NEWS : TECH (NFPC)

Hacker Forces School-Massacre Tweeter Out

By Paul Wagenseil, TechNewsDaily

To the offending tweeter, Jester said he had "Skills that make me a nightmare for people like u." Credit: Dreamtime

Score another one for the Jester.

On Friday, Dec. 14, the shadowy "patriot hacker" was instrumental in taking down a Twitter account that mocked the victims of that morning's Newtown, Conn., elementary school massacre.

The account, at @z0bm13d, used a news photo of a bloodied, crying child as its wallpaper, and a photo of a little boy wearing bloody zombie makeup as its icon. Its displayed name was "Sandy Hook Victim."

ANALYSIS: I'm a Hacker, Not a Crook

"I now have more holes that my daddy can [have sex with]," the account posted. "I forgive Ryan Lanza for what he did to me."

(Ryan Lanza of Hoboken, N.J., was erroneously named by several news outlets Friday as the Newtown shooter. The killer was actually his younger brother, Adam Lanza, who appeared to have been carrying identification naming him as Ryan Lanza.)

Public Outcry

It's not clear how quickly the alarm was raised, but on Friday evening a Twitter account at @GonzoPhD posted, "I never do this so listen to me this one time — report this sick piece of [garbage] .@z0mb13d for parodying today's shootings."

The Jester, whose Twitter account is @th3j35t3r, and whose activities are mostly limited to attacking Islamic extremist websites, noticed and tried to alert Twitter management directly.

"@twitter @support @safety 'FIX' THIS >> @z0mb13d," he tweeted. "Retrieve any IP details logged, pass to LEA's, I'd be happy to give perp some 'bad news'."

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But it seemed the Jester, who has managed to keep his own identity secret, wasn't willing to wait for Twitter to take action.

"Only hope is a very clever SE [social engineering] attack," he tweeted. "@z0mb13d I have a very particular set of skills acquired over a long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like u."

(Twitter refused to comment for this story. The Jester did not respond to a request for comment.)

Connecting the Dots

First, the Jester said, he looked at @z0mb13d's followers and quickly correlated them to a similarly named group in the Steam online-gaming community.

"Guy behind this despicable account >@z0mb13d is part of 'zomb13' gaming crew on steam, look at his followers, then look at steam," the Jester wrote. "How long b4 one of ur 'buddies' rats u out as pressure mounts?"

ANALYSIS: Hackers for Hire

Within a couple of hours, the Jester dug up and posted a partial telephone number belonging to a friend of the @z0mb13d account owner.

Around the same time one of @z0mb13d's first followers, whose account bore the same handle as a member of the gaming crew, closed his Twitter account.

An hour later, the Jester had linked the offensive account to an Indiana college student who worked at Dairy Queen and liked the horror-rap group Insane Clown Posse — and @z0mb13d had been suspended by Twitter.

Just as soon as that small victory was achieved, however, another threat to online decency presented itself.

The Westboro Baptist Church, famed for picketing military funerals with "God Hates Fags" signs, promised via Twitter to do the same at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Soon afterwards, the Jester posted another tweet: "#WBC #Westboro baptist church site .godhatesfags.com — seems to be experiencing 'technical difficulties'."

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Bill Gives Feds Warrantless Email Surveillance

A Senate proposal originally drafted to protect American's email privacy has taken a dramatic detour. In fact, it's turning around and heading in the opposite direction.

The original bill, backed by Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee Patrick Leahy, required that government agencies obtain search warrants before accessing email accounts. According to CNET's Declan McCullagh, a new version of the bill does away with all the middle men and actually gives government agencies warrantless access to Americans' email accounts. The bill is up for vote next Thursday (November 29.)

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Leahy's revision would give more than 22  government agencies access to email, Google Docs files, Facebook posts, even Twitter direct messages, without probable cause. In some scenarios, the bill also gives the FBI and Homeland Security full access to Internet accounts without the approval of the owner or a judge.

DNEWS VIDEO: COOL JOBS: HACKER

Law enforcement groups, such as the National District Attorney's Association, and Justice Department officials objected to Leahy's original bill. Detractors worried that requiring a warrant to access email accounts could impede criminal investigations.

