older woman, who survived a bout with cancer, insists she would have been able to pay the bills had she not become ill and gets angry when Danielle mentions the debt.
"I feel bad bringing it up," Danielle said. "I feel like the bad guy."
Parents are supposed to protect their children from harm, but some inflict long-lasting financial and emotional damage by using them to commit identity theft.
Some, such as Danielle's mother, victimize offspring who are old enough to establish credit in their own right. Others use the Social Security numbers of their minor children to set up fraudulent accounts that the victims might not discover for years.
"When we first started hearing about it, we were shocked and horrified," said Beth Givens, the head of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse in San Diego. "It turns out it is more common than you might think."
Linda Foley, the founder of the Identity Theft Resource Center, also in San Diego, said she almost never heard about parent perpetrators when she and her husband established the center a decade ago. These days, though, they get several complaints a week from victims or from other adults who have uncovered the crimes.
"It just keeps getting bigger," said Foley, who fears the recession and rising unemployment will tempt more parents to cross the line.
Insider Arrested For Stealing Critical Code From Financial Services Company
Via DarkReading.com -
Wall Street is abuzz today with news that a computer programmer has been arrested for stealing top-secret application code that drives his former company's high-speed financial trading platform.
Wall Street is abuzz today with news that a computer programmer has been arrested for stealing top-secret application code that drives his former company's high-speed financial trading platform.
According to an affidavit (PDF) filed by the arresting FBI officer and subsequently posted by news media, the programmer, Sergey Aleynikov, copied "proprietary trade code" from his company and uploaded it to a Website in Germany. He later quit his job at the New York firm and moved to a new company in Chicago that "intended to engage in high-volume automated trading" -- and paid him around three times his old salary of $400,000, according to the affidavit.
The financial institution, which is not named in the affidavit, allegedly saw via routine monitoring that Aleynikov's machine was used at least four times to send some 32 megabytes of data to an external site last month. The institution then recovered Aleynikov's bash history -- a record of commands used on his desktop -- to identify his specific actions, the affidavit says.
In a blog, Reuters columnist Matthew Goldstein reported that the New York firm in the affidavit is Goldman Sachs, and that Aleynikov may have stolen the "secret sauce" that has allowed the financial services firm to consistently perform better than many of its competitors. Several other publications have picked up on Goldstein's story, although Goldman Sachs has yet to make a public comment.
The affidavit does not address Goldstein's report, but it does say that "certain features of the [code], such as speed and efficiency by which it obtains and processes market data, gives the Financial Institution a competitive advantage among other firms that also engage in high-volume automated trading. The Financial Institution further believes that, if competing firms were to obtain the [code] and use its features, the Financial Institution's ability to profit from the [code]'s speed and efficiency would be significantly diminished."
Security experts, meanwhile, are saying that Aleynikov's actions should have been caught before the proprietary data got out. According to the affidavit, the downloads took place during four different sessions, and the data was encrypted before it was uploaded to the German Website. The downloads took place less than a week before Aleynikov announced his resignation. Aleynikov attempted to delete the encryption software and his bash history before transferring the files to his own computers, the affidavit says.
According to Goldstein's blog, Aleynikov told the FBI when he was arrested that he "only intended to collect 'open source' files on which he had worked, but later realized that he had obtained more files than he intended." Aleynikov's attorney reportedly is saying that her client will be proved innocent of the single charge of theft of trade secrets.
Wall Streeters, meanwhile, are wondering what might have been done with the secret software, which may have been available to others for several weeks now. The affidavit does not name the new firm that Aleynikov allegedly was prepared to join, nor does it say who had access to the data on the German site. Some financial experts expressed concern that Goldman Sachs' stock might suffer as a result of the reports, and others said they believe the financial institution in question should disclose the potential security breach and its potential impact on the company's ability to compete in the market.
Researchers: SSNs Can Be Guessed
Via Washington Post -
Researchers have found that it is possible to guess many -- if not all -- of the nine digits in an individual's Social Security number using publicly available information, a finding they say compromises the security of one of the most widely used consumer identifiers in the United States.
Many numbers could be guessed at by simply knowing a person's birth data, the researchers from Carnegie Mellon University said.
The results come as concern grows over identity theft and lawmakers in Washington push legislation that would bar businesses from requiring people to supply their Social Security number when purchasing a good or service.
"Our work shows that Social Security numbers are compromised as authentication devices, because if they are predictable from public data, then they cannot be considered sensitive," said Alessandro Acquisti, assistant professor of information technology and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, and a co-author of the study.
A Social Security Administration spokesman said the government has long cautioned the private sector against using a Social Security number as a personal identifier, even as it insists "there is no fool proof method for predicting a person's Social Security Number."
"For reasons unrelated to this report, the agency has been developing a system to randomly assign SSNs," which should make it more difficult to discover numbers in the future, Mark Lassiter, a spokesman for the Social Security Administration, said by e-mail.
[...]
The researchers at Carnegie Mellon set out to see if they could discover people's numbers by first exploiting what is publicly known about how the numbers are derived.
The Social Security number's first three digits -- called the "area number" -- is issued according to the Zip code of the mailing address provided in the application form. The fourth and fifth digits -- known as the "group number" -- transition slowly, and often remain constant over several years for a given region. The last four digits are assigned sequentially.
As a result, SSNs assigned in the same state to applicants born on consecutive days are likely to contain the same first four or five digits, particularly in states with smaller populations and rates of birth.
[...]
Privacy and security experts praised the Carnegie Mellon study, saying it should be a wake-up call to policy makers and industry leaders, many of whom have resisted switching to a more secure consumer authentication system due to the sheer cost of changing the current system.
[...]
Ross Anderson, a professor of security engineering at Cambridge University, said the findings suggest that businesses using SSNs as a password are being negligent, and should find other ways of verifying the claims to identity that are being made by their customers.
"Sure, the study says that if you were born in a big state on a busy day you're probably still safe," from having identity thieves guess your entire SSN, Anderson said. "Still, I think many people would find it unacceptable that a system continues in use which in effect exposes tens of millions of Americans to fraud and other kinds of harm."
Linda Foley, founder of the Identity Theft Resource Center, a San Diego based nonprofit, cited another potential problem. She said many businesses have errantly rely upon or have moved to redact all but the last four digits of a person's SSN, the very digits that are most unique to an individual.
"Because of the way the SSN has been designed, asking for the last four numbers of the SSN puts people at risk because those are the only numbers that are unique to you and cannot be guessed easily by someone who might want to use your identity," Foley said.
The National Science Foundation, the U.S. Army Research Office, Carnegie Melon Cylab, and the Berkman Faculty Development Fund provided support for the research. The study, which will be presented July 29 at the BlackHat 2009 security conference in Las Vegas, is available at this link.
Researchers have found that it is possible to guess many -- if not all -- of the nine digits in an individual's Social Security number using publicly available information, a finding they say compromises the security of one of the most widely used consumer identifiers in the United States.
Many numbers could be guessed at by simply knowing a person's birth data, the researchers from Carnegie Mellon University said.
The results come as concern grows over identity theft and lawmakers in Washington push legislation that would bar businesses from requiring people to supply their Social Security number when purchasing a good or service.
"Our work shows that Social Security numbers are compromised as authentication devices, because if they are predictable from public data, then they cannot be considered sensitive," said Alessandro Acquisti, assistant professor of information technology and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, and a co-author of the study.
A Social Security Administration spokesman said the government has long cautioned the private sector against using a Social Security number as a personal identifier, even as it insists "there is no fool proof method for predicting a person's Social Security Number."
"For reasons unrelated to this report, the agency has been developing a system to randomly assign SSNs," which should make it more difficult to discover numbers in the future, Mark Lassiter, a spokesman for the Social Security Administration, said by e-mail.
[...]
The researchers at Carnegie Mellon set out to see if they could discover people's numbers by first exploiting what is publicly known about how the numbers are derived.
The Social Security number's first three digits -- called the "area number" -- is issued according to the Zip code of the mailing address provided in the application form. The fourth and fifth digits -- known as the "group number" -- transition slowly, and often remain constant over several years for a given region. The last four digits are assigned sequentially.
As a result, SSNs assigned in the same state to applicants born on consecutive days are likely to contain the same first four or five digits, particularly in states with smaller populations and rates of birth.
[...]
Privacy and security experts praised the Carnegie Mellon study, saying it should be a wake-up call to policy makers and industry leaders, many of whom have resisted switching to a more secure consumer authentication system due to the sheer cost of changing the current system.
[...]
Ross Anderson, a professor of security engineering at Cambridge University, said the findings suggest that businesses using SSNs as a password are being negligent, and should find other ways of verifying the claims to identity that are being made by their customers.
"Sure, the study says that if you were born in a big state on a busy day you're probably still safe," from having identity thieves guess your entire SSN, Anderson said. "Still, I think many people would find it unacceptable that a system continues in use which in effect exposes tens of millions of Americans to fraud and other kinds of harm."
