Year 2013 will be year of cyber security. CNN expects more cyber wars this year. Cybercrime is on the rise, and last year we saw more and more computer virus attacks. Security company Kaspersky Lab warns of more new cyber-threats against enterprises and mobile devices. Cyber security also relates to mobile.
Security becomes an increasingly important issue. Year 2013 is the year of cyber security. Security company Stonesoft predicts we will face a more targeted launch cyber-attacks, cyber espionage and hactivism. Cyber security is the fastest growing trend in information security and its importance will increase in the future. According to Stonesoft the current security systems are unable to provide adequate protection against targeted attacks: we require proactive cyber protection and willingness to face the unknown threats.
Hacktivism will continue. According to article Anonymous: ‘Expect us 2013′ the hacking group boasted its cyberattacks against the U.S., Syrian, and Israeli governments in 2012. They are also warning people to continue to expect this type of activity.
SCADA security was hit hard in 2012. Some of the big manufacturers hit hard have learned their lessons and test their devices more now. But how are some smaller manufacturers security testing? Metasploit has special category for SCADA
devices. Good idea to test your devices against it.
There is still work to do on Cyber security standards and SCADA standards. For example in very widely used automation security standard IEC 61508 security is addresses only in informative way (NOT MANDATORY. IEC 62443-2-4: A Baseline Security Standard for Industrial Automation Control Systems is a good starting point when thinking on SCADA systems security.
Nowadays you need to think about SCADA system security more then some years ago. Previously, it was thought that it is sufficient to isolate factory process automation system from the office networks and the Internet. This is no longer enough. Nowadays you need to think about information security of production of automation systems. You can’t keep the automation systems isolated from Internet. Accidental connections to Internet from isolated networks happen. Malware can spread through USB memory sticks (Stuxnet did that). And nowadays there are more and more business reasons to connect process automation systems to other networks. So automations system do not anymore live in complete isolation from rest of the world.
Systems with SCADA vulnerabilities have become easier to find. Hackers tap SCADA vuln search engine article tells a search engine that indexes servers and other internet devices is helping hackers to find industrial control systems that are vulnerable to tampering. Search engine Shodan easily pinpoints shoddy industrial controls. Shodan makes it easy to locate internet-facing SCADA, or supervisory control and data acquisition, systems used to control equipment at gasoline refineries, power plants and other industrial facilities. The search engine can also be used to identify systems with known vulnerabilities. Shodan makes networks more vulnerable to brute-force attacks on passwords, many of which may still use factory defaults.
Thousands of SCADA Devices Discovered On the Open Internet article tells that there are all the time news of the continuing poor state of security for industrial control systems. The pair of researchers with found found not only devices used for critical infrastructure such as energy, water and other utilities, but also SCADA devices for HVAC systems, building automation control systems, large mining trucks, traffic control systems, red-light cameras and even crematoriums. Never underestimate what you can do with a healthy list of advanced operator search terms and a beer budget.
Researchers have also found crippling flaws in GPS receivers. Global Positioning System infrastructure critical to the navigation of a host of military and civilian technologies including planes, ships and unmanned drones. GPS system is also used to generate accurate clocks in SCADA system and smart grid devices. Researchers showed that they could permanently de-synchronise the date of Phasor Measurement Units used in smart grid and cause UNIX epoch rollover in a few minutes. The overall landscape of GPS vulnerabilities is startling.
Happy now? Mobiles, cloud, big data now ‘a growing security risk’ article tells that innovations in mobile and cloud computing, social technology and the use of “big data” present an emerging risk to organisations’ IT security, experts have warned. The European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA), which is an EU advisory body, said that those technologies would increasingly provide the platform for “most of the innovation expected in the area of IT” and warned that with their emergence would come an associated increased cyber threat. ENISA warned that the threat stemming from mobile computing comes from the fact that mobile communications take place over “poorly secured … or unsecured channels”. The most significant threat stems from hackers inserting malicious software in website browser and other software available on mobile devices. Cyber criminals could also use the capabilities of cloud computing for their own gains, such as by storing malware in those systems and using the technology as a platform to launch attacks.
Drive-by downloads attacks against web browsers have become the top web threat. More specifically, attackers are moving into targeting browser plugins such as Java (Java exploits are the major cross-platform threat), Adobe Reader and Adobe Flash. The drive-by download attacks are almost exclusively launched through compromised legitimate websites which are used by attackers to host malicious links and actual malicious code. Exploits are sold for considerable amount of money and quickly included into exploit kits.
Africa’s Coming Cyber-Crime Epidemic article tells that last decade may have just been the first step in a looming African cyber-crime wave. Africa has the world’s fastest-growing middle class, whose members are increasingly tech-savvy and Internet connected and lax law enforcement is a perfect petri dish for increased cybercrime.
European wide cyber police started. EU’s new European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) was just opened few days ago. The facility will act as the “focal point” in the EU’s fight against cybercrime, against both businesses and private citizens. EC3 will act as a hub where crime-fighters can pool expertise and information, support criminal investigations and help develop and spread best practice. It will work with industry to develop threat assessments. It will work closely with the FBI and the US Secret service, in addition to other foreign agencies.
1,930 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
Malware-splosion: 2013 Will be Malware’s Biggest Year Ever
http://securitywatch.pcmag.com/security/311804-malware-splosion-2013-will-be-malware-s-biggest-year-ever
According to the German security company AV-Test, malware has exploded in the past five years to unprecedented levels. More troublingly, they anticipate seeing over 60 million new pieces of malicious software by the end of the year.
Andreas Marx, CEO of AV-Test, told SecurityWatch that his company has been compiling malware samples since 1984. Their database had humble beginnings: just 12 samples of malicious software. By 2003 there were over a million and nearly ten million by 2008. But by the beginning of this year, the number had jumped to 104,437,337 unique samples.
“The AV-TEST database used to record current malware is now working flat out,” said Marx. He went on to say that the system has already recorded, “over 20 million samples of new malware between January and the beginning of May.”
To put those numbers in context, AV-Test didn’t reach 20 million new samples until August of last year. In 2011 and 2010, the company collected less than 20 million samples.