Citing ongoing legislature discussions, an aide to the Senate Judiciary committee declined CNET a comment on the matter. In light of former CIA director David Petraeus' email scandal, Marc Rotenberg, head of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, did tell CNET that "even the Department of Justice should concede that there's a need for more judicial oversight," not less.

Agencies granted this warrantless surveillance power include any executive department, military department, government corporation, government-controlled corporation or other establishment in the executive branch of the government. Also included is a long list of independent regulatory agencies, such as the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Federal Communications Commission, just to name a few.

BLOG: Government Surveillance On Citizens Rising

Such a hodgepodge list has rankled Markham Erickson, a lawyer in Washington D.C. who has kept a close eye on the legislation. Speaking not for his corporate clients, Erickson aired his concerns to CNET:

There is no good legal reason why federal regulatory agencies such as the [National Labor Relations Board], [Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission], [Securities and Exchange Commission] or FTC need to access customer information service providers with a mere subpoena. If those agencies feel they do not have the tools to do their jobs adequately, they should work with the appropriate authorizing committees to explore solutions. The Senate Judiciary committee is really not in a position to adequately make those determinations.

In many cases, police will still be required to obtain search warrants -- except when an "emergency" situation is declared -- but the new bill is in stark contrast to the original draft. Tech companies are likely to furrow their brow over these new proposals. What about you?

via CNET

Credit: Images.com/Corbis

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New Jersey To Allow Voting By Email, Fax

On Saturday, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's administration announced that voters displaced by Hurricane Sandy will be allowed to vote via email or fax.

"This has been an extraordinary storm that has created unthinkable destruction across our state and we know many people have questions about how and where to cast their vote in Tuesday's election. To help alleviate pressure on polling places, we encourage voters to either use electronic voting or the extended hours at county offices to cast their vote," said Lt. Governor Kim Guadagno in a press release.

DNEWS VIDEO: COOL JOBS: HACKER

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To cast their ballot electronically, displaced voters must submit a mail-in ballot application either by e-mail or fax to their county clerk. Once the application is approved, the clerk will send a ballot back to the voter, either by email or fax. Voters must email or fax their e-ballots no later than 8 p.m. on election day.

E-voters will also be sent a "waiver of secrecy form" that essentially waives their right to privacy since election officials will have to crosscheck names on the e-ballot application with voter registration lists.

New Jersey is not expected to be a close race, as Barack Obama is currently polling approximately 10 points higher than Mitt Romney.

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Had New Jersey been a swing state, considering e-voting's vast potential for fraud, this initiative surely would have come under more scrutiny. But for now, score one for state officials making sure Sandy's fallout doesn't destroy New Jersey citizens' right to vote.

via NJ.com

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Silent Circle Promises Spy-Proof Calls

Your communication online can be easy, or it can be encrypted. Good luck combining both: Any service secure enough to defeat eavesdropping by three-letter government agencies has come with a payload of added complexity.

A new company called Silent Circle says it's cracked that equation. And it has credentials to make such a claim: Its founders include one of the most famous names in cryptography, Pretty Good Privacy developer Phil Zimmermann, plus other security experts and several U.S. and British special-operations veterans.

"PGP" exhibited the promise and peril of strong cryptography when it debuted in 1991. This open-source software worked well enough for the U.S. government to investigate Zimmermann (the feds dropped the case in 1996), but it was sufficiently tricky that relatively few people adopted it.

ANALYSIS: Unlimited Security Suite Protects All Devices

Silent Circle promises the same uncrackable encryption in simple iOS and Windows apps for voice, video and text-message communication, with Android support coming later. That's a compelling pitch, and it's gotten this National Harbor, Md., firm attention after its Oct. 15 launch.

I've been trying its iOS Silent Phone and Silent Text apps since. They generally work as advertised--but some rough edges and a $20 monthly fee may limit their reach.

One holdup involved its setup. After you create an account at Silent Circle's site, you must generate a different activation code there to type into each app you install; its apps don't explain this step well.