Linda Foley, founder of the Identity Theft Resource Center, a San Diego based nonprofit, cited another potential problem. She said many businesses have errantly rely upon or have moved to redact all but the last four digits of a person's SSN, the very digits that are most unique to an individual.
"Because of the way the SSN has been designed, asking for the last four numbers of the SSN puts people at risk because those are the only numbers that are unique to you and cannot be guessed easily by someone who might want to use your identity," Foley said.
The National Science Foundation, the U.S. Army Research Office, Carnegie Melon Cylab, and the Berkman Faculty Development Fund provided support for the research. The study, which will be presented July 29 at the BlackHat 2009 security conference in Las Vegas, is available at this link.
Microsoft DirectShow MPEG2TuneRequest ActiveX Control Buffer Overflow
http://secunia.com/advisories/35683/
Description:
A vulnerability has been reported in Microsoft Windows, which can be exploited by malicious people to compromise a user's system.
The vulnerability is caused due to a boundary error in the ActiveX control for streaming video (msvidctl.dll) and can be exploited to cause a stack-based buffer overflow via specially crafted image content.
Successful exploitation allows execution of arbitrary code when a user e.g. visits a malicious website.
NOTE: The vulnerability is currently being actively exploited.
Solution:
Set the kill-bit for the affected ActiveX control.
Provided and/or discovered by:
Reported as a 0-day.
Changelog:
2009-07-06: Added additional information from Microsoft. Added Windows Server 2003 as affected.
Original Advisory:
Microsoft:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/972890.mspx
KingSoft Internet Security Blog:
http://blog.duba.net/read.php/225.htm
http://blog.duba.net/read.php/226.htm
CVE reference:
CVE-2008-0015
------------------------------------
PoC Exploit can be found over @ carnal0wnage -
http://carnal0wnage.attackresearch.com/node/370
Description:
A vulnerability has been reported in Microsoft Windows, which can be exploited by malicious people to compromise a user's system.
The vulnerability is caused due to a boundary error in the ActiveX control for streaming video (msvidctl.dll) and can be exploited to cause a stack-based buffer overflow via specially crafted image content.
Successful exploitation allows execution of arbitrary code when a user e.g. visits a malicious website.
NOTE: The vulnerability is currently being actively exploited.
Solution:
Set the kill-bit for the affected ActiveX control.
Provided and/or discovered by:
Reported as a 0-day.
Changelog:
2009-07-06: Added additional information from Microsoft. Added Windows Server 2003 as affected.
Original Advisory:
Microsoft:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/972890.mspx
KingSoft Internet Security Blog:
http://blog.duba.net/read.php/225.htm
http://blog.duba.net/read.php/226.htm
CVE reference:
CVE-2008-0015
------------------------------------
PoC Exploit can be found over @ carnal0wnage -
http://carnal0wnage.attackresearch.com/node/370
Germany's Biggest Bank Admits Hiring Detectives to Spying on Staff
Via breitbart.com -
Germany's biggest bank, Deutsche Bank, admitted Monday it had spied on a former member of its supervisory board, suspected of disclosing 2001 third quarter results before their official publication.
A bank spokesman said the target was Gerald Herrmann, who represented the union Verdi on the board that year.
German magazine Der Spiegel had reported over the weekend that the bank hired detectives to spy on its employees including a member of its supervisory board, managers and a shareholder.
The bank launched an internal inquiry at the end of May into potential breaches of data privacy law in connection with the affair, Spiegel said.
The spokesman confirmed the investigation and said the financial market regulator Bafin had also been contacted.
Herrmann told the Handelsblatt business newspaper on Monday Deutsche Bank informed him of the case a couple of days ago.
He denied the allegations against him and said he suspected he was spied on because Deutsche Bank did not appreciate his criticism of a redundancy compensation scheme.
The bank apologised to Hermann but the union member said he wanted a personal apology from chief executive Josef Ackermann who promised a "zero tolerance" approach over the affair at an annual general meeting of the bank.
According to Der Spiegel detectives "kept an eye on the movements of these people, and made inquiries as to who they were meeting and when".
In 2006, managers were spied on because of their suspected links to media mogul Leo Kirch, who was involved in a legal battle with Deutsche Bank, the magazine said.
Spiegel also said minority shareholder Michael Bohndorf, a lawyer living in Ibiza, Spain, was spied on.
Several detective agencies may have been involved in the affair.
Among the agencies is one led by a former agent of the Stasi, the notorious secret police in the former East Germany, who was also implicated in a scandal at German phone giant Deutsche Telekom.
Deutsche Bank even used "female bait" to find "personal weaknesses of certain shareholders", the magazine added.
Scandals over violations of privacy law have rocked the German corporate world in recent months, notably at railway company Deutsche Bahn and Deutsche Telekom.
Germany's biggest bank, Deutsche Bank, admitted Monday it had spied on a former member of its supervisory board, suspected of disclosing 2001 third quarter results before their official publication.
A bank spokesman said the target was Gerald Herrmann, who represented the union Verdi on the board that year.
German magazine Der Spiegel had reported over the weekend that the bank hired detectives to spy on its employees including a member of its supervisory board, managers and a shareholder.
The bank launched an internal inquiry at the end of May into potential breaches of data privacy law in connection with the affair, Spiegel said.
The spokesman confirmed the investigation and said the financial market regulator Bafin had also been contacted.
Herrmann told the Handelsblatt business newspaper on Monday Deutsche Bank informed him of the case a couple of days ago.
He denied the allegations against him and said he suspected he was spied on because Deutsche Bank did not appreciate his criticism of a redundancy compensation scheme.
The bank apologised to Hermann but the union member said he wanted a personal apology from chief executive Josef Ackermann who promised a "zero tolerance" approach over the affair at an annual general meeting of the bank.
According to Der Spiegel detectives "kept an eye on the movements of these people, and made inquiries as to who they were meeting and when".
In 2006, managers were spied on because of their suspected links to media mogul Leo Kirch, who was involved in a legal battle with Deutsche Bank, the magazine said.
Spiegel also said minority shareholder Michael Bohndorf, a lawyer living in Ibiza, Spain, was spied on.
Several detective agencies may have been involved in the affair.
Among the agencies is one led by a former agent of the Stasi, the notorious secret police in the former East Germany, who was also implicated in a scandal at German phone giant Deutsche Telekom.
Deutsche Bank even used "female bait" to find "personal weaknesses of certain shareholders", the magazine added.
Scandals over violations of privacy law have rocked the German corporate world in recent months, notably at railway company Deutsche Bahn and Deutsche Telekom.
Whitepaper: From 0 to 0Day on Symbian
Being the most widespread smartphone operating system, Symbian OS is a worthwile target for remote attacks. However, the obscurity of the operating system, combined with restrictions placed on end user devices and a lack of tools, make it very difficult for security researchers to work with Symbian based phones.
The goal of this whitepaper is to show that classic vulnerability analysis and exploitation is possible on Symbian OS smartphones. To this end, a set of methods and tools have been developed, and readily available standard software provided by Symbian has been modified to support debugging of memory mapped execute-in-place ROM. In this paper we will:
-----------------------------
https://www.sec-consult.com/files/SEC_Consult_Vulnerability_Lab_Pwning_Symbian_V1.03_PUBLIC.pdf
The goal of this whitepaper is to show that classic vulnerability analysis and exploitation is possible on Symbian OS smartphones. To this end, a set of methods and tools have been developed, and readily available standard software provided by Symbian has been modified to support debugging of memory mapped execute-in-place ROM. In this paper we will:
- Show how to statically analyze XIP ROM images (dumping, restoring import export tables, searching for unsafe function calls)
- Show how to enable run mode debugging of system binaries running from ROM IDA Pro, by patching the AppTRK debug agent
- Show other of the modified AppTRK. As an example, we will show a fully automated multimedia file fuzzer
- List and analyze the results of fuzzing the video- and audio codecs shipped with current Nokia smartphones
- Discuss further ideas and concepts, such as jailbreak shellcode, and an IRC bot trojan for Symbian
-----------------------------
https://www.sec-consult.com/files/SEC_Consult_Vulnerability_Lab_Pwning_Symbian_V1.03_PUBLIC.pdf
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Intermediate Class of Black Holes Discovered, Indicating Black Holes Join
Via ScienceAlert.au.com -
The first solid evidence of a new class of medium-sized black holes has been discovered in a distant galaxy by an international team of astronomers.
The first solid evidence of a new class of medium-sized black holes has been discovered in a distant galaxy by an international team of astronomers.
The black hole is more than 500 times the mass of the Sun, the researchers report in the journal Nature.
Until now, identified black holes have been either super-massive (several million to several billion times the mass of the Sun) in the centre of galaxies, or about the size of a typical star (between three and 20 Solar masses).
The team, led by astrophysicists at the Centre d'Etude Spatiale des Rayonnements in France, detected the new black hole approximately 290 million light years from Earth with the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton X-ray space telescope.
[...]