AV-Test says they expect to see five million new malware samples each month—about double the rate from last year. This works out to about 60 million new malware samples by year’s end.
Where’s It Coming From?
“Malware is getting ‘personal,’” Marx explained to SecurityWatch. “Instead of sending 100,000 users the identical malware sample, a malware writer generates 10,000 unique samples for 10 users each or even 100,000 completely unique samples.” By doing so, malware creators hope to sidestep security software by making the new malware just different enough to pass by unnoticed.
“In the majority of cases, the malware writers are using the same executable and then, it will automatically be encrypted, packed and scrambled in different ways,” said Marx.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Study ranks US least riskiest place to open data center
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2013/052213-study-ranks-us-least-riskiest-270045.html?page=1
UK, Germany and Sweden follow as the least riskiest places to establish data centers, according to a survey released this week
Eight of the top 15 countries ranked were in Europe, and Sweden and Norway became hot spots for data centers, according to the study. Easy availability of hydropower and naturally available cool weather prompted many companies to establish data centers in Sweden. Scandinavian countries recorded the highest jumps, with Sweden rising five spots to third and Norway up four spots to eight.
The rest of Europe was on shaky ground.
But as LTE deployments grow, there will be a need for more data centers as more companies centralize applications and deploy private clouds. That should give new life to the European data center business, according to the study.
united states stock market history says:
Hiya! I simply wish to give an enormous thumbs up for the great information you’ve right here on this post.
I can be coming back to your weblog for more soon.
Tomi says:
Hackers Find China Is Land of Opportunity
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/23/world/asia/in-china-hacking-has-widespread-acceptance.html?_r=2&
BEIJING — Name a target anywhere in China, an official at a state-owned company boasted recently, and his crack staff will break into that person’s computer, download the contents of the hard drive, record the keystrokes and monitor cellphone communications, too.
Pitches like that, from a salesman for Nanjing Xhunter Software, were not uncommon at a crowded trade show this month that brought together Chinese law enforcement officials and entrepreneurs eager to win government contracts for police equipment and services.
“We can physically locate anyone who spreads a rumor on the Internet,” said the salesman
Corporations employ freelance hackers to spy on competitors.
One force behind the spread of hacking is the government’s insistence on maintaining surveillance over anyone deemed suspicious. So local police departments contract with companies like Xhunter to monitor and suppress dissent, industry insiders say.
“if you are a government employee, there could be secret projects or secret missions,” the hacker said.
But government jobs are usually not well paying or prestigious, and most skilled hackers prefer working for security companies that have cyberdefense contracts
In Washington, officials criticize what they consider state-sponsored attacks. The officials say intrusions against foreign governments and businesses are growing
American cybersecurity experts say attacks from Chinese groups often occur only from 9 to 5 Beijing time.
“They’re using the least amount of sophistication necessary to accomplish their mission,” Mr. Kindlund said. “They have a lot of manpower available, but not necessarily a lot of intelligent manpower to conduct these operations stealthily.”
Venustech, says its clients include more than 100 government offices, among them almost all the military commands.
Another former hacker said the monolithic notion of insidious, state-sponsored hacking now discussed in the West was absurd
“China’s government is so big. It’s almost impossible to not have any crossover with the government.”
Private corporations in China are employing hackers for industrial espionage
Tomi says:
Scanner identifies malware strains, could be future of AV
http://www.net-security.org/malware_news.php?id=2505
When it comes to spotting malware, signature-based detection, heuristics and cloud-based recognition and information sharing used by many antivirus solutions today work well up a certain point, but the polymorphic malware still gives them a run for their money.
Security researcher Silvio Cesare had noticed that malware code consists of small “structures” that remain the same even after moderate changes to its code.
“Using structures, you can detect approximate matches of malware, and it’s possible to pick an entire family of malware pretty easily with just one structure,” he shared with CSO Australia.
So he created Simseer, a free online service that performs automated analysis on submitted malware samples and tells and shows you just how similar they are to other submitted specimens. It scores the similarity between malware (any kind of software, really), and it charts the results and visualizes program relationships as an evolutionary tree.
If a sample has less then 98 percent similarity with an existing malware strain, the sample gets catalogued as a completely new strain.
Simseer.com
Malware similarity and clustering made easy
http://www.simseer.com/
For incident response, malware detection and analysis, simseer.com has a service for you.
Tomi Engdahl says:
99.9% Of New Mobile Malware Targets Android Phones
http://mashable.com/2013/05/22/new-mobile-malware-targets-android-phones/
Android, the world’s most popular smartphone operating system, has malware issues. We knew that already. But a new report suggests these issues are only destined to worsen.
In fact, 99.9% of new mobile malware detected in the first quarter of 2013 is designed to hit Android phones, according to a new report released by online security firm Kaspersky Lab.
The vast majority of those are trojan viruses
SMS trojans, which steal money by sending unauthorized texts to premium rate numbers, are the most common, with 63% of total infections.
Outside of the mobile world, the report has some other interesting numbers. Using malicious links comprise 91% of total threats, making it by far the hackers’ preferred method of infecting victims.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IT Threat Evolution: Q1 2013
http://www.securelist.com/en/analysis/204792292/IT_Threat_Evolution_Q1_2013#12
The first quarter of 2013 turned out to be a busy time in IT security. This report will address the most significant events.
Q1 in figures
According to KSN data, Kaspersky Lab products detected and neutralized 1 345 570 352 threats in Q1 2013.
A total of 22,750 new modifications of malicious programs targeting mobile devices were detected this past quarter — that’s more than half of the total number of modifications detected in all of 2012.
Some 40% of the exploits seen in the first quarter of this year target vulnerabilities in Adobe products.
Nearly 60% of all malicious hosts are located in three countries: the US, Russia, and the Netherlands.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hay Festival 2013: Teenagers’ mistakes will stay with them forever, warns Google chief Eric Schmidt
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/eric-schmidt/10080596/Hay-Festival-2013-Teenagers-mistakes-will-stay-with-them-forever-warns-Google-chief-Eric-Schmidt.html
Teenagers can no longer grow up without being reminded of their mistakes because a full record of their lives is now stored on the internet, Eric Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman, has warned.