DNEWS VIDEO: COOL JOBS: HACKER

After that, however, the encryption becomes invisible. When you contact another Silent Circle user, the two apps quickly exchange data to set up a one-time encryption key; you both confirm it worked by verifying that you see the same sequence of words in the app. In one call, this was the unintentionally-timely "stormy handiwork"; in a text, it was "Uniform Quebec One One."

After each exchange, the software destroys that key after computing a "hash" value from it, which it will use to generate the next one-time key. The company never sees each key.

Silent Circle says it will publish its source code for others to inspect. Matthew Green, a computer-science professor at Johns Hopkins University, is waiting for that but said its system "looks like a pretty solid protocol."

Green also noted one unavoidable vulnerability: You can be spoofed if somebody takes a caller's phone and imitates their voice. Zimmermann called that the "Rich Little attack" at a meeting in September.

ANALYSIS: Eye Movements Could ID Computer Users

Christopher Soghoian, a privacy researcher with the American Civil Liberties Union, also wanted to see Silent Circle show its code so outside researchers could "beat up their text encryption protocol" to test for any vulnerabilities.

(My conversations with Green and Soghoian happened over unencrypted e-mail.)

Over a series of calls, I ran into a different issue: audio dropped out briefly, and video calling suffered from sluggish frame rates and sometimes the absence of audio. There's also no voicemail.

The Silent Text app requires more trust, since you can't verify a person's identity by their voice in it. Its "Burn Notice" feature can wipe messages after a preset interval, but you can defeat that with screen captures.

In the coming weeks, Silent Circle plans to offer the option to call conventional numbers from the app--which could help travelers calling the U.S. from countries that tap phone lines. A Silent Mail service is also on the way.

The company has already drawn business from governments and corporations (not to mention some anxiety from the latter), and it will offer free service to human-rights organizations. Will individuals pay $20 a month for calls no government can tap? You tell me.

Credit: Rob Pegoraro/Discovery

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Drone Missile Kills Electronics, Not People

As modern warfare continues to be fought behind key boards and monitors, last week Boeing successfully tested a missile capable of making screens go blank. Boeing says their Counter-electronics High-powered Advanced Missile Project known as CHAMP may one day change modern warfare by knocking out electronic targets with little or no collateral damage.

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Here's how Boeing described the event:

DNEWS VIDEO: COOL JOBS: HACKER

CHAMP approached its first target and fired a burst of High Power Microwaves at a two story building built on the test range. Inside rows of personal computers and electrical systems were turned on to gauge the effects of the powerful radio waves.

Seconds later the PC monitors went dark and cheers erupted in the conference room. CHAMP had successfully knocked out the computer and electrical systems in the target building. Even the television cameras set up to record the test were knocked off line without collateral damage.

In one hour, seven test-range targets were hit and all electronics inside the buildings were degraded and defeated.

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"This technology marks a new era in modern-day warfare," said Keith Coleman, CHAMP program manager for Boeing Phantom Works. "In the near future, this technology may be used to render an enemy's electronic and data systems useless even before the first troops or aircraft arrive."

So, uh, al Qaeda, you know those Sexy Tanja videos you like to make and watch in your free time? Heads up.

via io9

Credit: Boeing

 

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Eye Movements Could ID Computer Users

The password is becoming passé. Every week it seems, someone is proposing a new method for authenticating computer users when they attempt to access email or a bank account. There are finger swipes, brain patterns, palm prints, and even butt-prints. Now we can add eye movements to the list.

Oleg Komogortsev, an assistant professor in the computer science department at Texas State University-San Marcos thinks that how a person's eyes focus when he looks at an object can be as individual as a fingerprint. 

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Eyes make two kinds of movements. One is called a saccade, which is a swift, jerky motion that results when a person focuses. The other is called a fixation, which is when the eye rests on a given point. Our brains edit out the saccades most of the time, giving the illusion of continuous vision, but if you look closely at another person's eyes it's possible to see the saccades.

Komogortsev designed a system that tracks the eyes, using several different kinds of stimuli -- reading, looking for a dot on a screen and the classic Rorschach ink blots. With enough data, a computer can build up a picture of how an individual's eyes move.

Write WIth Your Eyes

The technology is still in its infancy. One problem is that it recognizes the wrong person about one time in three, which is nowhere near good enough.