It had been long believed by astrophysicists that there might be a third, intermediate class of black holes, with masses between a hundred and several hundred thousand times that of the Sun. However, such black holes had not been reliably detected until now.
"While it is widely accepted that stellar mass black holes are created during the death throes of massive stars, it is still unknown how super-massive black holes are formed," says a member of the team, Dr Sean Farrell, who recently completed his PhD studies at the Campus of the University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy and now works at the University of Leicester, UK.
"One theory is that super-massive black holes may be formed by the merger of a number of intermediate mass black holes. To ratify such a theory, however, you must first prove the existence of intermediate black holes.
"The identification of HLX-1 is therefore an important step towards a better understanding of the formation of the super-massive black holes that exist at the centre of the Milky Way and other galaxies."
This new source, identified as HLX-1 (Hyper-Luminous X-ray source 1), lies towards the edge of the galaxy ESO 243-49. It is ultra-luminous in X-rays, with a maximum X-ray brightness of approximately 260 million times that of the Sun.
The X-ray signature of HLX-1 and the lack of a counterpart in optical images confirm that it is neither a foreground star nor a background galaxy, and its position indicates that it is not the central engine of that galaxy.
Using XMM-Newton observations carried out on the 23rd November 2004 and the 28th November 2008, the team showed that HLX-1 displayed a variation in its X-ray signature. This indicated that it must be a single object and not a group of many fainter sources. The huge radiance observed can only be explained if HLX-1 contains a black hole more than 500 times the mass of the Sun. No other physical explanation can account for the data.
China's Green Dam Install Requirement is Only a Matter of Time
Via ChinaDaily.com -
Despite a last-minute delay in implementing Green Dam internet-filtering software, China's authorities and its PC manufacturers said Wednesday they expect the tool will end up on new computers.
Despite a last-minute delay in implementing Green Dam internet-filtering software, China's authorities and its PC manufacturers said Wednesday they expect the tool will end up on new computers.
One day after the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) declared a postponement to the July 1 start date for the mandatory inclusion of "Green Dam-Youth Escort" porn filtering software, an MIIT official said it was only "a matter of time" before the directive took effect.
"The government will definitely carry on the directive on Green Dam. It's just a matter of time," he told China Daily on condition of anonymity.
An earlier directive to all PC makers on May 19 said the pre-installation of the filtering software would be mandatory on July 1 for any new PC produced or sold in China.
The official said issues around potential copyright infringement were not behind the delay - it was simply because some computer manufacturers needed more time.
"What will happen is that some PC manufacturers will have it included with their PC packages sooner than the others," he said. "But there is no definite deadline at the moment."
Domestic PC giants, including Lenovo Group, Tsinghua Tongfang, Founder Technology Group and Haier Group, said Wednesday they will "install the filter as they were told". But some manufacturers have included a disclaimer with new PCs, saying they would not be responsible for damage caused by Green Dam.
Foreign PC makers were not available for comment.
Robert Rains, assistant information officer at the US embassy in Beijing, said the US authorities were "looking forward to engaging in further dialogues with the related Chinese authorities on this matter".
Teams Track People with Bluetooth at Werchter Rock Festival
Via Yahoo! News (Reuters) -
Researchers are using Bluetooth technology to observe the meanderings of tens of thousands of festival-goers at a top European rock festival, hoping their findings will launch a new generation of tracking devices.
Researchers are using Bluetooth technology to observe the meanderings of tens of thousands of festival-goers at a top European rock festival, hoping their findings will launch a new generation of tracking devices.
The team from the University of Ghent in Belgium believes the research could yield new satellite navigation applications for the retail and security sectors.
"We have installed 36 Bluetooth scanners across the site and along a few surrounding roads, as well as bus stops," the university's Nico Van de Weghe said on Friday of the project at the Werchter festival, northeast of Brussels this weekend.
Within a radius of 30 meters, the scanners track mobile phones equipped with Bluetooth, a type of short-range wireless technology which allows different devices to connect with one another, often to transfer files.
But the masses flocking to see Coldplay, Kings of Leon or Metallica need not worry about their privacy, Van de Weghe said.
The researchers will only track the devices' MAC address -- a number that identifies each device on a network -- which cannot be traced to phone numbers or personal details.
"Werchter is a very interesting case," Van de Weghe told Reuters, adding that this is the first time his team, working on a wider research project using new technology to track moving objects, will collect full data on a live situation.
The team is carrying out research on geographical information systems, such as satellite navigation systems, and is hoping to be able to track moving objects in real time.
"Tracking movements via Bluetooth could become very interesting. It could help retailers keep track of the number of customers numbers at different times, " Van de Weghe said.
The technique could also be used by security services to track suspicious movements, or monitor evacuations at mass events.
Some 80,000 people from across Europe attended a sweltering first day of the festival in the small town of Werchter, 40 km (25 miles) northeast of Brussels, on Thursday, with thousands more expected on Friday and over the weekend.
Pakistan's Nuclear Weapons Face Threat from Insiders
Via Times of India -
Pakistan's atomic weapons face the threat from insiders in the nuclear establishment colluding with outsiders, as authorities there have "a dismal track record" in thwarting such dangers, a former top American intelligence official has warned.
"The greatest threat of a loose nuke scenario stems from insiders in the nuclear establishment working with outsiders, people seeking a bomb or material to make a bomb", said Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, who served as a CIA officer for 23 years.
"Nowhere in the world is this threat greater than in Pakistan. Pakistani authorities have a dismal track record in thwarting insider threats," Mowatt-Larssen said in the July/August issue of Arms Control Today, published by the Arms Control Association.
He underlined that the network run by the father of the Pakistani bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan, channeled sensitive nuclear technologies to Iran, Libya, and North Korea for years under the noses of the establishment before it was taken down in 2003, to the best of our knowledge.
The Umma-Tameer-e-Nau (UTN), founded by Pakistani nuclear scientists with close ties to al-Qaida and the Taliban, was headed by Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, who had been in charge of Pakistan's Khushab reactor.
"It is stunning to consider that two of the founding fathers of Pakistan's weapons programme embarked independently on clandestine efforts to organize networks to sell their country's most precious secrets for profit," Mowatt-Larssen stressed.
Pakistan's atomic weapons face the threat from insiders in the nuclear establishment colluding with outsiders, as authorities there have "a dismal track record" in thwarting such dangers, a former top American intelligence official has warned.
"The greatest threat of a loose nuke scenario stems from insiders in the nuclear establishment working with outsiders, people seeking a bomb or material to make a bomb", said Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, who served as a CIA officer for 23 years.
"Nowhere in the world is this threat greater than in Pakistan. Pakistani authorities have a dismal track record in thwarting insider threats," Mowatt-Larssen said in the July/August issue of Arms Control Today, published by the Arms Control Association.
He underlined that the network run by the father of the Pakistani bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan, channeled sensitive nuclear technologies to Iran, Libya, and North Korea for years under the noses of the establishment before it was taken down in 2003, to the best of our knowledge.
The Umma-Tameer-e-Nau (UTN), founded by Pakistani nuclear scientists with close ties to al-Qaida and the Taliban, was headed by Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, who had been in charge of Pakistan's Khushab reactor.
"It is stunning to consider that two of the founding fathers of Pakistan's weapons programme embarked independently on clandestine efforts to organize networks to sell their country's most precious secrets for profit," Mowatt-Larssen stressed.
NSA Plans Massive Data Center in Utah
Via The Register UK -
The ultra-secretive National Security Agency plans to build a 1-million-square-foot data center in Utah as it seeks to decentralize its computing resources and tap regions with ample supplies of lower-cost electricity.
When completed, the facility will require at least 65 megawatts of power and cost $1.93bn, according to news reports. The 120-acre data center will be located in Utah's Camp Williams, which borders Salt Lake and Tooele counties. Two major power corridors already run through the spot, a major reason the NSA chose it.
The ultra-secretive National Security Agency plans to build a 1-million-square-foot data center in Utah as it seeks to decentralize its computing resources and tap regions with ample supplies of lower-cost electricity.
When completed, the facility will require at least 65 megawatts of power and cost $1.93bn, according to news reports. The 120-acre data center will be located in Utah's Camp Williams, which borders Salt Lake and Tooele counties. Two major power corridors already run through the spot, a major reason the NSA chose it.
The plans help demonstrate how power is emerging as one of the biggest costs in building and running today's data centers. During an initial building phase with a budget of $181m, $52m will be spent in preparatory electrical work, including connecting the two corridors. Later phases will include $340m in electrical work.
The Utah facility will be the NSA's third major data center. In 2006, the Baltimore Sun reported the agency's Fort Meade location maxed out the capacity of the Baltimore area power grid, preventing the installation of new supercomputers that had been planned. In 2007, the NSA announced plans to build a second data center in San Antonio, Texas. The agency is expanding existing intelligence-collection facilities in the UK's North Yorkshire, as well.
The supercomputers will be part of the NSA's signal intelligence program, whose mission is to "gain a decisive information advantage for the nation and our allies under all circumstances," according to The Salt Lake Tribune, which cited Congressional documents. Additional coverage is here, and here.