Speaking at the Telegraph Hay Festival, he said young people now had to live with the consequences of having a complete record of all their youthful indiscretions online.
He also suggested that some people’s sharing of personal information online had gone too far, saying parents to be who post ultrasounds of their babies online before even naming them took things to “overwhelmingly excessive levels”.
Schmidt went on to pledge that it was Google’s policy to erase information about what individuals’ had searched for after one year.
“We have never had a generation with a full photographic, digital record of what they did,” he said.
“We have a point at which we [Google] forget information we know about you because it is the right thing to do.
“There are situations in life that it’s better that they don’t exist.
“Especially if there is stuff you did when you were a teenager. Teenagers are now in an adult world online.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Iran Hacks Energy Firms, U.S. Says
Oil-and-Gas, Power Companies’ Control Systems Believed to Be Infiltrated; Fear of Sabotage Potential
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323336104578501601108021968.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Iranian-backed hackers have escalated a campaign of cyberassaults against U.S. corporations by launching infiltration and surveillance missions against the computer networks running energy companies, according to current and former U.S. officials.
In the latest operations, the Iranian hackers were able to gain access to control-system software that could allow them to manipulate oil or gas pipelines. They proceeded “far enough to worry people,” one former official said.
U.S. officials consider this set of Iranian infiltrations to be more alarming than another continuing campaign, also believed to be backed by Tehran, that disrupts bank websites by “denial of service” strikes. Unlike those, the more recent campaigns actually have broken into computer systems to gain information on the controls running company operations and, through reconnaissance, acquired the means to disrupt or destroy them in the future, the U.S. officials said.
“This is representative of stepped-up cyber activity by the Iranian regime. The more they do this, the more our concerns grow,” a U.S. official said
The U.S. has previously launched its own cyberattacks against Iran. The Stuxnet worm
The latest campaign, which the U.S. believes has direct backing from the Iranian government, has focused on the control systems that run oil and gas companies and, more recently, power companies, current and former officials said. Control systems run the operations of critical infrastructure, regulating the flow of oil and gas or electricity, turning systems on and off, and controlling key functions.
U.S. has “technical evidence” directly linking the hacking of energy companies to Iran, one former U.S. official said.
Iranian officials deny any involvement in hacking.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security earlier this month warned of an escalation in threats against computerized control systems, but it didn’t cite Iran as the origin of the threat.
Underscoring the Obama administration’s growing concern, the White House held a high-level meeting late last month on how to handle the Iranian cybersecurity threat.
“We don’t have much we can do in response, short of kinetic warfare.”
Unlike Chinese hacking, the Iranian infiltrations and cyberattacks appear intended to disrupt and possibly damage computer systems. “The differentiator is the intent. Stealing versus disrupting raises different concerns,” the U.S. official said. “That’s why they’re getting a fair amount of attention.”
The recent growth of Chinese infiltrations primarily has been aimed at stealing military and trade secrets, not doing damage.
Cybersecurity specialists say the electric-power industry remains under-prepared to fend off attacks, particularly ones backed by a foreign government.
“If you were worried about cyberattacks against electric utilities five years ago, you’re still worried today,”
Based on a survey of 150 power companies, the report found that “more than a dozen utilities reported ‘daily,’ ‘constant’ or ‘frequent’ attempted cyberattacks,” and one said it was the target of about 10,000 attempted cyberattacks each month
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google defends listing extremist websites in its search results
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/may/25/google-defends-listing-extremist-websites
Eric Schmidt tells Hay festival that legal information ‘even if it’s despicable, will be indexed’, and may help track terrorists
Google’s indexing of extremist websites helps police track their activity and will continue, the company’s chief told an audience at the Hay festival.
Schmidt said: “We cannot prima facie identify evil and take it down. We have taken the decision that information if it’s legal, even if it’s despicable, will be indexed.”
He went on to argue that extremists are usually possible to detect through their internet activity and that their online presence can sometimes help.
“Extremists are not clever enough not to be found out. They leave a digital trail the police can follow,” he said, after an interview with the mathematician Marcus de Sautoy.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google to beef up SSL encryption keys
Will double key length to 2048-bit by the end of 2013
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2270624/google-to-beef-up-ssl-encryption-keys
SOFTWARE HOUSE Google has announced plans to upgrade its Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates to 2048-bit keys by the end of 2013 to strengthen its SSL implementation.
“We’re also going to change the root certificate that signs all of our SSL certificates because it has a 1024-bit key,” McHenry said.
“Most client software won’t have any problems with either of these changes, but we know that some configurations will require some extra steps to avoid complications. This is more often true of client software embedded in devices such as certain types of phones, printers, set-top boxes, gaming consoles, and cameras.”
F-secure’s security researcher Sean Sullivan advised, “By updating its SSL standards, Google will make it easier to spot forged certificates.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Syrian Electronic Army: pro-government propaganda, or just trolling for lulz?
Hacker group is efficient, but it may not be effective
http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/24/4363140/syrian-electronic-army-hackers
The Syrian Electronic Army purports to be a collective of political hacktivists defending the Assad regime that has controlled the country for more than 40 years against a revolutionary movement. Researchers at HP who studied the SEA hacker collective for three months noted that it is considered one of the top 10 most skilled hacking teams in the world. Recently, the SEA has claimed responsibility for takeovers of more than a dozen prominent global media outlets, including CBS, NPR, and the BBC.
“The Syrian Electronic Army never attacks for the fun of it. Its aim is to deliver a message and spread truth,” a representative of the collective told The Verge in an email interview.
The SEA claims that it targets news sites based on their coverage. “There are many targets that were vulnerable that we felt were fair to Syria and had balanced coverage, we did not strike them,” the group said in an email. However, Galperin believes the group is going after “low-hanging fruit,” meaning, any news organization that leaves itself vulnerable.
“If the goal is to exert influence and put people on notice that they have reach everywhere, I think it’s successful,” al-Jijakali said. “If it’s to change hearts and minds of the revolutionaries or the world at large, I don’t think they achieve that. But I don’t think that’s the goal.”
There may be a simpler explanation for the jovial tone on some SEA hacks: they may have all been perpetrated by four mischief-making students, aged 18 to their “young twenties.” Those student hackers are nicknamed “Th3Pr0,” “Shadow,” “SEAHawk,” and “Ch3ckM4te.”
