Strategy for my Ethical Hackers: It is
better to have hacked something you don't need than to need access to
something you haven't hacked. Why would you ignore something that is
so easy to control?
Chinese
Hacking Team Caught Taking Over Decoy Water Plant
A Chinese hacking group accused this
February of being tied to the Chinese army was caught last December
infiltrating a decoy water control system for a U.S. municipality, a
researcher revealed on Wednesday.
The group, known as APT1, was caught by
a research project that provides the most significant proof yet that
people are actively trying to exploit the vulnerabilities in
industrial control systems. Many of these systems are connected to
the Internet to allow remote access (see “Hacking
Industrial Systems Turns Out to Be Easy”). APT1, also known as
Comment Crew, was lured by a dummy control system set up by Kyle
Wilhoit, a researcher with security company Trend
Micro, who gave a talk on his findings at the Black
Hat conference in Las Vegas.
The attack began in December 2012, says
Wilhoit, when a Word document hiding malicious
software was used to gain full access to his U.S.-based
decoy system, or “honeypot.” [In other words,
someone opened a document they should not have opened. Not hard to
“hack” when your target cooperates. Bob]
For my Ethical Hackers. TOR still
works for anonymous comunications, but you need to check those emails
for malware (FBI-ware?). This kind of confirms that the FBI is using
hacker tools and techniques to “get their man.” So, will we be
able to use the evidence gained from his computers to locate his
customers?
Alleged
Tor hidden service operator busted for child porn distribution
On Friday, Eric Eoin
Marques, a 28 year-old Dublin resident, was
arrested on a warrant from the US on charges
that he is, in
the words of a FBI agent to an Irish court, "the
largest facilitator of child porn on the planet."
The arrest coincides with the disappearance of a vast number of
"hidden
services" hosted on Tor, the anonymizing encrypted network.
Marques is alleged to be
the founder of Freedom Hosting, a major hidden services hosting
provider. While Marques' connection to Freedom Hosting was not
brought up in court, he has been widely connected to the service—as
well as the Tormail anonymized e-mail service and a Bitcoin exchange
and escrow service called Onionbank—in discussions on Tor-based
news and Wiki sites. All those services are now offline. And
prior to disappearing, the sites hosted by Freedom Hosting were also
distributing malware that may have been used to expose the users of
those services. [then again, maybe we don't need his computers...
Bob]
Tor hidden services are a
lesser known part of the Tor "darknet." They are
anonymized Web sites, mail hosts, and other services which can only
be reached by computers connected to Tor, or through a Tor hidden
services proxy website, such as tor2web.org,
and they have host names ending in .onion.
Do we even bother to look
at what others are doing?
Interesting news from Japan:
The Health, Labor
and Welfare Ministry plans to build an Internet-based network that
would allow medical institutions nationwide to share patients’
medical treatment and drug prescription records–a move that is also
likely to make it easier for patients to switch hospitals or leave
one to recover at home, according to ministry officials.
The network will
be compiled with so-called receipt computers– PCs equipped with
medical receipt-making software used by most medical institutions and
pharmacies–allowing hospitals and clinics across the country to
view patients’ medical records as needed. The ministry aims to
make the network operational by the end of fiscal 2018.
Read more on The
Japan News.
Interestingly, the report says that
patient consent will be required to share information and that
they will track (generate receipts) for data access to prevent
wrongful usage.
Will Japan do a better job of this than
the US or UK have done so far? And will they have better data
security and privacy protections in place? It all remains to be
seen.
I could read this as
simple prioritization. NSA should be spending resources on national
security and not on “can you tell me who grows marijuana in my
neighborhood?” On the other hand, this is more likely “damage
control” – feeding stories to gullible journalists.
Sean Gallagher reports:
It turns out that
the National Security Agency’s wide-ranging surveillance programs
could have been much worse, if other federal agencies had had their
way. TheNew York Times‘ Eric Lichtblau and Michael S.
Schmidt report
that the NSA has turned away the majority [51%?
Bob] of requests for information sharing from federal law
enforcement agencies, on the grounds that the requests have too
little to do with national security and could be misused in ways that
violate citizens’ privacy.
Read more on Ars
Technica.
Someone will have to start indexing all
these tools and databases, or is there already an App for that?
International
Criminal Court Legal Tools Database
International Criminal Court (ICC):
“The Legal
Tools are the leading information services on international criminal
law. They equip users with legal information, digests and an
application to work more effectively with core international crimes
cases (involving war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide or
aggression). By being freely available in the public commons, the
Tools democratize access to international criminal law information,
thus empowering practitioners and levelling preconditions for
criminal justice in both richer and materially less resourceful
countries. The Legal Tools are a significant contribution to
national capacity development in criminal justice for core
international crimes. The Tools comprise the online “Legal Tools
Database”, together with legal research and reference tools
developed by lawyers with expertise in international criminal law and
justice: the Case Matrix, the Elements Digest, the Proceedings Digest
and the Means of Proof Digest. Text in these tools or in the Legal
Tools Database does not necessarily represent views of the ICC, any
of its Organs or any participant in proceedings before the ICC or any
of the ICC States Parties. The Legal Tools Database is made freely
available through this web site. Additionally, criminal
jurisdictions, counsel and NGOs that work on core international
crimes cases may seek to have access to the Case Matrix – which
encompasses the Elements Digest, the Means of Proof Digest and key
documents from the Legal Tools Database – by sending an e-mail
message with a short statement on the nature of the need to
info@casematrixnetwork.org.
The Co-ordinator of the Legal Tools Project uses the web
site of the independent organization Case Matrix Network (CMN) to
administer some aspects of the Legal Tools Project, without cost to
the ICC.”
Somehow, the “reasons” don't seem
to justify the actions...
Veto
of Apple Ruling Likely to Upend Big Patent Battles
The Obama administration's decision to
overturn an international trade ruling against Apple Inc.—the first
such veto in more than 25 years—promises to upend long-running
battles over intellectual property in the smartphone market and
change the strategies some of the world's biggest technology
companies use to defend their inventions.
Increasingly, those companies have been
using patents to try to hobble rivals in a mobile-device market
expected to top $400 billion this year. In 2012, the number of
patent cases filed in the U.S. jumped nearly 30% from a year earlier
to 5,189, according to consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers.
… In a letter explaining the veto,
U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman, who was charged with
overseeing a presidential review of the ITC ruling, said he came to
his decision after extensive consultations with government trade
bodies "as well as other interested agencies and persons."
Mr. Froman said he based the decision on the
potential harm the sales ban would cause to consumers and the U.S.
economy. He suggested Samsung could still enforce its
patents in the courts.
I have Calibre loaded on a large thumb
drive. That allows me to run it at home and at school, manage my
books and the wife's, and be ready for eTextbooks if that ever
happens.
… Before Kindle, I fell in love
with Calibre.
A bit on the heavy side, but this eBook management suite is
incredibly powerful and always easy to use. For those users just
getting started with Calibre, but also for proficient users aiming to
maximise Calibre’s potentials, check out MakeUseOf’s Guide
To Calibre eBook Manager.
… 1. Add Amazon Books To Calibre
MOBI and EPUB files, but also PDF and
even TXT files can be easily added to your Calibre library by
dragging them to the application window.
… 2. Converting Other Formats
If you have eBooks in EPUB or another
format unsupported by Kindle, you can use Calibre to convert the
eBooks to a supported format
… 3. Email To Kindle
Instead of connecting over USB, you can
have Calibre send books to your Kindle over email.
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