The articles came around the same time The Washington Post reported that the Obama administration will proceed with a Bush-era plan to use NSA assistance is screening government computer traffic on private-sector networks. The plan is controversial because of the NSA's involvement in warrantless wiretapping of US citizens.
The program will scrutinize only data traveling to or from government systems, but it has provoked debate within the US Department of Homeland Security because of uncertainty about whether private data can be shielded from unauthorized scrutiny.Friday, July 3, 2009
Syria: Al Assad Removes Military Intelligence Director
Via Stratfor -
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has removed his brother-in-law Asef Shawkat, who is suspected of involvement in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, from his position as military intelligence director, Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported July 3, citing Syrian Web site All4Syria.info. Shawkat has held the post of military intelligence director since Feb. 14, 2005, the day al-Hariri was killed. He has now been appointed deputy chief of staff for the army.
------------------------
As cited above, All4Syria.info outlined the changes in Syrian military intelligence....
See Google's attempt at an English translation.
For some background information on Asef Shawkat, check out BBC's Who's Who in Syria's Leadership.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has removed his brother-in-law Asef Shawkat, who is suspected of involvement in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, from his position as military intelligence director, Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported July 3, citing Syrian Web site All4Syria.info. Shawkat has held the post of military intelligence director since Feb. 14, 2005, the day al-Hariri was killed. He has now been appointed deputy chief of staff for the army.
------------------------
As cited above, All4Syria.info outlined the changes in Syrian military intelligence....
See Google's attempt at an English translation.
For some background information on Asef Shawkat, check out BBC's Who's Who in Syria's Leadership.
Air Force: Lockheed's AGM-158 JASSM Program May be Killed
Via Bloomberg.com -
A $6 billion Lockheed Martin Corp. cruise missile program may be terminated if its testing record doesn’t improve, according to the U.S. Air Force.
The weapon was declared combat-ready five years ago and has been deployed even though it has a history of failure in testing. Four of 10 missiles tested during November, January and February didn’t detonate on impact or hit the target -- a reliability rate of 60 percent. The Air Force demands a rate of at least 80 percent and the program is expected to reach 90 percent within four years.
Lockheed, the world’s largest defense company, was told that failure in the next round of testing could have a potentially “significant” impact on funding and the program may be terminated, Air Force spokeswoman Lieutenant Colonel Karen Platt said in an e-mailed statement.
At risk is $4 billion in future orders for as many as 3,847 of the so-called Joint Air-to-Surface-Standoff Missile, Platt said. Lockheed currently has 1,053 missiles on contract.
Platt said a decision to kill the program would be up to the Pentagon’s weapons-buying office and likely would be deferred until after the next round of testing, which is expected to begin “in late summer or early fall.”
-----------------------------------------------
More information about the AGM-158 JASSM cruise missile program...
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/smart/jassm.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-158_JASSM
A $6 billion Lockheed Martin Corp. cruise missile program may be terminated if its testing record doesn’t improve, according to the U.S. Air Force.
The weapon was declared combat-ready five years ago and has been deployed even though it has a history of failure in testing. Four of 10 missiles tested during November, January and February didn’t detonate on impact or hit the target -- a reliability rate of 60 percent. The Air Force demands a rate of at least 80 percent and the program is expected to reach 90 percent within four years.
Lockheed, the world’s largest defense company, was told that failure in the next round of testing could have a potentially “significant” impact on funding and the program may be terminated, Air Force spokeswoman Lieutenant Colonel Karen Platt said in an e-mailed statement.
At risk is $4 billion in future orders for as many as 3,847 of the so-called Joint Air-to-Surface-Standoff Missile, Platt said. Lockheed currently has 1,053 missiles on contract.
Platt said a decision to kill the program would be up to the Pentagon’s weapons-buying office and likely would be deferred until after the next round of testing, which is expected to begin “in late summer or early fall.”
-----------------------------------------------
More information about the AGM-158 JASSM cruise missile program...
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/smart/jassm.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-158_JASSM
Two Bahrainis Targeted US Navy Ships & Personnel at Mina Salman
Via Military.com -
U.S. Navy ships in Bahrain were the target of an alleged terror attack, prosecutors here claimed in court yesterday.
U.S. Navy ships in Bahrain were the target of an alleged terror attack, prosecutors here claimed in court yesterday.
Two Bahrainis, accused of smuggling weapons into the country, planned to attack U.S. ships and personnel at Mina Salman, say prosecutors.
The two men, aged 22 and 21, were arrested on April 26 -- the day of the Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix -- when police allegedly seized machine guns, weapons, computer discs and other evidence from their homes in East Riffa.
Both appeared for the first time yesterday before the High Criminal Court, where they denied plotting terror attacks and smuggling weapons and ammunition into the country.
Police believe the pair had met abroad with members of a terrorist cell, al-Qaeda.
Their arrest came after National Security Agency received information that the 22-year-old unemployed man, of Jordanian origin, had intensified contacts with the cell in Iran.
Officers obtained a search warrant and found tapes, CDs, computers, bank statements and exchange company documents in his house.
He then led police to the other -- a 21-year-old junior customs officer -- who possessed the smuggled weapons.
Police raided his house and found two machine guns, a pistol, bullets, knives and swords, the court heard.
They also seized several books on building missiles, rockets, weapons and explosives, and pictures of the American Base and Navy ships along with research and videos on jehad, alleged prosecutors.
During questioning, the younger defendant confessed to planning an attack on U.S. forces at Mina Salman, said court documents.
[...]
The men allegedly carried out their plans and preparations for the attack during 2007 and 2008, according to trial documents.
They allegedly confessed, during questioning, to smuggling the weapons and ammunition from Jordan to use in a plot against American soldiers.
Hashim earlier claimed the guns, capable of firing 30 bullets per second, were smuggled into Bahrain to defend it from possible attack by Iran.
He told the GDN that the only reason they were acquired was to protect the country after claims that it was a province of Iran.
The GDN reported earlier that an Interior Ministry statement alleged the men were part of a terror network plotting attacks in Bahrain and elsewhere in the Gulf.
It also claimed they had met other members of a terrorist cell abroad.
Interior Minister Shaikh Rashid bin Abdulla Al Khalifa said at the time of the arrest that the men were rounded up after allegedly intensifying contacts with the terror cell abroad, travelling to a neighbouring Arab country, buying weapons and ammunition and smuggling them into Bahrain.
Both men reportedly confessed to plotting terrorist attacks and gave names of accomplices in Arab and foreign countriesTwo Centuries On, a Cryptologist Cracks a Presidential Code
Via WSJ.com -
For more than 200 years, buried deep within Thomas Jefferson's correspondence and papers, there lay a mysterious cipher -- a coded message that appears to have remained unsolved. Until now.
For more than 200 years, buried deep within Thomas Jefferson's correspondence and papers, there lay a mysterious cipher -- a coded message that appears to have remained unsolved. Until now.
The cryptic message was sent to President Jefferson in December 1801 by his friend and frequent correspondent, Robert Patterson, a mathematics professor at the University of Pennsylvania. President Jefferson and Mr. Patterson were both officials at the American Philosophical Society -- a group that promoted scholarly research in the sciences and humanities -- and were enthusiasts of ciphers and other codes, regularly exchanging letters about them.
In this message, Mr. Patterson set out to show the president and primary author of the Declaration of Independence what he deemed to be a nearly flawless cipher. "The art of secret writing," or writing in cipher, has "engaged the attention both of the states-man & philosopher for many ages," Mr. Patterson wrote. But, he added, most ciphers fall "far short of perfection."
To Mr. Patterson's view, a perfect code had four properties: It should be adaptable to all languages; it should be simple to learn and memorize; it should be easy to write and to read; and most important of all, "it should be absolutely inscrutable to all unacquainted with the particular key or secret for decyphering."
Mr. Patterson then included in the letter an example of a message in his cipher, one that would be so difficult to decode that it would "defy the united ingenuity of the whole human race," he wrote.
There is no evidence that Jefferson, or anyone else for that matter, ever solved the code. But Jefferson did believe the cipher was so inscrutable that he considered having the State Department use it, and passed it on to the ambassador to France, Robert Livingston.
The cipher finally met its match in Lawren Smithline, a 36-year-old mathematician. Dr. Smithline has a Ph.D. in mathematics and now works professionally with cryptology, or code-breaking, at the Center for Communications Research in Princeton, N.J., a division of the Institute for Defense Analyses.
[...]
The code, Mr. Patterson made clear in his letter, was not a simple substitution cipher.
[...]
Because frequency analysis was already well known in the 19th century, cryptographers of the time turned to other techniques. One was called the nomenclator: a catalog of numbers, each standing for a word, syllable, phrase or letter. Mr. Jefferson's correspondence shows that he used several code books of nomenclators. An issue with these tools, according to Mr. Patterson's criteria, is that a nomenclator is too tough to memorize.
[...]