“They’re just four kids that have decided that this is what they want to do to defend their homeland from who they have decided are their enemies,” Keys said.
The four may be behind the recent hacks, but they are likely part of a larger group.
Much of the SEA’s recent activity has consisted of low-skill attacks on Twitter accounts and badly-made websites. However, researchers believe the group is capable of much more.
Tomi Engdahl says:
US entertainment industry to Congress: make it legal for us to deploy rootkits, spyware, ransomware and trojans to attack pirates!
http://boingboing.net/2013/05/26/us-entertainment-industry-to-c.html
The hilariously named “Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property” has finally released its report, an 84-page tome that’s pretty bonkers. But amidst all that crazy, there’s a bit that stands out as particularly insane: a proposal to legalize the use of malware in order to punish people believed to be copying illegally. The report proposes that software would be loaded on computers that would somehow figure out if you were a pirate, and if you were, it would lock your computer up and take all your files hostage until you call the police and confess your crime. This is the mechanism that crooks use when they deploy ransomware.
It’s just more evidence that copyright enforcers’ network strategies are indistinguishable from those used by dictators and criminals.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Confidential report lists U.S. weapons system designs compromised by Chinese cyberspies
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/confidential-report-lists-us-weapons-system-designs-compromised-by-chinese-cyberspies/2013/05/27/a42c3e1c-c2dd-11e2-8c3b-0b5e9247e8ca_story.html
Designs for many of the nation’s most sensitive advanced weapons systems have been compromised by Chinese hackers, according to a report prepared for the Pentagon and to officials from government and the defense industry.
Among more than two dozen major weapons systems whose designs were breached
Experts warn that the electronic intrusions gave China access to advanced technology that could accelerate the development of its weapons systems and weaken the U.S. military advantage in a future conflict.
In January, the advisory panel warned in the public version of its report that the Pentagon is unprepared to counter a full-scale cyber-conflict. The list of compromised weapons designs is contained in a confidential version, and it was provided to The Washington Post.
F/A-18 fighter jet, the V-22 Osprey, the Black Hawk helicopter and the Navy’s new Littoral Combat Ship
the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter
Tomi Engdahl says:
A list of the U.S. weapons designs and technologies compromised by hackers
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/a-list-of-the-us-weapons-designs-and-technologies-compromised-by-hackers/2013/05/27/a95b2b12-c483-11e2-9fe2-6ee52d0eb7c1_story.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Clearwire to pull Huawei from network
Chinese vendor caught in takeover crossfire
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/27/clearwire_to_pull_huawei_from_network/
US mobile carrier Clearwire is getting ready to draw-down the Huawei kit in its network, in an apparent response to the never-ending story that the vendor is a threat to US national security.
While not a body blow to the Chinese vendor, since it’s won less than five per cent of Clearwire’s LTE build, it will drop yet more fuel onto the FUD-fire that continues to surround the vendor.
In essence, FierceWireless reports, Clearwire has attracted the government’s paranoia because Sprint Nextel (majority owner of Clearwire, and with a bid in for the shares it doesn’t already hold) is itself subject to an offer by SoftBank from Japan.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Symantec retires low-end security software
PC Tools’ security wares won’t make it into post-PC era, but PC-tuners safe
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/28/symantec_retires_lowend_security_software/
Symantec has quietly retired its PC Tools range of security products.
Acquired in 2008, PC Tools offered consumer-and-micro-business-grade anti-virus and network security tools dubbed “Spyware Doctor”, “Internet Security” and “Spyware Doctor with Antivirus”.
A “special offer” will herd encourage PC Tools users to adopt a Norton product.
PC Tools’ “Registry Mechanic” and “Performance Toolkit” products live on
Tomi Engdahl says:
Twitter aims to become safer with two-step sign-in
Users can now have a code sent to their mobile phones to log in
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9239480/Twitter_aims_to_become_safer_with_two_step_sign_in
Twitter, in a much-needed move to keep its users safer from cyberattacks, is introducing a more secure login process.
The system, called Login Verification, gives users the option to have a verification code sent to their mobile phone every time they log in to Twitter. After a person enrolls, he or she will be able to enter a six-digit code sent via SMS each time the user signs in to twitter.com. The system is designed to provide a second check on top of a regular password to help ensure only authorized users log in.
The feature, which Twitter describes as a form of two-factor authentication, can be turned on from a user’s account settings page.
The release comes after numerous hacks targeted at companies including the Associated Press, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Jeep and even Burger King.
Even with the new security feature turned on, however, users should still use a strong password and follow the site’s advice for keeping accounts secure, Twitter said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft loads botnet-crushing data into Azure
C-TIP gives ISPs near-realtime access to MARS data
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/28/microsoft_azure_ctip_security/
Microsoft is plugging its security intelligence systems into Azure so that service providers and local authorities can get near-realtime information on botnets and malware detected by Redmond.
The new Windows Azure-based Cyber Threat Intelligence Program (C-TIP) was unveiled on Tuesday by Microsoft as an extension of its crime-busting Microsoft Active Response for Security (MARS) program.
“While our clean-up efforts to date have been quite successful, this expedited form of information sharing should dramatically increase our ability to clean computers and help us keep up with the fast-paced and ever-changing cybercrime landscape,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
OPERATION HANGOVER
Unveiling an Indian Cyberattack Infrastructure
http://enterprise.norman.com/resources/files/Unveiling_an_Indian_Cyberattack_Infrastructure.pdf
In this report we detail a cyberattack infrastructure that appears to be Indian in origin. This infrastructure has been in operation for at least three years, more likely close to four years.
The purpose of this framework seems predominantly to be a platform for surveillance against targets of national security interest (such as Pakistan), but we will also show how it has been used for industrial espionage against the Norwegian telecom corporation Telenor and other civilian corporations
Tomi Engdahl says:
Boston Bombing Investigation Exposed Successes, Failures of Surveillance Tech
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/05/boston-marathon-investigation/
Despite multiple photos and surveillance video images of two suspects involved in the Boston Marathon bombings last month, as well as state-of-the-art facial-recognition software and two government databases, investigators were unable to identify the two suspected perpetrators, even after releasing several of the images to the public.
