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Comment Re:Iraq and Motorola Talkabouts (Score 1) 323

In this case, Mountain Dew was only able to be purchased at the US Camp, so yes, a listener would know that someone would go from a known position (e.g. my camp) to another known position (e.g. US Camp). Feel free to think out an example suiting your situation better. If you use truly random call signs that's great, in my experience it was more common to re-use your particular squads regular callsign. So no, I'm not talking about an assault from the inside of a camp. Another classic is when a radio guy wants to give his pals a heads-up that some high ranking officer is about to show up in 20 minutes so they should dress up properly.

My main point is that perhaps you are an awesome guy who do better than the average private Schmoe, but in general what you describe sucks from a security perspective.

Comment Re:Iraq and Motorola Talkabouts (Score 1) 323

My experience is that the understanding on what would be classified conversations are extremely low. I've worked at a multi-national army camp a couple of years ago with comms and listening to that chatter just made me sad.

The whole point of using encrypted radios for e.g. movement plans are useless when people ask "Charlie-Foxtrot Niner-Niner, Do you want us to pick up some Mountain Dew for you?".Add other pieces of information and a listener end up with the knowledge of who is going where and when.

"Classified Conversations" are a clear giveaway but "casual chatter" among soldiers gives a listener with some knowledge a pretty good picture as well. As for short ranges I think that most camps nowadays has local employees doing all sorts of stuff so for camp snooping as well as on the field range is not really that big problem.

I've never met you but from my experience I'd guess that your "code for some stuff" really wasn't half as secretive as you thought. By "just told people to get a phone or encrypted radio" you point out that something has happened or something needs to be communicated in a classified way to a specific person/position.

Comment Re:It seems ironic... (Score 1) 1147

Insightful? I do believe they try to make their products more popular than iPhone/iPods. Of course they want to build a product that their family members (and the rest of the world) would prefer over iPhone. But "journalism" stating that "Even Bill Gates wife use an iPhone, see pictures!!!" doesn't really help the stock price, which is you know - is part of the CEO's job. Stating "yes we realize we do suck, but we'll try to play catch-up now and mimic better products" doesn't ring quite as well as "you products suck, we will with our new awesome products blow your pitiful products away". Regardless if they copy the best qualities or not.
Cellphones

USB Tethering Working On iPhone 3.0 Through Hack 219

eviltangerine writes "Twitter user stroughtonsmith was dickering around with the carrier bundle files for his developer version of the iPhone 3.0 OS and enabled the USB tethering options. Apparently he has even been able to use his laptop to access the internet over the USB tether. MacRumors comments that while Apple has announced the availability of tethering, it hasn't hashed out the details with the mobile carriers (probably so they can charge more in fees). No word on connection speed, but here are some pictures of his phone while tethering."
Security

With Lawsuit Settled, Hackers Working With MBTA 90

narramissic writes "The three MIT students who were sued earlier this year by the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority for planning to show at Defcon how they had had reverse engineered the magnetic stripe tickets and smartcards said Monday that they are now working to make the Boston transit system more secure. 'I'm really glad to have it behind me. I think this is really what should have happened from the start,' said Zack Anderson, one of the students sued by the MBTA."
Software

Google Native Client Puts x86 On the Web 367

t3rmin4t0r writes "Google has announced its Google native client, which enables x86 native code to be run securely inside a browser. With Java applets already dead and buried, this could mean the end of the new war between browsers and the various JavaScript engines (V8, Squirrelfish, Tracemonkey). The only question remains whether it can be secured (ala ActiveX) and whether the advantages carry over onto non-x86 platforms. The package is available for download from its Google code site. Hopefully, I can finally write my web apps in asm." Note: the Google code page description points out that this is not ready for production use: "We've released this project at an early, research stage to get feedback from the security and broader open-source communities." Reader eldavojohn links to a technical paper linked from that Google code page [PDF] titled "Native Client: A Sandbox for Portable, Untrusted x86 Native Code," and suggests this in-browser Quake demo, which requires the Native Code plug-in.

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