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Submission + - US Wary of Allowing Russian Electronic Monitoring Stations Inside US (nytimes.com)

Submitted by cold fjord
cold fjord writes: The New York Times reports, "... the next potential threat from Russia may not come from a nefarious cyberweapon or secrets gleaned from ... Snowden ... Instead, this menace may come in the form of a ... dome-topped antenna perched atop an electronics-packed building surrounded by a security fence somewhere in the United States. ... the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon have been quietly waging a campaign to stop the State Department from allowing ... the Russian space agency, to build about half a dozen ... monitor stations, on United States soil ... These monitor stations, the Russians contend, would significantly improve the accuracy and reliability of Moscow’s version of the Global Positioning System ... The Russian effort is part of a larger global race by several countries ... to perfect their own global positioning systems and challenge the dominance of the American GPS. For the State Department, permitting Russia to build the stations would help mend the Obama administration’s relationship with the government of President Vladimir V. Putin ... But the C.I.A. and other American spy agencies, as well as the Pentagon, suspect that the monitor stations would give the Russians a foothold on American territory that would sharpen the accuracy of Moscow’s satellite-steered weapons. The stations, they believe, could also give the Russians an opening to snoop on the United States within its borders. ... administration officials have delayed a final decision until the Russians provide more information and until the American agencies sort out their differences ..."

Submission + - Good News Drug Users: The Silk Road Is Back (vice.com)

Submitted by Daniel_Stuckey
Daniel_Stuckey writes: Later today, Silk Road is rising from the dead. After the FBI seized the deep web's favourite illegal drug market and arrested its alleged founder Ross Ulbricht last month (for, among other things, ordering a hit through his own website), the online-marketplace-cum-libertarian-movement has found a new home and will be opening for business at 16:20 GMT this afternoon. In the wake of the original Silk Road's closure, everything became a little turbulent for its users. First, they had to get used to not getting high-quality, peer-reviewed drugs delivered direct to their sofas. (Though presumably they didn't stop getting high, instead forced back to the "mystery mix" street dealers and surly ex-Balkan war criminals who have spent years filling cities with drugs at night.) Some users were pissed off that they'd lost all the Bitcoin wealth they'd amassed, or that paid-for orders would go undelivered, while small-time dealers freaked out about how they suddenly lacked the funds to pay off debts owed to drug sellers higher up the food chain.

Submission + - Guardian Ignores MI5 Warnings, Vows To 'Publish More Snowden Leaks' (bbc.co.uk) 1

Submitted by dryriver
dryriver writes: Summary from BBC article: Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger says he plans to publish more revelations from Edward Snowden despite MI5 warning that such disclosures cause enormous damage. Mr Rusbridger insisted the paper was right to publish files leaked by the US intelligence analyst and had helped to prompt a necessary and overdue debate. Mr Rusbridger said more stories would be published in the future as the leaked documents were "slowly and responsibly" worked through. His comments come after criticism from the new head of MI5, Andrew Parker. Making public the "reach and limits" of intelligence-gathering techniques gave terrorists the advantage, he said. He warned that terrorists now had tens of thousands of means of communication "through e-mail, IP telephony, in-game communication, social networking, chat rooms, anonymising services and a myriad of mobile apps". Mr Parker said it was vital for MI5 to retain the capability to access such information if it was to protect the country. Mr Rusbridger said those on the security side of the argument wanted to keep everything secret and did not want a debate. "You don't want the press or anyone else writing about it. But MI5 cannot be the only voice in the debate," he told BBC Radio 4's World at One. He added that his newspaper had revealed the "extent to which entire populations are now being potentially put under surveillance". "I just spent a week in America where everybody is talking about this, from the president down." Asked about Mr Parker's suggestion that publishing the documents was helping terrorists, Mr Rusbridger said: "They will always say that. You read histories of intelligence and you go back to the 1990s and the security people were saying the same."