The facial-recognition system failed because none of the images captured of the suspects at the bombing site were full-frontal shots that the system’s algorithms could recognize.
The watch lists were supposed to alert authorities if Tsarnaev attempted to travel overseas, but they failed as well
“Google actually has the ability to do messy, big-data analysis that can deal with misspelled words, and law enforcement can’t,” he says in the documentary. “If law enforcement had used a Google-style big-data analysis, chances are that they might have prevented the Boston bombing from happening.”
the thermal-imaging camera is the most remarkable and the most worrisome, due to its capabilities
the camera has the ability to spot a dropped cigarette from a mile away due to heat the butt emits
Tomi Engdahl says:
Kaspersky plans source code reveal to avoid Huawei’s fate
Chinese giant has ‘grey areas’ but politics the reason for ban says AV’s party boy
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/30/kaspersky_plans_source_code_reveal_to_avoid_huawei_taint/
Eugene Kaspersky thinks Huawei’s products contain “some doors, they are not back doors, but somewhere in-between”, but that overall “there is nothing really wrong with Huawei”. The Russian security supremo is nonetheless taking steps to ensure his company doesn’t experience the same less-than-welcoming reception Huawei has found in the US market.
Throw in the big hair and he puts on quite a show, making him a source of quotable quotes (he’s adopted the term “SCADAgeddon” coined by local provocateur Stilgherrian to describe a likely outcome of online warfare) but also not quite ever appearing entirely serious.
How much weight to place then, on Kaspersky’s claims of grey areas in Huawei products?
“We are not going to detect Huawei software as malicious,” he said. “And it is not just Huawei that has this grey area in their products. There was a very famous story about Sony rootkits,” he pointed out, before adding that he feels Huawei’s troubles in the USA and beyond can be attributed to the detection of some suspicious behaviour in its products and the knowledge of those issues being politicised
“In the USA, Australia and Western Europe we are facing similar issues of trust,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebookers, beware: That silly update can cost you a job
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57586767-93/facebookers-beware-that-silly-update-can-cost-you-a-job/
Study shows that companies have rejected 1 in 10 people between ages 16 and 34 because of something the person shared on social media.
“If getting a job wasn’t hard enough in this tough economic climate, young people are getting rejected from employment because of their social media profiles and they are not concerned about it,” On Device Research’s marketing manager Sarah Quinn said in a statement.
Quinn says that better education on how social media can affect employment is needed to ensure young people aren’t making it even harder to excel in their careers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IDC: Outsourcing sector needs rescue fund for cloudy customers
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2013/02/15/outsourcing_rescue_fund/
The outsourcing industry should develop a voluntary crisis fund to give protection to customers should their services provider hit the wall.
This was proposed by IDC in light of 2e2′s recent high profile collapse that left some customers scrambling for alternative suppliers, and highlighted the pitfalls of outsourcing.
One solution is to create a “voluntary shared rescue fund” along the lines of the Association of British Travel Agents bond, said IDC associate veep Douglas Hayward.
Hayward said hosting and cloudy firms could hold a pot of cash in escrow to be used so that hosted data can be transitioned to new providers should the need arise.
“This could be marketed either as an industry-wide service, or as an optional value-added service to be bought by clients when signing a hosting/outsourcing contract,” he said.
Another option is for hosting firms to guarantee regular data backups are made to third party DR providers who are obliged to hand over the data to the customer in the event the hosting entity goes pop.
“That option, however, would be costly and arguably wasteful, not to mention bad for the environment, by generating huge volumes of duplicated data in independent data centres.”
seminole state college florida residency affidavit says:
Whats up! I just want to give an enormous thumbs up for the nice info you have got right here on this post.
I will likely be coming back to your weblog for extra soon.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Belarus becomes world’s top country … for SPAM
White Russia dons black hat, becomes junkmail conduit
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/30/belarus_surprise_worlds_spam_relaying_top_dog/
Belarus has eclipsed the US to become the biggest single source of global spam, according to cloud-based email and web security firm AppRiver.
Junk volumes from the landlocked former Soviet republic, which borders Poland and Russia, hit an all-time high on 13 April and have sustained this level since then.
After the spike happened on 13 April, AppRiver said it began recording an average of 12.3 million spam messages per day – which is now climbing.
Only one in a thousand messages from Belarus is legitimate, with 99.9 per cent of the electronic messages consisting of junk mail, said the security firm.
“Most of the messages just simply contained a link and a few words. Many of the links did not lead to active webpages, with most giving 500 or 404 server errors.”
“The links that did work lead to pharmacy websites trying to sell drugs to visitors. There was a very small amount of the messages that also lead to websites hosting malware,”
Belarus now accounts for 16.3 per cent of the world’s spam
Tomi Engdahl says:
Compromised Devices of the Carna Botnet
(also know and “Internet Census 2012″)
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BxMgdZPXsSLBQWRIZDB0cTdGU2c/view?pli=1&sle=true
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hacker measured the Internet, infected hundreds of devices in Finland
Especially Carna botnet Aftermath washed on. Unknown hacker polluted in the world estimated at millions of Internet connected devices, of which approximately 1.2 million are in Australian Cert authority, identifiable.
Of these, 1.2 million units in the 420 000 was used as the “Internet Census 2012″ survey-making. The hacker, therefore, mapped out the entire internet as a botnet spread during the last year.
Most of the contaminated equipment was located in China. The next highest number, but to a much lesser number of infections was, inter alia, Turkey, India, South Korea, Russia and the United States.
According to the report infections in Finland was 425 pieces
Malware infected devices are allowed to contact the telnet protocol from the public network and the default login credentials, such as admin / admin or root / password.
According to CERT-FI contaminated equipment among other things, is a broadband terminal devices connected to the Internet and digital television receivers.
The hacker’s trick was exceptional and strictly illegal in many countries. On the other hand Carna botnet is not guilty of, inter alia, traditionally understood spam or malware distribution. Or websites shutdown, as criminals often tend to do.
