Government Archives

Tag: Government

Meet The Software That Helped Catch The Boston Bombers

April 19, 2013 Paul Roberts

With one suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings dead and another on the run IN CUSTODY! the global, collective effort to identify those responsible for the crime has ended, and focus shifted to apprehending PROSECUTING Dzhokhor A. Tsarnaev, 19. He and his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, were the subject of a massive manhunt, culminating in a firefight in the suburb of Watertown, Massachusetts, that killed the older Tsarnaev brother and set of a massive, daylong manhunt that shut down the metropolitan Boston area.(*) So how did crowdsourcing fare in the effort to catch the two? You’d have to say: not too well. High-profile collaborative efforts to crowdsource public images of the Boston Marathon bombing site, like those organized by the group 4Chan, assembled intriguing collections of material and clocked impressive pageviews (3.4 million and counting). In the end, those efforts yielded some clues: the type of clothing worn by the suspects, […]

ACLU Complaint Shows Android Insecurity Getting Political

April 17, 2013 Paul Roberts

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a complaint with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday calling on the Federal Government to take action to stem an epidemic of unpatched and insecure Android mobile devices – a public scourge that the ACLU blames on recalcitrant wireless carriers. The civil liberties group’s complaint for injunctive relief with the FTC, noting that “major wireless carriers have sold millions of Android smartphones to consumers” but that “the vast majority of these devices rarely receive software security updates.” Calling the unpatched phones “defective and unreasonably dangerous,” the ACLU says that carriers leave their customers vulnerable to malware and spear phishing attacks that can be used to record or transmit information on the device to” third parties. “A significant number of consumers are using smartphones running a version of the Android operating system with known, exploitable security vulnerabilities for which fixes have been published by Google, but have […]

Update: DARPA Cyber Chief Peiter “Mudge” Zatko Heads To Google

April 14, 2013 Paul Roberts

Editor’s Note: Updated with comment from Google on Zatko’s role. – PFR Noted hacker and innovator Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, a project manager for cyber security research at DARPA for the past three years- will be setting up shop in the Googleplex, according to a post on his Twitter feed. Zatko, who earned fame as a founding member of the early 1990s Boston-area hacker confab The L0pht and later as a division scientist at government contractor BBN Technologies, announced his departure from DARPA following a three-year stint as a Program Manager in DARPA’s Information Innovation Office on Friday. “Given what we all pulled off within the USG, let’s see if it can be done even better from outside. Goodbye DARPA, hello Google!” he Tweeted. Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Zatko’s hiring and Zatko declined to expound on his title and responsibilities within the search giant. However, he has acknowledged that […]

Mobile Phone Use Patterns: The New Fingerprint

March 26, 2013 Paul Roberts

Mobile phone use may be a more accurate identifier of individuals than even their own fingerprints, according to research published on the web site of the scientific journal Nature. Scientists at MIT and the Université catholique de Louvain in Belgium analyzed 15 months of mobility data for 1.5 million individuals who the same mobile carrier. Their analysis, “Unique in the Crowd: the privacy bounds of human mobility” showed that data from just four, randomly chosen “spatio-temporal points” (for example, mobile device pings to carrier antennas) was enough to uniquely identify 95% of the individuals, based on their pattern of movement. Even with just two randomly chosen points, the researchers say they could uniquely characterize around half of the 1.5 million mobile phone users. The research has profound implications for privacy, suggesting that the use of mobile devices makes it impossible to remain anonymous – even without the use of tracking […]

Update: Destructive Hacks Hit South Korean Media, Banks

March 20, 2013 Paul Roberts

Editor’s Note: Updated to include information from AlienVault on the attacks. – PFR 3/20/2013 Destructive cyber attacks against media outlets and banks in South Korea have ratcheted up tensions on the Korean Peninsula, with charges that the government of reclusive North Korea was behind the hacks. According to a report in South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency, the attacks began at 2:00PM local time in South Korea and affected the computer networks of three broadcasters and two banks. Broadcasters KBS, MBC and YTN all reported that their computer networks were “halted” at that time. Shinhan Bank and Nonghyup made similar reports to the National Police Agency (NPA), according to Yonhap. Unlike past distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks that are believed to have been launched by the DPRK against the South, the latest incursions come at a time of extreme military tension on the peninsula, and caused damages to South Korean […]