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Submission + - Declassified NSA report on cryptography back online at FoxNews.com (foxnews.com)

Submitted by Velcroman1
Velcroman1 writes: The clandestine National Security Agency is partly responsible for the modern PC era, a newly declassified document reveals, thanks to decades of custom computers built for one thing: espionage. Declassified by the NSA on May 29 and posted online on Monday, the 344-page report “It Wasn’t All Magic: The Early Struggle to Automate Cryptanalysis,” details the unknown high-tech history of computers so secretive even their code names were kept confidential. A Slashdot link on Monday took down the computers hosting the documents at Government Attic (the slashdot effect still happens!) FoxNews.com has reposted the docs: Part One. Part Two.
Supercomputing

China Bumps US Out of First Place For Fastest Supercomptuer 125

Posted by samzenpus from the king-of-the-hill dept.
An anonymous reader writes "China's Tianhe-2 is the world's fastest supercomputer, according to the latest semiannual Top 500 list of the 500 most powerful computer systems in the world. Developed by China's National University of Defense Technology, the system appeared two years ahead of schedule and will be deployed at the National Supercomputer Center in Guangzho, China, before the end of the year."

Submission + - Senators Skip Out of Classified Briefing on NSA Surveillance Program

Submitted by terrymaster69
terrymaster69 writes: According to The Hill, only 47 out of 100 senators attended a classified briefing by senior intelligence officials regarding recently exposed surveillance programs. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, NSA Chief Keith Alexander and others were on hand to give the briefing but most of the Senate had already left Washington. "Danielle Pletka, vice president of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, said lawmakers would be better equipped to scrutinize the claims of senior intelligence officials if they attended briefings more regularly. 'If members were more diligent about attending briefings they would be far better informed about what’s going on, and they would also be far more willing to challenge the intelligence community on the conclusions that they come to,' she said. "

Submission + - Snowden NSA Claims Partially Confirmed

Submitted by bill_mcgonigle
bill_mcgonigle writes: Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D NY) disclosed that NSA analysts eavesdrop on Americans' domestic telephone calls without court orders during a House Judiciary hearing. After clearing with FBI director Robert Mueller that the information was not classified, Nadler revealed that during a closed-door briefing to Congress, the Legislature was informed that the spying organization had implemented and uses this capability. This appears to confirm Edward Snowden's claim that he could, in his position at the NSA, "wiretap anyone from you or your accountant to a federal judge to even the president." Declan McCullagh writes, "Because the same legal standards that apply to phone calls also apply to e-mail messages, text messages, and instant messages, Nadler's disclosure indicates the NSA analysts could also access the contents of Internet communications without going before a court and seeking approval." The executive branch has defended its general warrants, claiming that "the president had the constitutional authority, no matter what the law actually says, to order domestic spying without [constitutional] warrants", while Kurt Opsahl, senior staff attorney at EFF claims such government activity "epitomizes the problem of secret laws."

Submission + - Book review: The Chinese Information War 1

Submitted by benrothke
benrothke writes: Title: The Chinese Information War: Espionage, Cyberwar, Communications Control and Related Threats to United States Interests

Author: Dennis Poindexter

Page: 192

Publisher: McFarland

ISBN-13:978-0786472710

Rating: 9/10

Reviewer: Ben Rothke

Summary: Fascinating overview on the cyberwar with China



It's said that truth is stranger than fiction, as fiction has to make sense. Had The Chinese Information War: Espionage, Cyberwar, Communications Control and Related Threats to United States Interestsbeen written as a spy thriller, it would have been a fascinating novel of international intrigue.



But the book is far from a novel. It's a dense, but well-researched overview of China's cold-war like cyberwar tactics against the US to regain its past historical glory and world dominance.



Author Dennis Poindexter shows that Chinese espionage isn't made up of lone wolves. Rather it's under the directive and long-term planning of the Chinese government and military.



Many people growing up in the 1940's expressed the sentiment "we were poor, but didnt know it". Poindexter argues that we are in a cyberwar with China; but most people are oblivious to it.



Rather than being a polemic against China, Poindexter backs it up with extensive factual research. By the end of the book, the sheer number of guilty pleas by Chinese nationals alone should be a staggering wake-up call.