The hacker tried his own words, to minimize the damage
Source: http://www.digitoday.fi/tietoturva/2013/05/30/hakkeri-mittasi-internetin-tartutti-satoja-laitteita-suomessa/20137696/66?rss=6
Tomi Engdahl says:
Botnet uses hacked devices to scan the internet
http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Botnet-uses-hacked-devices-to-scan-the-internet-1825753.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
UN to call for ‘pre-emptive’ ban on soulless robot bomber assassins
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/30/o_noes_ban_the_killer_robots_again/
the Guardian:
“Killer robots” that could attack targets autonomously without a human pulling the trigger pose a threat to international stability and should be banned before they come into existence, the United Nations will be told by its human rights investigator this week.
That will be rather difficult, however. The autonomous robot jet bomber as described already exists: it is the Tomahawk cruise missile, and it went into service in the 1980s. Most US warships and submarines are armed with it (Royal Navy submarines carry it too). It has been used in anger on many occasion
There are lots of other weapons of this sort, likewise in use for decades, generally classified as cruise or anti-shipping “missiles”. Most of them, however, actually function as robotic jet aeroplanes for most of their flight. All of them acquire their targets autonomously by various methods, without any communication with the humans who launched them.
The earnest Christof Heyns, UN special rapporteur, is going to need a time machine if he aims to get autonomous weapons banned before they come into existence,
One can approve or disapprove of the ongoing CIA “drone” strikes as one wishes, of course
Tomi Engdahl says:
Despite opposition, Google will make critical security exploits public after seven days
http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/30/4379004/google-to-make-critical-zero-day-exploits-public-after-7-days
Google’s security researchers are well known for uncovering vulnerabilities in other people’s products. Standard operating procedure is to give the affected company sixty days before publishing the problem, keeping things under wraps until a fix can be shipped out. But when it comes to critical vulnerabilities that are actively being exploited, Google wants its researchers to cut that down to just a week. A post on its Online Security Blog explains the reasoning behind the seven-day guideline: “each day an actively exploited vulnerability remains undisclosed to the public and unpatched, more computers will be compromised.”
The change in policy comes two weeks after Google engineer Tavis Ormandy disclosed a publicly unknown vulnerability (“zero day”) in Windows 7 and Windows 8. Ormandy made the announcement just five days after informing Microsoft of the bug, bemoaning the company’s security team as “difficult to work with.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Defense Minister Carl Haglund has approved Finland’s participation in the European Defence Agency (EDA) Memorandum of Understanding on cyber co-operation.
Now, to start co-operation aims at the harmonization of capabilities necessary training in the field.
EDA has been preparing cyber co-operation under the leadership of Estonia since 2012. In addition to Estonia and Finland, the project involves the Netherlands and Austria.
Source: http://www.defmin.fi/ajankohtaista/tiedotteet?9_m=5524
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ruby on Rails exploit could hijack unpatched web servers
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2271698/ruby-on-rails-exploit-could-hijack-unpatched-web-servers
POPULAR web server software framework Ruby on Rails has a security vulnerability that could effectively give control of web servers to third parties.
security researcher Jeff Jarmoc has found a security vulnerability that could lead to web servers being hijacked if left unpatched.
Jarmoc detailed the effect of the vulnerability by explaining that a remote user can edit the web server’s crontab to download a file to the /tmp directory where it is compiled and executed.
The script Jarmoc details has been around for a number of years and exploits the fact that on Linux and BSD Unix systems the /tmp directory is world writeable. Typically webservers such as Apache store temporary data in the /tmp directory, but through the use of Apache modules such as mod_security the vulnerability can be mitigated, though not eliminated completely.
“Anytime there is a vulnerability in a widely deployed software stack like Ruby on Rails it takes years for all of the server administrators around the world to get around to patching it.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Concern about the development of killer robots increases
Can work independently, war robots to comply with international law? And how robots distinguish civilians and soldiers? Concern about the development of killer robots is growing around the world.
Experts are concerned about the military purpose used in the development of killer robots, writes the New York Times.
UN Special Rapporteur Christof Heyns wants to suspend the global war robots, testing, production and use of armed forces.
- War without judgment is a mechanical slaughter. It is a decision that we allow machines to kill people with weapons, Heyns said.
Heyns told the Human Rights Council in Geneva that no country can still use his kuvailemiaan killer robots, but the technology is soon or even now available. Heyns has drawn up an official report.
Including the United States, United Kingdom, Israel and South Korea are already using techniques that can be considered as precursors of the war robots. Russia and China, little is known about the development.
Heynsia a concern that if the war robots in use exceeds a certain limit, then there is no longer very difficult to go back to square one.
- If ever there was a time when should regulate or terminate such a sphere of nuclear development, the time is now, Heyns warned.
- It is still possible to stop the development of the military industry towards full autonomy before the moral and legal limits are exceeded.
Source: http://www.iltalehti.fi/ulkomaat/2013053117093826_ul.shtml
Tomi Engdahl says:
“It is not enough that the company has all the boxes”
Data security now talk about information and events, management of siem to (security information and event management), which provides a snapshot of the security intact. The aim is to enhance the log control and combine it with security event monitoring and reporting.
“It is not enough that the company has all the boxes. They must be controlled, “said a senior security expert Kauto Huopio Communications Regulatory Authority.
Organized defense was the order. The security industry analyst Bruce Schneier says that last month’s Cryptogram-newsletter.
“Technological development is ancillary to a nuclear capability is to multiply the attacker and the defender’s power and strength.”
Schneier whet the strikers are not bound by the law, the bureaucracy, or ethics.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/quotei+riita+etta+yrityksella+on+kaikki+purkitquot/a900312?s=r&wtm=tietoviikko/-02062013&
Tomi Engdahl says:
Security software market grew globally last year, 8 percent to 19.2 billion dollars. Case shows the research firm Gartner fresh figures.
Security software market drew threats to the development of and changes in practice, such as BYOD, or bring your own device.
The strongest market grew by McAfee, a turnover rose by as much as 37 per cent from the previous year to $ 1.7 billion. The growth was both organic and acquisition-based.
