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EARTHQUAKE WARNING FROM RUSSIAN INSTITUTE of PHYSICS of the EARTH

2011-03-17T20:14:00.000-04:00

Posted by Real News Reporter on March 12th, 2011
A new report released today in the Kremlin prepared for Prime Minister Putin by the Institute of Physics of the Earth, in Moscow, is warning that the America’s are in danger of suffering a mega-quake of catastrophic proportions during the next fortnight (14 days) with a specific emphasis being placed on the United States, Mexico, Central America and South American west coast regions along with the New Madrid Fault Zone region.
This report further warns that catastrophic earthquakes in Asia and the sub-continent are, also, “more than likely to occur” with the 7.3 magnitude quake in Japan today being “one of at least 4 of this intensity” to occur during this same time period.
Raising the concerns of a mega-quake occurring, this report says, are the increasing subtle electromagnetic signals that are being detected in the Earth’s upper atmosphere over many regions of the World, with the most intense being over the US Western coastal and Midwest regions.
Important to note are that Russian and British scientists are at the forefront of predicting earthquakes based on these subtle electromagnetic signals and have joined in an effort to put satellites in space to detect more of them.
More ominously in this report are Russian scientists confirming the independent analysis of New Zealand mathematician and long-range weather forecaster, Ken Ring, who predicted the deadly Christchurch quake and this week issued another warning of a quake to hit on or about March 20th.
Ring explains his methodology for predicting earthquakes as follows:
“The planets very much affect the earth, indirectly, by having an effect on the Sun. Some planets are very large. If the Sun was a basketball the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn would be the size of grapefruits, and the Earth would be, on that scale, the size of a peppercorn.
Jupiter and Saturn cause extra tides on the Sun when they get on either side of the Sun (as with Moon – Earth-Sun when the moon is full) and when these gas giants get on the same side as the Sun, (as with Earth -Moon – Sun when the moon is new). These greater solar tides become sunspot activity and solar flares and can be understood as akin to the increase in tides caused by the Moon when it too gets alongside Earth or opposite Earth.
At the moment we have Jupiter and Saturn on either side of the Sun and creating a tug of war with Earth in the middle. That started last September and will continue until about May. In September the Earth was right in line with Jupiter, Saturn and the Sun too.
That’s why there were several 7+ earthquakes around, it wasn’t just us. For instance there was one in Pakistan on the same day as Christchurch. This Jupiter/Saturn alignment continues until about May, and the Earth comes back into line as well in March. It is why there may be an extreme event, perhaps a large earthquake, around 20 March, which is when the Moon may be again in a trigger position.”
According to this report, however, where Ring is correct in assessing blame for our Earth’s earthquakes on the Sun and Planets, his substituting of Perigean Spring Tides (also known as King Tides) for the low pressure systems associated with them may be incorrect.
The mention in this report of massive low pressure systems being associated with catastrophic earthquakes is especially dire to the United States Midwestern region, which even today is continuing to be pounded by horrific rainfall amounts, and most especially impacting the New Madrid Fault Zone State of Arkansas which has suffered over 800 earthquakes in the past 6 months alone.
Equally in danger, this report continues, is the South American Nation of Bolivia which has, likewise, suffered catastrophic low pressure system storms that in the past week have killed over 52 people.
Most ominous in this report, though, is its warning that the fault-riddled State of California may be about to suffer its most catastrophic earthquake in decades as new reports for this region show the mass death of millions of fish [photo bottom left] is now occurring, and just like the mass stranding of whales on New Zealand beaches days prior to the February 22nd destruction of Christchurch.
Making the situation for our Planet even grimmer are the reports that our Sun is continuing to spew forth massive solar flares, the latest warned to hit our Earth today or tomorrow thus prompting the Hermanus Space Weather Warning Centre (SWWC) to issue a Solar Flare warning for the Southern Hemisphere.
Interesting to note in all of these events is the United States Army announcing this week that it is holding a rare training event involving the US Military, the CIA, Canadian officers, US Treasury and State departments, the US Agency for International Development, the Defense Threat Readiness Agency and the International Red Cross between March 21-25 at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and which should the worst happen they will certainly be prepared for it.
As this report concludes, that as of yet, “no firmly reliable” method for predicting earthquakes has been scientifically recognized, it is well worth noting the too many to be ignored anomalous coincidences leading up to catastrophic mega-quakes are breaking out all over the World and should only be ignored at ones peril.
In other words, it is always best to be prepared should disaster strike, wherever the warning comes from.

ZEITGEIST: MOVING FORWARD

2011-03-17T20:10:00.001-04:00

FBI Accused of Planting OpenBSD Backdoors 10 Years Ago

2010-12-15T17:52:00.000-05:00

A former contractor accused the FBI of planting backdoors and side-channel key leaking mechanisms into the OpenBSD Cryptographic Framework 10 years ago.

An e-mail touched off a bit of a firestorm when a former government contractor alleged the FBI put backdoors and side-channel key leak mechanisms in the OpenBSD Cryptographic Framework some 10 years ago.

The e-mail, which was posted online here by OpenBSD founder Theo de Raadt, came from Gregory Perry, who is now CEO of GoVirtual Education.

"If you will recall, a while back I was the CTO at NETSEC and arranged funding and donations for the OpenBSD Crypto Framework," Perry wrote in the Dec. 11 e-mail to de Raadt. "At that same time I also did some consulting for the FBI, for their GSA Technical Support Center, which was a cryptologic reverse engineering project aimed at backdooring and implementing key escrow mechanisms for smart card and other hardware-based computingtechnologies."

Stating that his non-disclosure agreement (NDA) with the FBI had ended, he told de Raadt the law enforcement agency had “implemented a number of backdoors and side channel key leaking mechanisms into the OCF, for the express purpose of monitoring the site to site VPN encryption system implemented by EOUSA, the parent organization to the FBI.”

In an e-mail to eWEEK today, Perry wrote that the OCF was a "target for side channel key leaking mechanisms, as well as pf (the stateful inspection packet filter), in addition to the gigabit Ethernet driver stack for the OpenBSD operating system; all of those projects NETSEC donated engineers and equipment for, including the first revision of the OCF hardware acceleration framework based on the HiFN line of crypto accelerators."

"The project involved," he continued, "was the GSA Technical Support Center, a circa 1999 joint research and development project between the FBI and the NSA [National Security Agency]... We were tasked with proposing various methods used to reverse engineer smart card technologies, including Piranha techniques for stripping organic materials from smart cards and other embedded systems used for key material storage, so that the gates could be analyzed with Scanning Electron and Scanning Tunneling Microscopy. We also developed proposals for distributed brute force key cracking systems used for DES/3DES cryptanalysis, in addition to other methods for side channel leaking and covert backdoors in firmware-based systems.”

Perry wrote that he left NETSEC in 2000 to start another venture and "had some fairly significant concerns with many aspects of these projects." He added that he was the lead architect for "the site-to-site VPN project developed for Executive Office for United States Attorneys, which was a statically keyed VPN system used at 235+ US Attorney locations and which later proved to have been backdoored by the FBI so that they could recover (potentially) grand jury information from various US Attorney sites across the United States and abroad.”

“After I left NETSEC, I ended up becoming the recipient of a FISA-sanctioned investigation, presumably so that I would not talk about those various projects; my NDA recently expired so I am free to talk about whatever," he wrote.

In announcing the e-mail, de Raadt noted that since the first IPSEC stack was available for free, large parts of the code can be found in many projects and products.

“Over 10 years, the IPSEC code has gone through many changes and fixes, so it is unclear what the true impact of these allegations are,” he wrote.

So far, there is mixed opinion about Perry's accusations.

"Governments around the world would want this type of access due to the realities of economic espionage and traditional espionage evolving into cyberspace," said Tom Kellermann, vice president of security awareness at Core Security. "The Chinese have been utilizing this form of tradecraft for years."

Still, Andrew Hay, an analyst with The 451 Group, said the ability to slip something malicious into the OpenBSD code is possible but unlikely due to thepossible political and social ramifications of the backdoor being discovered.

“As for those people leveraging the OCF in their own software I suspect that it would be quite difficult for them to audit the code for anomalies,” he said. “Software engineers typically rely on the scrutiny provided by the Open Source community (not to mention the project handlers) to audit the shared libraries and code prior to its release. Unless the end-application owners have detailed knowledge of what to look for, or guidance from the OpenBSD team, these anomalies will likely be as difficult to detect as looking for a particular needle in a stack of needles

For the first time in history, a man is cured of HIV

2010-12-15T17:48:00.000-05:00

For the first time in history, a man has been cured of HIV. The patient, 42-year old Timothy Ray Brown was first hospitalized at Berlin at Germany’s Charite Universitatsmedizin hospital after he contracted acute myeloid leukemia in 2007. He underwent aggressive chemotherapy that destroyed the majority of his immune cells and finally, went through a risky stem-cell transplant that appears to have completely cured Brown of HIV.

The key to this particular case was in the stem cell donor, who had a rare genetic mutation called CCR5 delta 32 homozygosity that is associated with a reduced risk of becoming infected with HIV. While Brown’s own immune system was shot, the donor’s cells were effective enough so that three years later, Brown was completely cured.

The treatment was life-threatening and not something many HIV patients would want to go through, but it opens up new avenues of research into gene therapies and stem cell treatments that may otherwise have been thought hopeless. And while no longer considered as maliciously fatal, HIV patients still live a life rife with pain and hardship. This case is monumental because for the first time in human history, we know that it’s possible to cure HIV and that is awe-inspiring.

Sources: Gizmodo, AidsMap

Pirate Bay bloke wants to set up ICANN alternative

2010-11-30T18:57:00.000-05:00

Calls for help
The bloke behind Pirate Bay wants to set up an alternative to the domain name outfit ICANN.

Peter Sunde says that he has been suspicious of ICANN for a long time. ICANN is the non-profit corporation is tasked with managing both the IPv4 and IPv6 Internet Protocol address spaces as well as handling the management of top-level domain name space including the operation of root nameservers.

However Sunde said that he has lost a domain in the past and it was taken without any consultation. Instead the organisation relied on information from recording industry group IFPI to change the domain ownership.

He has put out a Tweet to create a competing root server - “Hello all #isp of the world. We’re going to add a new competing root-server since we’re tired of #ICANN. Please contact me to help.”

Sunde has a plan to create a DNS root server to begin with that uses peer-to-peer technology and is secure. While it will be quite basic, it will be open and secure.

Sunde might just be venting, but he has a habit of doing stuff. Pirate Bay was one such example.
Published in News
Tagged under Pirate Bay domain server help ICANN alternative root

Harvard scientists reverse the ageing process in mice – now for humans

2010-11-30T18:52:00.001-05:00

Harvard scientists were surprised that they saw a dramatic reversal, not just a slowing down, of the ageing in mice. Now they believe they might be able to regenerate human organs

In mice, reactivating the enzyme telomerase led to the repair of damaged tissues and reversed the signs of ageing. Photograph: Robert F. Bukaty/AP

Scientists claim to be a step closer to reversing the ageing process after rejuvenating worn out organs in elderly mice. The experimental treatment developed by researchers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, turned weak and feeble old mice into healthy animals by regenerating their aged bodies.

The surprise recovery of the animals has raised hopes among scientists that it may be possible to achieve a similar feat in humans – or at least to slow down the ageing process.

An anti-ageing therapy could have a dramatic impact on public health by reducing the burden of age-related health problems, such as dementia, stroke and heart disease, and prolonging the quality of life for an increasingly aged population.

"What we saw in these animals was not a slowing down or stabilisation of the ageing process. We saw a dramatic reversal – and that was unexpected," said Ronald DePinho, who led the study, which was published in the journal Nature.

"This could lead to strategies that enhance the regenerative potential of organs as individuals age and so increase their quality of life. Whether it serves to increase longevity is a question we are not yet in a position to answer."

The ageing process is poorly understood, but scientists know it is caused by many factors. Highly reactive particles called free radicals are made naturally in the body and cause damage to cells, while smoking, ultraviolet light and other environmental factors contribute to ageing.

The Harvard group focused on a process called telomere shortening. Most cells in the body contain 23 pairs of chromosomes, which carry our DNA. At the ends of each chromosome is a protective cap called a telomere. Each time a cell divides, the telomeres are snipped shorter, until eventually they stop working and the cell dies or goes into a suspended state called "senescence". The process is behind much of the wear and tear associated with ageing.

At Harvard, they bred genetically manipulated mice that lacked an enzyme called telomerase that stops telomeres getting shorter. Without the enzyme, the mice aged prematurely and suffered ailments, including a poor sense of smell, smaller brain size, infertility and damaged intestines and spleens. But when DePinho gave the mice injections to reactivate the enzyme, it repaired the damaged tissues and reversed the signs of ageing.

"These were severely aged animals, but after a month of treatment they showed a substantial restoration, including the growth of new neurons in their brains," said DePinho.

Repeating the trick in humans will be more difficult. Mice make telomerase throughout their lives, but the enzyme is switched off in adult humans, an evolutionary compromise that stops cells growing out of control and turning into cancer. Raising levels of telomerase in people might slow the ageing process, but it makes the risk of cancer soar.

DePinho said the treatment might be safe in humans if it were given periodically and only to younger people who do not have tiny clumps of cancer cells already living, unnoticed, in their bodies.

David Kipling, who studies ageing at Cardiff University, said: "The goal for human tissue 'rejuvenation' would be to remove senescent cells, or else compensate for the deleterious effects they have on tissues and organs. Although this is a fascinating study, it must be remembered that mice are not little men, particularly with regard to their telomeres, and it remains unclear whether a similar telomerase reactivation in adult humans would lead to the removal of senescent cells."

Lynne Cox, a biochemist at Oxford University, said the study was "extremely important" and "provides proof of principle that short-term treatment to restore telomerase in adults already showing age-related tissue degeneration can rejuvenate aged tissues and restore physiological function."

DePinho said none of Harvard's mice developed cancer after the treatment. The team is now investigating whether it extends the lifespan of mice or enables them to live healthier lives into old age.

Tom Kirkwood, director of the Institute for Ageing and Health at Newcastle University, said: "The key question is what might this mean for human therapies against age-related diseases? While there is some evidence that telomere erosion contributes to age-associated human pathology, it is surely not the only, or even dominant, cause, as it appears to be in mice engineered to lack telomerase. Furthermore, there is the ever-present anxiety that telomerase reactivation is a hallmark of most human cancers."

New version of the Zeus financial malware

2010-10-21T14:00:00.000-04:00

New version of the Zeus financial malware adds sophisticated new mechanisms to commit online fraud New version of the Zeus financial malware adds sophisticated new mechanisms to commit online fraud - RSS feed from Security Park
(21/10/2010)

The Zeus developers keep releasing new features - such as a highly granular browser injection facility - that allow them to stay one step ahead of the IT security community, as well as fixing bugs and other issues in previous versions. This level of commitment attracts the fraudsters' business and maintains interest in the Trojan amongst security vendors, banks and law enforcement officials. And this in turn re-enforces the security circle, with hacker coders constantly tweaking and improving the malware as time goes on.

Trusteer has captured and analyzed a new version (2.1) of the Zeus financial malware and found that it has added sophisticated new mechanisms to commit online fraud and remain the Trojan of choice for criminals. Zeus has not only improved its business logic but also its ability to avoid detection and automatic analysis by antivirus vendors. Zeus is under the spotlight of security vendors, banks, and law enforcement, which forces its developers to continually improve it to avoid losing business to competing malware like Bugat, Clampi, and SpyEye. Just like commercial application developers, the creators of Zeus run an R&D programme to ensure it can avoid detection and side-step the growing number of IT security mechanisms designed to detect, block and eliminate it.

New capabilities in Zeus 2.1 include:

· URL matching based on a full implementation of the Perl Compatible Regular Expressions (PCRE) library. This allows much more flexibility for Zeus's configuration to define targets. For example, Zeus can now target all URLs that start with “https” and then zero in on those that contain specific digits and keywords. Earlier Zeus versions had a primitive regular expression implementation which provided very little flexibility in specifying target URLs.

· The injection mechanism (Zeus’s main “work horse”) now uses sophisticated regular expressions based on PCRE as well, which helps avoid detection. It can target individual web pages with elaborate injections, while not injecting into other pages. This surgical injection method creates more convincing pages and can target more banks using a single attack.

· Zeus now has a fine-grained "grabbing" mechanism, again based on PCRE, which can extract very specific areas of the page (e.g. the account balance) and report them to the C&C host. The grab mechanism provides an efficient way of collecting user data (such as account balance), as opposed to the cumbersome and wasteful way (supported by earlier Zeus variants) of having to copy the full page.

· As other researchers have already pointed out Zeus 2.1 completely changed the way it communicated with its Command &Control (C&C) servers with a daily list of hundreds of C&C hostnames, through which it cycles trying to find a live one which is a considerable improvement over the previous scheme.

· Zeus has added a 1024-bit RSA public key, which will probably be used for one-way encryption of data and authenticating the C&C server to Zeus clients.

“Since the Trusteer Secure Browsing software is installed on the PCs of millions of bank customers, automatically classifying, blocking, analyzing, and removing financial malware such as Zeus, our researchers can see enhanced attack vectors in real time,” said Mickey Boodaei, CEO of Trusteer. “The improvements are similar to those seen in commercial software, but instead of enhancements being released on a monthly or annual basis, the timescales are now being compressed to just days and weeks, largely because of the immense fraudulent revenues involved. While commercial software needs to undergo extensive quality assurance processes before being released, Zeus has the luxury of pushing rapid updates without worrying too much about software quality.”

Previous malware has risen in popularity, then been tweaked and then faded away, the enhancements in Zeus - which is currently into version 2.1 - show no signs of abating, largely because of the modular coding structure of Zeus. The modular approach, for example means that exploit hacks can be used to enhance the ability of Zeus to stage a real-time bank access attack, and so greatly extend its useful lifetime to the cybercriminals. As with any commercial application, software product maintenance and support are two of the more important reasons why users buy and use products, and Zeus has proven over the last three years that it does both very well for the cybercriminals.

"The big question is how long can Zeus stay in pole position in the malware fraud charts? Our researchers suggest that, given its ability to be morphed and enhanced, it's going to be some while yet before other malware gets a look in at the top spot. And this means that hackers have a vested interest to keep Zeus ahead of the game as far as its ability to defraud, forcing them to improve and increase their effort all the time to avoid losing the cybercriminal's business," Boodaei said.

IT security teams trying to defend against Zeus should:

1. Recognize that antivirus technology is only partially effective against modern malware such as Zeus, Bugat, and SpyEye. Many of these fly under the radar of antivirus solutions while targeting employees and stealing sensitive corporate information. This version of Zeus is extremely elusive and is virtually undetectable by antivirus products.

2. Recognize that the browser has emerged as the weakest link in the enterprise security infrastructure and is being exploited by malware authors and criminals to infect computers and steal sensitive information.

3. Protect employees, contractors, and unmanaged computers with secure browsing services, which can detect, block, and remove browser-borne malware from computers.

4. Put in place technology and processes that enable effective, and instant investigation of malware-related fraud incidents.

Friend of Digital Freedom

2010-10-21T13:53:00.001-04:00

Dear Friend of Digital Freedom,

The U.S. government has made two proposals this week that threaten online speech and privacy in radical new ways. Either one, if passed by Congress, will fundamentally rewrite the rules of the Internet. EFF is fighting hard for your rights and needs your help.

These proposals are the most frightening we've seen in a long time. The first is a bill called the "Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act," which would give the Justice Department new powers to censor websites accused of aiding "piracy." The second is an Obama Administration proposal that would end online privacy as we know it by requiring all Internet communication service providers -- from Facebook to Skype to your webmail provider -- to rebuild their systems to give the government backdoor access to all of your private Internet communications.

EFF is battling these threats to Internet users' privacy and freedom of speech, and we need your support. More than half of EFF's funding comes from individuals like you, and none of our funding comes from government grants. That means that when EFF goes toe-to-toe against government attempts to snatch away your rights, we pull no punches in defending the civil liberties of all technology users and innovators.

Become an EFF member today, and join the ongoing fight for privacy, free expression, and civil liberties on the Internet, as we face down these threats and secure a better future for us all.

Introduction to Internet Terminology

2010-10-21T13:42:00.004-04:00

Introduction to Internet Terminology

AVI - (Audio Video Interleaved) A Microsoft Corporation multimedia video format. It uses waveform audio and digital video frames (bitmaps) to compress animation.

Bandwidth - The capacity of an electronic line, such as a communications network or computer channel, to transmit bits per second (bps).

Bitmap - A representation, consisting of rows and columns of dots, of a graphics image in computer memory. The value of each dot (whether it is filled in or not) is stored in one or more bits of data. For simple monochrome images, one bit is sufficient to represent each dot, but for colors and shades of gray, each dot requires more than one bit of data. See more graphics formats

Bits and bytes -

Bit stands for binary digit: 0 or 1
A byte is made up of 8 bits
It takes 1 byte to store one ASCII character ASCII stands for the American Standard Code for Information Interchange
The combination of bits (which makes up one byte) below represents the letters below
A 0100 0001
B 0100 0010
C 0100 0011

K stands for kilo and = 1024 (2 to the tenth power)
M stands for mega. A MB, megabyte is about a million bytes (1024x1024)
G stands for giga. A GB, gigabyte is about a billion bytes (1024x1024x1024)
T stands for tera. A TB, terabyte is about a trillion!
RAM is usually measured in MB
Hard disk spaces is usually measured in gigabytes

Blog - A blog is information that is instantly published to a Web site. Blog scripting allows someone to automatically post information to a Web site. The information first goes to a blogger Web site. Then the information is automatically inserted into a template tailored for your Web site.

Bookmark - a way of storing your favorite sites on the Internet. Browsers like Netscape or Internet Explorer let you to categorize your bookmarks into folders.

Boolean logic - a type of logic (using AND, OR, NOT operators, for example) used by search engines to find information on the Internet and in electronic databases. (For example, to find computer viruses instead of human viruses, you might try the keywords "computers and viruses.")

Browser - A software program that allows users to access the Internet. Examples:

Non-graphical a user interface for computers which allows you to read plain text, not pictures, sound, or video, on the Internet. It is strictly text based, non-Windows, and does not place high memory demands on your computer. An example is lynx .(http://lynx.browser.org/)
Graphical a user interface for computers which enables people to see color, graphics, and hear sound and see video, available on Internet sites. These features are usually designated by underlined text, a change of color, or other distinguishing feature; sometimes the link is not obvious, for example, a picture with no designated characteristic. Examples are Netscape and Internet Explorer.