In February, Mandiant released their groundbreaking report APT1: Exposing One of Chinas Cyber Espionage Units, which focused on APT1, the most prolific Chinese cyber-espionage group that Mandiant tracked. APT1 has conducted a cyber-espionage campaign against a broad range of victims since at least 2006. The report has evidence linking them to China's 2nd Bureau of the People's Liberation Army.



China is using this cyberwar to their supreme advantage and as Poindexter writes on page 1: until we see ourselves in a war, we can't fight it effectively. Part of the challenge is that cyberwar does not fit the definition of what a war generally is because the Chinese have changed the nature of war to carry it out.



Poindexter makes his case in fewer than 200 pages and provides ample references in his detailed research; including many details, court cases and guilty verdicts of how the Chinese government and military work hand in hand to achieve their goals.



The book should of interest to everyone given the implications of what China is doing. If you are planning to set up shop in China, be it R&D, manufacturing or the like, read this book. If you have intellectual property or confidential data in China, read this book as you need to know the risks before you lose control of your data there.



Huawei Technologies, a Chinese multinational telecommunications equipment and services firm; now the largest telecommunications equipment maker in the world is detailed in the book. Poindexter details a few cases involving Huawei and writes that if Huawei isn't linked to Chinese intelligence, then it's the most persecuted company in the history of international trade.



The book details in chapter 2 the intersection between cyberwar and economic war. He writes that any foreign business in China is required to share detailed design documents with the Chinese government in order to do business there. For many firms, the short-term economic incentives blind them to the long-term risks of losing control of their data. The book notes that in the Cold War with Russia, the US understood what Russia was trying to do. The US therefore cut back trade with Russia, particularly in areas where there might be some military benefit to them. But the US isn't doing that with China.



Chapter 2 closes with a damming indictment where Poindexter writes that the Chinese steal our technology, rack up sales back to us, counterfeit our goods, take our jobs and own a good deal of our debt. The problem he notes is that too many people focus solely on the economic relations between the US and China, and ignore the underpinnings of large-scale cyber-espionage.



Chapter 6 details that the Chinese have developed a long-term approach. They have deployed numerous sleepers who often wait decades and only then work slowly and stealthily. A point Poindexter makes many times is that the Chinese think big, but move slow.

Chapter 7 is appropriately titles The New Cold War. In order to win this war, Poindexter suggest some radical steps to stop it. He notes that the US needs to limit trade with China to items we can't get anywhere else. He says not to supply China with the rope that will be used to hang the US on.



He writes that the Federal Government has to deal with the issue seriously and quickly, to protect its telecommunications interests so that China isn't able to cut it all off one day. He also notes that national security must no longer take a backseat to price and cheap labor.



Poindexter writes that the US Government must take a long-view to the solution and he writes that it will take 10 years to build up the type of forces that that would be needed to counter the business and government spying that the Chinese are doing.



Rachel Carson's Silent Springis the archetypal wake-up call book. Poindexter has written his version of Silent Spring,but it's unlikely that any action will be taken. As the book notes, the Chinese are so blatantly open about their goals via cyber-espionage, and their denials of it so arrogant, that business as usual simply carries on.



The Chinese portray themselves as benevolent benefactors, much like the Kanamits in To Serve Man. Just as the benevolence of the Kanamits was a façade, so too is what is going on with the cold cyberwar with China.



The book is an eye-opening expose that details the working of the Chinese government and notes that for most of history, China was the world's dominating force. The Chinese have made it their goal to regain that dominance.



The book states what the Chinese are trying to accomplish and lays out the cold facts. Will there be a response to this fascinating book? Will Washington take action? Will they limit Chinese access to strategic US data? Given Washington is operating in a mode of sequestration, the answer should be obvious.



The message detailed in The Chinese Information War: Espionage, Cyberwar, Communications Control and Related Threats to United States Interestsshould be a wake-up call. But given that it is currently ranked #266,881 on Amazon, it seems as if most of America is sleeping through this threat.