But it could be combined with are other types of biometric authentication that rely on the eyes, such as retinal scans, which analyze the pattern of blood vessels on the retina or iris scans, which analyze the pattern in the iris. Neither of these technologies are fool-proof. Retinal patterns can change due to certain diseases or age, and iris scans can be fooled by high-quality pictures of the eye.

When combined with Komogortsev's eye movement solution, the error rate for iris scans drops to about 5 percent, which is more in line with other technologies.

Via TechNewsDaily

Credit: Wikimedia Commons / Jake Maheu

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Internet Pirates: Your Days Are Numbered

Lend me thine ears ye scurvy pirates pillaging the World Wide Web, a vigilant armada will soon be on thy trail. By year's end, the nation's major Internet service providers will launch a six-strikes-an-you're-out initiative that may put a damper on your plundering days of wide-spread downloading.

The "Copyright Alert System" strategy (CAS), backed by the Obama administration, Hollywood and major record labels, aims to disrupt and potentially terminate Internet access for those who continually infringe upon copyright laws.

The program, which monitors peer-to-peer file-sharing services, includes participation by AT&T, Cablevision Systems, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Verizon.

DNEWS VIDEO: COOL JOBS: HACKER

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First offenders will receive an email alert from their Internet service provider saying their account may have been misused for online piracy. After a second offense, the alert could contain an educational message about online copyright laws.

After the third and fourth strikes, users could receive a pop-up notice "asking the subscriber to acknowledge receipt of the alert."

After four alerts, the warnings stop and the real punishments come to the surface...kind of.

The CAS program calls these "mitigation measures," which could include "temporary reductions of Internet speeds, redirection to a landing page until the subscriber contacts the ISP to discuss the matter or reviews and responds to some educational information about copyright, or other measures (as specified in published policies) that the ISP may deem necessary to help resolve the matter."

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Gigi Sohn, president of digital rights group Public Knowledge, and an adviser to the Center for Copyright Information, the group behind the program, told Wired that offenders won't be penalized each time an infringement is detected.

"Each strike is not one infringement," Sohn said. "Each strike is dozens or scores or hundreds of infringements."

Considering that, after the first infringement is detected, strikes will only be counted every seven days and that there's a grace period between each alert, this dragnet sounds like it has some pretty big holes for occasional pirates to easily slip through.

Forgive my skepticism, but '600-strikes and you're out' seems like a long leash, not to mention a very passive-aggressive way to project authority.

via Wired

Credit: Images.com/Corbis

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A Unique 'Fingerprint' For Each Computer

The Internet isn't always anonymous; it's possible to identify a user via the Internet Protocol address unique to each computer accessing the Internet or Media Access Control address of some hardware. However, both of these identifiers can be faked with the right software. Now scientists have found another unique identifier that acts almost like a fingerprint for each individual computer: the graphics card.

Researchers from Technische Universiteit Eindhoven in the Netherlands, Technical University of Darmstadt in Germany, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium, and the Dutch security firm, Intrinsic ID, discovered that there are physical differences between graphics cards that can be detected by software.

How Do You Hack Into a Phone?

These differences can't be duplicated because they're a random result of producing millions of processors. The researchers dubbed the differences "physically unclonable functions found in standard PC components," or PUFFIN.

DNEWS VIDEO: COOL JOBS: HACKER

"Such a "fingerprint" for a given piece of hardware would be most helpful to online gaming companies and the players. Heavy gamers tend to have high-end graphics cards and customized machines, so odds are they are accessing an online game, such as World of Warcraft from their own computer. This is a different situation than with a bank, which customers may access from a variety of machines such as their work computer or their personal laptop or even their smartphone.

An online gaming company would install the PUFFIN software on its servers. When a customer logged into the game, the software would scan the gamer's graphics card for its unique "fingerprint," and match it against the known fingerprint on file. If the log in name and password didn't match the fingerprint, the online gaming company could ask for additional authentication and if that didn't match, the company could block the user.

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The PUFFIN system isn't perfect. While it isn't possible to duplicate the hardware, it might be possible to duplicate the small differences in behavior on the part of the card. That's still a subject for further research. It's also worth noting that the identification is of the machine being used; it says nothing about who is using it. So someone might access a person's World of Warcraft account using the account holder's computer, and it would still look legitimate.  

