Social Networks

Privacy Bombshell: NSA Given Access To Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Others

If you haven’t had a chance to check out the Washington Post story on The National Security Agency’s (NSA’s) and FBI’s widespread program of wire tapping, which leads directly into the servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, including Facebook, Microsoft, Google and Apple. The classified program, dubbed PRISM, dates to 2007 and the administration of George W. Bush and authorizes the nation’s top spy agency to peer deep into the servers of  popular social networking sites, compiling audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents and connection logs. Together the information could enable intelligence operators to track an individual’s communications, movements relationships over time. The classified program came to light following the leak of a classified presentation for NSA staff, dated April 2013, that describes the program as critical and a leading contributor of intelligence to President Obama’s daily briefing. While a small cadre of members of Congress were briefed on the program […]

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AppSec And The Ghost In The Supply Chain

Tomorrow afternoon, Security Ledger, with help from our sponsor Veracode, will record its first video conversation. The show’s name: Talking Code (#talkingcode). The topic: application security, and – in particular – securing the supply chain. Joining me for the discussion will by Chris Wysopal, the co-founder and CTO of Veracode and Joshua Corman, the Director of Security Intelligence at Akamai Inc. Two things: you can send us questions or comments on Twitter. Our discussion will be filmed in studio, not live, but we’ll be tweeting comments live and engaging in realtime via Twitter. Just use the hashtag #talkingcode to pose questions. Say the term “supply chain,” and people immediately think of automobile and electronics manufacturers, who must assemble products from components makers scattered around the globe. These days, however, its not just manufacturers who have to worry about supply chains. Almost every company has a “supply chain” in one form or […]

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Facebook Graph Search API Used To Brute Force Phone Numbers From Profiles

Facebook’s Graph Search feature hasn’t been released yet. But white hat hackers are already harnessing the powerful social search engine to gather sensitive information on Facebook users. A new module for Recon-ng an open source “web reconnaissance framework” allows anyone with a Facebook Developer account to use Graph Search and Recon-ng’s features to harvest phone numbers associated with Facebook user accounts. The tool, dubbed “Facebook Harvester” allows brute force searching by partial phone numbers, using brute-force techniques, according to a blog post by Rob Simon, a Canton, Ohio- based security professional. Simon, who counts penetration testing and reverse engineering  among his skill set, wrote about his experiments using Graph Search on his blog, kc57.com. in April. In a phone interview with The Security Ledger, Simon said his work doing penetration testing drew him to the Graph Search API, which allows programmatic interaction with the Graph Search engine. He said the […]

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Fitbitten: Researchers Exploit Health Monitor To Earn Workout Rewards

Call it “the quantified self” – that intersection of powerful, IP-enabled personal health monitoring tools and (usually) Web based tools for aggregating, analyzing and reporting. The last five years has brought an explosion in these products. In addition to the long-popular gear like Garmin GPS watches – must have items for the exercise addicted – there’s a whole range of new tools for the merely “exercise curious” or folks interested in losing weight or just figure out what, exactly, they do all day. Count  Nike’s FuelBand, Jawbone’s UP, and Fitbit in that category. Alas, a growing number of reports suggest that, when it comes to medical devices and health monitoring tools, the security of sensitive personal data isn’t a top priority. The latest news comes by way of researchers at Florida International University in Miami, Florida. A team of three researchers, composed of students and faculty, analyzed the Fitbit health monitoring device […]

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Cyberbunker Owner Arrested In Spain, Rolled In Mobile DDoS Van

As the saying goes: “If the van’s a DoS’in, don’t come a knock’in.” Or something like that. Alas, for  a man believed to be the controversial owner of the Dutch bulletproof hosting firm Cyberbunker, the authorities did “come a knock’in,” arresting the individual who is believed to be responsible for the world’s largest distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. In a statement on Sunday, the Spanish Ministry of the Interior released a statement saying that National Police agents arrested the man responsible for the attacks in response to a European arrest warrant stemming from an investigation begun by Dutch authorities. The suspect was not named, but was described as a 35 year-old from Alkmaar (Netherlands) who was apprehended while  traveling in a van equipped with computer equipment and a range of antennas and used as a mobile office. The man is believed to be Sven Kamphuis, the owner and manager of Dutch hosting firm […]

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