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Security

Submission + - Now Even Dumb Hackers Can Make Crime Pay (cio.com)

Submitted by
Curseyoukhan
Curseyoukhan writes: "The stereotypical hacker, regardless of hat color, is a smart, nerdy, computer wizard. And while many real-life hackers probably fit the bill, not all of them are smart or nerdy. This week ExploitHub, whose motto is “Helping security professionals test MORE vulnerabilities, FASTER,” allowed a group calling itself the "Inj3ct0r Team" to test whether ExploitHub itself was vulnerable. The group quickly determined that it was."
Australia

Submission + - Australian Prime Minister's spoof "apocalypse" speech goes viral in China (dailylife.com.au)

Submitted by
brindafella
brindafella writes: "Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, recorded a spoof speech about the Mayan calendar apocalypse several days ago, for radio station "Triple J". Gillard said in part, "Whether the final blow comes from flesh eating zombies, demonic hell beasts or from the total triumph of K-pop, if you know one thing about me it is this: I will always fight for you to the very end."

The speech has been picked up in China on Sina Weibo (China's Twitter) and has achieved well over 23,000 repeats, without anyone picking up the irony.

This is just days after another Australian radio station, 2Day FM, created an international sensation with a prank (spoof) call to the hospital in London where Princess Catherine was undergoing treatment, and a nurse killed herself following the revelation of the prank."
Japan

Submission + - Japan police offers first-ever reward for wanted hacker (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: Japanese police are looking for an individual who can code in C#, uses a "Syberian Post Office" to make anonymous posts online, and knows how to surf the web without leaving any digital tracks — and they're willing to pay. It is the first time that Japan's National Police Agency has offered a monetary reward for a wanted hacker, or put so much technical detail into one of its wanted postings. The NPA will pay up to $36,000, the maximum allowed under its reward system. The case is an embarrassing one for the police, in which earlier this year 4 individuals were wrongly arrested after their PCs were hacked and used to post messages on public bulletin boards. The messages included warnings of plans for mass killings at an elementary school posted to a city website.
Privacy

Submission + - Why Do Companies Bother to Protect Customer Data? (cio.com)

Submitted by
Curseyoukhan
Curseyoukhan writes: "The upside to protecting consumer data is practically nonexistent, and the downside is barely any greater for the bottom line of most companies. Your business could have state-of-the-art protection or you could have the barest of bare bones security, and it wouldn't make any difference in the consumer-choice process. Furthermore the overwhelming majority of consumers could care less about privacy anyway. So why not just protect the stuff that's actually important to your business?"
Security

Submission + - Hacked review system leads to fake reviews and retraction of scientific papers (wordpress.com)

Submitted by dstates
dstates writes: Retraction Watch reports that fake reviewer information was placed in Elsevier's peer review database allowing unethical authors to review their own or colleagues manuscripts. As a result, 11 scientific publications have been retracted. The hack is particularly embarrassing for Elsevier because the commercial publisher has been arguing that the quality of its review process justifies its restrictive access policies and high costs of the journals it publishes.

Submission + - Intellectual Property Claims Gone Wild (huffingtonpost.com)

Submitted by tiqui
tiqui writes: With individuals, businesses and governments all seeking easy ways to get money without working for it, it's perhaps no longer surprising to see an archeologist and the country of Belize going after Disney and Spielberg for using the likeness of a crystal skill in an Indiana Jones movie... heat-up the popcorn, it should be interesting to see how much hypocrisy Disney deploys in its own defense.
Science

Submission + - Scientists Use Electrical Hum to Fight Crime

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "A suspected terrorist has been taped planning a deadly attack and the police want to use this evidence in court or someone has been captured on CCTV threatening an assault. Increasingly, recordings like these are playing a role in criminal investigations but how can the police be sure that the audio evidence is genuine and has not been tampered with or cleverly edited? Now Rebecca Morelle writes on BBC that a technique known as Electric Network Frequency (ENF) analysis is helping forensic scientists separate genuine, unedited recordings from those that have been tampered with and the technique has already been used in court. Any digital recording made anywhere near an electrical power source will pick up the noise from electricity supplied by the national grid and it will be embedded throughout the audio. This buzz is an annoyance for sound engineers trying to make the highest quality recordings but for forensic experts, it has turned out to be an invaluable tool in the fight against crime. Due to unbalances in production and consumption of electrical energy, the ENF is known to fluctuate slightly over time rather than being stuck to its exact set point so if you look at the frequency over time, you can see minute fluctuations and the pattern of these random changes in frequency is unique over time providing a digital watermark on every recording. Forensic Scientist Philip Harrison has been logging the hum on the national grid in the UK for several years. "Even if [the hum] is picked up at a very low level that you cannot hear, we can extract this information," says Dr. Harrison. "If we have we can extract [the hum] and compare it with the database, if it is a continuous recording, it will all match up nicely.""
Privacy