To get a sense of language patterns of the era, Dr. Smithline studied the 80,000 letter-characters contained in Jefferson's State of the Union addresses, and counted the frequency of occurrences of "aa," "ab," "ac," through "zz."
Dr. Smithline then made a series of educated guesses, such as the number of rows per section, which two rows belong next to each other, and the number of random letters inserted into a line.
To help vet his guesses, he turned to a tool not available during the 19th century: a computer algorithm. He used what's called "dynamic programming," which solves large problems by breaking puzzles down into smaller pieces and linking together the solutions.
The overall calculations necessary to solve the puzzle were fewer than 100,000, which Dr. Smithline says would be "tedious in the 19th century, but doable."
After about a week of working on the puzzle, the numerical key to Mr. Patterson's cipher emerged -- 13, 34, 57, 65, 22, 78, 49. Using that digital key, he was able to unfurl the cipher's text:
"In Congress, July Fourth, one thousand seven hundred and seventy six. A declaration by the Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled. When in the course of human events..."
That, of course, is the beginning -- with a few liberties taken -- to the Declaration of Independence, written at least in part by Jefferson himself. "Patterson played this little joke on Thomas Jefferson," says Dr. Smithline. "And nobody knew until now."
Purple Ra1n - iPhone 3GS Unlocking Tool
Via BetaNews -
In a comically blatant display of bravado this morning, George Hotz -- who gained fame last year as the first to post an unlocking utility for the new Apple iPhone -- has unveiled a new utility that he claims enables iPhone 3G S users to download, install, and utilize the applications of their choice, outside of Apple's and AT&T's control.
In a comically blatant display of bravado this morning, George Hotz -- who gained fame last year as the first to post an unlocking utility for the new Apple iPhone -- has unveiled a new utility that he claims enables iPhone 3G S users to download, install, and utilize the applications of their choice, outside of Apple's and AT&T's control.
In so doing, Hotz -- who uses the handle "GeoHot" -- publicly paraded his prowess in front of Dev-Team, the independent group of iPhone developers who had been racing to produce a similar tool for this latest model. Complete with poor punctuation and curious references to "holes," Hotz wrote, "Normally I don't make tools for the general public, and rather wait for the dev team to do it. But guys, whats up with waiting until 3.1? That isn't how the game is played. We release, Apple fixes, we find new holes. It isn't worth waiting because you might have the 'last' hole in the iPhone. What last hole...this isn't golf. I'll find a new one next week."
The Purple Ra1n tool is currently for Windows users only, though Hotz says a Mac OS X version is on the way. 3G S users need the latest edition of iTunes installed. Although this tool apparently will not go so far as to dissolve the bonds between the 3G S and the AT&T exclusive carrier (which was a key feature of Hotz' last tour de force), a test by CrunchGear's John Biggs appears to verify that a relatively simple process may lead to 3G S users installing the apps of their choice.
Hotz' news came just hours after the Dev-Team, in its own blog, pleaded with its own loyal readers to wait just a little while longer. Its own Ultrasn0w tool (whose symbolism may also have been capitalized upon by Hotz' Purple Ra1n) is reportedly capable of being used with the 3G S without modifications, the team says, after having discovered that an exploit that affected the 3G's ROMs and led to its jailbreak-ability, can also be used with 3G S as well.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
MD6 Withdrawn from SHA-3 Competition
Via Schneier on Security -
In other SHA-3 news, Ron Rivest seems to have withdrawn MD6 from the SHA-3 competition. From an e-mail to a NIST mailing list:
In other SHA-3 news, Ron Rivest seems to have withdrawn MD6 from the SHA-3 competition. From an e-mail to a NIST mailing list:
We suggest that MD6 is not yet ready for the next SHA-3 round, and we also provide some suggestions for NIST as the contest moves forward.
Basically, the issue is that in order for MD6 to be fast enough to be competitive, the designers have to reduce the number of rounds down to 30-40, and at those rounds, the algorithm loses its proofs of resistance to differential attacks.
Thus, while MD6 appears to be a robust and secure cryptographic hash algorithm, and has much merit for multi-core processors, our inability to provide a proof of security for a reduced-round (and possibly tweaked) version of MD6 against differential attacks suggests that MD6 is not ready for consideration for the next SHA-3 round.
EDITED TO ADD (7/1): This is a very classy withdrawal, as we expect from Ron Rivest -- especially given the fact that there are no attacks on it, while other algorithms have been seriously broken and their submitters keep trying to pretend that no one has noticed.
U.S. Soldier Captured & Sold to Afghan Militant Clan
Via CNN -
The American soldier abducted in southeastern Afghanistan is now being held by a notorious militant clan, a senior U.S. military official said.
This soldier and three Afghan soldiers were captured by low-level militants and then quickly "sold" to the clan and network led by warlord Siraj Haqqani -- believed to be deeply involved in the action.
The Haqqanis -- who operate on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and are well known to the U.S. military -- are assembling shuras, or local councils of leaders, to talk and try to "legitimize" what they have done, the official said.
U.S., Afghan and Pakistani troops are sealing off the area and also are talking to tribal chiefs, village elders and leaders.
They are telling them to "do the right thing and solve this," the official said.
The U.S. military is telling people not to let Haqqani operatives move through their area and to find the American and return him. The military wants to make sure there is "no shelter" for the militants holding him.
"We want to make sure there is no place to hide," the official said.
The soldier, missing since Tuesday, did apparently leave his small outpost on his own with no apparent means of defending himself, and the U.S. military believes a video of him is forthcoming.
The Taliban earlier claimed responsibility for the abduction. The U.S. soldier was kidnapped along with three Afghan soldiers, Taliban commander Mulvi Sangeen said.
The American soldier abducted in southeastern Afghanistan is now being held by a notorious militant clan, a senior U.S. military official said.
This soldier and three Afghan soldiers were captured by low-level militants and then quickly "sold" to the clan and network led by warlord Siraj Haqqani -- believed to be deeply involved in the action.
The Haqqanis -- who operate on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and are well known to the U.S. military -- are assembling shuras, or local councils of leaders, to talk and try to "legitimize" what they have done, the official said.
U.S., Afghan and Pakistani troops are sealing off the area and also are talking to tribal chiefs, village elders and leaders.
They are telling them to "do the right thing and solve this," the official said.
The U.S. military is telling people not to let Haqqani operatives move through their area and to find the American and return him. The military wants to make sure there is "no shelter" for the militants holding him.
"We want to make sure there is no place to hide," the official said.
The soldier, missing since Tuesday, did apparently leave his small outpost on his own with no apparent means of defending himself, and the U.S. military believes a video of him is forthcoming.
The Taliban earlier claimed responsibility for the abduction. The U.S. soldier was kidnapped along with three Afghan soldiers, Taliban commander Mulvi Sangeen said.
Saudi Arabia: Authorities Arrest Al-Qaeda Point Man
Via Asharq Alawest -
Dammam, Asharq Al-Awsat- Saudi security authorities arrested a member of the Al-Qaeda organization whose name was not on the list of 85 wanted persons recently announced by the Saudi Interior Ministry. The security forces faced armed resistance when they arrested the individual and believe that he had an active relationship with the terrorist organization's cadres abroad.
The Saudi Interior Ministry said the monitoring the individual uncovered his direct relationship with the organization abroad. Moreover, information obtained by Asharq al-Awsat indicated that the wanted person was active in smuggling Saudi returnees from Guantanamo and wanted members of the organization in Saudi Arabia into a neighboring country and that the security organs had been pursuing the detainee for the past few months.
Interior Ministry Security Spokesman Major General Mansur al-Turki confirmed to Asharq al-Awsat yesterday that the detainee was not on the list of 85 and had direct contact with the organization abroad. As to the nature of relationship with Al-Qaeda organization outside the country, this will become clear from the investigations that Saudi security are having with the detainees, according to Al-Turki.
Unofficial information obtained by Asharq Al-Awsat yesterday indicates that the detainee is in his thirties and was active in recruiting Saudis, among them returnees from Guantanamo, and members of Al-Qaeda organization who are active in a neighboring country. The information also indicated that the security organs sources have been pursuing him for several months and he was monitored inside a low-income house in Al-Sadah neighborhood, Buraydah city, Al-Qasim region. Maj. Gen. Al-Turki said "the interest of the investigations requires that no information about his activities is given."
Dammam, Asharq Al-Awsat- Saudi security authorities arrested a member of the Al-Qaeda organization whose name was not on the list of 85 wanted persons recently announced by the Saudi Interior Ministry. The security forces faced armed resistance when they arrested the individual and believe that he had an active relationship with the terrorist organization's cadres abroad.
The Saudi Interior Ministry said the monitoring the individual uncovered his direct relationship with the organization abroad. Moreover, information obtained by Asharq al-Awsat indicated that the wanted person was active in smuggling Saudi returnees from Guantanamo and wanted members of the organization in Saudi Arabia into a neighboring country and that the security organs had been pursuing the detainee for the past few months.