Feed Google News Sci Tech: How online advertisers link your devices - The Australian Financial Review (google.com)

From feed by feedfeeder

The Australian Financial Review
How online advertisers link your devices
The Australian Financial Review
With enough data and observations, online advertising firms are able to determine with a high degree of probability which devices belong to the same user. Photo: Bloomberg. By analysing patterns in anonymous browsing data over time, internet advertising...

and more

Comment Sinkholing? (Score 2) 1

by Open River (#44996551) Attached to: Sinkhole Sucks Brains From Wasteful Bitcoing-Mining Botnet
Sinkholing, for those that are not aware of the concept, is a technique where an C&C domain or IP address of a malicious program is redirected to a dedicated server. The server has a software component that is listening for incoming connections from infected machines which are then logged for various purposes, whether it is to get media coverage by publishing screaming headlines (which we do not do), or for abuse handling purposes where the aim is to get the infected machines taken offline for cleaning (which is what we do). Source: http://www.fitsec.com/blog/index.php/2013/09/02/sinkholing/

Submission + - Silent Circle Moving Away From NIST Cipher Suites After NSA Revelations

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: The first major domino to fall in the crypto world after the NSA leaks by Edward Snowden began was the decision by Lavabit, a secure email provider, to shut down in August rather than comply with a government order. Shortly thereafter, Silent Circle, another provider of secure email and other services, said it was discontinuing its Silent Mail offering, as well. Now, Silent Circle is going a step further, saying that it plans to replace the NIST-related cipher suites in its products with independently designed ones, not because the company distrusts NIST, but because its executives are worried about the NSA’s influence on NIST’s development of ciphers in the last couple of decades.

Jon Callas, one of the founders of Silent Circle and a respected cryptographer, said Monday that the company has been watching all of the developments and revelations coming out of the NSA leaks and has come to the decision that it’s in the best interest of the company and its customers to replace the AES cipher and the SHA-2 hash function and give customers other options. Those options, Callas said, will include non-NIST ciphers such as Twofish and Skein.

Submission + - Sinkhole Sucks Brains From Wasteful Bitcoing-Mining Botnet (techweekeurope.co.uk) 1

Submitted by judgecorp
judgecorp writes: A sinkhole has taken a quarter of the bots out of the ZeroAcess botnet which was making money for its operators through click fraud and Bitcoin mining. This particular Bitcoin mining operation was only profitable through the use of stolen electricity — according to Symantec, which operated the sinkhole, ZeroAccess was using $561,000 of electricity a day on infected PCs, to generate about $2000 worth of Bitcoin/

Submission + - US nuclear commander suspended over gambling (theguardian.com)

Submitted by mdsolar
mdsolar writes: The No 2 officer at the military command in charge of all US nuclear war-fighting forces has been suspended and is under investigation by the naval criminal investigation command for issues related to gambling, officials said on Saturday.

The highly unusual action against a high-ranking officer at US strategic command was made more than three weeks ago but not publicly announced.

Air force general Robert Kehler, who heads Strategic Command, suspended the deputy commander, navy vice admiral Tim Giardina, from his duties on September 3, according to the command's top spokeswoman, navy captain Pamela Kunze. Giardina is still assigned to the command but is prohibited from performing duties related to nuclear weapons and other issues requiring a security clearance, she said.

Submission + - Fighting Zombies? Chevrolet Reveals New 'Black Ops' Concept Truck (motorauthority.com)

Submitted by cartechboy
cartechboy writes: Whether its the Mayan calendar, a rough economy, or a fear of zombies, there are people who are currently preparing for the end of the world, coming, like, soon. And they can attract some fringe elements. So maybe those elements are worth a little truck marketing. Yesterday at the Texas State Fair, Chevrolet unveiled a "Black Ops" concept truck that it says will "explore the extremes of preparedness." The truck comes with a vault storage unit, solar power pack, gas masks, gloves, a military first aid kit, a folding shovel, a generator and some rope. Twinkies apparently not included.

Submission + - First Cases of Flesh-Eating Drug Emerge in the United States

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Having spent the last decade wreaking havoc in Russia, Eliza Gray reports at Time Magazine that a flesh-eating drug called Krokodil has arrived in Arizona where the Banner Poison Control center has reported the first two users of the drug which makes user’s skin scaly and green before it rots away (Warning: Graphic Images). Made of codeine, a painkiller often used in cough syrup, and a mix of other materials including gasoline, paint thinner, and alcohol, Krokodil become popular in Russia, where it was first reported in 2002, because it costs 20 times less than heroin and can be made easily at home. Also known as Desomorphine, Krokodil has sedative and analgesic effects, and is around 8-10 times more potent than morphine and when the drug is injected, it rots the skin by rupturing blood vessels, causing the tissue to die. As a result, the skin hardens and rots, sometimes even falling off to expose the bone. ”These people are the ultimate in self-destructive drug addiction,” says Dr. Ellen Marmur. “Once you are an addict at this level, any rational thinking doesn’t apply.” The average life span of a Krokodil user is two to three years, according to a 2011 TIME investigation of the drug’s prevalence in Russia.

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