CGI (Common Gateway Interface script) - a specificiation for transferring information between a Web server and a CGI program, designed to receive and and return data. The script can use a variety of languages such as C, Perl, Java, or Visual Basic. Many html pages that contain forms use a cgi program to process the data submitted by users/clients.

Chat - real-time, synchronous, text-based communication via computer.

Cookie - Information (in this case URLs, Web addresses) created by a Web server and stored on a user's computer. This information lets Web sites the user visits to keep of a user's browsing pattterns and preferences. People can set up their browsers to accept or not accept cookies.

Cyberculture - "a collection of cultures and cultural products that exist on and/or are made possible by the Internet, along with the stories told about these cultures and cultural products." David Silver, "Introducing Cyberculture," Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies: http://www.com.washington.edu/rccs/ [last accessed11/24/2001].

Digit - A single character in a numbering system. In decimal, digits are 0 through 9. In binary, digits are 0 and 1. The os and 1s equate to "on and off functions. Digitization allows for perfect copying. When text, music, voice and video are in digitized, they can be electronically manipulated, preserved and regenerated without degredation of quality at high speed. Each copy of a computer file is exactly the same as the original. See more comprehensive definitions.

Domain Name - A method of identifying computer addresses. Your e-mail address has a domain address. If you have an "edu" at the end of your e-mail address that means your account is affiliated with an educational institution. A "com" extension means you have a business account. A government account has a .gov suffix.

dpi - (dots per inch) the way the resolution of display and printing is measured.

FAQs - Frequently Asked Questions. A list of questions and answers to explain products and troubleshoot problems.

Firewall - The name "firewall" derives from the term for a barrier that prevents fires from spreading. A computer "firewall" is a barrier between your computer and the outside world. Just like a fire is most likely to
spread through open doors in a building, your computer is most vulnerable at its ports (the doors). Without ports you could not go on the Internet or let Internet traffic enter your computer.

An effective software firewall isolates your computer from the Internet using a code that sets up a blockade to inspect each packet of data, from or to your computer — to determine whether it should be allowed to pass or be blocked.

Firewall software operates in various ways: Packet filters block traffic from IP addresses and/or port numbers. Proxy servers can break the connection between two networks. NATs (Network Address Translators) hides the IP addresses of client stations by presenting one IP address to the "outside" world. Stateful inspection verifies inbound and outbound traffic to be sure the destination and the source are correct. Firewall software can allow your computer to operate in stealth mode, so that its IP address is not visible.

Flash - Animation software used to develop interactive graphics for Web sites as well as desktop presentations and games (Windows and Mac) by the company Macromedia. Flash on the Web is displayed by a browser plug-in. Non-Web presentations are run by a Flash player, included on a floppy or CD-ROM. Flashcan be used to create vector-based graphics in one or more timelines that provide a sequential path for actions.

FTP - Using file transfer protocol software to receive from upload) or send to (download) files (text, pictures, spreadsheets, etc.) from one computer/server to another.

.gif - (graphic interchange format) the usual format for a graphic that is not a photo. Animated gif files are embedded with coding that creates movement when the graphic is activated. See more graphics formats

Home page - Generally the first page retrieved when accessing a Web site. Usually a "home" page acts as the starting point for a user to access information on the site. The "home" page usually has some type of table of contents for the rest of the site information or other materials. When creating Web pages, the "home" page has the filename "index.html," which is the default name. The "index" page automatically opens up as the "home" page.

HTML - A type of text code in Hypertext Markup Language which, when embedded in a document, allows that document to be read and distributed across the Internet.

HTTP - The hypertext transfer protocol (http) that enables html documents to be read on the Internet.

Hypertext - Text that is non-sequential, produced by writing in HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) language. This HTML coding allows the information (text, graphics, sound, video) to be accessed using HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol).

Hyperlink - Text, images, graphics that, when clicked with a mouse (or activated by keystrokes) will connect the user to a new Web site. The link is usually obvious, such as underlined text or a "button" of some type, but not always.

Instant Messaging (IM) - a text-based computer conference over the Internet between two or more people who must be online at the same time. When you send an IM the receiver is instantly notified that she/he has a message.

Interlaced - A graphics formatting technique that causes an image to gradually appear on your screen instead of appearing all at once. The image appears blurry at first and is replaced by successive waves of bit streams that gradually fill in the missing lines until the image fully appears in full resolution. This gradually rendering of the image is helpful for Web users who have slow modems and connections, since this technique allows the viewer to see enough of the image to decide whether or not to continue loading it. For fast connections, there is no discernible difference.

Internet - A global network of thousands of computer networks linked by data lines and wireless systems.

[Background history on the Internet -The Internet, originally the ARPAnet (Advanced Research Projects Agency network), began as a military computer network in 1969. Other government agencies and universities created internal networks based on the ARPAnet model. The catalyst for the Internet today was provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Rather than have a physical communications connection from each institution to a supercomputing center, the NSF began a "chain" of connections in which institutions would be connected to their "neighbor" computing centers, which all tied into central supercomputing centers. This beginning expanded to a global network of computer networks, which allows computers all over the world to communicate with one another and share information stored at various computer "servers," either on a local computer or a computer located anywhere in the world. The Internet is not governed by any official body, but there are organizations which work to make the Internet more accessible and useful.]

IP Address - (Internet Protocol) The number or name of the computer from which you send and receive information on the Internet.

JAVA - a computer language, developed by Sun Microsystems, that lets you encode applications, such as animated objects or computer programs, on the Internet

Javascript - A Web scripting language developed by Netscape. It was developed independently of the full JAVA language and is an "open" language, free for anyone to use and adapt. For example, The Java Script Source has many scripts people can adapt for their own purposes.

.jpg (or jpeg)- (joint photographic expert group) a file format for photographs on Web pages. The "jpg" format compresses large photo files so they don't take up as many kilobytes of memory. See more graphics formats

Listserv - An e-mail list of e-mail addresses of people with common interests. Software enables people who belong to a list to send messages to the group without typing a series of addresses into the message header. Usually members of the group in the listserv have to subscribe to the mailing list.

Modem - A device that connects your computer to the Internet, when you are not connected via a LAN (local area network, such as at work or on a campus.) Most people connect to a modem when using a home computer. The modem translates computer signals to analog signals which are sent via phone lines. The telephone "speaks" to the computer/server which provides your Internet access.

MPEG - (Short for: Moving Picture Experts Group)

MPEG-1 Format for compressing video with audio for playback from storage
media with low data transfer rates such as CDROMs or over the network at
VHS quality.
MPEG-2 Format for compressing video with audio at broadcast quality
resolution for playback in higher data transfer rate environments. Usually
used for real-time encoding in the professional market, satellite digital
television (DirecTV, USSB), and for DVDs and other types of video CDs.
MP3

MPEG Layer 3

Format for compressing audio only defined in both MPEG-1 and
MPEG-2. Commonly used for digital music played on personal computers (MP3
songs) but also targeted at applications such as digital phones and new
hardware MP3 players intended as discman or car CD player replacements.

Multimedia - The Web's integration of audio, video, graphics and text.

Newsgroup - An Internet "site" centered around a specific topic or course. Some newsreader software can "thread" discussion so there can be various topics centered around a central theme. An advantage over e-mail is that the messages are archived and don't reside in your e-mail account, taking up your memory, unless you set up a "sent mail" or "carbon copy" option. The messages can often be threaded according to a particular discussion.

PHP - (Hypertext Preprocessor) open source, server-side HTML scripting languaage used to create dynamic Web pages. PHP is embedded within tags, so the author authorr can move between HTML and PHP instead of using large amounts of code. Because PHP is executed on the server, the viewer cannot see the code. PHP can perform the same tasks as a CGI program can do and is compatible with many different kinds of databases.

Portal - A Web site "gateway" that provides multiple services, which could include Web searching capability, news, free-email, discussion groups, online shopping, references and other services. A more recent trend is to use the same term for sites that offer services to customers of particular industries, such as a Web-based bank "portal," on which customers can access their checking, savings and investment accounts.

RSS - (Rich Site Summary or RDF [Resource Description Framework] Site Summary). An XML format for sharing content among different Web sites such as news items. How does it work? A Web site can allow other sites to publish some of its content by creating an RSS document and registers the document with an RSS publisher. A web publisher can post a link to the rss feed so users can read the distributed content on his/her site. Syndicated contentcan can include news feeds, listings of events, stories, headlines, etc.

Search Engine - specialized software, such as AltaVista and Yahoo, that lets WWW browser users search for information on the Web by using keywords, phrases, and boolean logic. Different search engines have different ways of categorizing and indexing information. Search engines are accessed by typing in the URL of that engine or using a browser's compilation of search engines in its Internet search function.

Shockwave - A three dimensional (3D) animation technology/format creataed by the Macromedia company. Macromedia Director producess Shockwave files, which can be viewed through a Shockwave player, a browser"plug-in" computer program or other multimedia applications that access the player. Shockwave can be used to create more sophisticated animations than the Macromedia Flash format. Shockwave uses the .dir file extension for source files and .dcr extension for Shockwave "movies."

Telnet - The command to log on to another computer on the Internet.

URL - A universal resource locator (a computer address) that identifies the location and type of resource on the Web. A URL generally starts with "http."

Vector - A line in computer graphics designated by its end points (x-y or x-y-z coordinates). A vector layer does not use pixels for storing image information. Instead, it stores a vector object as a set of properties that describe its attributes, dimensions, and position in the image. Each time an image is opened, these properties are used as instructions for drawing the objects. Because the objects are independent elements, you can move them without affecting the rest of the image.

Virtual Community - a term commonly used to describe a group of people who exchange ideas through computer networks, listservs, newsgroups, and Web-based bulletin boards. They might not ever meet face-to-face. Generally these people meet over the long-term, on a regular basis, and share their ideas about a variety of subjects, depending upon their special interest. The discussions could relate to hobbies, music, health, self help issues, and professional and scholarly activities.

Virus - a computer program usually hidden in an existing program. Once the existing program is executed, the virus program is activated and can attach itself to other programs or files. Viruses can range from benign activities such as attaching a harmless message to performing malicious activities such as destroying all the data on a computer hard drive. Viruses are commonly distributed as e-mail attachments which activate when the attachment is opened. Virus protection software, updated regularly with the latest virus definitions, can help protect computers from viruses.

Web Bot - A term that applies to programs/applets (macros and intelligent agents) used on the Internet. Such bots perform a repetitive function, such as posting messages to multiple newsgroups or doing searches for information.

Wide World Web (WWW) - A hypermedia information storage system which links computer-based resources around the world. Computer programs called Browsers enable words or icons called hyperlinks to display, text, video, graphics and sound on a computer screen. The source of the material is at a different location - a different file in the same directory, a file in another computer, which can be located anywhere in the world.

WORM - A destructive computer program that replicates itself throughout your computer's hard drive and and memory. Worms use up the computers resources and pull the system down. Worms can be spread in mass-e-mailing if the user opens an attachment.

(2) A program that moves through a network and deposits information at each node for diagnostic purposes or causes idle computers to share some of the processing workload.

XML (Extensible Markup Language) - is a less robust variety of SGML, a system for organizing and tagging elements of a document so that the document can be transmitted and interpreted between applications and organizations. Human readable XML tags defines "what it is," and HTML defines "how it looks." XML allows designers to create their own tags. For example:

HTML

Jane Doe
March 27, 1975
XML

Jane
Doe
03-27-75

In the HTML version the tags identify formatting options, such as font size and bold. In the XML example, the tags identify the content.

Because XML can support business-to-business transactions by making the transmission and interpretation of data easier, it has the potential to become the standard for the exchange of data over the Internet.

Jan 2004

--
Wyretap OganiXation ©2007
www.wyretap.us.tt

Adobe Flash Player user-assisted privacy compromise

2010-09-05T12:33:00.000-04:00

From: Alexander Klink
Date: Sun, 05 Sep 2010 00:14:35 +0200

Security Advisory for

Adobe Flash Player – user-assisted privacy compromise
=====================================================

Date released: 04.09.2010
Date reported: 08.03.2010
$Revision: 1.1 $

by Security Testlab
  Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology
  http://testlab.sit.fraunhofer.de/

Vendor: Adobe
Product: Flash Player
Website: http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/
Vulnerability: privacy problem
Status: unpatched
Adobe ID: 451

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Summary:

Adobe uses the so-called »Settings Manager« to configure aspects of the Flash
Player application. As the Settings Manager is itself only a flash applet at a
specific URL, it can be spoofed and used to set privacy-related parameters,
such as allowing access to the camera and microphone for an attacker-chosen
domain.

The only security measure in place to prevent this for an attacker is that the
Settings Manager has to be retrieved using HTTPS from www.macromedia.com. Thus,
the attacker has to be in a position to control traffic from the user (e.g. a
MiTM situation). Also, user interaction and a moderate amount of social
engineering might be needed to convince the user to accept a certificate for
www.macromedia.com.

Attackers with access to a rogue certificate authority (such as
– maybe – your friendly neighbourhood government agency, see
http://files.cloudprivacy.net/ssl-mitm.pdf) may have a slight advantage
here.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Technical details:

The Settings Manager is located at the following URL:

http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager.html

As noted before, the Settings Manager is a flash applet itself, which leads to
the nice note »The Settings Manager that you see above is not an image; it is
the actual Settings Manager.« on the website.

The flash applet is located at
http://www.macromedia.com/support/flashplayer/sys/settingsmanager.swf,
which in turn loads another applet from
https://www.macromedia.com/support/flashplayer/sys/settingsmanager2.swf
(Note the https URL, Flash Player versions earlier than 8 retrieved this
applet via HTTP only)

This applet is now allowed to change the settings for domains which
already have a Local Shared Object (aka »Flash cookie«) set. In particular,
it is possible to set the options for camera and microphone access.

In our proof of concept exploit, this is how the communication
takes place (given that the user has not yet accepted a certificate
for www.macromedia.com). All files on the rogue www.macromedia.com
referenced below have been modified to serve our PoC exploit.

- The user accesses the (rogue) Settings Manager at
 https://www.macromedia.com/[...]/settings_manager.html
 (maybe by being forced if the attacker can modify normal HTTP traffic)
 If the attacker is lucky, the user ignores the certificate warning
 and accepts the certificate. If the attacker is powerful, then there
 is no certificate warning
- This page contains an invisible iframe load_evil.html, which redirects
 to evil.html on the HTTP server, as settingsmanager.swf has to be
 retrieved using HTTP. evil.html in turn contains an embed-tag to load
 the modified settingsmanager.swf
- settingsmanager.swf writes a dummy LSO, so that the domain is known
 in the next step. After that, it loads settingsmanager2.swf via HTTPS.
- settingsmanager2.swf can now be used to allow the video and camera
 to be turned on for www.macromedia.com. Our PoC sets this option for
 all domains (just because we can and it was easier to implement).
 It then redirects to hidden_record.flv, which uses the camera and
 microphone to record the user and sends the data via RTMP to a
 haxeVideo server.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Communication:

* 08.03.2010: Informed Adobe PSIRT about the issue
* 08.03.2010: Adobe PSIRT responds and asks for PoC files
* 10.03.2010: SIT sends PoC files
* 12.03.2010: Adobe PSIRT asks for individual files instead of VMWare image
* 18.03.2010: SIT sends individual PoC files
* 13.04.2010: Conference call regarding status and possible solutions
             between SIT and Adobe PSIRT
* 25.05.2010: SIT pings Adobe PSIRT for status update and information
             on which solution is chosen
* 17.06.2010: SIT pings Adobe PSIRT again for status update
* 17.06.2010: Adobe PSIRT responds that it is still investigation options
* 06.08.2010: SIT pings Adobe PSIRT for status update and informs them
             of intended release on the weekend 3.-5. September
* 06.08.2010: Adobe PSIRT replies that it is looking into the option of
             implementing a GUI, »which has proven to be time-consuming«.
             No schedule for a fix is yet available.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Solution:

Adobe currently does not offer a patch for this security issue.

Mitigation is possible though by not allowing the Flash Player to
use the microphone and camera.

Add a line like this:

AVHardwareDisable = 1

to your mms.cfg. For more information about configuring/restricting
Flash Player using mms.cfg, see

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/flash_player_admin_guide/flash_player_admin_guide.pdf

Gaffa tape may be effective for blocking camera access as well, but
may be less helpful for blocking microphone access.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Credits:

- Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology,
 Security Testlab

--
Alexander Klink, Fraunhofer SIT
Forschungsbereich Anwendungs- und Prozesssicherheit
Rheinstr. 75, 64295 Darmstadt, Germany
Telefon: +49 6151 869-229
mailto:alexander.klink () sit fraunhofer de
http://www.sit.fraunhofer.de

_______________________________________________
Full-Disclosure - We believe in it.
Charter: http://lists.grok.org.uk/full-disclosure-charter.html
Hosted and sponsored by Secunia - http://secunia.com/

10 Social Networking Security Trends To Watch

2010-09-05T12:23:00.002-04:00

MySpace. Facebook. LinkedIn. Orkut. Who doesn't have a profile on at least one of these sites these days? The explosion of social networking has reinvented communication as we know it, creating new opportunities to develop friendships, romances and business contacts all over the world -- a fact which has not gone unnoticed by the malware authors and organized crime.

"Things are happening at such a rapid rate, it's hard to slow that momentum," said Dan Hubbard, senior director, security and technology research, for Websense. "And because they're investing so much money in it, it's very difficult to insert security into that paradigm."

"The attackers understand that this is going on and are gravitating toward that," he added.

In a Web 2.0 world, social networking can turn into a security nightmare when hackers exploit users and steal information for profit. As a result, businesses and individuals alike will have to strike a balance, and find new ways to achieve their objectives while staying safe on the Internet.

Here's a look at some of the things experts say we can expect to see more of in the world of Web 2.0 social networking.Spam, Spam And More Spam

Like the Nigerian bank scam, this one is not going away any time soon.

Spammers that are getting the door slammed in their faces with e-mail spam filters now have found new ways to access users with social networking sites, especially in the workplace. Experts say that spam is more profitable than ever.

Experts say that 419 scams, named for the relevant section of the Nigerian penal code, which used to flood employee e-mail inboxes, now target their LinkedIn user profiles. And more attackers will target LinkedIn to access corporate accounts and intellectual property.

A recent phish, detected by researchers as SophosLabs, claimed to come from a 22-year-old woman living in the Ivory Coast who had inherited $6.5 million after her father passed away and requested a safe place (presumably your bank account) for the money to be deposited.

Does anybody actually believe this stuff anymore, you ask. The good news is that many users are already wise to the ways of Nigerian bank scams. The bad news is that some people actually still fall for them.Third Party Threats

It's no secret that as applications acquire more functionality, the more susceptible they are to security threats. As social networking sites encourage users to build add-ons for their network, users will be opening themselves up to exploits from vulnerabilities in third-party applications. Consequently, users will increasingly be subjected to things like buffer overflow vulnerabilities in image uploaders, which are typically hosted by third parties.

"The more function an application has, the less secure it tends to be," said Roger Thompson, chief research officer for AVG. "There are simply more opportunities for things to go wrong." Surprise, You've Got Spyware

Perhaps nothing is more ironic than pesky banner ads claiming that your site is hosting every kind of virus known to man and then offering to clean it up -- for a small fee of course. As more social networking users increasingly fear malware on their computers, they become bigger targets for these kinds of pop-up adware, tricking them to download fake anti-virus cleaners which are benign at best and destructive at worst. The irony of course is that this kind of adware is doing the very things that they're trying to prevent.
It's A Worm

It's social networking at its finest. Experts say social networking users can expect more threats to travel virally -- what infects one person will then infect everyone on his or her friends list.

One recent example was the Orkut worm, in which a prankster spread a spammy message to almost 400,000 Brazilian with profiles on the site. However, experts say that other rapid, self-replicating viruses will likely be more malicious, designed to steal or delete users' personal information like date of birth and passwords. That data can then be sold in numerous black market economies or used to acquire credit card and bank information. Often the same login credentials used on Facebook and MySpace are also used to access banking and other sensitive accounts.

'Poking' Holes in XXS Flaws

In a recent attack, millions of Facebook users were left exposed to a cross site scripting vulnerability affecting the user interface of the site's Job page. Among other things, the vulnerability gave the attackers the ability to install malicious software as well as trick users into handing over their credentials through fake logins. The social networking site plugged the hole May 23.

The takeaway is that the same threats plaguing Web 2.0 are amplified on social networking sites. Why? Because these sites rely on the prolific and rapid spread of information between users. And unlike other pages, malicious software is bound to be exposed to a high volume of people on these sites.

That said, it's safe to say that users can expect more than a poke once these vulnerabilities are detected by attackers. Reflecting the growing Web 2.0 threat, attackers will continue to find and exploit cross site scripting vulnerabilities on social networking sites. Once exploited, users will generally become the recipients of malicious downloaders, often unbeknownst to them, such as information stealing code or keystroke loggers.

Flash Attacks

It's the beauty of Web 2.0. There are more attacks on Flash now than ever before. Applications such as Adobe Air and Microsoft Silverlight, which allow the browser to be used in a more effective way, also increase the attack surface.

Naturally, the prolific use of Flash is one of the evolutions that make Facebook and MySpace so lucrative to attackers. As anyone with a profile knows, these technologies are extremely pervasive, as well as fun, when doing social networking. Unfortunately, a recent exploit in Adobe Flash has become a huge security threat. Experts say that so far hundreds of thousands of Websites have been compromised, including thousands of networking site pages, as the result of the Flash exploit loose in the wild.Phishing For Friends

As companies restrict access to social networking sites, the individual user will become the victim of highly targeted and personalized spearphishing attacks. These attacks could come in the form of spoofed pages. Or simply by an unknown user inviting someone to join their friend network.

It won't be hard. After all, a lot of your information, from where you spent your last vacation to your childhood pet, is probably already somewhere on your profile. Often, attackers will spoof or create a profile that will appear to be legitimate, then social engineer a message to entice the user to click in lots of places. Plus, experts say that often users are often more willing to click on unknown links or surrender personal information because they're on a trusted medium that encourages the unrestricted sharing of information.

"There's a huge problem of users using information in an unsafe way and sharing social information without thinking who could possibly be looking," said Graham Cluley, senior security consultant for Sophos. "If you make up a mother's maiden name, it isn't a matter of public record. There's no reason to display it for all and sundry to see."There's A MySpace Clause In The Company Handbook

With increased mobility, companies are also moving to become more flexible regarding users' rights to access their social networking pages.

This creates problems when it opens up completely new threat vectors. So don't be surprised if you see companies accordingly adopting policies that include social networking etiquette and safety. In addition, companies will also start to crack down on usage of these sites, or implement technology to limit how long you can be chatting with your former college roommate on Facebook.

