Wednesday, February 08, 2012

You can't underestimate anyone's understanding of security concepts...
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has been under fire from world leaders to step down this week. He’s also under fire from hacktivist group Anonymous, who leaked hundreds of his office’s emails on Monday.
While Anonymous is infamous for its hacking know-how, it doesn’t take a genius computer programmer to guess one of the passwords commonly used by Assad’s office accounts: 12345. The string of consecutive numbers is the second-weakest password according to a 2011 study. [“Password” is number one Bob]


No liability, because you have no Privacy?
Backdoor in TRENDnet IP Cameras Provide Real-Time Peeping Tom Paradise?
Nearly a month after a console cowboy identified a security vulnerability in Trendnet streaming IP cameras, Trendnet issued a security advisory. So far there have been 26 vulnerable models identified [I'm pretty sure they mean camera models, not tall anorexic women Bob] that allow voyeurs to spy in real time on homes and offices. Since many of the cameras were not registered, this vulnerability may remain an exploitable Peeping Tom paradise for a long time.
… The vulnerability allows users to tune in and to spy in real-time on thousands of private lives via Trendnet home security cameras. "There does not appear to be a way to disable access to the video stream,
… Since looking for these Trendnet cameras "manually is boring and tedious," SomeLuser created a Python script that uses the Shodan search engine to find the URL of web cam video streams, regardless of if it has a password on it or not. By now there are all kinds of lists circulating on forums, pastebin and sites like 4chan, giving armchair surfers unobstructed views into offices, homes, living rooms and kids' bedrooms.


Is this how companies act in a polite society? Should we expect anti-social networks?
Path caught storing users’ unencrypted data
February 7, 2012 by Dissent
Heather Taylor writes:
Today developer Arun Thampi discovered his entire address book including full names, emails and phone numbers was being collected by the new social app, Path.
In trying to make things easy for users, Path uploads your address book to their servers so you can easily connect to your friends and family on its network.
The problem is Path doesn’t tell you its going to do it.
Read more on eConsultancy.

(Related) So, is this evil? How about a 15 minute delay like a stock ticker?
"There is media (but not public?) outcry over the Pasadena, CA police switch from analog radio that can be picked up by scanners to encrypted digital radio that cannot. 'On Friday, Pasadena police Lt. Phlunte Riddle said the department was unsure whether it could accommodate the media with digital scanners. Riddle said the greatest concern remains officer safety. "People who do bank robberies use scanners, and Radio Shack sells these things cheap," Riddle said. "We just had a robbery today on Hill Avenue and Washington Boulevard," Riddle said. "The last thing I want to do is to have the helicopter or the officers set up on the street and the criminals have a scanner and know where our officers are." Just prior to the switch over, city staffers said they would look into granting access to police radio chatter, most likely by loaning media outlets a scanner capable of picking up the secure signal.'"


Is this anti-social? We keep telling you that “Delete” does not mean “Delete.”
Deleted Facebook images accessible for 'three years'
Given the cutting-edge technological reputation of Facebook, you’d perhaps think profile holders need only execute a simple button press in order to swiftly cast unwanted or embarrassing photographs into social networking oblivion.
However, it would appear that personal images deleted by users are still doing the rounds on Facebook for up to three years after that initial button press.
Zuckerberg & Co. have this week revealed that not all images are removed “in a reasonable period of time” and that access to them can still be gained by Facebook users that maintain a direct link to the deleted image(s).
What that means is, for example, a Facebook photograph emailed out to friends can still be viewed via the original email link even though the image no longer appears on the user’s photo page.


I see this as a bit scary. Something like a “Minority Report” enabling technology. Walk past my store and I'll signal your Smartphone to tell you about my special offers (For you? $19.95)
Your dogs are going to hate you...
Why Lady Gaga Could Deploy a Sound Only Your Smartphone Can Hear
Audio tags are looking more and more like the new QR code — not only are they way less ugly than those jagged black-on-white squares, but you don’t need to take a picture of anything in order for them to work.
A startup called SonicNotify embeds inaudibly high-pitched audio signals within music or any other audio track. When a compatible app hears that signal, it triggers any available smartphone function to link you to websites, display text, bring up map locations, display a photo, let you vote on which song a performer plays next and so on.
… Buyers and journalists with the app installed at Fashion Week will be zapped an image of each model the instant they step onto the catwalk so they can examine the outfits up-close, in real time. Similarly impressive capabilities exist within the music realm. Best of all, the audience doesn’t even need to be actively running the app in order for it to pick up on those inaudible signals. [Remind you of the intro to the old “Outer Limits” TV show? “We control the vertical... and horizontal...” Bob]
“With Sonic, we can unlock anything that your iPhone or Android can do, as long as the SonicNotify SDK is built into an app that’s running in the background on your phone,” explained Israel. “For example, some of the stuff we’re doing with Gaga is when she is performing, mid-set, everyone in the arena gets a notification which lets them choose which song she plays for her encore.”

