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ICREACH: How the NSA Built Its Own Secret Google -The Intercept

The online publication The Intercept has a fascinating story on the National Security Agency’s “Google-like” search engine, which was created to chew through almost a trillion records containing “metadata:” the cell phone calls, email messages, geo-location data and other online communications the agency has harvested. The story exposes a tool called ICREACH. Author Ryan Gallagher cites classified documents obtained by The Intercept that provide what he calls hard evidence that the NSA has, through ICREACH “made massive amounts of surveillance data directly accessible to domestic law enforcement agencies” including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Administration. Read more via The Intercept with: ICREACH: How the NSA Built Its Own Secret Google -The Intercept.

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Report: AdWords Fraudbot Helps E-Commerce Firms Compete

One of the more interesting stories to come out this week is from Brian Krebs over at Krebsonsecurity.com. Writing on Friday, Krebs used his prodigious knowledge of the cyber underground to profile “GoodGoogle,”  one of a growing number of specialized online fraud services that helps e-commerce firms target competitors by gaming Google’s AdWords feature. As you probably know, AdWords are one of Google’s biggest sources of revenue. They allow companies with products or services to sell to “bid” on words or phrases (like “Internet of Things”). Users who search on those terms will see hyperlinked ads to the right of their search results that link to a site of the advertiser’s choosing. Advertisers pay a premium to own popular (and lucrative) keywords – more than $40 per click for keywords like “loan,” “insurance,” “mortgage” or “attorney” depending on the word and time of day. Typically, advertisers set a certain daily budget […]

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Apple And IBM: The Corporatization of Consumerization

Apple Computer has built up a brand so strong that it borders on being a cult. That is why it is jarring to realize that, at the end of the day, Steve Jobs’ baby is just another company that needs to make its numbers each quarter and keep Wall Street happy. The company’s announcement of an exclusive partnership with  IBM is just that: a reminder that Apple’s core business is business, and that the company has been sorely underperforming in a key market: the enterprise. Whatever its faults, IBM is flush with the very things that Apple lacks: the brand, technology, expertise and reach that puts enterprise technology buyers at ease. As we reported, IBM will offer mobile device management, security, data analytics and cross-platform integrations for Apple’s iPad and iPhone that leverage IBM’s cloud services. There will be IBM-managed offerings around mobile device activation, supply and management tailored to businesses. But the partnership is something more- […]

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Nest, Samsung and AMD Back Thread For Home Automation

A week that has already been full of standards news for the Internet of Things added more with the unveiling of Thread, a proposed communications standard backed by Google’s NEST group that promises a “new and better way to connect products in the home.” Google was joined by Samsung, Freescale Semiconductor, ARM, smart lock maker Yale Security and Big Ass Fans (favorite company name ever) in forming The Thread Group to promote Thread. In a press release on Tuesday, the group said that the Internet of Things presents unique challenges that are not well met by existing wireless communications technologies such as Wi-Fi, ZigBee and Z-Wave. In contrast to those technologies, Thread focuses exclusively on network connectivity, not application-layer exchanges and connection management. Thread Group says existing application protocols and IoT platforms can easily run on Thread networks. Specifically, it uses 6LoWPAN (IPV6 over Low power Wireless Personal Area Networks) to create 802.15.4-standard mesh networks of smart […]

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Google Unveils Project Zero Hacking Team

Google has unveiled an all-star team of hackers and security researchers it is calling “Project Zero.” According to a post on Google’s security blog, the company is hoping to use its security research muscle to investigate the security of “any software depended upon by large numbers of people, paying careful attention to the techniques, targets and motivations of attackers.” Research like Google employee Neel Mehta’s, which helped expose the “Heartbleed” vulnerability in OpenSSL is a good example of the kinds of stuff Project Zero will do. Researchers will devote their time to finding and reporting software vulnerabilities and researching new exploits, mitigations and “program analysis.” The company said it plans to disclose any vulnerabilities it finds to the vendor first, then to the public in an external database. The public can monitor “time to patch” (given that the vulnerability is disclosed ahead of a patch). Project Zero brings Google’s elite hackers under […]

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