Submission + - How Websites Know Your Name, Email and Company the First Time You Visit (42floors.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Darren Nix works for 42Floors, a business that helps people find office space. He recently received a marketing email for a service that offered to identify visitors to his website. After squeezing some information out of the marketer and playing around with a demo account, he now explains exactly how sketchy companies track you presence across multiple websites. The marketer offered to provide Nix with "tracking code that would sit in your web site" which would "grab a few key pieces of data from each visitor." This includes IP addresses and search engine data. The marketer's company would then automatically analyze the data and send back whatever personal information they've collected on that user from different websites. Thus, it's entirely possible for a site to know your name, email address, and company on your very first visit, and without any interaction on your part. Nix writes, 'A real-world analogue would be this scenario: You drive to Home Depot and walk in. Closed-circuit cameras match your face against a database of every shopper that has used a credit card at Walmart or Target and identifies you by name, address, and phone. If you happen to walk out the front door without buying anything your phone buzzes with a text message from Home Depot offering you a 10% discount good for the next hour. Farfetched? I don’t think so. ... All the necessary pieces already exist, they just haven’t been combined yet.'
Security

Submission + - New SCADA Vulnerability Reports are Old News (cio.com)

Submitted by
Curseyoukhan
Curseyoukhan writes: "Do any of these videos, reports or warnings make us safer? Slightly, yes. But as several analysts have noted, the cost and scope of securing SCADA systems is astronomical. There is very little chance we can achieve any meaningful level of security for these systems. For now what we really have is détente, because nobody else's systems are much better."
Security

Submission + - Real-World Cyber City Used to Train Cyber Warriors (net-security.org)

Submitted by
Orome1
Orome1 writes: "NetWars CyberCity is a small-scale city located close by the New Jersey Turnpike complete with a bank, hospital, water tower, train system, electric power grid, and a coffee shop. It was developed to teach cyber warriors from the U.S. Military how online actions can have kinetic effects. Developed in response to a challenge by U.S. Military cyber warriors, NetWars CyberCity is an intense defensive training program organized around missions. "We've built over eighteen missions, and each of them challenges participants to devise strategies and employ tactics to thwart computer attacks that would cause significant real-world damage," commented Ed Skoudis, SANS Instructor and NetWars CyberCity Director."
Security

Submission + - Hackers Breach IAEA Server (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Gunkerty Jeb
Gunkerty Jeb writes: The International Atomic Energy Agency has confirmed that one of its decommissioned servers had been accessed and had data stolen from it.

The admission from the United Nations’ nuclear regulatory arm came in response to the publication of some 170 email addresses, apparently belonging to the same number of scientists, showed up in identical entries on Cryptome and the text sharing site Pastebin.

The list of email addresses comes alongside a veiled threat to release more information from the compromised server if the IAEA doesn’t investigate nuclear weapons and other activities in Israel.
Communications

Submission + - GSM Association - joyn Innovation Challenge (gsma.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The GSM Association is offering developers the chance to have their applications promoted at the Mobile World Congress 2013 (this year over 60,000 people attended). The joyn Innovation Challenge is based on the GSMA Rich Communications Service APIs.

The best entry will receive the prestigious ‘joyn Innovation Challenge Award’ that recognises the most innovative, compelling and creative idea developed using the joyn platform. The best new ideas will be showcased on the GSMA’s exhibition stand at the Mobile World Congress, 2013.
Crime

Submission + - DEA issues extortion scam warning involving Internet drug buys (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "The Drug Enforcement Administration today issued a public warning that criminals posing as DEA agents have apparently amped up an old scam to steal consumers' money. The DEA describes the scam like this: Criminals call the victims (who in most cases previously purchased drugs over the internet or by telephone) and identify themselves as DEA agents or law enforcement officials from other agencies."

Submission + - The national problem of student IDs as location surveillance (blogspot.com)

Submitted by
BeatTheChip
BeatTheChip writes: "Andrea Hernandez continues to fight for her rights as her case is moved to a Texas federal court rendering a national spotlight on the conflict. It is time to realize she is one resistant face amid millions of US students grappling with identity technology requirements and overbearing location surveillance at school. Scholastic institutions who adopt RFID, Smart Card and biometric technology struggle with funding and management. Teachers and administrators are running aground with privacy and other issues that don't always serve the interests of students and don't solve problems. The students left behind at John Jay High and across the nation are negotiating ID badge interactions and location surveillance every day as an institutional mandate."

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