The PUFFIN Project will run until 2015.

Via PUFFIN, Threatpost

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Gmail Two-Step Verification: Mission Possible

It took somebody else's mistake to get me to correct one of my own. Nineteen months after Google announced it was adding a security option called "two-step verification" -- a move I thought a good idea at the time -- I finally activated this on my own Gmail account.

If Wired writer Mat Honan had done so, he wouldn't have had hackers break into his Gmail, remotely wiping his MacBook Air, iPad and iPhone along the way, to hijack his Twitter account. (A $1,690 data-recovery session rescued photos and other personal data from the laptop.) That was enough motivation for me.

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Almost a month after making that switch, I can report that two-step verification works, with the occasional snag. I thought that might be the case, but I didn't foresee that it would also be educational and, in a weird way, fun.

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Setting it up starts with adding a phone number to your Gmail account, to which Google can send a numeric code by text message or synthesized speech. You then enter this code each time you log into your account--or you can install Google's free, open-source Authenticator on an Android, iPhone or BlackBerry device to generate these codes for you.

That's a better idea: Authenticator works even if your phone is offline (as long as it has the correct time) and can secure logins on such third-party services as the LastPass password manager. But setting it up involved an extra detour, scanning a barcode displayed on my Google account page.

Codes expire in 30 seconds, and without them your password alone is useless. This neatly solves the problem of logging on from a strange computer. And I've realized that I enjoy this little Mission: Impossible routine -- in part because it doesn't require me to carry a separate fob generating one-time codes, the traditional way IT departments handle two-factor authentication.

That's also the biggest vulnerability in Google's approach: If you get my phone, you can both see my Gmail account and use Authenticator to verify a login I might have saved in one of my browsers. To ensure you can log in without your phone, stash a printout of backup codes in your wallet.

A second is the application-specific passwords Google generates for sites and apps that can't take a one-time code. These 16-character strings of gibberish don't expire but are only shown to you once. You can then revoke any of them--handy if somebody steals a laptop that syncs your Gmail or a phone dies with your Google login saved -- but you have to name each one clearly first. Think "MacBook Air system preferences," not "laptop."

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The app-specific passwords page also lists services to which you've granted access to your Google account. I didn't realize I had so many, 28 in all.

Two app passwords stopped working mysteriously, requiring me to generate new ones, but otherwise this has caused much less friction than I'd feared.

A third vulnerability is the option to exempt a "trusted computer" from two-step verification. But if somebody breaks into my house to get to my desktop, I have bigger problems.

I feel safer and smarter -- and sheepish about taking so long to follow my advice. I also wish Google's competitors would do a better job of following its lead: Microsoft and Yahoo's two-factor authentication is more limited and less convenient. And being tied to Google can itself be grounds for insecurity.

Credit: Rob Pegoraro/Discovery

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Hackers Claim Romney's Taxes Ransomed for $1M

Mitt Romney's tax returns are allegedly no longer secret. An unidentified group claims to have stolen Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney's tax returns from PricewaterhouseCoopers' Tennessee offices.

Mashable is reporting a hacker group claims to be in possession of "all available 1040 tax forms for Romney." The group, which is yet unidentified, posted on the text-hosting site PasteBin that they had illegally entered PricewaterhouseCoopers' Nashville office on Aug. 25, 2012, accessed the computers, made copies of the returns and escaped. PasteBin is popular with the hacker group Anonymous.

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The unnamed group is threatening to release the returns to the public unless a ransom is met. They're asking for $1 million USD in Bitcoins. The Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer electronic currency with no central banking authority -- thus, it's very difficult to track.

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If PricewaterhouseCoopers pays by Sept. 28, the information the hackers claim to hold will "remain a secret forever." However, a statement addressed to PricewaterhouseCoopers, again on PasteBin, states that "other interested parties will be allowed to compete," for the release of the tax returns. The second statement also admits that the returns will be sent to "all major media outlets."