(Related) “We can, therefore we must!” What if your insurance company required you to monitor your health and report it to them in exchange for a break in premiums? (Auto insurance companies are already doing something similar...)
mHealth: Remote Patient Monitoring Is On The Rise, With Smartphones Leading The Way
… As smartphone processors become more powerful, a growing number of patients will be monitored by mobile networks. A recent report by Juniper on the mHealth sector estimated that 3 million patients will be monitored on those networks over the course of the next four years.


Ubiquitous surveillance. Now my model airplane skills can translate into “Urban Crop Dusting!” as I swoop down and spread Scott's fertilizer (only the best) on your lawn.
Congress Welcomes The Drones
February 7, 2012 by Dissent
Kashmir Hill writes:
The Senate passed a $63 billion bill Monday to provide four years of funding for the Federal Aviation Administration. One of the provisions of the Reauthorization Act is that the FAA clear the path for wider spread use of drones (a.k.a. unmanned aircraft) for governmental and commercial purposes. Within 90 days, the FAA has to speed up the process by which government agencies and law enforcement can get permission to use drones, and by 2015, it has to start allowing commercial use of drones
Read more on Forbes.


I don't understand... Did he say, “What you're doing is a crime. Keep doing it?”
Judge Refuses to Shut Down Online Market for Used MP3s
A one-of-a-kind website enabling the online sale of pre-owned digital-music files got a legal boost late Monday when a federal judge refused to shutter it at the request of Capitol Records.
It could be short-lived boost, however.
… The brief ruling (.pdf) by U.S. District Judge Richard Sullivan of New York did not clearly outline the reason for the decision. But in a transcript (.pdf) of a court proceeding Monday, he said that Capitol is likely to prevail at trial.
… Sullivan’s decision means that the case is still headed to trial, where Capitol will attempt to prove its allegations that ReDigi facilitates wanton copyright infringement and is not protected by the first-sale doctrine.
… ReDigi explained to Sullivan in court papers (.pdf) that its undisclosed number of account holders have a right to upload their purchased iTunes files into ReDigi’s cloud. And when a file is sold to another ReDigi account holder, no copy is made. What’s more, because of ReDigi’s technology, the original uploaded file that is sold cannot be accessed by the seller any more through ReDigi or via the seller’s iTunes account.
Prices for songs vary on ReDigi, with some files having asking prices as high as 87 cents — just 12 cents less than what many songs retail for on iTunes. The company, which earns up to 15 percent per sale, also offers cloud-storage music streaming.


Might be worth checking into...
http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=27115
New Web-Browser Add-On Protects Privacy
February 7, 2012 by Dissent
Leslie Meredith gives a nice write-up on Cocoon:
Last week Microsoft and Google clashed over who had a better privacy policy. When you use a Web-browser add-on called Cocoon, it just doesn’t matter. The free tool creates a safety zone within Firefox and Internet Explorer to stop websites from tracking you, reduce spam and protect against viruses.
Cocoon’s co-founder Jeff Bermant admits he’s not a tech guy. “I wanted to give people relief from worrying about what can go wrong on the Internet,” he said. “Cocoon is for people who don’t know much about their computers.”
Read more on Tech News Daily.
[From the article:
Cocoon appears as a toolbar at the top of your browser window. When you click the "power button," the tool bar turns blue to indicate that Cocoon has been activated and your activities are protected.
Cocoon includes "disposable email" that lets users set up unique, throw-away email addresses to use when they subscribe to a website. Then they can easily delete the address to stop an onslaught of spam.
… Cocoon touts its portability, but to access your Cocoon account on another computer the plugin must be installed in the browser of the computer you'd like to use. [Or, install your browser on a thumb drive and carry your security with you. Bob] Once it is installed, you can log into your account with your email and password. When you log out of your session, it's as if you've never been there.


A great list of websites to start reading via you favorite RSS reader...


I probably have enough material for a half dozen textbooks on my thumb drive...
"The Saylor Foundation has a vision: Free and open materials for a complete undergraduate university education. To that end, they've announced the first winners in their Open Textbook Challenge: Four textbooks were relicensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 (CC-BY 3.0) Unported license, the most open of the CC licenses, and in return the authors were awarded a prize of $20,000 for each book. See the blog entries and the accompanying press releases for details. The second wave of submissions will be accepted until May 31, 2012."

(Related)
Rice University And OpenStax Announce First Open-Source Textbooks
… Rice University, which has been pushing alternative distribution mechanisms for scholarly publications for years, has announced a new initiative, by which they hope to publish free, high-quality textbooks in core subjects like physics and biology via a non-profit publisher called OpenStax College. It’s the polar opposite of Apple’s iBooks textbooks, which, while they too help drag this dusty industry into the present, amount more to a new sales vector for the publishers than competition.


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