"There are so many companies that have presence within those pages. Now companies are starting to create flexible policies and open those things up," said Dan Hubbard, senior director, security and technology research, for Websense. "Like anything there's user education, policies and enforcement. You have to have the technology to back these things up." Linked Out

When one door closes another opens.

This tried and true adage has never rung more true than with social networking. Attackers frustrated by their inability to enter corporate networks because of sophisticated controls, now have a whole new point of entry with LinkedIn, which allows them to access personal professional information and spoof employee profiles.

Plus, it's no secret that attackers follow the money. This networking site aimed at professionals also opens up a whole new attack vector for organized crime intending to pilfer intellectual property and corporate information, as well as the typical credit cards and social security numbers used in identity theft.All About The Money

Reflecting current cyber crime trends, experts say that attacks on social networking sites will increasingly become more financially driven.

Until recently, attacks like the Sammy worm on Facebook simply shut down sites and impeded traffic. However, soon similar attacks will wreak havoc on users' bank accounts as attacks become more complex and organized. This also means that sites like Facebook -- which touts a more professional, white-collar user base, as well as professional networking sites like LinkedIn, will increasingly become targets for organized crime.

"The types of attacks we've already seen, we'll see more of. They'll be better targeted toward monetization," said Brian Chess, founder and chief scientist for Fortify Software. "Along those same lines, having all of your information all there on a site that isn't controlled by users and whose security practices aren't paramount, isn't always the best deal.

While experts say that they can't predict the future, it's likely that social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook will start taking more responsibility regarding their security practices -- especially if users significantly change their behavior or avoid logging on altogether.

"Individuals have a tough time making decisions about security," said Chess, "but when they do, they can be really fickle about it."

Russian Trojan blamed for credit card losses at US diner

2010-09-05T12:17:00.000-04:00

Hundreds hit after PC becomes infected

By John E Dunn | Techworld
Published: 16:25 GMT, 01 September 10

Hundreds of lunchtime customers of a diner in the US city of Memphis are believed to have had funds stolen from their debit and credit cards after PCs at the venue became infected with malware.

Large numbers of customers reported having had funds taken after using Jason’s Deli in recent weeks, which prompted an investigation by the US Secret Service, part of the Department of Homeland Security.

After establishing that staff were not involved, police discovered that a computer system used by to verify credit cards had been infected with unidentified new-variant malware, which had logged and forwarded the data to criminals believed to be in Russia.

“The computers received a virus that was unknown before this event,” said Special Agent Rick Harlow of the US Secret Service in a news conference. “No antivirus program that we ran against it found it,” he said.

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“This could have happened in almost any business in the Memphis area or the country,” said Harlow.

The sums involved are thought to be significant. One local report cited an unnamed individual as having lost $793.

Police indicated that businesses in Seattle and San Francisco might have been affected by the same attack without offering further details. How PCs become infected with the rogue program has yet to be determined.

The Secret Service is so concerned that the malware is undetectable by antivirus software, it has sent files to the computer emergency response team (CERT) at Carnegie Mellon University for evaluation. The institution is working on a signature of the attack files so antivirus systems can be updated to protect against it.

Global ATM Caper Nets Hackers $9 Million in One Day

2010-09-05T12:04:00.001-04:00

Phishing scam targets fast food customers

2010-09-02T21:00:00.001-04:00

ecurity experts are issuing warnings following the discovery of a phishing attack based on fast food chain McDonald's.

According to security firm Sophos, the attack claims to be a customer survey. The message links users to a phony survey site which asks a number of questions about the fast food chain. The site then promises to send the user a $90 payment in exchange for filling out the survey.

In order to receive the money, however, users are asked to hand over account information. Data such as credit card numbers and security code are requested in order the "process" the payment. Though the company is warning users not to respond the survey messages, researchers are warning that the unconventional nature and target of the attack could lead some users to fall for the social engineering scheme

How To Protect Against Eves Droppers

2010-09-02T20:55:00.000-04:00

Introduction

Current email communication is clear text. Clear/plain text leaves emails open too many types of vulnerabilities. As messaging moves forward, new technologies will surface that solve these problems. This article will focus on solutions that could be implements to thwart the threat.

It is no longer acceptable to communicate the way we do when truncating confidential information. Email is the accepted way to send documents and information, it is most widely used due to it attributes of convenience and cost effectiveness. With these great attributes comes extreme vulnerability through various paths. We are carelessly forgetting to consider many important elements susceptible through unwanted intrusions of our mail, such as the state of authenticity and confidentiality, which is made vulnerable through actions such as eavesdropping, identity theft, message modification and false messaging, as well as invasion of privacy through backups not being protected.
Emails are extremely vulnerable to interception. The process by which emails are sent and received makes them exceedingly open to confidentiality flaws and thus authenticity flaws as well. Emails can be intercepted at many points on route to the recipient. The email is stored on a minimum of two servers on its way to the recipient. It is on the sender mail server as well as the recipient mail server. When travelling through the MX hosts the email is stored on each host as well. Due to the mails being stored on so many servers on route, increases the risk of intrusion. The way you choose to address your mail also has and affect, you may attract potential unauthorized personnel or hackers.

There is no protection from an unprincipled member of IT staff, monitoring mail servers, from intercepting your confidential emails, or from a hackers obtaining access to the mail server at points where physical access security and network security are weak, through malware (spyware, adware, Trojans, viruses). If that was not enough room for intrusion of confidential information, another route open to mail interception is through network traffic interception, where emails are monitored at a higher level, by governments’ agencies for example, based on suspicious keywords, these mails could be stored for long periods for later review, leaving room for breach of confidentially and authenticity later on. Emails can be read and modified in transit failing to maintain the confidentiality and authenticity element.
It is noted that information sent via email is at great risk of getting into the wrong hands and in order to maintain the transfer of confidential and authentic information to and fro, it is of utmost importance to secure our mail in the best ways possible.

Confidentiality

Sending an email from one user to another right now, is like sending a letter in a transparent envelope. The stamp is just the time and date, the address is the DNS name and zip code is the IP address of the server. The envelope a transparent encapsulation called SMTP and the message a simply formatted readable document that is easy to intercept monitor and read. There are too many gaps in the system enabling confidentiality breaches.

Authenticity

There are very few technical controls in typically implemented email that reflect the authenticity of messages, basically proving that the message has not been tampered with and that it indeed came from the user it says it came from. This is one of the reasons that many organisations do not use email to send formal documents that need registration. Due to so many confidentiality flaws in the email system, authenticity of emails is directly affected. Without proper email security and authentication the messages can be intercepted and modified, or falsely sent, legitimate emails could even be denied.

Secure and Protect Your Email

There are ways to help protect your computer from being intercepted via your mail, and thus information from getting into the wrong hands, as your operating system is your platform for your email. However, the only assurance of protection of your confidential information sent via email would be through encrypting ones emails. As mentioned previously you would not send confidential information within a letter not sealed in an envelope, so one should not be careless in sending emails that are not secured through encryption.

Encryption of Emails and How it Works

Through encrypting your email you are obtaining the best available email protection providing confidentiality. Encryption will deter all but the most devoted hackers from intercepting your mail, thus your best option to maintain the confidentiality of your mail. To ensure the authenticity of your mail you can use a personal email certificate to digitally sign your mail.

So, what exactly is encryption? Encryption is a means by which data, your email, is converted into a form of data (cipher text) that is not recognizable as clear/plain text. The security of encryption lies in the capacity of an algorithm to create cipher text that is not converted back to the original plain text with ease.

Typical email encryption is also referred to as PKI (Public key infrastructure). This type of encryption utilizes two keys, one being a private key (to encrypt the email) and the other a public key( to decrypt the email). You are the only one in possession of the private key; you thus encrypt your email with your private key. In order to read the mail one needs to decrypt it with the public key. Therefore you would give the public key to the person you are directing the mail to, and thus only that person will be able to read the email. The recipient could then reply to your email, encrypting it using the public key and you can then open and read it using your private key.

It is sensible to make it a norm to encrypt all of your mail rather than the odd confidential one, so that to the potential hacker they are seen as all being encrypted and no emphasis is placed on a few encrypted emails amongst the lot of unencrypted ones. One should not be advertising and drawing attention towards the encrypted emails and thus confidential information, through only encrypting certain emails and not the others.

Authentication

By utilizing encryption throughout your emails you in turn are authenticating and validating them as well. The most common form of authentication is your personal username and password. This could easily be captured by an unscrupulous individual which in turn could use them to send modified or false messaging looking as if it is coming from you. By encrypting, you are protecting this important information, your credentials, thereby assuring that the messages from that username and password are legitimate.

Encryption also provides validation through fingerprint and digital signature. By validating the emails you are assuring that the identity of the sender is legitimate and that the message or attachment incorporated within the email has remained unchanged by another source. A digital fingerprint inimitably identifies a message by using an algorithm. Any attempt to modify the message will in turn modify the fingerprint which will thus be different to the unique fingerprint proving that the message has been tampered with. Therefore fingerprints enable you to see if the message has been modified in any way. To assure that the message has come from the correct source you would use a digital signature. The digital signature is accomplished through the use of a private key. The sender would electronically sign the message and the fingerprint with their private key. The recipient would verify the message using the corresponding public key. This ensures that the message has not been altered in any way, and that it is the legitimate message from the expected sender.

Conclusion

Risk of Marijuana's 'Gateway Effect' Overblown, New Research Shows

2010-09-02T20:51:00.000-04:00

ScienceDaily (Sep. 2, 2010) — New research from the University of New Hampshire shows that the "gateway effect" of marijuana -- that teenagers who use marijuana are more likely to move on to harder illicit drugs as young adults -- is overblown. Whether teenagers who smoked pot will use other illicit drugs as young adults has more to do with life factors such as employment status and stress, according to the new research. In fact, the strongest predictor of whether someone will use other illicit drugs is their race/ethnicity, not whether they ever used marijuana.

Conducted by UNH associate professors of sociology Karen Van Gundy and Cesar Rebellon, the research appears in the September 2010 issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior.

"In light of these findings, we urge U.S. drug control policymakers to consider stress and life-course approaches in their pursuit of solutions to the 'drug problem,' " Van Gundy and Rebellon say.

The researchers used survey data from 1,286 young adults who attended Miami-Dade public schools in the 1990s. Within the final sample, 26 percent of the respondents are African American, 44 percent are Hispanic, and 30 percent are non-Hispanic white.

The researchers found that young adults who did not graduate from high school or attend college were more likely to have used marijuana as teenagers and other illicit substances in young adulthood. In addition, those who used marijuana as teenagers and were unemployed following high school were more likely to use other illicit drugs.

However, the association between teenage marijuana use and other illicit drug abuse by young adults fades once stresses, such as unemployment, diminish.

"Employment in young adulthood can protect people by 'closing' the marijuana gateway, so over-criminalizing youth marijuana use might create more serious problems if it interferes with later employment opportunities," Van Gundy says.

In addition, once young adults reach age 21, the gateway effect subsides entirely.

"While marijuana use may serve as a gateway to other illicit drug use in adolescence, our results indicate that the effect may be short-lived, subsiding by age 21. Interestingly, age emerges as a protective status above and beyond the other life statuses and conditions considered here. We find that respondents 'age out' of marijuana's gateway effect regardless of early teen stress exposure or education, work, or family statuses," the researchers say.

The researchers found that the strongest predictor of other illicit drug use appears to be race-ethnicity, not prior use of marijuana. Non-Hispanic whites show the greatest odds of other illicit substance use, followed by Hispanics, and then by African Americans.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by University of New Hampshire, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Researchers Discover How to Conduct First Test of 'Untestable' String Theory

2010-09-02T20:29:00.000-04:00

ScienceDaily (Sep. 2, 2010) — Researchers describe how to carry out the first experimental test of string theory in a paper published September 2 in Physical Review Letters. String theory was originally developed to describe the fundamental particles and forces that make up our universe. The new research, led by a team from Imperial College London, describes the unexpected discovery that string theory also seems to predict the behaviour of entangled quantum particles. As this prediction can be tested in the laboratory, researchers can now test string theory.

Over the last 25 years, string theory has become physicists' favourite contender for the 'theory of everything', reconciling what we know about the incredibly small from particle physics with our understanding of the very large from our studies of cosmology. Using the theory to predict how entangled quantum particles behave provides the first opportunity to test string theory by experiment.

"If experiments prove that our predictions about quantum entanglement are correct, this will demonstrate that string theory 'works' to predict the behaviour of entangled quantum systems," said Professor Mike Duff FRS, lead author of the study from the Department of Theoretical Physics at Imperial College London.

"This will not be proof that string theory is the right 'theory of everything' that is being sought by cosmologists and particle physicists. However, it will be very important to theoreticians because it will demonstrate whether or not string theory works, even if its application is in an unexpected and unrelated area of physics," added Professor Duff.

Professor Duff recalled sitting in a conference in Tasmania where a colleague was presenting the mathematical formulae that describe quantum entanglement: "I suddenly recognised his formulae as similar to some I had developed a few years earlier while using string theory to describe black holes. When I returned to the UK I checked my notebooks and confirmed that the maths from these very different areas was indeed identical."

The discovery that string theory seems to make predictions about quantum entanglement is completely unexpected, but because quantum entanglement can be measured in the lab, it does mean that at last researchers can test predictions based on string theory. There is no obvious connection to explain why a theory that is being developed to describe the fundamental workings of our universe is useful for predicting the behaviour of entangled quantum systems. "This may be telling us something very deep about the world we live in, or it may be no more than a quirky coincidence," concluded Professor Duff. "Either way, it's useful."

The study was carried out by researchers from Imperial College London and Stanford University. It was partly funded by the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC).

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The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by Imperial College London.

Human Unconscious Is Transferred to Virtual Characters

2010-09-02T20:26:00.002-04:00

ScienceDaily (Sep. 2, 2010) — Virtual characters can behave according to actions carried out unconsciously by humans. Researchers at the University of Barcelona have created a system which measures human physiological parameters, such as respiration or heart rate, and introduces them into computer designed characters in real time. "The ultimate aim is to develop a method which allows humans to unconsciously relate with some parts of the virtual environment more intensely than with others, and that they are encouraged only by their own physiological responses to the virtual reality shown," Christoph Groenegress, co-author of the work and researcher at the University of Barcelona explained.

The system, the details of which were recently published in the journal The Visual Computer, uses sensors and wireless devices to measure three physiological parameters in real time: heart rate, respiration, and the galvanic (electric) skin response. Immediately, the data is processed with a software programme that is used to control the behaviour of a virtual character who is sitting in a waiting room.

The heart rate is reflected in the movement of the character's feet; respiration in the rising of their chest (exaggerated movements so that it can be noticed); and the galvanic skin response in the more or less reddish colour of the face.

The researchers conducted an experiment to see if the people whose physiological parameters were recorded had any preference as regards the virtual actor who was to use them, without them knowing in advance. But the result was negative, "probably because other factors also influence the choice such as the character's appearance or their situation in the scene." The team is now studying how to solve this problem.

To tell stories and in rehabilitation

The scientists point out that the unconscious processes can be a useful tool for telling stories -in a video-game, for example- or for arousing interest in participants when carrying out a sequence of tasks, such as patients undergoing rehabilitation.

"We maintain that the linking of subjective corporal states to a virtual reality can improve the sensation of realism that a person has of this reality and, eventually, create a stronger link between humans and this virtual reality," Groenegress concludes.
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The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by Plataforma SINC.

Fake antivirus software using ransom threats

2010-09-02T20:21:00.000-04:00

Fake antivirus software using ransom threats

Locks 'infected' apps, then asks for money

By John E Dunn, TechWorld
September 02, 2010 12:52 PM ET

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Fake antivirus programs appear to be adopting some of the money-raising tactics of more threatening ransom malware, security company Fortinet's latest threat report has found.

The most prevalent malware variant during August was TotalSecurity W32/FakeAlert.LU!tr, a malicious program that masquerades as antivirus software in order to sell worthless licenses for non-existent malware. On its own it accounted for 37.3 percent of all malware threats detected by the company during the month.

Gigamon in the Data Center: Download now

Unlike standard fake antivirus programs, however, the new version of TotalSecurity takes the ruse a stage further by preventing any applications other than a web browser to run, claiming they are 'infected'. The user is invited to have the infection cleaned by buying the bogus TotalSecurity product.

Adding an extra layer of sophistication to its arsenal - and no doubt aware how quickly bogus antivirus software is blocked by genuine security products - TotalSecurity can now vary the downloads it feeds to target PC using server-side polymorphism. Put another way, the exact version downloaded to a victim's PC will constantly change which makes detection harder.

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"This is a technique typically seen with botnets, such as Waledac, and has been picked up by the developers of TotalSecurity. This is another example of how relying purely on antivirus is not a silver-bullet approach to protecting systems from infection," said Fortinet's threat research head, Derek Manky.

According to Fortinet, such attacks demonstrate the vulnerability of PC-based antivirus software. A layered defence would have a better chance of detecting TotalSecurity by either intercepting the initial spam used to spread it or by blocking the download website.

Once rare enough to be a curiosity, malware using threats and direct interference with a PC's operation have slowly become more common.

A previous report from Fortinet in March noted a sudden surge in the technique, about a year after the first aggressive use of ransomware in the form of the notorious Vundo Trojan. That particular piece of malware used crude encryption of a victim's files.

In July came news of the odd Krotten Trojan that disables a victim's PC in a variety of ways before asking for a tiny payment to be made to a Ukrainian mobile phone network. Two months before that researchers in Japan discovered the Kenzero porn blackmail Trojan that threatens to post a victim's embarrassing browsing history to a public website.

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New Solar Prediction System Gives Time to Prepare for the Storms Ahead

2010-09-02T20:19:00.000-04:00

ScienceDaily (Sep. 2, 2010) — A new method of predicting solar storms that could help to avoid widespread power and communications blackouts costing billions of pounds has been launched by researchers at the University of Bradford.

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Solar storms involve the release of huge amounts of hot gas and magnetic forces from the surface of the sun into space at around a million miles an hour. The next major solar storms are expected in 2012-13 as part of the sun's 11-year weather cycle. A 2008 US National Academy of Sciences report estimated that modern reliance on electronics and satellite communications means a major storm could cause twenty times more economic damage than Hurricane Katrina.

Although major solar eruptions (coronal mass ejections) normally take several days to reach the Earth, the largest recorded in 1859 took just eighteen hours. Solar flares -- which can also cause significant disruption to communications systems -- take just a few minutes. So advance warning is of vital importance to enable steps to be taken to avoid the worst effects of solar activity.

Up to now, solar weather prediction has been done manually, with experts looking at 2D satellite images of the sun and assessing the likelihood of future activity. But the team from the University of Bradford's Centre for Visual Computing have created the first online automated prediction system, using 3D images generated from the joint NASA/ESA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory satellite (SOHO). The system can be seen at work at http://spaceweather.inf.brad.ac.uk

Already in use by both NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), the Bradford Automated Solar Activity Prediction system (ASAP) identifies and classifies sun spots and then feeds this information through a model which can predict the likelihood of solar flares. The system is able to accurately predict a solar flare six hours in advance and the team are working to achieve a similar accuracy for the prediction of major solar eruptions in the near future.

Reader in Visual Computing, Dr Rami Qahwaji, who led the EPSRC-funded research, says: "Solar weather prediction is still very much in its infancy, probably at about the point that normal weather forecasting was around 50 years ago.

"However, our system is a major step forward. By creating an automated system that can work in real time, we open up the possibility for much faster prediction and -- with sufficient data -- prediction of a wider range of activity. With NASA's new Solar Dynamic Observatory satellite which came into operation in May, we have the chance to see the sun's activity in much greater detail which will further improve our prediction capabilities."

The ASAP model is based on historical data which was analysed to identify patterns in the sun's activity. Dr Qahwaji is now applying for more funding to further improve the system and ensure it can be adapted to work with the latest sun monitoring satellites.

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The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by University of Bradford, via AlphaGalileo.

DLL hijacking vulnerabilities

2010-08-23T19:12:00.001-04:00

DLL hijacking vulnerabilities

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Published: 2010-08-23,
Last Updated: 2010-08-23 19:23:24 UTC
by Bojan Zdrnja (Version: 1)

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For the last couple of days there have been a lot of discussions about a vulnerability published by a Slovenian security company ACROS. HD Moore (of Metasploit fame) also independently found hundreds of vulnerable applications and, as he said, the cat is now really out of the bag.

In order to see what is going here we first have to understand how modern applications are built. Modern applications come modularized with multiple DLLs (Dynamic Link Libraries). This allows the programmer to use functions available in other DLLs on the system – Windows has hundreds of them. Now, if a DLL is not available on the system, the developer can decide to pack it with the main application’s executable and store it, for example, in the applications directory.

The most important DLLs are specified in the KnownDLLs registry key (HKLM/System/CurrentControlSet/Control/Session Manager/KnownDLLs). These are easy – if an application needs to load it, the system knows that they have to be in the directory specified by the DllDirectory registry key, which is usually %SystemRoot%/system32.

However, when another DLL is being loaded, the system dynamically tries to find the DLL. Historically, Microsoft made a mistake by putting the current directory in the first place (some of you Unix oldies might remember when “.” was at the first place in the PATH variable). This has been fixed by Microsoft by introducing the SafeDllSearchMode setting (registry value). This setting specifies the order in which a DLL will be searched for. For example, as specified in http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms682586%28v=VS.85%29.aspx this is the search order with the SafeDllSearchMode setting enabled:

1. The directory from which the application loaded.
2. The system directory. Use the GetSystemDirectory function to get the path of this directory.
3. The 16-bit system directory. There is no function that obtains the path of this directory, but it is searched.
4. The Windows directory. Use the GetWindowsDirectory function to get the path of this directory.
5. The current directory.
6. The directories that are listed in the PATH environment variable. Note that this does not include the per-application path specified by the App Paths registry key. The App Paths key is not used when computing the DLL search path.

If multiple directories hold a DLL with the same name, the first match wins. This setting is enabled by default on Windows XP SP2.

Now, the problem happens when, for example, the application tries to load a DLL that does not exist on the system. You can see one such example in the picture below, where I found out that one of my favorite applications is very much vulnerable. See how it tries to find the DLL in all those directories before if gets to the one on the share? Both names of the application and DLL have been blacked out – no point in serving this on a silver plated dish :(

Ok, so what about attack vectors. Any place where the attacker can put both the file to be opened by an application and a malicious DLL can be used as the attack vector. Obviously, as in the example above, the most obvious attack place are Windows shares so I guess we are looking at another vulnerability that uses similar attack vectors such as the LNK vulnerability last month – the difference here is that by just browsing to the directory nothing will happen since the user has to open the file.