Interior Ministry Security Spokesman Major General Mansur al-Turki confirmed to Asharq al-Awsat yesterday that the detainee was not on the list of 85 and had direct contact with the organization abroad. As to the nature of relationship with Al-Qaeda organization outside the country, this will become clear from the investigations that Saudi security are having with the detainees, according to Al-Turki.
Unofficial information obtained by Asharq Al-Awsat yesterday indicates that the detainee is in his thirties and was active in recruiting Saudis, among them returnees from Guantanamo, and members of Al-Qaeda organization who are active in a neighboring country. The information also indicated that the security organs sources have been pursuing him for several months and he was monitored inside a low-income house in Al-Sadah neighborhood, Buraydah city, Al-Qasim region. Maj. Gen. Al-Turki said "the interest of the investigations requires that no information about his activities is given."
Security Guard Charged with Hacking Hospital Systems
Via Computerworld -
The grainy video shows a bleary-eyed young man in a hoodie inside the Carrell Clinic in Dallas. As he hits the elevator button, the theme music from Mission Impossible plays in the background. "You're on a mission with me: Infiltration," he says to the camera.
Then in the course of the next five minutes, the man, who says he hasn't slept in three days, uses a security key to roam the halls of the hospital and install malicious botnet software on a computer there.
He says he's "infiltrated a very large corporate office," but according to the FBI, he was just working the night shift as a security guard, pretending to break into the very building he was supposed to be guarding.
On Friday the federal authorities arrested the man in the video, Jesse William McGraw, on a charge of felony computer intrusion, saying he intended to use the botnet to launch a massive distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on July 4, the day after he was set to stop working there. He'd nicknamed the day "Devil's Day."
McGraw was an employee of a Dallas security company called United Protection Services; he worked the 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift at the clinic.
McGraw, who went by the hacker name GhostExodus, allegedly installed malicious software in computers all over the Carrell Clinic, including systems that contained confidential information and others that managed the building's climate-control systems, authorities said Tuesday.
The hacker could have harmed patients or damaged supplies of drugs if he had turned off air conditioning during the hot Texas summer, authorities said.
GhostExodus' Mission Impossible video was one of several that he posted to YouTube. They have since been removed, but copies were seen by the IDG News Service. One video named in court filings that was not deleted shows him skillfully playing a violin.
GhostExodus may have seen his arrest coming.
In a March 14 online journal entry, he said that an enemy was fabricating evidence against him and that he was erasing his tracks, but he did leave some tracks on the Web. For example, there's a May 24 forum post in which he brags about his hacking and posts screenshots of the administrative interface to the hospital's heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems. "Spreading botnets is boring. But sometimes you get a hefty prize for all your hard work and labor," he wrote. "Like this you see below. An HVAC server."
McGraw talks like a big-time spy, but he makes some silly mistakes. In one video he puts on surgical gloves -- presumably to hide his fingerprints -- after typing on the computer he plans to hack. In another, he crops the video so that his face is not visible, but then shows off a fake FBI identity card -- with his picture on it. Then there's the fact that he posted the whole thing on YouTube.
His undoing came when a member of his hacker group, called the Electronik Tribulation Army, boasted to security researcher Wesley McGrew and showed him screen shots of hacked machines. That hacker, who went by the name XXxxImmortalxxXX, claimed to have hacked the Carrell Clinic systems, but McGrew soon linked the crime to GhostExodus and handed over his findings to authorities.
The group also compromised computers used by the Dallas Police and NASA, the FBI said in an affidavit. According to GhostExodus' journal, he appears to have found a cross-site scripting bug -- a common Web programming error -- on NASA's Web site.
The grainy video shows a bleary-eyed young man in a hoodie inside the Carrell Clinic in Dallas. As he hits the elevator button, the theme music from Mission Impossible plays in the background. "You're on a mission with me: Infiltration," he says to the camera.
Then in the course of the next five minutes, the man, who says he hasn't slept in three days, uses a security key to roam the halls of the hospital and install malicious botnet software on a computer there.
He says he's "infiltrated a very large corporate office," but according to the FBI, he was just working the night shift as a security guard, pretending to break into the very building he was supposed to be guarding.
On Friday the federal authorities arrested the man in the video, Jesse William McGraw, on a charge of felony computer intrusion, saying he intended to use the botnet to launch a massive distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on July 4, the day after he was set to stop working there. He'd nicknamed the day "Devil's Day."
McGraw was an employee of a Dallas security company called United Protection Services; he worked the 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift at the clinic.
McGraw, who went by the hacker name GhostExodus, allegedly installed malicious software in computers all over the Carrell Clinic, including systems that contained confidential information and others that managed the building's climate-control systems, authorities said Tuesday.
The hacker could have harmed patients or damaged supplies of drugs if he had turned off air conditioning during the hot Texas summer, authorities said.
GhostExodus' Mission Impossible video was one of several that he posted to YouTube. They have since been removed, but copies were seen by the IDG News Service. One video named in court filings that was not deleted shows him skillfully playing a violin.
GhostExodus may have seen his arrest coming.
In a March 14 online journal entry, he said that an enemy was fabricating evidence against him and that he was erasing his tracks, but he did leave some tracks on the Web. For example, there's a May 24 forum post in which he brags about his hacking and posts screenshots of the administrative interface to the hospital's heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems. "Spreading botnets is boring. But sometimes you get a hefty prize for all your hard work and labor," he wrote. "Like this you see below. An HVAC server."
McGraw talks like a big-time spy, but he makes some silly mistakes. In one video he puts on surgical gloves -- presumably to hide his fingerprints -- after typing on the computer he plans to hack. In another, he crops the video so that his face is not visible, but then shows off a fake FBI identity card -- with his picture on it. Then there's the fact that he posted the whole thing on YouTube.
His undoing came when a member of his hacker group, called the Electronik Tribulation Army, boasted to security researcher Wesley McGrew and showed him screen shots of hacked machines. That hacker, who went by the name XXxxImmortalxxXX, claimed to have hacked the Carrell Clinic systems, but McGrew soon linked the crime to GhostExodus and handed over his findings to authorities.
The group also compromised computers used by the Dallas Police and NASA, the FBI said in an affidavit. According to GhostExodus' journal, he appears to have found a cross-site scripting bug -- a common Web programming error -- on NASA's Web site.
Serious SMS Vulnerability Discovered for the iPhone
Via Computerworld.com -
Apple is working to fix an iPhone vulnerability that could allow an attacker to remotely install and run unsigned software code with root access to the phone.
The attack in question exploits a weakness in the way iPhones handle text messages received via SMS (Short Message Service), said security researcher Charlie Miller, during a presentation at the SyScan conference in Singapore on Thursday. He didn't provide a detailed description of the SMS vulnerability, citing an agreement with Apple.
[...]
The SMS vulnerability allows an attacker to run software code on the phone that is sent by SMS over a mobile operator's network. The malicious code could include commands to monitor the location of the phone using GPS, turn on the phone's microphone to eavesdrop on conversations, or make the phone join a distributed denial of service attack or a botnet, Miller said.
Apple is working to patch the vulnerability and expects to have a fix ready later this month, before Miller discusses the attack in greater detail during a planned presentation at the Black Hat USA conference in Las Vegas.
[...]
The iPhone also requires applications to run in a sandbox, a security feature that isolates them from other applications and limits their access to the phone's capabilities. But SMS offers a way for attackers to get greater access to the phone's capabilities, Miller said.
"SMS is a great vector to attack the iPhone," he said.
Most often used to send brief text messages between cell phones, SMS can also send binary code to an iPhone, which then processes the code without any user interaction. Each SMS message is limited to 140 bytes, but longer sequences can be sent to the phone as multiple messages that are automatically reassembled.
This feature allows larger programs to be delivered to a phone, Miller said.
In addition, vulnerabilities found in the iPhone's SMS function give an attacker root access to the handset, Miller said. That's not the case for the iPhone's other applications, such as its browser, where vulnerabilities only give an attacker access to the application's sandbox.
----------------------------------
In related news, another couple of researchers plan to release an SMS auditing tool for the iPhone @ Blackhat as part of a talk titled "Attacking SMS".
Apple is working to fix an iPhone vulnerability that could allow an attacker to remotely install and run unsigned software code with root access to the phone.
The attack in question exploits a weakness in the way iPhones handle text messages received via SMS (Short Message Service), said security researcher Charlie Miller, during a presentation at the SyScan conference in Singapore on Thursday. He didn't provide a detailed description of the SMS vulnerability, citing an agreement with Apple.
[...]
The SMS vulnerability allows an attacker to run software code on the phone that is sent by SMS over a mobile operator's network. The malicious code could include commands to monitor the location of the phone using GPS, turn on the phone's microphone to eavesdrop on conversations, or make the phone join a distributed denial of service attack or a botnet, Miller said.
Apple is working to patch the vulnerability and expects to have a fix ready later this month, before Miller discusses the attack in greater detail during a planned presentation at the Black Hat USA conference in Las Vegas.
[...]
