security

Will Disney Soon Be Able to Break into Computers… Legally?

"Something called The IP Commission Report (subtitled A Report Of The Commission On The Theft Of American Intellectual Property) just crossed my desk. This new and very impressively produced report, authored by seven sets of hyper-impressive credentials, informs Congress that they should change US laws to go far, far beyond anything that has been authorized previously. On page 6, (by the report’s internal numbering), we get a bit of an overture – a foretaste of what’s to come. It says this: 'Companies that experience cyber theft ought to be able to retrieve their electronic files or prevent the exploitation of their stolen information.'" Continue reading →

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Digital Diversification: How to Do It

"It is no secret that the US has a total lack of privacy, outrageous prison sentences for relatively minor and frivolous so-called 'crimes' (see the tragic case of Aaron Swartz), and seizures at the drop of a hat under the flimsiest of pretexts, among other contemptible practices. Would you really want to keep your digital presence solely under US jurisdiction if you didn’t have to? Fortunately, if you answered 'no,' it is relatively easy to move your digital presence across borders to a friendly jurisdiction. Paul Rosenberg has the details and he fills us in on the article below." Continue reading →

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Another US encrypted email service, founded by PGP inventor, also shuts down

"Later on Thursday, an executive with a better-known provider of secure email said his company had also shut down that service. Jon Callas, co-founder of Silent Circle Inc, said on Twitter and in a blog post that Silent Circle had ended Silent Mail. 'We see the writing the wall, and we have decided that it is best for us to shut down Silent Mail now. We have not received subpoenas, warrants, security letters, or anything else by any government, and this is why we are acting now,' Mr Callas wrote. Silent Circle, co-founded by the PGP cryptography inventor Phil Zimmermann, will continue to offer secure texting and secure phone calls." Continue reading →

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Tor Urges Users To Leave Insecure Windows Operating System

"In a critical security advisory issued over the weekend, the Tor Project told its users that they should seriously consider migrating away from Microsoft’s Windows operating system and disabling JavaScript. The Tor Project security advisory was a response to revelations on Sunday that an attack had targeted users of the Tor Browser. According to the advisory, the attack exploited a Firefox JavaScript vulnerability that has already been resolved. The vulnerability is a cross-platform threat, but the exploit in this case was Windows-specific. Tor Browser Bundle users on Linux, OS X, and LiveCD systems like Tails were never at risk of exploit." Continue reading →

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How to escape from a car underwater

"On Friday night, Morgan Lake lived through many drivers’ nightmare: She found herself plummeting about 27 feet off the edge of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge into the water below. And the 22-year-old student managed a feat that pilots and military personnel take hours of specialized training to perfect: She escaped from her sinking car, swam to safety and survived. Ken Burton, president of Panama City, Fla.-based Stark Survival, has guided helicopter operators worldwide through his $2,295 underwater-egress class. For those who might find themselves underwater in their cars, Burton offered this advice." Continue reading →

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How to Survive a Plane Crash: 10 Tips That Could Save Your Life

"In a report analyzing airline accidents from 1983 to 2000, the National Transportation Safety Board found that the survival rate of crashes was 95.7%. But it’s important to take note of another interesting tidbit that the FAA and NTSB found in their research on plane crashes: 40% of fatalities that did occur happened in crashes that were survivable. Close to half of all airplane crash fatalities might have been prevented had passengers taken proper action. In today’s post we’re going to offer research-backed advice from Ben Sherwood’s The Survivor’s Club on what you can do to make it out of a plane crash alive." Continue reading →

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Exposing high-security flaws with 3D Printing

"MIT students David Lawrence and Eric Van Albert showed how 3D printing could allow anyone to replicate a Schlage key for their high-security Primus locks used in Government offices, medical and detention centres. The Primus lock and key system are tightly controlled by Schlage and bear the words 'Do not duplicate' across the top. They are considered to be one of the hardest locks to pick in the world. With the use of a normal 2D scanner, their code – the software deciphers the code on each key - and the use of a 3D printing service like Shapeways the pair have managed to duplicate working Primus lock keys." Continue reading →

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A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto (March 9th, 1993)

"People have been defending their own privacy for centuries with whispers, darkness, envelopes, closed doors, secret handshakes, and couriers. The technologies of the past did not allow for strong privacy, but electronic technologies do. We the Cypherpunks are dedicated to building anonymous systems. We are defending our privacy with cryptography, with anonymous mail forwarding systems, with digital signatures, and with electronic money. Cypherpunks write code. We know that someone has to write software to defend privacy, and since we can't get privacy unless we all do, we're going to write it." Continue reading →

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Hackers now stashing child pornography on business websites

"A new study from an online watchdog group shows a surge in complaints that hackers are manipulating both adult and regular business sites to spread viruses and images of children being sexually assaulted. According to the BBC, the group, the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), has tracked 227 reports of use of 'orphan folders' to hide the offending material in the past six weeks. One example involved a furniture store site being used as a repository for the images of sexual abuse. 'What better way to scare someone into paying a ransom than to tell them that they have been spotted accessing child pornography?' Cluley told the Independent." Continue reading →

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Irish man facing U.S. extradition for hosting largest child porn network on the planet

"If extradited to the US, Marques faces four charges relating to images hosted on the Freedom Hosting network, including images of the torture and rape of children. He could be sentenced to 30 years in prison. Freedom Hosting hosted sites on the The Onion Router (Tor) network, which anonymises and encrypts traffic, masking the identity of users. Users on the Tor sub-Reddit were suspicious about the news, dissecting the details of the vulnerability and pointing to a previous case where the FBI had taken over and maintained a site hosting child abuse material for two weeks in order to identify users." Continue reading →

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