In order to protect your networks/system be sure to audit permissions on shares to prevent unauthorized users from putting files where they shouldn’t be. Of course, I expect that by now you already blocked SMB and WebDAV on the perimeter so an external share cannot be used.

What about a fix? This will be a difficult one, especially since we can look at SafeDllSearchMode as a fix. So in most cases, developers of vulnerable applications will have to fix them and judging by the numbers I’ve seen around we are looking at a very difficult period. Hopefully those popular applications (such as the one I successfully exploited above) will get patched quickly so the final risk will be reduced.

We will keep an eye on this and update the diary as we get more information.

--
Bojan
INFIGO IS

iPhone jailbreaking not illegal, says US government

2010-07-27T18:02:00.001-04:00

27 July 2010

The US government has given iPhone users the go-ahead to bypass electronic protection on Apple's iPhones to enable them to use any wireless service provider, not just Apple partners.

The Library of Congress' Copyright Office also ruled that iPhone users can bypass Apple's access controls to download and run applications not approved by Apple.

The rulings refute Apple's contention that iPhone buyers are licensees of the technology, not owners, and thereby bound by the company's licensing agreement.

Apple also argued in submissions to the US Copyright Office that "jailbreaking" iPhones circumvented access controls designed to protect consumers and Apple from harm.

But the Copyright Office said jailbreaking any smartphone to make the operating system on that phone interoperable with an independently created application is fair use.

The rulings were made in response to a request for exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a consumer advocacy group.

The EFF said the rulings recognized that the primary purpose for the locks on smartphones that bind users to a particular carrier or applications are to limit competition, not to protect copyrights.

This story was first published by Computer Weekly

This article is featured in:
Compliance and Policy • Wireless and Mobile Security

Cybercriminals tap online automated services to check the effectiveness of their frauds

2010-07-27T18:00:00.001-04:00

27 July 2010

The increasing automation of online frauds has been extended into the field of fraud effectiveness checks, as virus authors and botmasters are said to be using automated tools to verify the effectiveness of their fraudulent activities.

The interesting extension of the world of automated checking into the fraud arena has been made possible, says security researcher Brian Krebs, by the use of pay-for subscription services.

According to Krebs, these automated services test when and whether web reputation programs like Google Safe Browsing and McAfee SiteAdvisor have flagged malicious links.

Writing in his security blog, the former Washington Post IT security writer said that nothing puts a crimp in the traffic to booby-trapped websites than being listed on multiple internet reputation services that collect and publish information on the location of nasty sites.

"People who maintain the bad sites can stay ahead of such services by moving their malware to new domains once the present hosts start showing up on too many blacklists. But constantly checking these lists can be a time-consuming pain", he said.

"Enter sites like crypt-check.com. For a mere 20 cents, subscribers can check to see whether their malicious sites are flagged by any of 18 different blacklists, including Spamhaus, ZeuSTracker, SpamCop, SmartScreen, Norton Safe Web, Phishtank, Malwaredomainlist and MalwareURL", he added.

Krebs likens these automated services to Virustotal, but for bad domains, listing the percentage of blacklists that detect any submitted malware sites.

In a test of the veracity of the automated services, he said he picked on vinni-trinni, mainly because the site was first flagged by Malwaredomainlist and MalwareURL back in March of this year.

"The results were underwhelming: As we can see from the above screen shot, this service detects that three out of 18 blacklists have flagged it as malicious, but the author's own service fails to show listings by either Malwaredomainlist or MalwareURL", he said.

This article is featured in:
Malware and Hardware Security

Wi-Fi channel planning in 2.4 GHz - Part 2

2010-07-18T07:35:00.000-04:00

In my last post, I talked about Wi-Fi channel planning in 2.4 GHz. The main consideration with this frequency band is that there are only three non-overlapping channels and that careful planning needs to happen in order to avoid co-channel interference.

After reading the article, someone emailed me several great questions and suggested a follow up post. Here is what they asked:

You say in this post that co-channel interference can occur when 2 nearby APs are operating on the same channel. I wonder if you can expand on that. It raised some questions for me. First, why doesn't one AP act as "boaster" to another? Second, does that mean that an enterprise can only have 3 APs in a physical space? If so, what's the size limitation?

Regarding the first question, one access point cannot act as a "boaster" to another as the station (i.e. laptop) needs to build an association to a specific Access Point. This association process is similar to plugging your computer into a specific Ethernet switch port if you were using wired networking.

Therefore, once a wireless station is associated to an Access Point, it has a physical layer link. Because this specific path/link is established, another access point cannot process data without the station disassociating from the original AP and associating with the second - this is roughly analogous to unplugging your cable from one port and plugging it into a second.

Regarding the second question, because of co-channel interference, an enterprise can only have 3 APs in a given physical space (if they are using 2.4 GHz). The size limitation depends on many factors including the output power of the access point, if any special antennas are being used, and the construction materials of the area. Typically, an AP with an omni-directional antenna in general office space covers about 5,000 square feet.

This becomes an issue in high-density situations as each Access Point can only handle a certain number of stations. My rule here is that a typical AP can handle 20-25 stations, depending on bandwidth requirements. Therefore, organizations run into a problem where they would like to have more than 60-75 users in a given space (such as conference centers, meeting rooms, theatres, multipurpose rooms, cafeterias or gymnasiums).

Don't fret - there is another option, which is to use wireless devices in the 5 GHz frequency band. 5 GHz has many advantages over 2.4 GHz, including *many* more non-overlapping channels. In fact, 5 GHz has 24 non-overlapping channels, which make it an especially popular choice for industries with high density requirements. That being said, one of the most important considerations for 5 GHz deployments is to ensure that all your end user devices are capable of transmitting in the 5 GHz spectrum.

Douglas J. Haider is a Principal Technologist with Xirrus. He hosts a personal blog at WiFiJedi.com, and micro-blogs on Twitter @wifijedi

Windows 8 release date in 2012; plans leaked

2010-07-18T07:28:00.001-04:00

June 29, 2010 - 6:08 A.M.
By Richi Jennings. June 29, 2010.

Windows 8 plans have leaked out of Microsoft. Highlights include a 2012 release date (beta in 2011), webcam login, faster startup/shutdown, an appstore, and more. In IT Blogwatch, bloggers unpick fact from fantasy.

Your humble blogwatcher selected these bloggy morsels for your enjoyment. Not to mention animated optical illusions...
(MSFT)

Peter Bright shines a light:

A set of slides distributed to Microsoft's PC partners in April of this year has been leaked. ... Outlines Microsoft's vision for Windows 8 ... form factors ... hardware capabilities ... and the demands that these parameters will place on OEMs.
...
Suggests that Redmond still sees no value in creating a dedicated tablet-oriented operating system ... does not, of course, mean that Windows 8 might not be more finger-friendly than Windows 7. ... "Logoff + Hibernate" ... will act as an accelerated alternative to shutting down.

Gavin Clarke waxes innovative:

Microsoft's successor to Windows 7 is taking shape - and that shape looks suspiciously like an iPad. ... In trying to differentiate Windows 8 ... it plans to stress features for partners such as Windows 8's customization and the different form factors.
...
The company is becoming firmly entrenched in its role of taking innovation cues from other people ... or is incapable of thinking beyond the present trends on product development.

DanielRemains was probably the first leak publisher:

These PDFs come directly from an OEM Microsoft partner. ... I had to convert them to PDF to be able to remove watermarks.
...
Microsoft has some nice plans cooking it seems!.

Buon giorno, Adrian Alfaro: [in translation]

This top secret slide has escaped ... it exposes Microsoft's future plans, including Windows 8 development. ... Other features ... will be implemented through presence sensors.
...
The boot time of Windows 8 will be even shorter ... thanks to Action Center identifying autorun applications that slow the startup. ... Integration between Windows Help, Microsoft Answers and third-party forums.

Stephen Chapman serves "some super secret squirrel" scuttlebutt:

Long story short, these slide decks are chock full of internal thinking on Windows 8. ... Microsoft is clearly paying attention to Apple while planning Windows 8 ... aiming to give Windows the very same “it just works” status. ... Logging in via facial recognition. ... Windows accounts could be connected to the cloud which would allow for roaming settings.
...
Shaping the planning of Windows 8 are explosion of form factors (laptops, netbooks, slates, etc.) ... collision of enterprise and personal worlds ... and more. ... One of the key takeaways here is Microsoft detailing “Slate” as a major form factor focus. ... Windows 8 will introduce “Windows Store” ... which will allow you to purchase applications.

But Preston Gralla counsels caution:

It's not yet confirmed that the slide deck is real, and Windows 8 is likely two years away. ... But don't be surprised if most or all of these features are in.

And Pallab De notes an oopsie:

As you can imagine, Microsoft is not bemused. Francisco Martin’s blog, which was hosted on Microsoft Live Spaces, has already been pulled down. ... Worse still, in their eagerness to share the confidential documents, Win7Vista might have exposed their source. ... One Mr. Derek Goode from HP.
...
Windows 8 will provide an option called “Factory Reset”, which will [reinstall Windows] while retaining your data and configuration. ... [And] a pre-boot recovery environment, which will be simple enough to be useful to everyone, but will also house advanced diagnostic tools for power users.

Meanwhile, what would Miguel de Icaza do?

If I was in charge of the Windows 8 future ... I would try to reproduce ... the AppStore ... formula on my mainstream operating system. ... Everyone is scared of installing applications on Windows either because they break the system or because you might be accidentally installing malware.
...
For a Windows appstore to work, they need to guarantee that installing software wont ever break the system. ... Microsoft needs to both alter their kernel ... and come up with a new way of distributing applications. They need: A sandbox. ... Self contained applications. ... APIs that will run in the Sandbox. ... A public contract for extensions.

And Finally...
Amazing Animated Optical Illusions
[hat tip: epicwinftw.com]

Don't miss out on IT Blogwatch:

Richi Jennings is an independent analyst/consultant, specializing in blogging, email, and security. A cross-functional IT geek since 1985, you can follow him as @richi on Twitter, pretend to be richij's friend on Facebook, or just use good old email: itbw@richij.com.

You can also read Richi's full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.

Defending against hackers at their own conference

2010-07-18T07:25:00.000-04:00

Part of going to any conference is picking and choosing the presentations to attend. But, going to a hacker conference, such as the upcoming HOPE in New York City, means taking extra care for security. In my case, I'm going to bring a Windows XP laptop. Am I asking for it?

Here's my plan, many parts of which can help anyone needing to secure a computer while traveling.

Since Internet access at the conference is via an unsecured wireless network, the most obvious first step is use a VPN. VPNs provide the over-the-air encryption that comes with WPA or WPA2 on home/business networks.

Without a corporate home office to connect to, I pay a yearly fee for VPN access to Witopia. They offer two types of VPNs, PPTP and SSL, and have been very reliable. Yes, there are free, ad-supported VPNs, but that's not a business model for me. Some free things are great, but good security is worth paying for.

Another step that anyone using a public wireless network should take is insuring that the operating system firewall is both running and configured properly.

On some computers I use Online Armor from Tall Emu, but in many ways the firewall built into Windows XP is just fine. What's especially nice about it, is that the configuration is drop-dead simple. Complex firewall configuration is an accident waiting to happen.

If you're not sure about the state of a firewall on a computer, you can test it at Shields UP! a free service from Steve Gibson. Stealthed ports are the best, closed ports are good enough and open ports are bad. Be aware though, that if your computer is behind a router, any external firewall test is actually testing the firewall in the router, not your computer.

One step that is easily skipped is File and Printer Sharing. On a home or business network, we normally want to share files with other computers on the LAN. Not so on a public network. File and printer sharing will be disabled on my XP system while at the conference. With Windows 7, if you tell it that you are on a public network, it should turn off file and printer sharing.

Ad-hoc networks are another potential danger.

Normal networks, run by a router are called "infrastructure" networks and this is the only type you want to deal with. Computers can create their own ad-hoc networks such that two computers can communicate directly without involving a router. Bad guys create ad-hoc networks in the hope of luring in unsuspecting computer users. Not me. Windows XP will be configured to never connect to any ad-hoc network, a step anyone running XP should take.

Speaking of XP, every time I boot my laptop, I will logon on a restricted user, rather than an administrator.

Normally when I travel, sensitive files are stored in a TrueCrypt container on the hard drive. However, this being a hacker conference, I'm keeping the TrueCrypt container on a USB flash drive in my pocket and I hope to never have to refer to any sensitive files while at the conference.

Even more so, I'll separate the somewhat sensitive files into a different container from the more sensitive ones.

If, however, I have to look at any of the sensitive files, this means entering the TrueCrypt password while in the belly of the beast, so to speak. To minimize potential damage, I won't use my normal password, but will create a new one specifically for the conference.

Ditto email. Beforehand, I'll change my email password, and after the conference, I'll change it back.

Speaking of email, I normally use Thunderbird, but won't at the conference.

Any client side email program has to send out your password to an email server, and this exchange is, all too often, unencrypted. VPN or not, special short-term password or not, this scares me. All my email will be done via encrypted webmail.

Of course, all webmail systems are not the same. Some only encrypt the logon, others encrypt everything, including the pages for reading and writing email. Gmail is perhaps the most secure in that it now encrypts everything. This gives me two levels of encryption, the VPN and SSL from Gmail. Fortunately, the webmail system offered by my ISP also encrypts everything.

Gmail has another great feature, auditing. At the bottom of each page is a link to information about the last couple times the account was accessed. Great feature. It could be better, but I haven't yet seen anything comparable on another webmail system.

As for web browsers, it goes without saying that Internet Explorer will never see the light of day.

The big advantage to Firefox is the zap I wrote about last year. With a slight modification to a CSS file, Firefox can display all secure web page URLs in green. This is a great defense against man-in-the-middle attacks and is especially helpful in the home office of such attacks, a hacker confab.

For extra protection, I just may well run Firefox in a Sanboxie sandbox. And, if I can remember, I'll turn off the Wi-Fi radio in my laptop when I'm not online. That's a big if though.

There's my game plan. Come and get me hackers. Uh, then again, never mind.

Michael Horowitz

Defensive Computing

Hackers sneak $69260 from account

2010-07-18T07:19:00.001-04:00

By: DANNY ADLER
The Intelligencer

Some people in Eastern Europe stole $69,260 by hacking into the Northampton municipal authority's payroll account, according to investigators.

Law enforcement officials from various agencies are conducting a criminal investigation and efforts are being made to recover all the money.

Nearly $28,000 had been recovered as of June 25, municipal authority Executive Director Tom Zeuner said Thursday.

Basically the hackers got money from the authority's account and transferred it into the individual accounts of people contacted in the U.S. These people, called dupes, then forwarded the bulk of that money to an account or accounts in Europe, Bucks County District Attorney David Heckler said.

The dupes were told by e-mail they were playing a role in starting a new Eastern European business and could earn a little cash if they made the transfer. Heckler said the dupes had no idea they were dealing with thieves. The hackers' pitch to the dupes was one that seemed "somewhat plausible" and was not the most obvious of e-mail scams, the DA said.

The recovered cash was the money paid to the dupes for transferring the funds.

Some $41,000 hasn't been recovered, but Fox Chase Bank has agreed to credit Northampton Bucks County Municipal Authority with about half of that amount.
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A news release by the municipal authority said the payroll account was "electronically compromised by some unknown third party" on March 2. The authority immediately notified law enforcement, Northampton police Detective Chuck Pinkerton said Thursday. Computer crimes experts from various agencies are helping with the investigation, he said.

The DA's office said it is reaching out to the FBI because of the international scope of the crime, Heckler said.

Kerry Lynch, the Hatboro-based bank's chief payments officer, said Fox Chase Bank has security procedures in place "that should prevent this sort of thing."

"There are very sophisticated hackers out there who are able to put malware on users' computers," he said. Exactly how it happened in this case, he said, is conjecture.

Heckler urges everyone to change their online passwords regularly, keep virus protection programs up to date and frequently monitor bank accounts.

Danny Adler can be reached at 215-949-4205 or dadler@phillyBurbs.com

July 09, 2010 02:54 AM

Personal data exposed after hacker hits Iowa college

2010-07-18T07:09:00.000-04:00

Star Tribune

Last update: July 16, 2010 - 9:28 PM

A hacker has breached a northwestern Iowa university's database, exposing nearly a quarter-century's worth of Social Security numbers and other sensitive information belonging to 93,000 people to potential misuse, the school said Friday.

Buena Vista University in Storm Lake, Iowa, said there is no indication that anyone has been victimized.

The incident is being turned over to federal authorities in Minneapolis for criminal investigation, the school said. It is offering free credit monitoring to potential victims.

Along with Social Security numbers, the compromised data include the names and some driver's license numbers for students (applicants and enrollees), parents and staff members dating as far back as 1987.

Buena Vista President Fred Moore, citing the ongoing investigation, was cautious in explaining why the school was compelled to refer the case to federal authorities outside of Iowa.

"The facts that are particular to the case argued for us to refer it [to Minneapolis]," he said. "I can't get into it any more than that."

The school said the breach was first detected last month by computer forensics experts, and letters are being sent to everyone affected. About 5,000 of those letters were sent to Minnesota, Buena Vista President Fred Moore said.

The school enrollment ranges from 2,600 to 2,700 annually. After Iowans, Minnesotans account for the largest number of students there, Moore said.

PAUL WALSH

Scammers use iPhone 4G offers to gather email addresses and other personal information

2010-07-18T07:07:00.000-04:00

Scammers are using the lure of a free next generation iPhone to gather email addresses and other personal information.

Sophos has intercepted email spam inviting recipients to sign-up to test, try and keep the much-predicted (but as yet unannounced) next version of the iPhone, which is being dubbed the "4G" by the media.

Separately, Sophos researchers have also uncovered a co-ordinated campaign on Twitter, using avatars of sexy young women, pumping out adverts to users promising a "free iPhone 4G" in an offer that is claimed to end today.

However, clicking on the links provided in either spam campaign takes users to a website which demands private information such as name, address, email contact details and date of birth.

"Even though it hasn't been officially announced by Apple, and may not be released for a couple of months, there is a lot of buzz on the internet about the iPhone 4G," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. "In their excitement, some internet users might blindly hand over their personal information in the belief that they will get a preview version of what will be one of 2010's hottest gadgets. But being careless with your data risks exposing yourself to more spam in future and costly identity theft."

Sophos recommends that internet users adopt a healthy level of scepticism over "too-good-to-be-true" iPhone 4G offers.

"Apple is a company obsessed with secrecy about its upcoming products - you have to ask yourself, would Apple really be leaking products out to the general public for testing before they have officially announced its existence? Security is tight around the iPhone 4G - the editor of the Gizmodo blog evenhad his house raised after he claimed to have got his hands on a prototype," continued Cluley. "Sometimes people's common sense goes out the window when they're faced with the possibility of a sexy new gadget.. and that's bad news for personal security and privacy."

Hackers Exploit Windows Shortcut File Flaw

2010-07-18T07:04:00.000-04:00

By Stefanie Hoffman, CRN

6:47 PM EDT Fri. Jul. 16, 2010

A new strain of malware is spreading in the wild via USB storage devices, exploiting a vulnerability in the way Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) Windows handles shortcut files, security reporter Brian Krebs writes.

Specifically the rootkit-syle malware exploits a serious flaw in the way Microsoft Windows processes shortcut files, and can even penetrate fully patched Window 7 systems, researchers found.

VirusBlokAda, an anti-virus company based in Belarus, first reported the flaw last month when researchers detected Trojan payloads in the wild distributed when users accessed contents of an infected USB drive with a file manager such as Windows Explorer.

Shortcut files, known for ending in the ".lnk" extension, are Windows files that link specific application icons to the respective executable programs. Located on the users' Desktop or Start Menu, shortcuts aren't supposed to do anything until a user clicks on the related icon.

The .lnk shortcut flaw opened up the door for the distribution of two rootkits -- Rootkit.TMPHider and SScope.Rootkit.TmpHider.2 -- which have proliferated in active attacks as a result of the vulnerability, according to a VirusBlockAda advisory.

During the attack, the malware installs two drivers, mrxnet.sys and mrxcls.sys, used to inject malicious code into systems while hiding existing malware so it can't be detected on the USB drives. "That's the reason why you can't see malware files on the infected USB storage device," said VirusBlokAda researcher Sergey Ulasen, in a June advisory.

"So you just have to open infected USB storage device using Microsoft Explorer or any other file manager which can display icons (for i.e. Total Commander) to infect your Operating System and allow execution of the malware," Ulasen said, adding, "Thus, current malware should be added to very dangerous category (because it) causes the risk of the virus epidemic at the current moment."

A malicious shortcut on the USB will then automatically download malware if users open the device on Windows Explorer or a similar file manager used to display icons. The fact that users could become automatically infected without any user interaction indicates a high severity level and a "critical" ranking by Microsoft.

Ulasen also noted that the digital signature of both driver files belonged to hi-tech company Realtek Semiconductor.

Independent researcher Frank Boldewin found that the malware is targeting SCADA control systems, used to control industrial machinery in power plants and factories, which he said could possibly indicate cyberespionage.

"This points me to the Siemens WinCC SCADA system. Looks like this malware was made for espionage," he said in a blog post.

Ulasen said that he contacted both Microsoft and Realtek about the attacks but heard back from neither. Microsoft, however, is reportedly investigating the problem, according to Krebs.

Adobe Reader and Microsoft IE Top Security Concerns

2010-07-18T07:01:00.001-04:00

* By Kurt Mackie
* 07/16/2010

The majority of Internet security threats come from unpatched vulnerabilities in Adobe Acrobat/Reader and Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser, according to an industry study.

Those two programs topped a list of the "15 most observed vulnerabilities" on the Web, according to M86 Security's "Security Labs Report: January-June 2010 Recap," released this week. The vulnerabilities persist even though Adobe and Microsoft have issued fixes for the flaws. Some users apparently haven't applied the patches, which date back to 2006 in one case.

Topping the list of commonly unpatched vulnerabilities is the Adobe Acrobat/Reader "CollectEmailInfo" flaw, for which a patch was issued in 2008. Next is the "deleted object event handling process" flaw in Internet Explorer, which had a patch issued this year. An "RDS ActiveX" flaw in Microsoft Internet Explorer ranks third on the list, even though a patch was issued in 2006. All told, according to report, Microsoft Internet Explorer constituted five of the top 15 vulnerabilities, while Adobe Reader represented four of the top 15 vulnerabilities. M86 Security's complete list of vulnerabilities can be found in the report here (PDF download).

The report, which covers the first half of this year, highlighted some trends to watch. One "worrisome development" is the rise of "advanced persistent threat" attacks that infamously targeted Google, Adobe, Juniper Networks and other companies. The Google attack is typically known as "operation aurora" and attributed to Chinese hackers using an Internet Explorer 6 flaw.

According to M86 Security's report, advanced persistent threat attacks involve a number of steps. First, the attacker searches out employee IDs to infiltrate a company's social network. Next, URLs leading to malicious Web sites are sent through the social network. When a user clicks on the link, it redirects the person's browser to a malicious Web site housing an exploit that can spread malware.

Another rising threat is a technique of code obfuscation using Adobe Flash, according to the report. The attack avoids detection by combining "JavaScript with Adobe's ActionScript scripting language." ActionScript can work with JavaScript on the parent Web page to enable two-way communications, which makes it difficult to detect the exploits.

Java-based exploits also represent a rising trend, the study found. Typically, these attacks take place when "an iFrame or JavaScript is injected into a Web page of a legitimate site that redirects the browser to a malicious Web page."

Most malicious code on the Web is hosted on compromised existing Web sites, rather than sites devised by criminals, according to the report. The United States leads as the No. 1 host country for malware at 43 percent, followed by China (14 percent) and Russia (four percent).

Spam is on the rise, despite the demise of the McColo hosting provider and botnets. Spam represents 88 percent of all inbound e-mail and has shown a 14 percent upward trend since January. Spam is mostly used to push pharmaceutical sales, particularly the "Canadian Pharmacy" brand, according to the report.

Photos from your gadget can leak your location

2010-07-16T20:44:00.001-04:00

July 16, 2010 11:13 AM PDT
Researcher: Photos from your gadget can leak your location
by Declan McCullagh
Ben Jackson speaking at the Next HOPE hacker conference in New York on Friday.
Ben Jackson speaking at the Next HOPE hacker conference in New York on Friday.
(Credit: Declan McCullagh/CNET)

NEW YORK--Be warned: If you take a snapshot with your iPhone or other camera-enabled gadget, it may divulge more information about you than your photographic abilities.

At the Next HOPE hacker conference here on Friday, a security researcher demonstrated how he scanned over 2.5 million photo links posted to Twitter and extracted exact latitude and longitude coordinates embedded in over 65,000 photos -- typically without the user's knowledge.

"It's a privacy fail," says Ben Jackson of Mayhemic Labs, who plans to release the software and data collection this evening.

It works this way: the most recent generation or two of cell phones can geotag photographs by injecting the location coordinates into the EXIF metadata of images taken with the camera. This is precise enough to allow individual homes to be located, and sometimes even the general area inside a home, and is different from the geotag-this-message feature that Twitter and similar services offer.

To let Twitter users know that they may be inadvertently telling the world about their daily perambulations, Mayhemic Labs created ICanStalkU.com, an in-your-face approach to raising awareness about inadvertent location-sharing. A Perl script samples a subset of image links from Twitter, including Twitpic, Yfrog, and Sexypeek, and examines the EXIF metadata to see if latitude and longitude coordinates are embedded.

If they are, the coordinates are converted to a street address if possible (or a city name if not) and posted on ICanStalkU.com. About 3 percent of images posted to Twitter are geotagged through EXIF, Jackson says.

"It's completely random," he says. "We freak people out."

Jackson said one geotagged photograph from an anonymous Twitter account showed a man engaging, while naked, by himself in certain behavior that can not be described adequately in a family publication. Mayhemic Labs were able to identify the street address of the house and identify the names of the man and woman who lived there.

The iPhone and other phones offer the ability to disable geotagging of photos (on the iPhone, visit the Location Services settings menu), but not everyone has that privacy setting activated.

Rye Brook Blotter: Identity Thieves Steal $1900 By Hacking into Email Account

2010-06-19T13:21:00.002-04:00

Several identity thefts have been reported to the Rye Brook Police in the last week.

By Satta Sarmah | Email the author | June 2, 2010

Zoom

Criminals have become more crafty when it comes to stealing someone's identity, as a Rye Brook woman and her friends recently discovered when someone hacked into her email account.

The woman contacted police on May 28 to report that an unknown person hacked into her Hotmail account and contacted every single person listed in her address book.

The person pretended to be the woman and sent an email to all her friends, telling them she was in trouble somewhere in England and needed money to return home. The person asked the friends to forward money right away, and one of them did, sending $1900 to an address in England.

Rye Brook Police advised the woman to contact her Internet provider, but unfortunately for her friend, there is very little police can do to retrieve the money since it was sent overseas.

Rye Brook Police also received a second report on May 28 of identity theft via email.

A woman told police that someone had hacked into her Hotmail account and sent an email to all the contacts in her address book.

Similar to the first case, the hacker pretended to be the woman and emailed her friends stating that she was stranded in London and needed money to get home. The hacker asked for someone to send $1700 via Western Union, but this time no one sent any money.

The woman received a call from her friends asking if she actually sent the email. She told them no and soon after reported the crime to the police. She told police that she cannot get into her email account because the hacker changed her password.

Two other Rye Brook residents have reported identity thefts to police in the last two weeks.

On May 21, a woman told police that she received a call from Bank of America notifying her about four charges they believe she did not make. Three charges were in the amount of $29.95 to an Internet company and one was for $1 to another Internet company. The woman closed all the accounts and alerted the credit bureau. Police said she will not be held liable for the charges.

On May 22, another woman reported an identity theft to the police. She said that around May 20 she received a call from CitiBank stating that her Sears credit card showed possible fraudulent activities.

She told the bank that she didn't even own a Sears Card and the bank told her there were two charges for a total of $500 from Sears and Kmart for credit cards opened in her name.

The next day, the woman received three denials letters from Chase, Target and CitiBank Sears. She received a denial for the Sears card because she already had a credit card from the store that someone had opened without her knowledge.

Target told the woman that someone tried to open a store credit card in Virginia Beach using her social security number, date of birth and yearly income. However, the last two pieces of information were incorrect, so the Target card was denied.

Rye Brook Police Lieutenant Eugene Matthews said the increase in online shopping has made many more people susceptible to identity theft.

He said the police can take a victim's report and follow-up on the incident as much as possible, but it is usually the responsibility of identity theft victims to notify the credit bureau and all their creditors about the crime.

Matthews said victims of identity theft involving overseas transactions should not only contact their local police, but also the U.S. State Department, which encourages victims of international financial scams to report the crime to several government agencies.

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iPad hackers expose 114,000 iPad 3G owners email accounts

2010-06-19T13:16:00.000-04:00

iPad 3G owners hacked

iPad 3G owners had their email addresses exposed in what is being called a major security breach for Apple.

This leaves approximately 114,000 iPad 3G owners wide-open to spam marketing and malicious hacking, including some high level military officials, CEOs and politicians.

Those who got in on the frenzy when the iPad 3G went on sale April 30 are included in this breach of private information. If ever there was an "A" list that people did not want to be on, this is it.

Big names who are on this list ? According to the site Valleywag, some of the names on the list includes New York Times Co. CEO Janet Robinson, Diane Sawyer of ABC News, and Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

It is suspected that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel's information was also compromised.

Who did the hacking? The group called Goatse hacked AT&T's Web servers and gave this information to Valleywag. The same company that owns Valleywag, Gawker Media, also owns the site Gizmodo. Back in April, Gizmodo made headlines for purchasing an iPhone 4 prototype and exposing it to the world on their site.

What information was hacked from iPad 3G owners? Valleywag stated that the information exposed included "subscribers' email addresses, coupled with an associated ID used to authenticate the subscriber on AT&T's network, known as the ICC-ID. ICC-ID stands for integrated circuit card identifier and is used to identify the SIM cards that associate a mobile device with a particular subscriber."

According to a statement made by AT&T on Wednesday, "The only information that can be derived from the ICC IDS is the e-mail address attached to that device. We take customer privacy very seriously and while we have fixed this problem, we apologize to our customers who were impacted."

Who takes responsibility, Apple or AT&T? Apple requires that iPad owners provide an email address to activate service. Although it is AT&T's servers that exposed the email addresses, but some may blame Apple because customers have no other choice than to use AT&T service until Apple allows the iPad to connect through other mobile carriers.

Read the full report about the iPad 3G security breach on Valleywag here.

Time to wake up to cyber threat say experts

2010-06-19T13:03:00.001-04:00

AFP/Tallinn

Nato governments and the public must wake up to the threat of cyberattacks, which could paralyse a nation far more easily than conventional warfare, experts warned yesterday.

“Cybercrime and cyberespionage are topics that can’t be ignored,” said Melissa Hathaway, a former US cyber tsar, at a conference in Estonia organised by the trans-Atlantic alliance’s IT defence unit.

“Key infrastructure, including power stations, have become vulnerable due to their dependence on Internet connections,” Hathaway said.

“There is no national security in the modern world without economic security, and both companies and private citizens should also realise the depth of the problem,” she added.

Charlie Miller - a security expert who launches test assaults on IT systems - underlined that cyberwar is far easier than a conventional attack.

“It would take two years and cost less than $50mn a year to prepare a cyberattack that could paralyse the US,” Miller warned.

Such an attack could involve fewer than 600 hackers, he added.

Estonia is home to a unit known in Nato jargon as the Co-operative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence.

Bitter experience taught Estonia - one of the world’s most wired nations and a Nato member since 2004 - all about cyberattacks.

The Baltic state of 1.3mn people suffered an assault in 2007 that paralysed key business and government Web services for days.

Despite Estonia’s experience, people elsewhere have not woken up, said British defence ministry expert Gloria Craig.

“It’s still hard to convince the public that a cyberattack is an attack, when people don’t see a smoking gun,” Craig said.

“As of now Nato is not prepared for a global cyberattack,” she added.

US specialist Bruce Schneier, however, said the current threat should not be overplayed.

“Building tanks does not mean you fear you could be overrun by a military force right now. It pays to build tanks and it pays to prepare for cyberwar, but I don’t believe that’s a fear we should worry about right now,” Schneier said.

You dont have to be a hacker to be able to hack an iPad

2010-06-19T13:01:00.000-04:00

The email addresses of more than 114,000 Apple iPad users have been exposed in a targeted hacking attack.

One of the key methods used to hack into the recent Apple hack was emulating an iPad via a browser. And you don't have to be a hacker/programmer to switch your user agent.

User Agent Switcher is a popular (More than 5M downloads) add-on to FireFox that allow you to switch user agent very easily. This is done by web developers who want to see how the page looks for other browser (without having to install each and every one of them).

But there is a more sinister purpose that helped make the iPad hack work. Masquerading as another device can help you get "free lunch”:
* Get free WiFi – some networks have free WiFi for iPhone.
* Access content behind a “paywall” since some sites allow searchbots (such as googlebot) to view parts that ordinary users need to pay or register to see.
* And then to get the Email of IPad users from AT&T, add iPad to User Agent Switcher. As explained on thetabletblog.net, by changing your User Agent string (also refereed to as spoofing), you can trick websites into thinking you are visiting them on an iPad.

All you have to do is copy and paste the following line of text into the User Agent field: Mozilla/5.0(iPad; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.21.10 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.4 Mobile/7B314 Safari/531.21.10.

Ron Gula, CEO, Tenable Network Security (makers of Nessus), outlining how any failure on AT&T’s part was due to a lack of monitoring and alerting when the brute force queries began.

"AT&T may have had the world's best patching and security program and this box may have resisted penetration attempts from the best tools and attackers. However, the web service exploited to obtain the iPad user emails worked by design. If there was any failure on AT&T's part it was a lack of monitoring and alerting when the brute force queries began or not conducting a detailed enough risk assessment.”

Computer hacker jailed for fraud

2010-06-19T12:54:00.001-04:00

Published Date: 18 June 2010

A former Crawley man has been jailed after he was convicted of two complex types of fraud by hacking into websites.
Alistair Peckover, formerly of Sheppey Close, Broadfield, targetted on-line betting sites and individual email accounts, converting both types to extract money to help feed his gambling habit.

Peckover, 21, was sentenced yesterday (Thursday)
at Southend Crown Court in Essex to 20 months imprisonment, having pleaded guilty at a hearing at the same court on May 13 to two counts of fraud, and admitting 50 other offences which were taken into consideration.

Four months of the sentence were in respect of breach of previous suspended sentence.

A police spokesman said: 'Using sophisticated computer programmes, some of which he wrote himself, Peckover was able to remotely view the files that another computer user was viewing, without their knowledge or consent. Using this method, he could look through anything on another's computer and taken anything that he chose.

'Both Google and BT, whose systems were misused, were made aware of the security breaches and have made arrangements to prevent them happening again.'

Amongst his haul was a Porsche, and £40,000 in cash (in Sterling and Euros) stuffed in to two containers. These were all seized by detectives, together with a Breitling watch, a Rolex watch, a Nintendo Wii console, a Pioneer car stereo, over £30,000 worth of gold bullion in small handsize bars, and six computers. Passports in three names that he had used were also found.

Detective Constable Des Hamilton, of the Sussex Police Major Fraud Unit, said: 'This is a classic example of a self-taught obsessive loner with real computer skills but no concern for his impact on other people. Peckover used his skills to systematically defraud legitimate on-line businesses and unsuspecting members of the public. He was caught time and again but seemed completely uncaring about others. We hope that this sentence will help him use his obvious talents for more honest activity. Computer-based crime is not victimless.'

* Last Updated: 18 June 2010 9:59 AM
* Source: n/a
* Location: Crawley

Google Street View Wi-Fi data included passwords and e-mail

2010-06-19T12:46:00.001-04:00

The French data protection authority has found passwords and e-mail messages among the Wi-Fi data Google intercepted

By Peter Sayer, IDG News Service
June 18, 2010 08:31 AM ET

Wi-Fi traffic intercepted by Google's Street View cars included passwords and e-mail, according to the French National Commission on Computing and Liberty (CNIL).

CNIL launched an investigation last month into Google's recording of traffic carried over unencrypted Wi-Fi networks, and has begun examining the data Google handed over as part of that investigation.

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Google revealed on May 14 that the fleet of vehicles it operates to compile panoramic images of city streets for its Google Maps site had inadvertently recorded traffic from unencrypted Wi-Fi networks. Google's intention was only to record the identity and position of Wi-Fi hotspots in order to power a location service it operates, the company said. However, the software it used to record that information went much further, intercepting and storing data packets too.

At the time, Google said it only collected "fragments" of personal Web traffic as it passed by, because its Wi-Fi equipment automatically changes channels five times a second. However, with Wi-Fi networks operating at up to 54M bits per second, it always seemed likely that those one-fifth of a second recordings would contain more than just "fragments" of personal data.

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That has now been confirmed by CNIL, which since June 4 has been examining Wi-Fi traffic and other data provided by Google on two hard disks and over a secure data connection to its servers.

"It's still too early to say what will happen as a result of this investigation," CNIL said Thursday.

"However, we can already state that [...] Google did indeed record e-mail access passwords [and] extracts of the content of e-mail messages," CNIL said.

Data protection authorities in Spain and Germany have also asked Google for access to Wi-Fi traffic data intercepted in their countries, but the CNIL was the first to have its request granted, it said.

Google also told CNIL that the data collected by the Street View cars is also used by other services, including Google Maps and Google Latitude, which allows users automatically transmit their location to friends, and to track others who choose to share their location via the service.

That's of interest to CNIL, because Google has still not made the necessary statutory declarations regarding its processing of personal data for the Latitude service in France.

Peter Sayer covers open source software, European intellectual property legislation and general technology breaking news for IDG News Service. Send comments and news tips to Peter at peter_sayer@idg.com.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.

Stem cell therapy 'damage' seen in kidney disease case

2010-06-19T11:49:00.001-04:00

Page last updated at 21:09 GMT, Thursday, 17 June 2010 22:09 UK

There are hopes that stem cell therapy can be used to tackle many diseases

A new complication has been seen in a patient with kidney disease who received stem cell therapy, scientists have warned.

Stem cells were injected into the kidney, but the patient suffered tissue damage and died from an infection.

The Canadian and Thai researchers said the findings published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology showed caution was needed.

Experts said there was a gap between research and treatment.

Many scientists hope stem cell therapy can be used to treat a wide range of diseases.

It has been shown that it is possible to reprogram adult stem cells, taken from bone marrow, to become a range of specific cell types - including kidney cells.

We believe that this is either formed directly by the stem cells that were injected or that the stem cells caused these masses to form

Dr Duangpen Thirabanjasak, Chulalongkorn University

And animal studies have indicated that injecting stem cells directly into organs, including the kidney, is safe.

The patient in this case had been treated by a private clinic.

Researchers from Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand, and Paul Scott Thorner, from the University of Toronto, were involved in removing and analysing the kidney.

They found that the patient had not benefited at all from the treatment, but had actually developed tissue damage called angiomyeloproliferative lesions at the injection sites. These were found to be clusters of blood vessels and bone marrow cells.

Enthusiasm 'premature'

Dr Duangpen Thirabanjasak, from Chulalongkorn University, who led the research, said: "This type of lesion has never been described before in patients, and we believe that this is either formed directly by the stem cells that were injected or that the stem cells caused these masses to form."

And she warned that, because they had not been seen before, no-one knew how the lesions might have developed over time.

The authors conclude that their findings should serve as a warning to clinical investigators that the development of blood vessel and bone marrow masses may be a possible complication of stem cell therapy.

And they said more work was needed to identify why the masses formed, and how this could be avoided.

Writing in the journal, Andras Nagy, of Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital, and Susan Quaggin, of the University of Toronto, said caution was needed over stem cell therapies - especially if they were being offered by unregulated private clinics.

They added: "Premature enthusiasm and protocols that are not fully vetted are dangerous and result in negative publicity for the field of stem cell research, and more importantly, may result in disastrous outcomes with no benefit to the patient.

"Although there is promise, a large gap still exists between scientific knowledge and clinical translation for safe and effective stem cell-based therapies.

Moving Through Time: Thinking of the Past or Future Causes Us to Sway Backward or Forward

2010-06-18T19:37:00.001-04:00

ScienceDaily (Jan. 26, 2010) — Although we can't technically travel through time (yet), when we think of the past or the future we engage in a sort of mental time travel. This uniquely human ability to psychologically travel through time arguably sets us apart from other species.

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Researchers have recently looked at how mental time travel is represented in the sensorimotor systems that regulate human movement. It turns out our perceptions of space and time are tightly coupled.

University of Aberdeen psychological scientists Lynden Miles, Louise Nind and Neil Macrae conducted a study to measure this in the lab. They fitted participants with a motion sensor while they imagined either future or past events. The researchers found that thinking about past or future events can literally move us: Engaging in mental time travel (a.k.a. chronesthesia) resulted in physical movements corresponding to the metaphorical direction of time. Those who thought of the past swayed backward while those who thought of the future moved forward.

These findings reported online in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggest that chronesthesia may be grounded in processes that link spatial and temporal metaphors (e.g., future= forward, past= backward) to our systems of perception and action.

"The embodiment of time and space yields an overt behavioral marker of an otherwise invisible mental operation," explains Miles and colleagues.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by Association for Psychological Science.

Journal Reference:

Lynden K. Miles, Louise K. Nind, and C. Neil Macrae. Moving Through Time. Psychological Science, 2010; DOI: 10.1177/0956797609359333

Scientists Create Nano-Patterned Superconducting Thin Films

2010-06-18T19:31:00.001-04:00

ScienceDaily (June 16, 2010) — A team of scientists from Bar-Ilan University, Israel, and the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory has fabricated thin films patterned with large arrays of nanowires and loops that are superconducting -- able to carry electric current with no resistance -- when cooled below about 30 kelvin (-243 degrees Celsius). Even more interesting, the scientists showed they could change the material's electrical resistance in an unexpected way by placing the material in an external magnetic field.

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Computers & Math

Reference

"Such superconducting nanowires and nano-loops might eventually be useful for new electronic devices -- that is the long-term vision," said Brookhaven Lab physicist Ivan Bozovic, who synthesized the superconducting films. "That is the long-term vision."

He and his collaborators describe the research in Nature Nanotechnology, published online June 13, 2010.

It has been a long-standing dream to fabricate superconducting nano-scale wires for faster, more powerful electronics. However, this has turned out to be very difficult if not impossible with conventional superconductors because the minimal size for the sample to be superconducting -- known as the coherence length -- is large. For example, in the case of niobium, the most widely used superconductor, it is about 40 nanometers. Very thin nano-wires made of such materials wouldn't act as superconductors.

However, in layered copper-oxide superconductors, the coherence length is much smaller -- about one or two nanometers within the copper-oxide plane, and as small as a tenth of a nanometer out-of-plane. The fact that these materials operate at warmer temperatures, reducing the need for costly cooling, makes them even more attractive for real-world applications.

To see if they could achieve superconductivity in a thin film material etched to form a pattern of "wires" -- much like the circuits etched into computer chips -- the Brookhaven team started by using a precision technique for making superconducting thin films atomic layer by layer. They used molecular beam epitaxy to build a material with alternating layers of copper-oxide and lanthanum and strontium. Bozovic's team had previously used this technique to produce thin films that retain superconductivity within a single copper-oxide layer.

Then the team at Bar-Ilan used electron-beam lithography to "etch" a pattern of thousands of loops into the surface of the material. The thickness, or diameter, of the "nanowires" forming the sides of these loops was mere 25 nanometers, while the lengths ranged from 150 to 500 nanometers. Measurements of electrical resistance of the patterned arrays showed that they were indeed superconducting when cooled below about 30 K.

When the scientists applied an external magnetic field perpendicular to the loops, they found that the loop resistance did not keep increasing steadily with the field strength, but rather changed up and down in an oscillatory manner.

"These oscillations in resistance have a large amplitude, and their frequency corresponds to discrete units (quanta) of magnetic flux -- the measure of the strength of the magnetic field piercing the loops," Bozovic said. "A material with such a discrete, switchable form of magneto-resistance -- especially from the superconducting to the non-superconducting state -- could be extremely useful for engineering new devices."

The observed frequency of the oscillations in resistance may also have implications for understanding the mechanism by which copper-oxide materials become superconductors in the first place. The current findings seem to rule out certain theoretical models that propose that an ordered alignment of charge carriers known as "stripes" is essential to superconductivity in copper-oxide compounds. A better understanding of the mechanism of superconductivity could lead to even more advances in designing new materials for practical applications.

The Brookhaven scientists' role in this research was supported by DOE's Office of Science. The work was also funded by the German Research Foundation through a German-Israeli cooperative agreement, and by a scholarship granted by the Israel Ministry of Science.

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The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by DOE/Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Journal Reference:

Ilya Sochnikov, Avner Shaulov, Yosef Yeshurun, Gennady Logvenov, Ivan Bozovic. Large oscillations of the magnetoresistance in nanopatterned high-temperature superconducting films. Nature Nanotechnology, 2010; DOI: 10.1038/nnano.2010.111

Computer Intelligence Predicts Human Visual Attention for First Time

2010-06-18T19:22:00.003-04:00

ScienceDaily (June 17, 2010) — Scientists have just come several steps closer to understanding change blindness -- the well studied failure of humans to detect seemingly obvious changes to scenes around them -- with new research that used a computer-based model to predict what types of changes people are more likely to notice.

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These findings on change blindness were presented in the Journal of Vision.

"This is one of the first applications of computer intelligence to help study human visual intelligence, " said author Peter McOwan, professor at Queen Mary, University of London. "The biologically inspired mathematics we have developed and tested can have future uses in letting computer vision systems such as robots detect interesting elements in their visual environment."

During the study, participants were asked to spot the differences between pre-change and post-change versions of a series of pictures. Some of these pictures had elements added, removed or color altered, with the location of the change based on attention grabbing properties (this is the "salience" level referred to in the article).

Unlike previous research where scientists studied change blindness by manually manipulating such pictures and making decisions about what and where to make a change, the computer model used in this study eliminated any human bias. The research team at Queen Mary's School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science developed an algorithm that let the computer "decide" how to change the images that study participants were asked to view.

While the experiments confirmed that change blindness can be predicted using this model, the tests also showed that the addition or removal of an object from the scene is detected more readily than changes in the color of the object, a result that surprised the scientists. "We expected a color change to be a lot easier to spot, since color plays such an important role in our day-to-day lives and visual perception," said lead researcher Milan Verma of Queen Mary.

The authors suggest that the computer-based approach will be useful in designing displays of an essential nature such as road signs, emergency services, security and surveillance to draw attention to a change or part of the display that requires immediate attention.

"We live in a world in which we are immersed in visual information," explained Verma. "The result is a huge cognitive burden which may hinder our ability to complete a given task. This study is an important step toward understanding how visual information is processed and how we can go about optimizing the presentation of visual displays."

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The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Journal Reference:

M. Verma, P. W. McOwan. A semi-automated approach to balancing of bottom-up salience for predicting change detection performance. Journal of Vision, 2010; 10 (6): 3 DOI: 10.1167/10.6.3

Researchers have used a computer-based model to predict what types of changes people are more likely to notice. The achievement sheds light on change blindness -- a failure of humans to detect seemingly obvious changes to scenes around them. (Credit: iStockphoto/Tracy Lorna)

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Cancer Killer Found In The Ocean

2010-06-18T19:18:00.000-04:00

Marine Biotechnologists Treat Cancer With Mud-loving Ocean Bacteria

November 1, 2007 — Biomedicine scientists identified and sequenced the genes of a bacteria called Salinispora tropica. It produces anti-cancer compounds and can be found in ocean sediments off the Bahamas. A product called salinosporamide A has shown promise treating a bone marrow cancer called multiple myeloma, as well as solid tumors.

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It's estimated that over 1.4 million Americans will be diagnosed with cancer this year, and for more than 500,000 it will be fatal. But now, scientists have found a new weapon against it. The ocean! You run in it ... play in it ... splash in it ... but what’s found at the bottom of it can kill cancer!

"This bacteria makes a really potent anti cancer agent," Bradley Moore, Ph.D., marine biochemist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, Calf., told Ivanhoe.

The bacterium was discovered in 1991, but just recently researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography unlocked the genomic sequence, revealing this bacteria's cancer fighting potential.

"That’s how new drugs are discovered. We really have to go out there and grow bacteria, look at the genomes," Dr. Moore said. "What we've recently been able to do is take the enzymes out of the cell, put them in a test tube, and then play God and manipulate these enzymes and make new chemistry."

And make new drugs. "There's a major search underway for better drugs to treat cancer and one way to find these new medicines is to look to nature," Paul Jensen, Ph.D., associate research scientist at Scipps Institution of Oceanography, told Ivanhoe.

And unlike most of the drugs used to fight cancer today -- this bacterium is not found on land.

"When you look at a globe ... there's more blue than there is land," said Dr. Moore.

Revealing that our oceans maybe an even more valuable resource than we realize. A clinical trial is already underway. A San Diego pharmaceutical company is using it to treat patients that have a form of bone marrow cancer -- and it could soon be tested to treat other cancers.

The American Geophysical Union and The American Society for Microbiology contributed to the information contained in the TV portion of this report.

BACKGROUND: Researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography have discovered bacteria in mud from the Bahamas with the potential to help fight cancer. Now that the bacteria’s genome has been successfully sequenced, that information is now being used by a pharmaceutical company to treat bone marrow cancer patients.

ABOUT THE BACTERIA: The bacteria known as Salinispora tropica is related to the Streptomyces genus, a land-based group of bacteria considered to be the kinds of antibiotic-producing organisms. First discovered in 1991 in shallow ocean sediment off the Bahamas, it took several years to successfully sequence Salinispora’s genome, revealing that this mud-dwelling bacteria produces natural antibiotics and anti-cancer products. Researchers found that 10% of the bacteria’s genome is dedicated to producing molecules for antibiotics and anti-cancer agents, compared to only 6% to 8% of most organisms’ genomes. The decoding opens the door to a broad range of possibilities for isolating and adapting potent molecules the marine organism naturally employs for chemical defense, scavenging for nutrients, and communication in its ocean environment. One compound, salinosporamide A, is currently in human clinical trials for treating multiple myeloma, a cancer of plasma cells in bone marrow, as well as for treating solid tumors.

SEQUENCING ABCs: Genome sequencing is figuring out the order of DNA nucleotides, or bases, in a genome: the building blocks that make up an organism’s DNA. The entire genome can’t be sequenced at once because DNA sequencing methods can only handle short stretches of DNA at a time. So scientists break the DNA into small pieces, sequence those, and then reassemble the pieces into the proper order to sequence the entire genome. There are two ways of doing this. The "clone-by-clone" approach involves breaking the genome into chunks, called clones, each about 150,000 base pairs long, then using genome mapping techniques to figure where each belongs in the genome. Next they cut the clones into smaller, overlapping pieces of about 500 base pairs each, sequence those pieces, and use the overlaps to reconstruct the sequence of the entire clone.

An alternative strategy, called the "whole-genome shotgun method," involves breaking the genome into small pieces, sequencing them, and then reassembling the pieces into the full genome. The clone-by-clone approach is more reliable, but slow and time-consuming. The shotgun method is faster, but it can be extremely difficult to accurately put together so many tiny pieces of sequence all at once Neither of these approaches proved sufficient to completely solve the Salinispora tropica genomic puzzle, however. Instead, information about the natural chemistry of the organism helped close the sequencing gap.

Note: This story and accompanying video were originally produced for the American Institute of Physics series Discoveries and Breakthroughs in Science by Ivanhoe Broadcast News and are protected by copyright law. All rights reserved.

New Evidence That Smokeless Tobacco Damages DNA and Key Enzymes

2010-06-18T19:15:00.000-04:00

ScienceDaily (June 18, 2010) — Far from having adverse effects limited to the mouth, smokeless tobacco affects the normal function of a key family of enzymes found in almost every organ in the body, according to the first report on the topic in the American Chemical Society's monthly journal Chemical Research in Toxicology.

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The enzymes play important roles in production of hormones, including the sex hormones estrogen and testosterone; production of cholesterol and vitamin D; and help the body breakdown prescription drugs and potentially toxic substances. Smokeless tobacco also damages genetic material in the liver, kidney and lungs.

Krishan Khanduja and colleagues note widespread recognition of smokeless tobacco's harmful effects on the mouth, which include an increased risk of gum disease and oral cancer. The potential carcinogens and other chemicals in chewing tobacco and other smokeless products are absorbed into the blood and travel throughout the body. However, scientists have little information on smokeless tobacco's effects on other parts of the body. To fill that knowledge gap, the scientists evaluated changes in enzymes and genetic material in laboratory rats using extracts of smokeless tobacco.

In addition to damage to the genetic material DNA, they found that smokeless tobacco extracts alter the function of the so-called CYP-450 family of enzymes. "These products are used around the world but are most common in Northern Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Mediterranean region," the report says. "Most of the users seem to be unaware of the harmful health effects and, therefore, use smokeless tobacco to 'treat' toothaches, headaches, and stomachaches. This false impression only promotes tobacco use among youth. The use of smokeless tobacco and its new products is increasing not only among men but also among children, teenagers, women, and immigrants of South Asian origin and medical and dental students."

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The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by American Chemical Society, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Journal Reference:

Pramod K. Avti, Kim Vaiphei, Chander M. Pathak, Krishan L. Khanduja. Involvement of Various Molecular Events in Cellular Injury Induced by Smokeless Tobacco. Chemical Research in Toxicology, 2010: 100603104818032 DOI: 10.1021/tx900458x

Shining Light Around Corners: Scientists Explore New Method for Curving 'Airy' Light Beams

2010-06-18T18:57:00.001-04:00

ScienceDaily (June 18, 2010) — We learned in science class that light beams travel in straight lines and spread through a process known as diffraction -- and they can't go around corners. But now researchers at Tel Aviv University are investigating new applications for their recent discovery that small beams of light can indeed be bent in a laboratory setting, diffracting much less than a "regular" beam.

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These rays, called "Airy beams," were named after English astronomer Sir George Biddell Airy, who studied the parabolic trajectories of light in rainbows, and were first created at the University of Central Florida. Now, the fortuitously-named Prof. Ady Arie and his graduate students Tal Ellenbogen, Noa Voloch-Bloch, Ayelet Ganany-Padowicz and Ido Dolev of Tel Aviv University's Faculty of Engineering have demonstrated new ways to generate and control Airy beams. Employing new algorithms and special nonlinear optical crystals, their research is reported in a recent issue of the scientific journal Nature Photonics.

Some of these new applications, such as a light source to generate beams that can turn around corners, or lighted spaces that contain no apparent light source, are still five or ten years away, says Prof. Arie. But his research has immediate applications as well. For example, because small particles are attracted to the highest intensities of a beam, the pharmaceutical and chemical industries can use the new beam to sort molecules according to size or quality, filtering impurities from drug formulations that might otherwise lead to toxicity and death.

A light that can twist around curves

Until now, reports an editorial review in the same issue of Nature Photonics, Airy beams have been generated through "linear diffraction" using tools that project a single color of light through glass plates of varying thicknesses. But using crystals they built in the lab, Tel Aviv University's approach uses another technique: nonlinear optics. Sent through crystals, light waves bounce inside the crystal, changing their wavelength and color. It is through this process, the researchers say, that the door is opened for creating new light beams at new wavelengths with greater control of their trajectories.

"We've found a way to control whether an Airy beam curves to the left or to the right, for example," says Prof. Arie. He has also found a way to control the peak intensity location of the beams, which are generated through a nonlinear optical process.

Nonlinear optics is a sub-field of optics that deals with the response of materials to high intensities of light. The strong interaction between light and material results in the generation of new colors, which are half the wavelength of the original input light frequency. For example, a nonlinear response to infrared light can generate visible light -- which is how those bright, green "laser pointers," often used in presentations given in large rooms, generate their light.

Airy beams promise remarkable advances for engineering. They could form the technology behind space-age "light bullets" -- as effective and precise defense technologies for police and the military, but also as a new communications interface between transponders. As tiny, tight packets of information, these Airy beams could be used out in the open air, researchers hope.

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The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by American Friends of Tel Aviv University.

Journal References:

Tal Ellenbogen, Noa Voloch-Bloch, Ayelet Ganany-Padowicz, Ady Arie. Nonlinear generation and manipulation of Airy beams. Nature Photonics, 2009; 3 (7): 395 DOI: 10.1038/nphoton.2009.95
Valdas Pasiskevicius. Nonlinear optics: Engineering Airy beams. Nature Photonics, 2009; 3 (7): 374 DOI: 10.1038/nphoton.2009.107

2010-06-18T18:52:00.000-04:00

SC Leaves Big Questions Open in Text-Message Privacy Case

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By Erika Morphy
TechNewsWorld
06/18/10 1:52 PM PT

The Supreme Court overturned a lower-court ruling in favor of the California cop who cried foul when his superiors read sexually charged text messages that he had sent using department equipment. However, in their 9-0 ruling, the justices chose not to address many of the stickier questions the case raised about employee privacy, basing their decision on narrow legal grounds instead.

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The U.S. Supreme Court declined to carve out new rights to digital privacy for public sector workers in its 9-0 decision in City of Ontario v. Quon.

The case revolved around the question of whether the Ontario, Calif., police force had the right to read text messages employees sent using the department's equipment and wireless service.

The department had no formal policy about text-messaging, but it did have a general computer, Internet and email policy, which stated that use of such equipment and services was limited to city business.

That written policy, however, was undermined by a lieutenant who collected additional money from police officers who exceeded their 25,000-character text-messaging "allowance." The officers were assured that they could use the text service for personal communications as long as they paid any extra fees.

The department decided to conduct an audit, which revealed that an officer, Jeff Quon, had sent sexually explicit messages from the police department's account. Quon sued the department for violation of his privacy. The case made its way to the 9th Circuit, which held that the police department violated Quon's Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure.

Narrow Interpretation

The Supreme Court decided the case on very narrow grounds, brushing aside mitigating factors such as the fact that the written policy had been negated to a certain extent by Quon's supervisor.

"Because the search [by the police chief] was motivated by a legitimate work-related purpose and because it was not excessive in scope, the search was reasonable," wrote Justice Anthony M. Kennedy.

The issue of whether an employee has rights if a supervisor sidesteps a written policy is still unsettled, Bart Lazar, IP attorney at Seyfarth Shaw, told TechNewsWorld.

The Supreme Court could have shut the door on other issues of employees' rights to privacy, but by deciding the case on narrow grounds, it did not, noted Lazar.

Essentially, what the court said was that this is an evolving area in terms of technology development, as well as how people view technology and what their expectations of privacy are with respect to it, said Allan Dinkoff, litigation counsel with Weil, Gotshal & Manges.

"It basically said it was reluctant to make hard and fast rules because the situation is still in a state of flux," Dinkoff told TechNewsWorld.

The Supreme Court punted on a lot of issues, Paul Bond, an attorney in Reed Smith's data privacy, security and management group, told TechNewsWorld.

In Quon, the United States Supreme Court passed had the opportunity to set forth a bright-line rule, but it chose not to, he said.

It could have held that when employers issued clear written policies stating that employees were to have no expectation of privacy in their communications, those employers could then monitor company-issued devices with impunity, Bond suggested.

The Court could have ruled that employees have some inalienable privacy interest even when communicating on employer-issued devices, he added. It could have determined that an employee's privacy rights are not entirely subject to waiver by an employer's edict, even on employer-issued devices, which was the thrust of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling.

"Instead, the Court expressly declined to rule on whether Quon's expectation of privacy in his text communications was or was not reasonable," noted Bond.

Public vs. Private

Still, the Quon ruling does provides some measure of certainty to both the public and the private sector, Chris Parlo of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius told TechNewsWorld.

At the very least, an opinion in favor of Quon would have opened the door to possible similar claims -- or at least expectations -- in the private sector, he said.

This decision just formalizes what is common sense and conventional wisdom for both private and public sector employees, Robert D. Brownstone, law and technology director and co-chair at Fenwick & West, told TechNewsWorld.

"Have a policy in place that sets an expectation on the part of employees that the employer has the right to monitor communications in order to gauge efficiency or make other operational decisions," he advised. "As long as that policy is spelled out and consistently applied, it should be no problem."

Spell It Out

Companies need to spell out every contingency, said Brownstone. For example, some companies allow employees to access corporate networks using their own smartphones. Should emails sent and received using a personal device over a company network be subject to monitoring?

If a company thinks they should be, Brownstone said, it needs to make that clear.

As the cost of new technology drops to a point where virtually everyone can afford laptops, netbooks, cellphones, smartphones and the like, employees' reliance on employers' hardware, systems and networks will diminish, noted Barry Werbin, head of the intellectual property practice at Herrick, Feinstein -- an observation the Supreme Court made in its ruling.

That will probably result in fewer issues involving employees' privacy rights in the workplace, because there will be fewer compelling reasons for employees to use their employers' computers and networks, Werbin told TechNewsWorld.

"There may be exceptions," he said. "If you work in a secure or 'clean room' environment and can't bring in your own communications equipment, the courts will have to address whether someone in a setting like that -- especially if they have children at home with a nanny, or a sick, aging parent -- should be denied personal communications for eight hours at a time."

SF Law Puts Cellphone Radiation Info Front and Center

2010-06-18T18:50:00.001-04:00

SF Law Puts Cellphone Radiation Info Front and Center

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By Erika Morphy
E-Commerce Times
Part of the ECT News Network
06/16/10 3:03 PM PT

Although studies on the effects of cellphone radiation on health are far from conclusive, San Francisco city officials want customers to be able to easily compare the specific absorption rates of phones when they make their buying decisions. Needless to say, the wireless industry opposes the requirement that stores post that information, but the mayor is expected to sign it into law.

San Francisco's Board of Supervisors has voted 10-1 to approve a law requiring cellphone retailers and vendors to post how much radiation their devices emit. The measure calls upon stores to display the "specific absorption rates" next to the devices.

SAR -- that is, the amount of radio frequency energy absorbed by the body when using a wireless phone -- is a standard specified by the Federal Communications Commission. Levels can vary, from 0.3 to the legal limit of 1.6, as measured in watts per kilogram of body weight.

Noncompliance with the measure -- assuming it is signed into law by Mayor Gavin Newsom, who was an early proponent -- could lead to fines of US$100 to $300.

This law would be a first for a U.S. city, said Alex Formuzis, director of communications for the Environmental Working Group, which releases studies every year on the various levels of radiation emitted by cellphones.

The organization hopes that the San Francisco law will highlight this issue for consumers -- as well as lead device manufacturers to build lower-emitting phones.

"Having this information available at the point of sale will be a tremendous educational tool," Formuzis told the E-Commerce Times.

Customer Confusion?

The wireless industry lobbied against the measure, arguing it would confuse consumers.

"It suggests that some phones are safer than others, which is contrary to the FCC standard," John Walls, VP of public affairs for CTIA, told the E-Commerce Times.

"All devices have to comply with FCC safety standards, and studies show that one compliant phone is not 'safer' than another," Walls insisted.

That, however, is exactly what the EWG maintains.

Good List

"The spectrum of the radiation these devices emits is all over the board with some producing very high levels and others very little," said Formuzi.

The organization produces a list of cellphones, ranked by the levels of radiation they emit.

EWG points to studies that suggest high levels of cellphone emissions lead to higher risks for brain and salivary gland tumors among people using cellphones for 10 years or longer.

For example, people who used cellphones for more than 10 years had a significantly increased risk of developing glioma, a usually malignant brain tumor, on the side of the head they had favored for cellphone conversations, researchers in Europe found.

Long-term cellphone users were 10 to 20 percent more likely to be hospitalized for migraines and vertigo than people who had taken up cellphones more recently, concluded a study of 420,095 Danish adults.

The 10 best phones for 2010, according to EWG:

Sanyo Katana II [Kajeet]
Samsung Rugby (SGH-a837) [AT&T]
Samsung Memoir (SGH-T929) [T-Mobile]
Samsung I8000 Omnia II [Verizon Wireless]
Samsung SGH-t229 [T-Mobile]
Helio Pantech Ocean [Virgin Mobile]
Sony Ericsson W518a Walkman [AT&T]
Samsung SGH-a137 [AT&T, AT&T (NYSE: T) GoPhone]
LG Shine II [AT&T]
LG CF360 [AT&T, AT&T GoPhone]

Carbon Nanotubes May Pose Asbestos-Like Threat to Human Health

2010-05-25T20:38:00.000-04:00

Tuesday, September 16, 2008 by: David Gutierrez, staff writer

(NaturalNews) Touted as miracle ingredients that will revolutionize electronics, chemistry and materials science, carbon nanotubes may pose as great a threat to the human body as asbestos, according to a study published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

Carbon nanotubes are artificially created, tiny molecules that are very strong and resilient. They are already in use in products including bicycle handlebars, baseball bats and tennis rackets, but just how prevalent their use is in these or other products remains unknown because companies are not required to disclose the information.

Because nanotube fibers are similar in certain ways to asbestos, researchers decided to determine if they have similar effects on the bodies of mice. The researchers injected either asbestos, carbon nanotubes of varying lengths, or normal flat carbon sheets into the abdomens of mice. They found that just like asbestos, long carbon nanotubes cause inflammation and scarring in the lining of the lungs and stomach.

"For a fiber to be harmful, it has to be thin, long and insoluble in the lung," researcher Dr. Ken Donaldson said. "What we found was that the long nanotubes were pathogenic - they caused inflammation and scar formation."

Researchers and health advocates called for a more cautious approach in introducing nanotechnologies, and for more transparency by manufacturers.

"These sorts of materials need to be handled very carefully," said study co-author Dr. Anthony Seaton, who has treated people harmed by asbestos. "The Health and Safety executive in the UK needs to take appropriate measures to ensure that people are not being exposed to these things in the air."

In addition to workers in manufacturing plants, other people might be at risk, warned Dr Andrew Maynard the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC.

"What happens if you demolish products, or you throw products into landfill sites or incinerate the products? Is there a chance of carbon nanotubes coming out then and exposure occurring?" he asked. "We simply don't know the answer to that and I think it's something that needs to be addressed."

The Butterfly Effect on the Sun’s Surface

2010-05-25T20:19:00.000-04:00

New Flu Vaccines Could Protect Against All Strains

2010-05-25T20:16:00.001-04:00

New Flu Vaccines Could Protect Against All Strains

By Alexis Madrigal
May 25, 2010 |
5:55 pm |
Categories: Health

A new vaccine may be able to provide some protection against all strains of influenza.

Current immunizations create antibodies that target a specific piece of a molecule on the surface of the virus that researchers call its “head.” That piece of the hemaglutinin protein evolves very quickly, which is why you have to get a different flu shot each year as new types of flu develop.

The next-generation vaccine causes antibodies to go after a piece of the hemaglutinin that changes less often and that is present in many influenza strains. Researchers are calling them “headless HA” vaccines, and they could be the key to a universal flu shot.

Mice immunized with the new vaccine survived a flu that killed unprotected mice.

“Our results suggest that the response induced by headless HA vaccines is sufficiently potent to warrant their further development toward a universal influenza virus vaccine,” Peter Palese of Mt. Sinai Medical School, who led the effort, said in a press release. “Through further development and testing, we predict that a single immunization with a headless HA vaccine will offer effective protection through several influenza epidemics.”

The early research appears in the new open access journal mBio. In a commentary accompanying the paper, two Italian researchers suggested that many other types of disease that currently require multiple vaccines may soon have broader solutions.

“Is influenza the only disease that warrants approaches for universal vaccines? Clearly it is not,” wrote Antonio Cassone of the Instituto Superiore di Sanità in Rome and Rino Rappuoli of Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics.

UK government will not repeal Digital Economy Act

2010-05-25T20:08:00.000-04:00

Digital liberties campaign steps up

By Adam Hartley

Monday at 08:40 BST | Tell us what you think [ 3 comments ]

UK government will not repeal the unpopular Digital Economy Act

The new UK government has no plans to repeal the unpopular Digital Economy Act, according to the new Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt.

Hunt told paidContent:UK that the Digital Economy Act will stand, at least for the time being, despite vociferous support from digital liberties campaigners.

"We're not going to repeal it," said the Conservative Minister for Culture, in no uncertain terms.

Warning letters to filesharers

Hunt added that the current plan is to wait to see how the measures perform and then take a decision if action to change the Digital Economy Act at a later day.

Which means that if you are still sharing a lot of copyrighted material online via torrents sites, you may well still get one of those warning letters from your ISP at some point soon…

The campaign against the Digital Economy Act is still ongoing.

You can see more on that campaign right here.

Via The Guardian

Tags: Government, Digital Economy Act, Digital Economy Bill, ISP, filesharer, three strikes

Hacking into jail TJX case computes to 20 years

2010-03-27T10:29:00.001-04:00

A federal judge has sent a stern message to cyber criminals by imposing stiff penalties on Albert Gonzalez, the computer fraudster who helped organize the theft of credit card information from TJX Companies, Heartland Payment Systems, and other national firms. The theft of millions of credit card and debit card numbers caused financial loss, inconvenience and hardship to many, including thousands of consumers in Massachusetts. TJX says that Mr. Gonzalez’ crimes cost the Framingham-based company alone some $171.5 million.

On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Patti Saris imposed a 20-year sentence on Mr. Gonzalez after his conviction in the TJX case. Yesterday, U.S. District Judge Douglas Woodlock imposed a sentence for Mr. Gonzalez’ theft of data from Heartland and other companies.

The sentences were imposed in spite of the 28-year-old Mr. Gonzalez’ expressions of regret, his pleas for leniency, and the tears of his family. Judge Saris took note of the defendant’s “macho, almost glee about how you could beat the system,” and his online boasting to friends about what he had done.

The sentences are entirely appropriate and establish a welcome standard for crimes of this kind. They also constitute a message that should be downloaded and studied carefully, both by those currently engaged in cyber crime and those who treat computers, the Internet and private financial data as a private playground for supposedly “harmless” fun: What you are up to is not a game, but serious crime, with real victims. Keep it up, and you will be caught. Push it far enough, and you will spend time in prison — a real one.

Smart meters not hacker-proof By JORDAN ROBERTSON Associated Press March 26, 2010, 11:43PM

2010-03-27T10:26:00.000-04:00

SAN FRANCISCO — Computer-security researchers say new smart meters that are designed to help deliver electricity more efficiently also have flaws that could let hackers tamper with the power grid in previously impossible ways.

At the very least, the vulnerabilities open the door for attackers to jack up strangers' power bills.

These flaws also could get hackers a key step closer to exploiting one of the most dangerous capabilities of the new technology, which is the ability to remotely turn someone else's power on and off.

The attacks could be pulled off by stealing meters — which can be situated outside of a home — and reprogramming them. Or an attacker could sit near a home or business and wirelessly hack the meter from a laptop, according to Joshua Wright, a senior security analyst with InGuardians.

The firm was hired by three utilities to study their smart meters' resistance to attack.

These utilities, which he would not name, have already done small deployments of smart meters and plan to roll the technology out to hundreds of thousands of power customers, Wright said.

There is no evidence the security flaws have been exploited, although Wright said a utility could have been hacked without knowing it. InGuardians said it is working with the utilities to fix the problems.

There are few public studies on the meters' resistance to attack, in part because the technology is new. However, last summer, Mike Davis, a researcher from IOActive, showed how a computer worm could hop between meters in a power grid with smart meters, giving criminals control over those meters.

Houston-based CenterPoint Energy is not using InGuardians for security work, but CenterPoint spokeswoman Alicia Dixon said the company is using an independent third-party security consultant to work on the issue.

The company won't divulge the findings of that work, if any, because it could compromise security, Dixon said.

CenterPoint Energy has installed about 268,000 smart meters in the Houston area, although it is testing 111,000 of them for accuracy in response to a request to all power distributors from the Texas Public Utility Commission.

Terry Hadley, a PUC spokesman, said he is unaware of any incidents of hacking smart meters in Texas.

He notes the PUC's smart meter rules require all companies to conduct a security audit of their systems.

The rule states electric utilities will have “an independent security audit” of the smart meters done within one year of giving customers access to their smart meter data. They must promptly report the results of the study to the PUC.

Chronicle reporter Tom Fowler contributed to this report.

Scientist: Naked Mole Rats 'Holy Grail' on Aging

2010-03-27T10:20:00.001-04:00

Tuesday | Posted by: roboblogger
Scientist: Naked Mole Rats 'Holy Grail' on Aging

Full story: ClipSyndicate

About 1,600 naked mole rats live in tanks at the Univ. of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, where researcher Rochelle Buffenstein nurtures the largest colony in the US.

New US law to sanction countries harbouring cybercrime

2010-03-25T21:00:00.003-04:00

New US law to sanction countries harbouring cybercrime

Would create global blacklist of countries tolerating crime

Iain Thomson in San Francisco

V3.co.uk, 25 Mar 2010

A proposed law sponsored by two senior US senators would allow the US to bring sanctions against countries who fail to deal with online crime.

The International Cybercrime Reporting and Cooperation Act, sponsored by Senators Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), would require the US government to tabulate how effective countries were with dealing with online criminals in their countries on an annual basis and would allow Congress to take out punitive sanctions against those who were slacking.
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“Cybercrime is a serious threat to the security of the global economy, which is why we need to coordinate our fight worldwide. Until countries begin to take the necessary steps to fight criminals within their borders, cybercrime havens will continue to flourish,” said Senator Hatch.

“We don’t have the luxury to sit back and do nothing. I believe the International Cybercrime Reporting and Cooperation Act will not only function as a deterrent of cybercrime, but will prove to be an essential tool necessary to keep the Internet open for business.”

The bill has been welcomed by some of the biggest technology firms in the world, including Cisco, HP, Microsoft, Symantec, PayPal, eBay, McAfee and Facebook.

“Microsoft strongly supports the International Cybercrime Reporting and Cooperation Act and applauds Senators Gillibrand and Hatch for their leadership in this area,” said Fred Humphries, managing director of US Government Affairs at Microsoft.

“This legislation is a great step forward toward accessing the technology capabilities and judicial remedies of foreign countries to combat cybercrime and provide a safer, more trusted and secure Internet.”

With security firms putting the losses from online crime in the billions worldwide the legislation is an attempt not only to force countries to take the problem more seriously, but also to foster closer links between national police forces so that information can be shared.

“This bill would enhance global cooperation on cyber security issues while providing the United States with new tools to protect its critical infrastructure from cyber threats,” said US Chamber of Commerce Vice President Bruce Josten.

“At a time when criminal enterprises are increasing their exploitation of the cyber realm to conduct nefarious acts, S. 3155 would establish tough new ways to prepare for and address these threats.”

Russia Arrests Alleged Mastermind of RBS WorldPay Hack

2010-03-25T20:53:00.000-04:00

Russia Arrests Alleged Mastermind of RBS WorldPay Hack

* By Kim Zetter Email Author
* March 22, 2010 |
* 2:10 pm |
* Categories: Crime, Crypto, Hacks and Cracks
*

Russian authorities have nabbed the man accused of masterminding a coordinated global ATM heist of $9.5 million from Atlanta-based card processing company RBS WorldPay.

Viktor Pleshchuk, 28, of St. Petersburg, was arrested by the Russian Federal Security Service, or FSB, according to the Sunday Mail, which broke the story last week in the United Kingdom.

The Financial Times confirmed the arrest this week, adding that Pleshchuk was among “several suspects” arrested. The paper didn’t name the other suspects or say when any of them were arrested. The arrests are being touted by some as signaling a new era of cooperation between Russian and U.S. authorities.

Pleshchuk was indicted in the United States last November with Sergei Tsurikov, 25, of Tallinn, Estonia; Oleg Covelin, 28, of Chisinau, Moldova; and a fourth person identified only as “Hacker 3.” The government described the caper as “perhaps the most sophisticated and organized computer fraud attack ever conducted.”

The hack involved reverse-engineering PINs for payroll debit card accounts — the holy grail of bank card hacking.

RBS WorldPay, the payment-processing arm of the Royal Bank of Scotland, provides a number of electronic payment processing services, including debit card transactions, electronic benefits transfer payments (EBT), prepaid cards, credit card and ATM-processing services. The processor discovered in November 2008 that it had been hacked and that the intruders had accessed account details for 100 payroll cards — offered by some employers as a paperless alternative to paychecks.

The hackers compromised RBS WorldPay’s database encryption to raise the amount of funds available on the compromised cards, and boost their daily withdrawal limits. In some case, the hackers raised the limits to $500,000.

According to the indictment, Tsurikov conducted reconnaissance of the RBS network after Covelin provided him with information about vulnerabilities in the system. Pleshchuk and Covelin then worked on exploiting the vulnerabilities to obtain access. Pleschuk allegedly developed the method for reverse engineering the encrypted PINs.

Once the hackers raised the account limits, they provided an army of cashers with 44 cards programmed with the account details. On November 8 that year, the cashers simultaneously hit more than 2,000 ATMs, netting about $9.5 million in less than 12 hours.

The hackers were able to observe the withdrawals of funds from ATMs in real time in order to monitor the amounts being taken by cashers and lock the accounts to prevent further withdrawals. Once the mission was completed, the hackers tried to erase their tracks on the RBS network.

It’s unclear what kind of punishment Pleshchuk and the others might meet for their crimes. The United States lacks extradition treaties with Russia and some other East European countries, so in the past, American authorities have waited to grab suspects while they vacationed in more cooperative countries. In July 2007, Turkish authorities arrested Maksym “Maksik” Yastremskiy after he traveled there from Ukraine.

Even when authorities in some East European countries have nabbed carders wanted in the United States, prison time isn’t guaranteed. Another alleged carding ringleader who was nabbed in Ukraine in 2005 finagled his way out of prison with help from politial friends.

Dmitry Ivanovich Golubov is thought by American law enforcement officials to be the carder “Script,” one of the godfathers of Eastern European carding rings. Ukrainian police arrested Golubov in the summer of 2005 after much work by U.S. postal inspectors and other law enforcement officials in the United States. But about six months after his arrest, two Ukrainian politicians convinced a judge to release himon bond. He’s never been tried for his alleged crimes.

Former FBI special agent E.J. Hilbert, who worked diligently with others to convince Ukrainian authorities to arrest Golubov in 2005, is doubtful that Pleshchuk will do any serious time.

“The cooperation between the FBI and FSB related to this arrest is monumental, and I’m hopeful it truly is a new era of cooperation,” he told Threat Level. “But I am extremely skeptical. Any criminal making this amount of money will be well connected and thus protected.”

Though agents on the ground may do their best to work for a conviction, “they’re battling a corrupt system” Hilbert said.

Read More http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/03/alleged-rbs-hacker-arrested/#ixzz0jEvzrYTy

TJX Hacker Gets 20 Years in Prison

2010-03-25T20:48:00.002-04:00

TJX Hacker Gets 20 Years in Prison

* By Kim Zetter Email Author
* March 25, 2010 |
* 2:02 pm |
* Categories: Breaches, Crime, Hacks and Cracks
*

albert2_crop_small

BOSTON — Convicted TJX hacker Albert Gonzalez was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Thursday for leading a gang of cyberthieves who stole more than 90 million credit and debit card numbers from TJX and other retailers.

The sentence for the largest computer-crime case ever prosecuted is the lengthiest ever imposed in the United States for hacking or identity-theft. Gonzalez was also fined $25,000. Restitution, which will likely be in the tens of millions, was not decided Thursday.

Clean-cut, wearing a beige jail uniform and wireframe glasses, the 28-year-old Gonzalez sat motionless at his chair during Thursday’s proceedings, his hands folded in front of him.

Before the sentence was pronounced, Gonzalez told the court he deeply regrets his crimes, and is remorseful for having taken advantage of the personal relationships he’d forged. “Particularly one I had with a certain government agency … that gave me a second chance in life,” said the hacker, who had worked as a paid informant for the Secret Service. “I blame nobody but myself.”

“I violated the sanctity of my parents’ home by using it to stash illegal proceeds,” said Gonzalez. He asked for a lower sentence “so I can one day prove to [my family] that I love them as much as they love me.”

The hacker’s voice cracked and his gaze drifted to the floor as he finished his statement. His father, mother and sister sat in the front row of the gallery; Gonzalez’s father’s eyes reddened and he held a tissue to his face.

Gonzalez, who once dubbed his criminal enterprise “Operation Get Rich or Die Tryin’,” had argued in court filings that his only motive was technical curiosity and an obsession with conquering computer networks. But chat logs the government obtained showed Gonzalez confiding in one of his accomplices that his goal was to earn $15 million from his schemes, buy a yacht and then retire.

The hacker had faced a sentence of between 15 and 25 years for the TJX string of intrusions. The government sought the maximum, while Gonzalez sought the minimum, on grounds that he suffered from Asperger’s disorder and computer addiction, and that he cooperated with the government extensively against his U.S. co-conspirators and two Eastern European hackers (known only as “Grigg” and “Annex”). Gonzalez even provided the government with information about breaches that had not yet been detected.
soup_nazi-2001-defcon1

Albert Gonzalez at the 2001 DefCon hackers' convention in Las Vegas

A psychiatrist who examined Gonzalez for prosecutors, however, found no evidence of Asperger’s disorder or computer addiction. At Thursday’s hearing, assistant U.S. attorney Stephen Heymann urged the court to hand down a 25-year sentence that would strongly deter future Albert Gonzalezes from a life of cybercrime.

Gonzalez “conned law enforcement once before with the idea that he had seen the error of his ways,” said Heymann. “What matters is that teenagers and young people not look up to him.”

Defense attorney Martin Weinberg argued the minimum 15-year sentence would be sufficient to set an example. “That’s an enormous, devastating sentence … and a compelling and clear message to anyone looking at this case that they would suffer what he has suffered.”

In splitting the difference, U.S. District Judge Patti Saris credited Gonzalez for his apparent remorse, and his bond with his family. But Saris said she was disturbed by the fact that he committed his crimes while working for the government. She explained the low $25,000 fine by predicting her restitution order, to be set at a future hearing, will be sizable.

“You’re never possibly going to be paying back all the restitution that’s going to be ordered,” said Saris.

The government claimed in its sentencing memo that companies, banks and insurers lost close to $200 million, and that Gonzalez’s credit and debit card thefts “victimized a group of people whose population exceeded that of many major cities and some states.”

Gonzalez’s crimes were committed mostly between 2005 and 2008 while he was drawing a $75,000 salary working for the U.S. Secret Service as a paid undercover informant.

The sentence is for two criminal cases that were consolidated and that concern hacks into TJX, Office Max, Dave & Busters restaurant chain, Barnes & Noble and a string of other companies.

The drama in the case continued up to the last minute when Gonzalez attempted last week to contest the monetary losses attributed to the TJX intrusion. The defense served the company with a subpoena seeking documentation to back its assessment that it suffered $171.5 million loss, a figure that the judge will take into consideration when she decides what restitution Gonzalez will have to pay.

Gonzalez’s attorney argued in court documents that some of the losses were the result of TJX’s own negligence. Gonzalez should not be responsible, for example, for the cost of security upgrades the company implemented after the breach — upgrades that, had they been in place before, might have prevented the intrusion.

According to documents filed in a class-action lawsuit against the retailer, TJX had failed to notice 80 gigabytes of data being siphoned from its network over seven months beginning in July 2005. A 2004 audit of the company’s network had also found “high-level deficiencies” in its security practices.

On Wednesday, TJX sought to quash the 11th-hour subpoena, calling it a “diversion and a sideshow.” In a motion and memo filed with the court, the company took issue with Gonzalez’s characterization of its security. (.pdf)

“TJX firmly denies that it was negligent, but it is not on trial in this proceeding,” the company wrote. “Defendant’s responsibility for the loss suffered by TJX is not mitigated by accusations against TJX.”

The company pointed out that at least 11.2 million payment cards were stolen from the TJX intrusion alone. If the government calculated the potential loss at $500 per card (per federal guidelines) the impact of the intrusion would exceed $400 million.

The string of hacks began in 2005 when Gonzalez and accomplices conducted war-driving expeditions along a Miami highway and other locations in search of poorly protected wireless networks, and found easy access into several retailer networks.

Once inside a local TJX outlet’s network, the hackers forged their way upstream to its corporate network in Massachusetts. Gonzalez obtained a packet sniffer from best friend Stephen Watt, which he and accomplices installed on the TJX network to siphon transaction data in real time, including the magstripe data on the credit and debit cards.

The stolen magstripe data was routed to servers Gonzalez leased in Latvia and Ukraine, and ultimately passed to master Ukrainian card seller Maksym “Maksik” Yastremskiy, who peddled them to other carders in the underground, accepting payment through web currencies, such as E-Gold and Web Money, or direct bank-account deposits to Eastern Europe. Maksik’s customers programmed the magstripe data onto counterfeit credit cards.

Yastremskiy, whom authorities say earned $11 million from card sales, was captured in Turkey in 2007 while on vacation and was sentenced in 2009 to 30 years in prison by a Turkish court. U.S. authorities seized a treasure trove of data from his computer that helped build a case against Gonzalez.

Some of Gonzalez’s breaches were the first known intrusions to involve the decryption of PIN codes, the holy grail of bank card security. According to court documents, Gonzalez sought out accomplices in Eastern Europe to crack the PINs. Gonzalez’s associates programmed blank cards with debit card magstripe data and used them with the stolen PINs to siphon money from ATMs.

Authorities found 16.3 million stolen card numbers on Gonzalez’s leased Latvian server. Another 27.5 million stolen numbers were found on the server in Ukraine.

But this wasn’t the first of Gonzalez’s carding crimes. His initial run-in with law enforcement began in 2003, when he was arrested for making fraudulent ATM withdrawals in New York. Under the nickname “Cumbajohnny,” he was at the time a top administrator on a carding site called Shadowcrew, where crooks trafficked in stolen bank card data and other goods.

When the Secret Service discovered his central role in the carding community, the agency cut him loose and put him to work undercover on the site, where he lured his associates into using a supposedly secure VPN for their internet traffic, which was actually wiretapped by the Secret Service’s New Jersey office.

The undercover sting operation, known as “Operation Firewall,” ended in October 2004 with coordinated raids that resulted in the arrest of 28 members of the site, which agents subsequently closed.

At that point, Gonzalez, still on pre-trial release from his 2003 arrest, moved back to Miami. He continued to help the Secret Service, though he was now on salary with the agency earning $75,000 a year.

Simultaneous to his government crime-fighting work, however, he adopted a new nick, “segvec,” and resumed his criminal activity under the noses of the agents who were paying him, ramping up his activities to a level that far exceeded any crimes he’d committed before his arrest, or any staged by the Operation Firewall defendants.

Authorities, who had no idea the “segvec” they were furiously chasing for more than a year was their salaried informant, finally figured it out and nabbed Gonzalez in May 2008. A few months later, during interrogations, he directed authorities to a stash of $1.1 million in cash that he’d buried in a barrel in the backyard of his parents’ home.

In addition to this cash, the government has seized Gonzalez’s Miami condo, a 2006 BMW, a Glock 27 firearm, a currency counter, a Tiffany diamond ring given to his former fiance and three Rolex watches that Gonzalez gave to his father and others as gifts.

Gonzalez’s sentencing this week follows two others related to the TJX hacks. Last December, Stephen Watt, a former coder for Morgan Stanley, was sentenced to two years in prison for providing the sniffer that Gonzalez used in the TJX hack. Watt was also ordered to pay restitution to TJX, jointly with other accomplices, in the amount of $171.5 million.

Earlier this month, Humza Zaman, a former network security manager at Barclays Bank, was sentenced to 46 months in prison and fined $75,000 for serving as a money courier for Gonzalez. He was charged with laundering between $600,000 and $800,000 for Gonzalez.

Gonzalez’s sentence is among the stiffest imposed for a financial crime, and the longest U.S. prison term in history for hacking. It beats out a sentence recently imposed on hacker Max Ray Vision, who received 13 years in prison for similar crimes.

On Friday, Gonzalez will be sentenced in another case involving breaches at Heartland Payment Systems — a New Jersey card-processing company — Hannaford Brothers supermarket chain, 7-Eleven and two national retailers that are unidentified in court documents. These hacks involved more than 130 million debit and credit card numbers. He faces a likely sentence of between 17 and 25 years in that case.

Under the plea agreements, the sentences will be served concurrently.

Updated 15:55.

Top photo of Albert Gonzalez courtesy of Stephen Watt

See Also:

* Secret Service Paid TJX Hacker $75,000 a Year
* Gonzalez Accomplice Gets Probation for Selling Browser Exploit
* TJX Hacking Conspirator Gets 4 Years
* Former Morgan Stanley Coder Gets 2 Years in Prison for TJX Hack
* TJX Hacker Was Awash in Cash; His Penniless Coder Faces Prison
* TJX Hacker ‘Will Never Commit Any Crime Again’
* Document Reveals TJX Hacker’s Assistance to Prosecutors
* In Gonzalez Hacking Case, a High-Stakes Fight Over a Ukrainian’s Laptop
* TJX Hacker Charged With Heartland, Hannaford Breaches
* Former Teen Hacker’s Suicide Linked to TJX Probe
* Indicted Federal Informant Allegedly Strong-Armed Hacker Into Caper That Drew 9-Year Sentence
* TJX Failed to Notice Thieves Moving 80-GBytes of Data on Its Network

Tags: Albert Gonzalez, breach, carding, gonzalez, hack, tjx

Read More http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/03/tjx-sentencing/#ixzz0jEtVnKW3

By Rachel Ehrenberg - Chemical Fingerprints Could Finger Weapons Makers

2010-03-25T20:36:00.001-04:00

SAN FRANCISCO — Finding out whodunit in chemical warfare cases may be aided by scientists focused on the howdunit.

Researchers have developed a technique to ascertain the chemical fingerprint of compounds such as mustard gas, rat poison and nerve agents such as VX. Figuring out the details of how these compounds were created in the first place could provide vital clues to law enforcement agencies aiming to catch chemical warfare criminals and help guide first responders as they gather evidence.

Chemical forensics typically focuses on identifying the compound in question, but chemist Audrey Martin and her colleagues at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California wanted to take these analyses a step further. “If we already know this was a chemical attack using mustard gas, now we want to know who made it,” said Martin, who presented the research March 22 in a poster session at a meeting of the American Chemical Society held in San Francisco. “We’re looking at the next step — where did this come from?”

The technique relies on the fact that there are often many routes to the same chemical — for example there are 12 different ways of making sulfur mustard gas. Depending on the route and the ingredients, there are various chemical by-products, impurities and unreacted ingredients in the final product. The presence and proportions of these molecules can provide clues to how the compound was made, said Martin. In some cases, such as with the rat poison tetramine, one synthetic route might be ruled out entirely by the presence of a particular ingredient. Signatures of the reaction conditions, such as temperature and pressure, may also be hidden in the final product.

So far, the Lawrence Livermore team has determined these various chemical signatures for a handful of compounds, including Sarin gas and the toxic nerve agent VX. The team is also documenting how these chemicals evolve over time, so scientists can tell if something has been sitting around for five minutes, 20 minutes or a week.

Martin has developed a computer application that she can feed these signatures into, minimizing time spent manually comparing chemical profiles. The researchers are also investigating how such agents interact with food and surfaces such as tile, plastic and metal. This information could help guide first responders charged with sampling a contaminated area, said Martin.

“It’s not a smoking gun,” she cautions. But if a suspect was seen purchasing a particular ingredient, or has a telltale residue on a shirtsleeve, the method might help clinch a case.

Image: ORNL

Tags: ACS, Chemistry, LLNL, ScienceNews.org, weapons

Also on Wired.com

Mass internet scams increasing rapidly

2010-03-08T19:58:00.001-05:00

By Dene Mackenzie on Tue, 9 Mar 2010

Blogs | Internet | Mack-Line

Internet security remains an issue and although Mack-line has written about the need to be careful, a story breaking late last week has prompted a new warning.

Authorities in the United States smashed one of the world's biggest networks of virus-infected computers.

It was a data vacuum that stole credit cards and online banking credentials from as many as 12.7 million poisoned PCs.

The "botnet" of infected computers included PCs inside more than half of the Fortune 1000 companies.

More than 40 major banks were infiltrated, according to investigators.

Spanish investigators have arrested the three alleged ringleaders of the so-called Mariposa botnet, which grew into one of the biggest weapons of cybercrime.

More arrests are expected soon in other countries, and that is unusual.

The masterminds behind the biggest botnets are not often taken down.

Virus warnings have been appearing regularly on a computer owned by a friend.

Despite running regular scans, uninstalling WindowsLive, as messages with questionable links were being sent to and from Live contacts, the warnings remain.

Symantec reported last week that by the end of February, it was already seeing several of its 2010 cyber security predictions come true.

Here are some hard numbers for Mack-line readers to think about:More than 75% of businesses have suffered a cyber attack in the past 12 months.

Credit cards are the top item for sale.

Credit card information is the most commonly advertised item for sale in the underground economy, accounting for 18% of all goods and services.

Banks get phished, with 76% of brands used in phising attacks so far this year being in the financial sector.

News agendas drive attacks.

The earthquake in Haiti was sadly followed by an increase in the volume of scam and phishing messages as spammers used the event for their benefit.

While businesses and consumers alike are attracted by the flexibility of online banking, it should be noted that this, too, carries inherent security risks.

Internet security firm AVG reported that Australian Bureau of Statistics research found six million people were exposed to scams and frauds during any given year and more than 800,000 fell victim in some way.

AVG Australia-New Zealand marketing manager Lloyd Borrett said the use of the internet by cyber criminals to mass-market fraudulent schemes was unprecedented and increasing rapidly.

The threats posed by online banking might be more acute, given the dangers associated with so-called "insider threats".

Online banking provided a new channel for internal or external criminals to steal money or confidential information.

AVG research showed 85% of people now used the internet for shopping, and more than two-thirds did their banking online.

"Banks could also be doing more," he said.

"The use of drop-down menus as part of the log-in process can help defeat key-logging software."

Criminals used key-logging software to record key-strokes.

Drop-down menus could not be recorded in that way, as they were activated by the user's mouse.

Last week, Mack-line's Otago Daily Times email and various others used - Gmail, Fastmail and Yahoo!Xtra - received "requests" from three New Zealand banks to update details.

That scam is an oldie but a goodie.

Do not be fooled into providing your details.

Mack-line deals with three banks and Credit Union South.

The BNZ and the credit union both provide a second level of security when logging in.

Westpac regularly asks you to change your password.

National Bank is a new addition, so there is no update on what it's security measures are.

Be aware when you are banking or shopping online.

Check that an online internet payment system has a padlock symbol displayed in either the bottom right-hand corner of the web page or in the address bar, and never access an online payment system via a link contained in an email.

Security Hardware & IT Security Software: Cloud Computing's 7 Deadliest Security Risks

2010-03-08T19:53:00.000-05:00

At the RSA security conference, cloud security was top of mind for many, and none more so than the Cloud Security Alliance. Founded last year, the CSA is promoting best practices for securing cloud environments and educating users as to how the cloud can help secure other forms of computing. To that end, the CSA has a list of the seven biggest security hurdles for enterprises looking to adopt cloud technologies. Though not quite the seven deadly sins, any of these can send an enterprise to a purgatory of data breaches, notifications and lawsuits. Here is the CSA's list of the security challenges and what do to about them.

Trapping Sunlight With Silicon Nanowires

2010-03-07T15:33:00.001-05:00

ScienceDaily (Mar. 5, 2010) — Solar cells made from silicon are projected to be a prominent factor in future renewable green energy equations, but so far the promise has far exceeded the reality. While there are now silicon photovoltaics that can convert sunlight into electricity at impressive 20 percent efficiencies, the cost of this solar power is prohibitive for large-scale use. Researchers with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), however, are developing a new approach that could substantially reduce these costs. The key to their success is a better way of trapping sunlight.

"Through the fabrication of thin films from ordered arrays of vertical silicon nanowires we've been able to increase the light-trapping in our solar cells by a factor of 73," says chemist Peidong Yang, who led this research. "Since the fabrication technique behind this extraordinary light-trapping enhancement is a relatively simple and scalable aqueous chemistry process, we believe our approach represents an economically viable path toward high-efficiency, low-cost thin-film solar cells."

Yang holds joint appointments with Berkeley Lab's Materials Sciences Division, and the University of California Berkeley's Chemistry Department. He is a leading authority on semiconductor nanowires -- one-dimensional strips of materials whose width measures only one-thousandth that of a human hair but whose length may stretch several microns.

"Typical solar cells are made from very expensive ultrapure single crystal silicon wafers that require about 100 micrometers of thickness to absorb most of the solar light, whereas our radial geometry enables us to effectively trap light with nanowire arrays fabricated from silicon films that are only about eight micrometers thick," he says. "Furthermore, our approach should in principle allow us to use metallurgical grade or "dirty" silicon rather than the ultrapure silicon crystals now required, which should cut costs even further."

Yang has described this research in a paper published in the journal NANO Letters, which he co-authored with Erik Garnett, a chemist who was then a member of Yang's research group.

Generating Electricity from Sunlight

At the heart of all solar cells are two separate layers of material, one with an abundance of electrons that functions as a negative pole, and one with an abundance of electron holes (positively-charged energy spaces) that functions as a positive pole. When photons from the sun are absorbed, their energy is used to create electron-hole pairs, which are then separated at the interface between the two layers and collected as electricity.

Because of its superior photo-electronic properties, silicon remains the photovoltaic semiconductor of choice but rising demand has inflated the price of the raw material. Furthermore, because of the high-level of crystal purification required, even the fabrication of the simplest silicon-based solar cell is a complex, energy-intensive and costly process.

Yang and his group are able to reduce both the quantity and the quality requirements for silicon by using vertical arrays of nanostructured radial p-n junctions rather than conventional planar p-n junctions. In a radial p-n junction, a layer of n-type silicon forms a shell around a p-type silicon nanowire core. As a result, photo-excited electrons and holes travel much shorter distances to electrodes, eliminating a charge-carrier bottleneck that often arises in a typical silicon solar cell. The radial geometry array also, as photocurrent and optical transmission measurements by Yang and Garrett revealed, greatly improves light trapping.

"Since each individual nanowire in the array has a p-n junction, each acts as an individual solar cell," Yang says. "By adjusting the length of the nanowires in our arrays, we can increase their light-trapping path length."

While the conversion efficiency of these solar nanowires was only about five to six percent, Yang says this efficiency was achieved with little effort put into surface passivation, antireflection, and other efficiency-increasing modifications.

"With further improvements, most importantly in surface passivation, we think it is possible to push the efficiency to above 10 percent," Yang says.

Combining a 10 percent or better conversion efficiency with the greatly reduced quantities of starting silicon material and the ability to use metallurgical grade silicon, should make the use of silicon nanowires an attractive candidate for large-scale development.

As an added plus Yang says, "Our technique can be used in existing solar panel manufacturing processes."

This research was funded by the National Science Foundation's Center of Integrated Nanomechanical Systems.Journal Reference:

Erik Garnett and Peidong Yang. Light Trapping in Silicon Nanowire Solar Cells. Nano Letters, 2010; 100202130154041 DOI: 10.1021/nl100161z

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Adapted from materials provided by DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Breakthrough Reveals Blood Vessel Cells Are Key to Growing Unlimited Amounts of Adult Stem Cells

2010-03-07T15:31:00.000-05:00

ScienceDaily (Mar. 7, 2010) — In a leap toward making stem cell therapy widely available, researchers at the Ansary Stem Cell Institute at Weill Cornell Medical College have discovered that endothelial cells, the most basic building blocks of the vascular system, produce growth factors that can grow copious amounts of adult stem cells and their progeny over the course of weeks. Until now, adult stem cell cultures would die within four or five days despite best efforts to grow them.

"This is groundbreaking research with potential application for regeneration of organs and inhibition of cancer cell growth," said Dr. Antonio M. Gotto Jr., the Stephen and Suzanne Weiss Dean of Weill Cornell Medical College and Provost for Medical Affairs of Cornell University.

This new finding sets forth the innovative concept that blood vessels are not just passive conduits for delivery of oxygen and nutrients, but are also programmed to maintain and proliferate stem cells and their mature forms in adult organs. Using a novel approach to harness the potential of endothelial cells by "co-culturing" them with stem cells, the researchers discovered the means to manufacture an unlimited supply of blood-related stem cells that may eventually ensure that anyone who needs a bone marrow transplant can get one.

The vascular-cell model established in this study could also be used to grow abundant functional stem cells from other organs such as the brain, heart, skin and lungs. An article detailing these findings appears in the March 5 issue of the journal Cell Stem Cell.

In adult organs, there are few naturally occurring stem cells, so using them for organ regeneration is impractical. Until now, strategies to expand cultures of adult stem cells, which invariably used animal-based growth factors, serum, and genetically manipulated feeder cells, have only been marginally successful. This study, which employs endothelial cells to propagate stem cells without added growth factors and serum, will likely revolutionize the use of adult stem cells for organ regeneration, as well as decipher the complex physiology of the adult stem cells.

"This study will have a major impact on the treatment of any blood-related disorder that requires a stem cell transplant," says the study's senior author, Dr. Shahin Rafii, the Arthur B. Belfer Professor in Genetic Medicine, co-director of the Ansary Stem Cell Institute and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, at Weill Cornell Medical College. Currently, stem cells derived from bone marrow or umbilical cord blood are used to treat patients who require bone marrow transplants. Most stem cell transplants are successful, but because of the shortage of genetically matched bone marrow and umbilical cord blood cells, many patients cannot benefit from the procedure.

"Over the last few decades, substantial funding has been spent to develop platforms to expand adult stem cell cultures, but these efforts have never been able to coax an authentic adult stem cell to self-renew beyond a few days," continues Dr. Rafii. "Most stem cells, even in the presence of multiple growth factors, serum, and support from generic non-endothelial stromal cells, die after a few days. Now, employing our endothelial stem cell co-cultures, we can propagate bona fide adult stem cells in the absence of external factors and serum beyond 21 days with an expansion index of more than 400-fold."

If this vascular-based stem cell expansion strategy continues to be validated, physicians could use any source of hematopoietic (blood-producing) stem cells, propagate them exponentially, and bank the cells for transplantation into patients.

In a true first, the study demonstrates how this novel vascular cell platform or "vascular niche" can self-renew adult hematopoietic stem cells for weeks, both in vitro and in vivo, by co-culturing them on a bed of endothelial cells. The researchers chose endothelial cells because they are in close contact with blood stem cells, and previous work from Dr. Rafii's lab had demonstrated that endothelial cells produce novel stem-cell-active growth factors. However, maintenance of the endothelial cells is cumbersome and if they are not "fed" specific substances, such as growth factors known as "angiogenic factors," they immediately die. To get around this problem, the researchers genetically engineered the endothelial cells to stay in a long-term survival state by inserting a recently discovered gene cloned from adenoviruses, which does not promote oncogenic transformation of the human cells. This earlier discovery, using a single gene to put endothelial cells into a long-lasting "suspended animation" state without harming their ability to produce blood vessels, was also discovered in Dr. Rafii's lab and published in the journal Proceedings of National Academy Sciences in 2008.

Endothelial Cells Could Generate Stem Cells and Their Differentiated Progeny

In this study, the researchers also discovered that endothelial cells not only could expand stem cells, but also instruct stem cells to generate mature differentiated progeny that could form immune cells, platelets, and red and white blood cells, all of which constitute functioning blood.

"We are the first group to demonstrate that endothelial cells elaborate a repertoire of stem-cell-active growth factors that not only stimulate stem cell expansion but also orchestrate differentiation of these stem cells into their mature progeny," says Dr. Jason Butler, a senior investigator at Weill Cornell Medical College and first author of the study. "For example, we have found that expression of specific stem-cell-active factors, namely Notch-ligands, by the endothelial cells lining the wall of working blood vessels promote proliferation of the blood-forming stem cells. Inhibition of these specific factors on the endothelial cells resulted in the failure of the regeneration of the blood-forming stem cells. These findings suggest that endothelial cells directly, through expression of stem-cell-active cytokines, promote stem cell reconstitution."

Further describing this innovative concept, in a high-impact article published in the January 2010 issue of Nature Reviews Cancer, Drs. Rafii and Butler, and Dr. Hideki Kobayashi, who is also a co-author of the current study, have elaborated on specific endothelial cell-produced growth factors that promote the growth of tumor cells besides stem cells.

Development of the vascular-cell technology that supports long-lasting growth of stem cells will also allow scientists to generate abundant sources of functional and malignant stem cells for genetic and basic studies. This study has also resolved a long-standing controversy in which several groups had claimed that bone-forming cells (osteoblasts) exclusively support the expansion of blood-forming stem cells. "However, using a highly sophisticated molecular imaging approach, we show that regenerating blood-forming stem cells in the bone marrow are in intimate contact with the blood vessels, indicating that endothelial cells are the predominant regulator of stem cell repopulation in the adult bone marrow," states Dr. Daniel Nolan, a senior scientist in Dr. Rafii's lab and a co-author of the new study.

One other important concern addressed in this study was whether forced expansion of the stem cells over a long period of time would induce cancerous mutations in the stem cells. However, the authors of this study show that, even after one year, there was no indication of tumor formation, such as leukemias, when the expanded stem cells were transplanted back into mice. This suggests that the endothelial cells provide a milieu that proliferates stem cells without creating cancer risk.

The current breakthrough represents the culmination of many years of work by Dr. Rafii and his lab, including their research in converting adult mouse spermatogonial stem cells to endothelial cells (Nature, September 2007) and in deriving stable, copious endothelial cells from human embryonic stem cells (Nature Biotechnology, Jan. 17, 2010).

The ability to generate many stable endothelial cells from human embryonic stem cells leads to new research opportunities, according to Dr. Zev Rosenwaks, who is a co-author in this study and director and physician-in-chief of the Ronald O. Perelman and Claudia Cohen Center for Reproductive Medicine, as well as the director of the Tri-Institutional Stem Cell Initiative Derivation Unit at Weill Cornell Medical College.

Dr. Rosenwaks says, "Generation of endothelial cells derived from diseased embryonic stem cells that are being propagated in our Derivation Unit will open up new avenues of research to molecularly eavesdrop on the communication between vascular cells and stem cells. This innovative line of investigation -- to determine how normal and abnormal human vascular cells induce the formation of organs during development of embryos and how dysfunction of endothelial cells results in developmental defects -- will lay the foundation for novel platforms for therapeutic organ regeneration."

Dr. Rafii sees even more opportunities. "Identification of as yet unrecognized growth factors produced by human embryonic cell-derived endothelium and adult endothelial cells that support stem cell expansion and differentiation will establish a new arena in stem cell biology. We will be able to selectively activate endothelial cells not only to induce organ regeneration, but also to inhibit specifically the production of endothelial cell-derived factors in order to block the growth of tumors. Our findings are the first steps toward such goals and they highlight the potential of vascular cells for generating sufficient stem cells for therapeutic organ regeneration, tumor targeting, and gene therapy applications," concludes Dr. Rafii.

Co-authors include Daniel J. Nolan, Eva L. Vertes, Hideki Kobayashi, Andrea T. Hooper, Koji Shido, Ian A. White, Mariko Kobayashi, Yuki Kimura and Marco Seandel of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Department of Genetic Medicine and Ansary Stem Cell Institute at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center; Zev Rosenwaks, Chad May and Larry Witte of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center; Carrie Shawber and Jan Kitajewski at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center; Barbara Varnum-Finney of ImClone Systems Incorporated; and Irwin D. Bernstein at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle. The study received funding from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

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Adapted from materials provided by Weill Cornell Medical College.

Journal Reference:

Jason M. Butler, Daniel J. Nolan, Eva L. Vertes, Barbara Varnum-Finney, Hideki Kobayashi, Andrea T. Hooper, Marco Seandel, Koji Shido, Ian A. White, Mariko Kobayashi, Larry Witte, Chad May, Carrie Shawber, Yuki Kimura, Jan Kitajewski, Zev Rosenwaks, Irwin D. Bernstein, Shahin Rafii. Endothelial Cells Are Essential for the Self-Renewal and Repopulation of Notch-Dependent Hematopoietic Stem Cells. Cell Stem Cell, 2010; 6 (3): 251-264 DOI: 10.1016/j.stem.2010.02.001

Human Aging Gene Found In Flies

2010-03-07T15:30:00.001-05:00

ScienceDaily (May 12, 2008) — Scientists funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) have found a fast and effective way to investigate important aspects of human aging. Working at the University of Oxford and The Open University, Dr Lynne Cox and Dr Robert Saunders have discovered a gene in fruit flies that means flies can now be used to study the effects aging has on DNA. In new work published today in the journal Aging Cell, the researchers demonstrate the value of this model in helping us to understand the aging process. This exciting study demonstrates that fruit flies can be used to study critical aspects of human aging at cellular, genetic and biochemical levels.

Dr Lynne Cox from the University of Oxford said: "We study a premature human aging disease called Werner syndrome to help us understand normal aging. The key to this disease is that changes in a single gene (called WRN) mean that patients age very quickly. Scientists have made great progress in working out what this gene does in the test tube, but until now we haven’t been able to investigate the gene to look at its effect on development and the whole body. By working on this gene in fruit flies, we can model human aging in a powerful experimental system."

Dr Robert Saunders from The Open University added: "This work shows for the first time that we can use the short-lived fruit fly to investigate the function of an important human aging gene. We have opened up the exciting possibility of using this model system to analyse the way that such genes work in a whole organism, not just in single cells.”

Dr Saunders, Dr Cox and colleagues have identified the fruit fly equivalent of the key human aging gene known as WRN. They find that flies with damage to this gene share important features with people suffering from the rapid aging condition Werner syndrome, who also have damage to the WRN gene. In particular, the DNA, or genetic blueprint, is unstable in the flies that have the damaged version of the gene and the chromosomes are often altered. The researchers show that the fly’s DNA becomes rearranged, with genes being swapped between chromosomes. In patients with Werner syndrome, this genome instability leads to cancer. Cells derived from Werner syndrome patients are extremely sensitive to a drug often used to treat cancers: the researchers show that the flies that have the damaged gene are killed by even very low doses of the drug.

Professor Nigel Brown, Director of Science and Technology, Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council said: "The aging population presents a major research challenge to the UK and we need effort to understand normal aging and the characteristics that accompany it."

"Fruit flies are already used as a model for the genetics behind mechanisms that underlie normal functioning of the human body and it is great news that this powerful research tool can be applied to such an important area of study into human health."

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Adapted from materials provided by Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.

Wyretap.net

EARTHQUAKE WARNING FROM RUSSIAN INSTITUTE of PHYSICS of the EARTH

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FBI Accused of Planting OpenBSD Backdoors 10 Years Ago

A former contractor accused the FBI of planting backdoors and side-channel key leaking mechanisms into the OpenBSD Cryptographic Framework 10 years ago.

An e-mail touched off a bit of a firestorm when a former government contractor alleged the FBI put backdoors and side-channel key leak mechanisms in the OpenBSD Cryptographic Framework some 10 years ago.

The e-mail, which was posted online here by OpenBSD founder Theo de Raadt, came from Gregory Perry, who is now CEO of GoVirtual Education.

“After I left NETSEC, I ended up becoming the recipient of a FISA-sanctioned investigation, presumably so that I would not talk about those various projects; my NDA recently expired so I am free to talk about whatever," he wrote.

In announcing the e-mail, de Raadt noted that since the first IPSEC stack was available for free, large parts of the code can be found in many projects and products.

“Over 10 years, the IPSEC code has gone through many changes and fixes, so it is unclear what the true impact of these allegations are,” he wrote.

So far, there is mixed opinion about Perry's accusations.

Still, Andrew Hay, an analyst with The 451 Group, said the ability to slip something malicious into the OpenBSD code is possible but unlikely due to thepossible political and social ramifications of the backdoor being discovered.

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