Reviewed by Ben Rothke

Submission + - Fireworks Filmed from Above By Balloon (rocketnews24.com)

Submitted by kodiaktau
kodiaktau writes: The filming was done by a small GoPro camera attached to a balloon, which was released into the air so it could film the fireworks being let off from the ground below. The video itself is in slow motion, to follow the trajectory of the fireworks. Looks like the balloon finally gets hit around 1:39.

Submission + - Larry Ellison buys 98% of Lanai, Hawaii's sixth-largest island (wsj.com) 1

Submitted by McGruber
McGruber writes: The Wall Street Journal has the news that, in June of 2012, Larry Ellison co-founder and chief executive of Oracle purchased the Hawaiian islande Lanai for $300 million.

Ellison now owns nearly everything on the island, including many of the candy-colored plantation-style homes and apartments, one of the two grocery stores, the two Four Seasons hotels and golf courses, the community center and pool, water company, movie theater, half the roads and some 88,000 acres of land. (2% of the island is owned by the government or by longtime Lanai families.)

Now Ellison is attempting to win over the island's small, but wary, local population, one whose economic future is heavily dependent on his decisions. He and his team have met with experts in desalination and solar energy to change the way water and electricity are generated, collected, stored and delivered on the island. They are refurbishing residential housing intended for workers (Mr. Ellison's Lanai Resorts owns and manages 400 of the more than 1,500 housing units on the island). They've tackled infrastructure, such as lengthening airport runways and paving county roads. And to improve access to Lanai, Mr. Ellison bought Island Air earlier this year and is closing a deal to buy another airline.

Submission + - OSX Recovery feature exploit ideas? 2

Submitted by oldunixgeek
oldunixgeek writes: I was aghast to discover recently while trying to buy a used Macbook Pro
that there is no easy way to wipe the system clean to the metal and reinstall
it from original media.

Apparently, the only supported way to reinstall the OS on a Mac since
Mountain Lion is through the recovery partition which can be accessed
by pressing command-r while booting. Once booted to the recovery utility,
one can restore from a backup or reinstall the OS over the internet.

How on earth could this be secure? If it is not, I'd like to hear people's ideas
on the easiest way to accomplish the following:

Sell someone a used Mac. They reinstall the OS using command-r after
they've bought it. Software installed by the previous owner on
the recovery partition reinstalls OS-X but also installs trojans, keyloggers, what
have you.

Despite the buyer's best efforts to get a clean install, they start day one with a
compromised machine.

Not that I want to do this myself, I just think it should be brought to the attention
of Apple and any IT departments considering allowing their employees to use
Macs in their work.

Submission + - What have we learned since constructing the ISS?

Submitted by crhylove
crhylove writes: The International Space Station is in many ways the first "real" space station. It has been inhabited for a while now, and I'm guessing that much of the initial engineering did not jibe perfectly with the intended purposes that the "real world" would impose on such a habitat. For one, we know they are now opting for Linux as the uptime is better than Windows. What other lessons have we learned about living in space, and/or how would the ISS be designed differently today with the new knowledge we've accrued on the ISS as-is?

Submission + - Google security expert finds, publicly discloses Windows kernel bug (paritynews.com)

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: Security expert Tavis Ormandy has discovered vulnerability in Windows kernel which when exploited would allow an ordinary user to obtain administrative privileges of the system. Google’s security pro posted the details of the vulnerability back in May through Full Disclosure mailing list rather than reporting it to Microsoft first and now has gone ahead with publishing of a working exploit. This is not the first instance where Ormandy has opted for full disclosure without first informing the vendor of the affected software.

Submission + - Federal Judge Dismisses Movie Piracy Complaint (mailtribune.com)

Submitted by cluedweasel
cluedweasel writes: A Federal judge in Medford, OR has dismissed a piracy case lodged against 34 Oregonians. Judge Ann Aiken ruled that Voltage Pictures LLC unfairly lumped the defendants into what she called a "reverse class action suit" to save on legal expenses and possibly to intimidate them into paying thousands of dollars for viewing a movie that could be bought or rented for less than $10.

Submission + - Windows trojan targets French (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Finance staff are tricked into opening the booby-trapped messages in phone calls from con men, who claim to have emailed in legit paperwork that needs urgent attention. The documents instead include a Trojan that, when activated on the victim's PC, hands control of the Windows machine to the swindlers over the internet.

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