The iPhone also requires applications to run in a sandbox, a security feature that isolates them from other applications and limits their access to the phone's capabilities. But SMS offers a way for attackers to get greater access to the phone's capabilities, Miller said.
"SMS is a great vector to attack the iPhone," he said.
Most often used to send brief text messages between cell phones, SMS can also send binary code to an iPhone, which then processes the code without any user interaction. Each SMS message is limited to 140 bytes, but longer sequences can be sent to the phone as multiple messages that are automatically reassembled.
This feature allows larger programs to be delivered to a phone, Miller said.
In addition, vulnerabilities found in the iPhone's SMS function give an attacker root access to the handset, Miller said. That's not the case for the iPhone's other applications, such as its browser, where vulnerabilities only give an attacker access to the application's sandbox.
----------------------------------
In related news, another couple of researchers plan to release an SMS auditing tool for the iPhone @ Blackhat as part of a talk titled "Attacking SMS".
Green Dam Remote Change System Time Exploit
// GreenDam listens on UDP 1234 & waits for the 4 bytes time value
// We can send some bytes to change the time of the system
// testgreendam[at]gmail.com
http://www.milw0rm.com/exploits/9065
// We can send some bytes to change the time of the system
// testgreendam[at]gmail.com
http://www.milw0rm.com/exploits/9065
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) Reviewed by Senate Intelligence Committee
Via DoDBuzz.com -
The Senate Intelligence Committee may try to break up the nation’s storied spy satellite agency — the NRO — once a paragon of American technological brilliance and now considered by many a troubled bureaucracy that has had trouble getting the big things right. In parallel, the Director of National Intelligence was briefed June 23 by a panel of distinguished experts about the best path ahead for the National Reconnaissance Office. The panel “considered options to break up NRO or reassign functions but recommended continuation of a single, unified program,” a former senior intelligence official said. The report about the Senate committee came from this same source, a respected insider.
Dennis Blair, director of National Intelligence, has drafted a panel of trusted intelligence experts to revamp the troubled National Reconnaissance Office, builder of America’s multi-billion dollar spy satellites.
The panel, led by Trey Obering, former director of the Missile Defense Agency, includes: Marty Faga, a member of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board and a former NRO director; Joanne Isham, head of Washington operations for L-1 Identity Solutions and former deputy director of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency; Paul Kaminski, former undersecretary of Defense for acquisition, technology and logistics who recently penned a study recommending acquisition changes for the NRO; Tom Moorman, a VP at Booz Allen who was named by Space News as one of the 10 most influential space leaders; and Vincent Vitto former president and CEO of the Draper Lab, a private research and development company and vice chairman of the Defense Science Board.
The panel examined every facet of the NRO — its mission, charter, staffing, requirements, organization, funding and relationship to other organizations. One of the key jobs the Obering panel had is drafting a new charter for the NRO. The current charter was drafted 44 years ago and refers to jobs that no longer exist.
The panel’s work “was very well received” by DNI Dennis Blair. In addition to its primary recommendation to essentially keep the NRO structure as is — an amalgam of CIA officials, Air Force officers and some civilians, the panel “made many suggestions on external relationships and internal moves that could make it more effective, the former intelligence official said.
When I asked if this meant a realignment of Air Force and CIA officials, or some changes in how the organization relates to the Defense Department and intelligence community, my source said he was “not sure that relationships will change.”
Terrorist Financing on the Internet
http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC06.php?CID=1302
In response to growing international pressure since the September 11 attacks, al-Qaeda has increasingly relied on the internet to spread its message and gain support throughout the world. In addition, al-Qaeda has used the web's broad reach, timely efficiency, and certain degree of anonymity and security as a conduit for terrorist financing. Unfortunately, al-Qaeda is not the only terrorist group that exploits the internet for financing; groups such as Hamas, Laskhar-e Taiba, and Hizballah also use the internet to raise and transfer funds to support their groups' activities. Although there is broad international agreement that the internet creates serious counterterrorism vulnerabilities and that action is needed to counter this growing threat, there is far less agreement on what steps need to be taken.
Download this article (PDF)
In response to growing international pressure since the September 11 attacks, al-Qaeda has increasingly relied on the internet to spread its message and gain support throughout the world. In addition, al-Qaeda has used the web's broad reach, timely efficiency, and certain degree of anonymity and security as a conduit for terrorist financing. Unfortunately, al-Qaeda is not the only terrorist group that exploits the internet for financing; groups such as Hamas, Laskhar-e Taiba, and Hizballah also use the internet to raise and transfer funds to support their groups' activities. Although there is broad international agreement that the internet creates serious counterterrorism vulnerabilities and that action is needed to counter this growing threat, there is far less agreement on what steps need to be taken.
Download this article (PDF)
New Attack on AES Encryption Published
Via Schneier on Security -
There's a new cryptanalytic attack on AES that is better than brute force:
There's a new cryptanalytic attack on AES that is better than brute force:
Abstract. In this paper we present two related-key attacks on the full AES. For AES-256 we show the first key recovery attack that works for all the keys and has complexity 2119, while the recent attack by Biryukov-Khovratovich-Nikolic works for a weak key class and has higher complexity. The second attack is the first cryptanalysis of the full AES-192. Both our attacks are boomerang attacks, which are based on the recent idea of finding local collisions in block ciphers and enhanced with the boomerang switching techniques to gain free rounds in the middle.
In an e-mail, the authors wrote:
We also expect that a careful analysis may reduce the complexities. As a preliminary result, we think that the complexity of the attack on AES-256 can be lowered from 2119 to about 2110.5 data and time.We believe that these results may shed a new light on the design of the key-schedules of block ciphers, but they pose no immediate threat for the real world applications that use AES.
Agreed. While this attack is better than brute force -- and some cryptographers will describe the algorithm as "broken" because of it -- it is still far, far beyond our capabilities of computation. The attack is, and probably forever will be, theoretical. But remember: attacks always get better, they never get worse. Others will continue to improve on these numbers. While there's no reason to panic, no reason to stop using AES, no reason to insist that NIST choose another encryption standard, this will certainly be a problem for some of the AES-based SHA-3 candidate hash functions.
GCHQ Takes Lead on UK Gov IT Security Training
Via ZDNet UK -
In the past, all government IT security training has been the charge of the Cabinet Office, through the office of the Central Sponsor for Information Assurance (CSIA). However, GCHQ said on Tuesday that its National Technical Authority for Information Assurance arm, known as CESG, will take on the role of co-ordinating the training effort.
In the past, all government IT security training has been the charge of the Cabinet Office, through the office of the Central Sponsor for Information Assurance (CSIA). However, GCHQ said on Tuesday that its National Technical Authority for Information Assurance arm, known as CESG, will take on the role of co-ordinating the training effort.
"CESG will develop the content for information assurance education and training, and will approve service providers for its delivery, in consultation with the CSIA," GCHQ told ZDNet UK in an email exchange.
However, the Cabinet Office will continue to have strategic oversight of the training, the agency added.
The information assurance training covers such areas as data protection, security good practice and how to harden IT systems. As its scope covers both government agencies and their industry partners, the task is "substantial", GCHQ said.
To deal with the amount of training needed, CESG will certify training programmes offered by the security industry so public-sector bodies and their business partners can use these.
"CESG is looking to quality-assure training and education programmes through industry partners and in collaboration with government departments," GCHQ said. "To meet the volume, we anticipate that all forms of training will be used, from traditional training in classrooms to e-learning packages, workshops and seminars."
Training materials will in part be gathered by harvesting 'good practice' from the public sector, via workshops involving government agencies. One of these workshops has already taken place, on 14 May, GCHQ said. "Twelve different government departments were represented [at the workshop], including the Department for Work and Pensions, the Home Office, HM Revenue & Customs, and the National Policing Improvements Agency," the agency said.
The agency also intends to feed information security knowledge from private-sector sources into the training. However, CESG will not take on any training role for the private sector, GCHQ said.
"[Information assurance] professionalism across the private sector is addressed by the Institute of Information Security Professionals," said GCHQ. "[Information assurance] and information security good practice for the private sector is handled by the department for Business, Innovation and Skills. CESG supports government customers and those private-sector organisations delivering information services to those customers."
The expansion in CESG's role comes at a time when GCHQ is taking on more responsibilities in general. As part of the government's Cyber Security Strategy, a Cyber Security Operations Centre is being set up in Cheltenham to co-ordinate UK systems infrastructure defence and attack capabilities.
Suspect North Korean Ship Changes Course Under US Scrutiny
Via GlobalSecurity.org -
A North Korean cargo ship being closely tailed by the United States Navy appears to be changing course, and may be returning to North Korea. The ship has come to be seen as an initial test of new United Nations restrictions on Pyongyang.
U.S. officials say the Kang Nam, a North Korean cargo ship, is apparently abandoning the course it has been on for a week toward Southeast Asia, and may now be headed back home.
The ship, which intelligence officials describe as having a history of transporting North Korean weapons for sale, was believed to have been headed toward Burma. A U.S. Navy destroyer group began tracking the ship about a week ago under suspicion it may be carrying items banned under a recently passed United Nations Security Council Resolution.