The market, however, was the biggest player on Symantec, the net sales grew by only 3 per cent to 3.75 billion dollars.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/turvaohjelmistot+kayvat+kaupaksi+8/a905619?s=r&wtm=tietoviikko/-02062013&
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Politics of Security in a Democracy
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/05/the_politics_of_3.html
The first is that we respond to a strong leader.
The second is that doing something — anything — is good politics. A politician wants to be seen as taking charge, demanding answers, fixing things. It just doesn’t look as good to sit back and claim that there’s nothing to do. The logic is along the lines of: “Something must be done. This is something. Therefore, we must do it.”
The third is that the “fear preacher” wins, regardless of the outcome.
Fast-forward 10 years. If I’m right and there have been no more terrorist attacks, the fear preacher takes credit for keeping us safe. But if a terrorist attack has occurred, my government career is over. Even if the incidence of terrorism is as ridiculously low as it is today, there’s no benefit for a politician to take my side of that gamble.
The fourth and final reason is money. Every new security technology, from surveillance cameras to high-tech fusion centers to airport full-body scanners, has a for-profit corporation lobbying for its purchase and use. Given the three other reasons above, it’s easy — and probably profitable — for a politician to make them happy and say yes.
For any given politician, the implications of these four reasons are straightforward. Overestimating the threat is better than underestimating it. Doing something about the threat is better than doing nothing. Doing something that is explicitly reactive is better than being proactive.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Little Brother Is Watching You
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/05/mother-jones-video-rise-of-little-brother.html
In the post-9/11 atmosphere of ever-increasing government secrecy and surveillance
But the same technological advances that have empowered the rise of Big Brother have created another wrinkle in the story. We might call it the emergence of Little Brother: the ordinary citizen who by chance finds himself in a position to record events of great public import, and to share the results with the rest of us. This has become immeasurably easier and more likely with the near-ubiquitous proliferation of high-quality recording devices.
There is a surprisingly rich and dynamic academic literature developing around the concept of “sousveillance,” a term coined by the University of Toronto professor and inventor Steve Mann to describe privately made recordings that can serve as a counterweight to institutional and government surveillance. Mann is famous for approaching these questions from the perspective of wearable computing
Tomi Engdahl says:
Helping passwords better protect you
http://googleblog.blogspot.fi/2013/05/helping-passwords-better-protect-you.html
1. Use a different password for each important service
2. Make your password hard to guess
3. Keep your password somewhere safe
4. Set a recovery option
Tomi Engdahl says:
Turkey’s PM Erdogan: Twitter Is Menace to Society
http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=150907
Turkey’s PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan has lashed out at the role of social media in helping organize and co-ordinate rallies, after the wave of large-scale protests that gripped the country.
“And now we have this menace called Twitter,” said Erdogan in an interview for Haberturk Sunday evening.
“Social media are a menace for societies,” added the Turkish PM, as quoted by the Occupy Gezi Facebook page.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mobile Device “Security”: The Problems of Remotely Disabling Stolen Phones
http://blog.trendmicro.com/trendlabs-security-intelligence/mobile-device-security-the-problems-of-remotely-disabling-stolen-phones/
The problem of mobile device theft has become sufficiently severe that legislators have decided to file bills discussing it.
Having one’s mobile device stolen has real costs. Replacing a phone can cost hundreds of dollars; any data on the device may be either lost or stolen. Enterprises particularly care about the latter problem
The bigger issue is that other solutions to try and “fix” this problem may actually weaken mobile device security, not strengthen it. It’s frequently suggested that “remote kill” systems that would remotely disable stolen devices be included in new devices. However, these are very problematic from a security perspective: it would mean that the capability to remotely administer a device would have to be built into the device: i.e., a backdoor. If the capability to remotely kill a device is built into a product, it has to be assumed that a sufficiently determined attacker can access it and do what they with that capability.
There’s also the thorny issue of who would hold the keys: both end user and organizations can be socially engineered and end up with a malicious attacker disabling (or just threatening to disable) a device.
a “remote kill” system brings with it very real potential problems. It may be better to focus on locating the device after it has been stolen; this capability is already built into iOS and Windows Phone, but not Android.
Tomi Engdahl says:
USSR’s old domain name attracts cybercriminals
http://news.yahoo.com/ussrs-old-domain-name-attracts-cybercriminals-070143935.html
The Soviet Union disappeared from the map more than two decades ago. But online an ‘e-vil empire’ is thriving.
Security experts say the .su Internet suffix assigned to the USSR in 1990 has turned into a haven for hackers who’ve flocked to the defunct superpower’s domain space to send spam and steal money.
David and others say scammers began to move to .su after the administrators of Russia’s .ru space toughened their rules back in late 2011.
“In my opinion more than half of cybercriminals in Russia and former USSR use it.”
the .su domain survived the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the creation of a .ru domain in 1994
those behind .su refused to pull the plug — on both commercial and patriotic grounds.
With more than 120,000 domains currently registered, mothballing .su now would be a messy operation.
Tomi Engdahl says:
It-fault stopped drug – patient died
Cardiac failure patients treated with left Sweden in February without a diuretic pharmacy information system because of a problem. The patient subsequently died.
Case was reported at the end of May, the authorities in Sweden.
Swedish state pharmacy company Apoteket AB, the case involved a malfunction dose distribution of a specialized pharmacy system.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/itvika+lopetti+laakkeen++potilas+kuoli/a906589?s=r&wtm=tietoviikko/-04062013&
Tomi Engdahl says:
CIOs Should Be Prepared for Litigation Disasters
http://www.cio.com/article/733720/CIOs_Should_Be_Prepared_for_Litigation_Disasters
IT departments usually have careful plans for what to do in natural disasters, but they need a litigation-readiness plan, too, so they’ll be ready to handle ediscovery requests
Just as CIOs should have contingency plans for a network crash, they need a litigation-readiness plan for responding to legal requests for electronically stored information, a process called ediscovery.
Timeliness is critical. Responding inefficiently after notice of a triggering event often results in the loss of data, which can lead to legal sanctions against the company and avoidable costs.
