http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/06/ryan-harris-sentencing/
Archive for 2012/06/29
MPAA Using Megaupload Case as Backdoor SOPA, Court Hears
Posted: 2012/06/29 in Copyright, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Illegal File Sharing, Jurisprudence, Legislation, Litigation, Public Policy, Stats / reportsPolitical activist group Demand Progress has filed a brief in the Megaupload case, urging the court to disregard the MPAA’s concerns over the return of data to former Megaupload users. The group argues that Hollywood lobbyists are out to make it impossible for Megaupload users to access their property, effectively using the court case as a backdoor SOPA.
More:
http://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-using-megaupload-case-as-backdoor-sopa-court-hears-120628/
Hacker made £10,000 worth of calls from public phone boxes
Posted: 2012/06/29 in Cybercrime, Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Stats / reportsA phone-hacker who struck again by running up close to £10,000 worth of premium-line bills has been jailed for 18 months.
Computer expert Dariusz Ganski, of Sunny Bank, Kingswood, used a router to tap into BT phone boxes and made hours of calls to expensive numbers.
DHS dared Humphreys’ crew to hack into a drone and take command. Much to their chagrin, they did exactly that
Posted: 2012/06/29 in Education / Awareness, Network Security, Privacy / Data Protection, Public Policy, Stats / reportsThere are a lot of cool things you can do with $1,000, but scientists at an Austin, Texas college have come across one that is often overlooked: for less than a grand, how’d you like to hijack a drone?
A group of researchers led by Professor Todd Humphreys from the University of Texas at Austin Radionavigation Laboratory recently succeeded in raising the eyebrows of the US government. With just around $1,000 in parts, Humphreys’ team took control of an unmanned aerial vehicle owned by the college, all in front of the US Department of Homeland Security.
After being challenged by his lab, the DHS dared Humphreys’ crew to hack into a drone and take command. Much to their chagrin, they did exactly that.
Humphrey tells Fox News that for a few hundreds dollar his team was able to “spoof” the GPS system on board the drone, a technique that involves mimicking the actual signals sent to the global positioning device and then eventually tricking the target into following a new set of commands. And, for just $1,000, Humphreys says the spoofer his team assembled was the most advanced one ever built.
“Spoofing a GPS receiver on a UAV is just another way of hijacking a plane,” Humphreys tells Fox. The real danger here, however, is that the government is currently considering plans that will allow local law enforcement agencies and other organizations from coast-to-coast to control drones of their own in America’s airspace.
Google revealed an unsettling lack of human understanding. Could it be that Google just doesn’t get real people?
Posted: 2012/06/29 in Education / Awareness, Google, Stats / reportsEverything new from Google is prima facie fantastic, and served with the best intentions. Google is a monolithic company, sure, but it’s filled with geniuses who want to make your life easier through technology. Nobody’s faulting their ambition, or questioning its motives.
But we have to wonder: Are these new things meant for regular people, or the data-obsessed, grace-deficient Silicon Valley nerd vanguard? As much as we wish it weren’t so, the answer seems a whole hell of a lot like the latter.
That the company responsible for Android is still building for robots. In each case, Google has balanced on golden fingers a product—clearly with a lot of time, thought, and money behind it—that just doesn’t seem to jibe with the way we actually live our lives.
There isn’t any lack of effort or innovation here, but rather a gaping disconnect between the way data geeks and the rest of us see the world.
Much more:
http://gizmodo.com/5921823/does-google-have-any-social-skills-at-all
SWAT team throws flashbangs, raids wrong home due to open WiFi network
Posted: 2012/06/29 in Education / Awareness, Enforcement, New Business Models, Stats / reports, Tech EvolutionTurns out the home had an open WiFi router, and the threats had been made by someone outside the house. Whoops.
Department of Justice has revealed, for the first time, the types of secret letters that the government can send out to ISPs and other tech companies being asked to reveal personal data about their users and customers who are being investigated for national security reasons
Posted: 2012/06/29 in Education / Awareness, Enforcement, Privacy / Data Protection, Public Policy, Stats / reportsIn 2009, over 6,000 Americans received such National Security Letters (NSLs).
According to the Wall Street Journal, the “letters show that the FBI is now informing people who receive the letters how they can challenge the documents in court. But some key elements of the letters remain blocked from view—including lists of material the FBI says companies can send in response to the letter.”
Most commonly, government investigators request names and addresses associated with phone and Internet records. There are also some especially broad requests, including “electronic communications transactional records,” and “Internet activity logs.” However, it remains unclear exactly what those terms mean, and how companies comply or don’t comply with such requests is also a mystery.