The ship was expected to refuel in Singapore, where the government had promised what it called "appropriate action" under the U.N. resolution. Park Seung-jae, an analyst with the Asia Strategy Institute in Seoul, says that may have helped change Pyongyang's mind about the voyage.
"When they (North Korea) go through Singapore, they cannot ignore inspection from Singapore. Also, on the other hand, it may be very difficult for them to throw out weapons or nuclear equipment on the sea," said Park.
Park says if the ship does return to the North, it will bolster the impression that international sanctions against Pyongyang are effective. He says the United States and its partners will need to maintain close scrutiny of the North's shipping.
"North Korean ships in Myanmar and Iran will be the first priority to watch," he said.
Weapons sales are an important source of hard currency for North Korea, one of the most economically isolated and impoverished nations in the world. Washington also fears Pyongyang may attempt to cash in on its nuclear programs by selling equipment, technology, or even fissile material to nations or groups hostile to the United States.
U.N. Security Council Resolution 1874, passed in response to North Korea's nuclear test in May, authorizes member states to inspect the North's ships in their ports or territory.
North Korea has said on several recent occasions it would view any attempt to stop and inspect its ships by the United States or South Korea as an act of war, and retaliate accordingly. Pyongyang's official Rodong Sinmun newspaper extended that threat to Japan Wednesday, saying "responsibility for all consequences" of military action would rest will Tokyo if it attempted an inspection.
A North Korean cargo ship being closely tailed by the United States Navy appears to be changing course, and may be returning to North Korea. The ship has come to be seen as an initial test of new United Nations restrictions on Pyongyang.
U.S. officials say the Kang Nam, a North Korean cargo ship, is apparently abandoning the course it has been on for a week toward Southeast Asia, and may now be headed back home.
The ship, which intelligence officials describe as having a history of transporting North Korean weapons for sale, was believed to have been headed toward Burma. A U.S. Navy destroyer group began tracking the ship about a week ago under suspicion it may be carrying items banned under a recently passed United Nations Security Council Resolution.
The ship was expected to refuel in Singapore, where the government had promised what it called "appropriate action" under the U.N. resolution. Park Seung-jae, an analyst with the Asia Strategy Institute in Seoul, says that may have helped change Pyongyang's mind about the voyage.
"When they (North Korea) go through Singapore, they cannot ignore inspection from Singapore. Also, on the other hand, it may be very difficult for them to throw out weapons or nuclear equipment on the sea," said Park.
Park says if the ship does return to the North, it will bolster the impression that international sanctions against Pyongyang are effective. He says the United States and its partners will need to maintain close scrutiny of the North's shipping.
"North Korean ships in Myanmar and Iran will be the first priority to watch," he said.
Weapons sales are an important source of hard currency for North Korea, one of the most economically isolated and impoverished nations in the world. Washington also fears Pyongyang may attempt to cash in on its nuclear programs by selling equipment, technology, or even fissile material to nations or groups hostile to the United States.
U.N. Security Council Resolution 1874, passed in response to North Korea's nuclear test in May, authorizes member states to inspect the North's ships in their ports or territory.
North Korea has said on several recent occasions it would view any attempt to stop and inspect its ships by the United States or South Korea as an act of war, and retaliate accordingly. Pyongyang's official Rodong Sinmun newspaper extended that threat to Japan Wednesday, saying "responsibility for all consequences" of military action would rest will Tokyo if it attempted an inspection.
Month of Twitter Bugs (MoTB) Begins
Aviv Raff has launched the Month of Twitter Bugs (MoTB).
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MoTB #01: Multiple vulnerabilities in bit.ly service
http://www.twitpwn.com/
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Luckily, all of the vulnerabilities released in MoTB #01 has been patched, but tomorrow is another day. =)
-------------------------------
MoTB #01: Multiple vulnerabilities in bit.ly service
http://www.twitpwn.com/
-------------------------------
Luckily, all of the vulnerabilities released in MoTB #01 has been patched, but tomorrow is another day. =)
Cigarette and Tobacco Smuggling Finances Terrorism Worldwide
Via SecurityManagement.com -
A new report from the Center for Public Integrity, an investigative journalism outfit, details how terrorists and insurgencies the world over have smuggled cigarettes to finance their organizations and their missions.
CPI's investigation concentrates on seven groups which range from Marxist insurgencies to jihadist terrorists and from republican terrorists to profit-driven Congolese rebels.
After crackdowns on fundraising following the 9/11 attacks, terrorist groups worldwide have increasingly turned to criminal rackets, officials say. And smuggling cigarettes — either untaxed or counterfeit — has proved a particularly lucrative, low-risk way to fund operations.
Hezbollah, the Taliban, and al-Qaeda are involved in smuggling cigarettes; so are the Real Irish Republican Army (Real IRA) and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Terrorist financing through cigarette smuggling is “huge,” says Louise Shelley, a transnational crime expert at George Mason University and an adviser to the World Economic Forum on illicit trade. “Worldwide — it’s no exaggeration… No one thinks cigarette smuggling is too serious, so law enforcement doesn’t spend resources to go after it.”
“Cigarettes are easy to smuggle, easy to buy, and they have a pretty good return on the investment,” adds David Cid, a former FBI counterterrorism agent and deputy director of the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism in Oklahoma City. “Drug dogs don’t alert on your car if it’s full of Camels.” And, he notes, “The other advantage is you don’t go to jail for 50 years.”
Trafficking stolen and counterfeit cigarettes has unwittingly become a lucrative venture for terrorist and militant organizations because of the hefty taxation on tobacco, such as in the state of New York. According to CPI, it costs $100,000 to produce 10 million cigarettes in China, which can reap revenues as high as $2 million in the United States. When you consider the relative cheapness of terrorist operations, 9-11 only cost Al Qaeda about $500,000 to pull off, profit margins like these are enormously attractive to terrorists and militant groups.
But stopping the nexus between cigarette smuggling and terrorist financing is possible, reports CPI.
“You need to ensure that the products are being sold through legitimate channels through legitimate distributors — that they’re not committing willful blindness,” Larry Johnson, a terrorism and criminal finance investigator for BERG Associates, told CPI. “The contraband is fairly easy to deal with because it’s in the power of the distributors and producers to control the process. This is actually one of those few problems that is fixable.”
For more on the report and the relationship between terrorism financing and tobacco smuggling, see this article from the Agence France Presse.
For a short film on how taxes created an explosion in black market cigarettes in New York, watch the below from the CPI.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5e9ZBcSexyw
A new report from the Center for Public Integrity, an investigative journalism outfit, details how terrorists and insurgencies the world over have smuggled cigarettes to finance their organizations and their missions.
CPI's investigation concentrates on seven groups which range from Marxist insurgencies to jihadist terrorists and from republican terrorists to profit-driven Congolese rebels.
After crackdowns on fundraising following the 9/11 attacks, terrorist groups worldwide have increasingly turned to criminal rackets, officials say. And smuggling cigarettes — either untaxed or counterfeit — has proved a particularly lucrative, low-risk way to fund operations.
Hezbollah, the Taliban, and al-Qaeda are involved in smuggling cigarettes; so are the Real Irish Republican Army (Real IRA) and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Terrorist financing through cigarette smuggling is “huge,” says Louise Shelley, a transnational crime expert at George Mason University and an adviser to the World Economic Forum on illicit trade. “Worldwide — it’s no exaggeration… No one thinks cigarette smuggling is too serious, so law enforcement doesn’t spend resources to go after it.”
“Cigarettes are easy to smuggle, easy to buy, and they have a pretty good return on the investment,” adds David Cid, a former FBI counterterrorism agent and deputy director of the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism in Oklahoma City. “Drug dogs don’t alert on your car if it’s full of Camels.” And, he notes, “The other advantage is you don’t go to jail for 50 years.”
Trafficking stolen and counterfeit cigarettes has unwittingly become a lucrative venture for terrorist and militant organizations because of the hefty taxation on tobacco, such as in the state of New York. According to CPI, it costs $100,000 to produce 10 million cigarettes in China, which can reap revenues as high as $2 million in the United States. When you consider the relative cheapness of terrorist operations, 9-11 only cost Al Qaeda about $500,000 to pull off, profit margins like these are enormously attractive to terrorists and militant groups.
But stopping the nexus between cigarette smuggling and terrorist financing is possible, reports CPI.
“You need to ensure that the products are being sold through legitimate channels through legitimate distributors — that they’re not committing willful blindness,” Larry Johnson, a terrorism and criminal finance investigator for BERG Associates, told CPI. “The contraband is fairly easy to deal with because it’s in the power of the distributors and producers to control the process. This is actually one of those few problems that is fixable.”
For more on the report and the relationship between terrorism financing and tobacco smuggling, see this article from the Agence France Presse.
For a short film on how taxes created an explosion in black market cigarettes in New York, watch the below from the CPI.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5e9ZBcSexyw
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