Wednesday, October 26, 2011


This might grow interesting. When did it start? What percentage of Mitsubishi locations have been hacked/infected? Are they the ONLY defense contractor hacked?
"When Mitsubishi announced in September it had been hacked in August it was criticized for keeping quiet for a month. Now it appears that the attackers got nuclear power plant and military aircraft details according to sources quoted in the Japanese media."
[From the article:
The computers were found to have been hacked in August, and 83 computers were found to have been infected with a virus. Those computers were spread out over 11 locations, including the Kobe and Nagasaki shipyards that construct submarines and destroyers as well as the Nagoya facility that is in charge of manufacturing a guided missile system.
At that time, Mitsubishi Heavy officials said no confirmation had been made that information related to products or clients had leaked.
According to sources, a further investigation into dozens of computers at other locations found evidence that information about defense equipment and nuclear power plants had been transmitted from those computers to outside the company.


Identity theft is so simple, you can do it while on parole... (Hey, a guy has to pay his lawyers!)
Identity thief nabbed with over 300,000 victim profiles
Robert Delgado, 40, who lived in a Los Angeles suburb called Monterey Park, pleaded guilty earlier this year to conspiracy to commit bank fraud and was sentenced on Monday. At the time of his arrest in March 2011, Delgado had already been on parole for identity theft.
Court documents show Delgado was accused of obtaining credit card numbers, forging credit cards and government-issued ID sporting his (or a co-conspirator's) photograph, and using the identity documents to buy flat screen TVs, power tools, electronics, and jewelry. Those in turn would be sold for cash.


How ineffective is the TSA? The article is funnier than a the Sunday Comics. If the TSA is such a joke, why not eliminate the whole requirement for Airport security rather than put a bunch of individual contractors in its place?
Congressman: Secret Report On TSA Pat Downs, Body Scanner Failures Will “Knock Your Socks Off”
October 26, 2011 by Dissent
Steve Watson reports:
The chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, which oversees the TSA, has asserted that the release of a classified report on TSA security failures will renew calls for the replacement of the agency with private airport security personnel.
“The failure rate (for body scanning equipment) is classified but it would absolutely knock your socks off,” Florida Republican, Rep. John L. Mica told reporters during a briefing Monday.
Read more on Infowars.


There is just too much money involved... I wonder what you would need to pay for an “anonymous card?”
"The two largest credit-card networks, Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc., are pushing into a new business: using what they know about people's credit-card purchases for targeting them with ads online. 'A MasterCard document obtained by the Journal outlines some of the company's plans, which included linking Web users with purchases. According to document, the credit card provider said it believes "you are what you buy." ... Visa is planning a similar service, which would aggregate its customers' purchase history into segments, including location, to make ads more effective at appealing to people in a respective area.'"


“Well, they have all this data just sitting there – of course we want to browse through it!”
Google’s updated Transparency Report reveals increase in government requests
October 25, 2011 by Dissent
Google released its semi-annual Transparency Report today, and it’s generating a lot of buzz. Here are two articles on the report you may want to read:
The data are intriguing, but frustrating, because of what they do not include or partial out. Like other privacy advocates, I would like to see even greater disclosure as to how many requests for user information were just requests and how many were subpoenas, warrants, or “emergency requests.”


For my Ethical Hackers. Just because they claim the records don't exist does not mean they won't prosecute you for hacking into their system and taking them – be sure to hide your tracks.
Feds Embrace Lying in Response to Public-Record Requests
The Justice Department is proposing new Freedom of Information Act rules allowing the government to inform the public that records do not exist even if they do.
The proposal, published in the Federal Registrar for comment, may codify existing practice, as the government has already lied to requesters of public records that relevant documents did not exist. Under normal practice, which seems Orwellian enough, the government may assert that it can neither confirm nor deny that relevant records exist if the matter involves national security.
Under the latest proposal, however, FOIA requesters might not sue to challenge the designation because the government has told them they did not exist, civil rights groups said.


More significant that it appears at first glance... Your automated “Power” searches will have to be revised...
Google Kills Its Other Plus, and How to Bring It Back
Google+ is the fastest-growing social network in history, with 40 million users since its June launch. To help them focus, Google’s quietly shuttered a number of products, removing iGoogle and Google Reader’s social features and closing Google Labs, Buzz, Jaiku and Code Search in the last two weeks alone.
But in doing so, they also killed off one of its oldest and most useful tools, from its most popular product.
On Wednesday, Google retired a longer-standing “plus”: the + operator, a standard bit of syntax used to force words and phrases to appear in search results.
Unlike their other recent closures, the removal of + was made without any public announcement. It could only be found by doing a search, which advised the user to double-quote the string from now on, making “searches” look like “awkward” “Zagat” “reviews.”
… Geeks from Reddit and Hacker News were quick to condemn the move.
The Alternatives
As Google marginalizes its core base, it’s opened the door for smaller, more nimble startups, such as DuckDuckGo, a one-man project that’s quickly becoming the go-to search engine for discriminating nerds.
For those unwilling to leave Google’s deep index, there are other solutions. One pseudonymous hacker made FindErr, a simple proxy that adds quotes to every search before shuttling the user off to Google.
My personal favorite is this simple userscript created by electrotype for Hacker News, which instantly adds quote marks to every submitted search. It works in Chrome natively and Firefox with the Greasemonkey plugin.


This could be fun
"The BBC reports that the Royal Society is putting all of its old papers online and has a fascinating sample of articles from the first several years. You can reach all the old journal articles from this page at the Royal Society by selecting a journal and going to past issues."

No comments: