Last week I wrote about Terry Childs, the jailed network administrator for the City of San Francisco who, if the press is to be believed, went nutty, changed the admin passwords, and then locked everyone out of administration of city systems. It was the cyber equivalent of swallowing the key. In a twist to this […]
By PatB Contributing Writer, [GAS] US-CERT, the organization absorbed into the United States Department of Homeland Security in 2004, is keeping the Internet secure by coordinating the efforts of industry leaders and keeping those efforts top-secret. Yesterday, the biggest companies on the Internet, including Cisco, Microsoft and Sun Microsystems, came to a decision on security […]
This is potentially huge. Viacom, which owns MTV and Paramount Pictures, has been involved in a legal battle with YouTube (and now Google) over what Viacom alleges is massive copyright infringement of their property. Viacom claims to have identified 160,000 unauthorised clips of its programmes. Now, a US court has told Google that it must […]
Geeks, as we all know, rule the world. Would you like to be one, too? Maybe you’re not quite geek enough. Maybe you know somebody who is crying out to be a geek, but they don’t know where to start. Maybe – heavens, say it ain’t so – you don’t own a Blackberry. Or – […]
By PatB Contributing Writer, [GAS] When I worked at the Department of Homeland Security, I remembered hearing discussions about creating security by denying access to electronics or control systems. The idea was that in a crowd of people, like in a protest group or political rally, cell phones could be dampened in a region to […]
By JR Raphael Contributing Writer, [GAS] You may have been part of a scientific study and not even known it. New word is out this week that researchers used cell phone towers and call records to secretly track every step made by 100,000 people — without ever getting their permission. The study, conducted by Boston’s […]
By JR Raphael Contributing Writer, [GAS] Ah, the mystery of the lie detector. Can it really be beaten? George Constanza said trying to learn would be like asking Pavarotti to teach you his tricks. Well, grab your microphone and get ready. It’s time for you to hit the stage. The basics To beat a polygraph, […]
It seems that all domains aren’t created equal. According to a new study by McAfee, sites with names ending by “.hk,” “.cn,” and “.info” are among the most dangerous ones an Internet user can visit. The second annual McAfee “Mapping the Mal Web” report into the riskiest and safest places on the Web reveals that […]
With the increasing amount of WiFi hot spots everywhere, the FBI is warning people to be careful when connecting to unknown wireless networks. Without the proper protection, it is fairly easy for a villain to capture information broadcasted from your system while being connected to a rogue or compromised access point. Since most laptops are […]
By JR Raphael Contributing Writer, [GAS] A couple of Polish scientists have come up with a way to encode secret messages within the data of internet-based VoIP calls. The men, from the Institute of Telecommunications in Warsaw, designed a steganographic system — a special kind of code that allows content to be encrypted inside of […]