As reported by The Tennesseean, the Williamson County Republican Party in Tennessee notified local police when a suspicious package arrived at their offices last Friday. The package allegedly includes, "copies of Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s tax returns hacked from an accounting office." The local Democratic party office admits to receiving a package as well. Both contain a thumb drive and a letter matching the details on PasteBin.

If PricewaterhouseCoopers fail to act before Sept. 28, "the entire world will be allowed to view the documents with a publicly released key to unlock everything," reads the hacker's statement.

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Romney's tax returns have been to this election what Barack Obama's birth certificate was to the 2008 election. Romney released his 2010 returns and the Washington Post extrapolated his 2011 filings, but his full tax history is still a closely guarded secret. Even after its release and authentication, Obama's birth certificate is a topic of discussion amongst some groups. If the hackers do have Romney's tax information, it would take some time to ensure there was no forgery or tampering.

The Obama campaign and other Democrats have challenged Romney to release the information. According to Politifact, "only two general election candidates have revealed no more than two years of tax returns." One is Sen. John McCain in 2008 and the other is Gov. Romney. In the 2008 Democratic primary, Sen. Barack Obama released seven years of tax returns, and Sen. Hillary Clinton followed suit shortly thereafter.

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Phone calls to PricewaterhouseCoopers' Nashville and United States central offices by Discovery News were not answered.

As a final statement, the hackers allegedly wrote, "Who-ever is the winner does not matter to us."

UPDATE: USNews is reporting PricewaterhouseCoopers' statement which said, "We are aware of the allegations that have been made regarding improper access to our systems. We are working closely with the United States Secret Service, and at this time there is no evidence that our systems have been compromised or that there was any unauthorized access to the data in question."

The hacker's statement explaining the caper at the Nashville PricewaterhouseCoopers office:

Romney's 1040 tax returns were taken from the (PricewaterhouseCoopers) office 8/25/2012 by gaining access to the third floor via a gentleman working on the 3rd floor of the building. Once on the 3rd floor, the team moved down the stairs to the 2nd floor and setup shop in an empty office room. During the night, suite 260 was entered, and all available 1040 tax forms for Romney were copied. A package was sent to the PWC on suite 260 with a flash drive containing a copy of the 1040 files, plus copies were sent to the Democratic office in the county and copies were sent to the GOP office in the county at the beginning of the week also containing flash drives with copies of Romney's tax returns before 2010. A scanned signature image for Mitt Romney from the 1040 forms were scanned and included with the packages, taken from earlier 1040 tax forms gathered and stored on the flash drives.

The other statement explaining the situation and how payment is to be delivered:

Using your Office @ 830 Crescent Centre Drive, Suite 260, Franklin, TN 37067 Telephone: [1] (615) 503-2860 we were able to gain access to your network file servers and copy over the tax documents for one Willard M Romney and Ann D Romney. We are sure that once you figure out where the security breach was, some people will probably get fired but that is not our concern.

All major news media outlets are going to be sent an encrypted copy of the most recent tax years that your company had on file since you did not have them all in a convenient electronic form. The years before 2010 will be of great interest to many. If the parties interested do not want the encrypted key released to the public to unlock these documents on September 28 of this year then payment will be necessary.

The deal is quite simple. Convert $1,000,000 USD to Bitcoins (Google if if you need a lesson on what Bitcoin is) using the various markets available out in the world for buying. Transfer the Bitcoins gathered to the Bitcoin address listed below. It does not matter if small amounts or one large amount is transferred, as long as the final value of the Bitcoins is equal to $1,000,000 USD at the time when it is finished. The keys to unlock the data will be purged and what ever is inside the documents will remain a secret forever.

Failure to do this before September 28, the entire world will be allowed to view the documents with a publicly released key to unlock everything.

Bitcoin Address to Stop Release: [redacted]

And the same time, the other interested parties will be allowed to compete with you. For those that DO want the documents released will have an different address to send to. If $1,000,000 USD is sent to this account below first; then the encryption keys will be made available to the world right away. So this is an equal opportunity for the documents to remain locked away forever or to be exposed before the September 28 deadline.

Who-ever is the winner does not matter to us.

Sources: Mashable, The Tennessean, Nashville CityPaper, Politifact

Credit: Paul Cunningham/Corbis

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