Upon receiving notice, team members must be prepared to immediately identify relevant data sources, communicate requirements to preserve data (called a legal hold), and suspend automatic data-purging operations, such as the routine recycling of tapes or auto-deletion of emails.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Researchers Say They Can Hack Your iPhone With A Malicious Charger
http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/06/02/researchers-say-they-can-hack-your-iphone-with-a-malicious-charger/
Careful what you put between your iPhone and a power outlet: That helpful stranger’s charger may be injecting your device with more than mere electrons.
At the upcoming Black Hat security conference in late July, three researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology plan to show off a proof-of-concept charger that they say can be used to invisibly install malware on a device running the latest version of Apple’s iOS.
conference website describes the results of the experiment as “alarming.
The researchers’ malicious charger, which they’re calling “Mactans” in what seems to be a reference to the scientific name of the Black Widow spider, is built around an open-source single-board computer known as a BeagleBoard, sold by Texas Instruments for a retail price of around $45. “This hardware was selected to demonstrate the ease with which innocent-looking, malicious USB chargers can be constructed,” the researchers write.
the team had contacted Apple about their exploit, but hadn’t yet heard back from the company
The Georgia Tech researchers would be far from the first to hack iOS devices via their USB connections. The devices’ combined data and power port has been the most common point of entry for hackers seeking to jailbreak their devices to remove Apple’s default restrictions on their devices.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Anatomy of a hack: How crackers ransack passwords like “qeadzcwrsfxv1331”
For Ars, three crackers have at 16,000+ hashed passcodes—with 90 percent success.
http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/05/how-crackers-make-minced-meat-out-of-your-passwords/
The list contained 16,449 passwords converted into hashes using the MD5 cryptographic hash function. Security-conscious websites never store passwords in plaintext. Instead, they work only with these so-called one-way hashes
While Anderson’s 47-percent success rate is impressive, it’s miniscule when compared to what real crackers can do, as Anderson himself made clear.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Not good enough, Oracle – promises to secure Java are too little, too late
http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2013/06/03/oracle-promises-secure-java/
Oracle has promised to work harder to make Java more secure.
Given the constant flood of high-profile, heavily-exploited vulnerabilities, are Oracle’s new ideas going to be enough to save this piece of software from drowning in bad vibes?
In a lengthy blog post last week, the head of Java development, Nandini Ramani, summed up what’s been done to “address issues with the security-worthiness of Java”.
Java has been been home to a glut of security dangers for a long time now. In our Virus Bulletin prevalence reports, we combine data from a wide range of sources, and Java has been in the top five all this year and was the third biggest detection type overall in 2012.
Thanks to its cross-platform design, Java holes can hit multiple operating systems and have been behind some of the most high-profile and damaging attacks of the last year or two.
The standard advice from Naked Security has long been to disable Java in the browser at least, and to avoid installing it at all if it’s not *absolutely* required.
For some time now, numerous voices have advocated dropping Java and called for its rapid retirement, as the tragic roller-coaster of disasters has unfolded. Now Oracle says they’re stepping up to the plate, ready to do what they can to fix it, but surely it’s a case of too little, too late.
If Java is entrenched in your business, I’d suggest getting busy with looking for an alternative. If you’re still allowing it in your browser, just stop now.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Majority of Users Still Vulnerable to Java Exploits
http://community.websense.com/blogs/securitylabs/archive/2013/06/04/majority-of-users-still-vulnerable-to-java-exploits.aspx
Since the April 16 Java Critical Patch Update was released by Oracle, we also noticed that businesses have been slow to apply the Version 7 Update 21 patch into their environment. Based on our analysis, we identified the following trends:
2 days after the release of the patch, less than 2% of users had adopted Java SE Version 7 Update 21.
After a full week, the average adoption of the newest version of Java was at less than 3%.
2 weeks after the newest Java version was released, the trend line had moved to a little over 4%.
One month after release, the number of live web requests using the most recent version of Java was only around 7%.
So 1 month after release, the remaining 92.8% of users remain vulnerable to at least one exploit in the wild.
Our investigations further revealed that the busiest period of patch adoption was during the second week after release, and that adoption is continuing although at a slower rate.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cerf sees a problem: Today’s digital data could be gone tomorrow
A disk with its data may survive, but the ability to understand it may be lost
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9239790/Cerf_sees_a_problem_Today_s_digital_data_could_be_gone_tomorrow_
One of the computer scientists who turned on the Internet in 1983, Vinton Cerf, is concerned that much of the data created since then, and for years still to come, will be lost to time.
Cerf warned that digital things created today — spreadsheets, documents, presentations as well as mountains of scientific data — won’t be readable in the years and centuries ahead.
The data objects are only meaningful if the application software is available to interpret them, Cerf said. “We won’t lose the disk, but we may lose the ability to understand the disk.”
The scientific community collects large amounts of data from simulations and instrument readings. But unless the metadata survives, which will tell under what conditions the data was collected, how the instruments were calibrated, and the correct interpretation of units, the information may be lost.
“If you don’t preserve all the extra metadata, you won’t know what the data means. So years from now, when you have a new theory, you won’t be able to go back and look at the older data,”
What’s needed, Cerf said, is a “digital vellum,” a means as durable and long-lasting as the material that has successfully preserved written content for more than 1,000 years.
Ensuring that people in future centuries have access to this data, is “a hard problem,” he said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
U.N. Realizes Internet Surveillance Chills Free Speech
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/06/04/223225/un-realizes-internet-surveillance-chills-free-speech
“The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports that the United Nations has finally come to the realization that there is a direct relationship between government surveillance online and citizens’ freedom of expression.”
Internet Surveillance and Free Speech: the United Nations Makes the Connection
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/internet-and-surveillance-UN-makes-the-connection
Frank La Rue, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression and Opinion delivered this week a landmark report [PDF] on state surveillance and freedom of expression. In preparation, the Special Rapporteur reviewed relevant studies, consulted with experts including EFF, and participated in the state surveillance and human rights workshop
The explosion of online expression we’ve seen in the past decade is now being followed by an explosion of communications surveillance. For many, the Internet and mobile telephony are no longer platforms where private communication is shielded from governments knowing when, where, and with whom a communication has occurred.
The report acknowledges the benefits of technological innovations that have enabled rapid, anonymous, cross-cultural dialogues around the world. Nevertheless, the report warns that these same technologies can open a Pandora’s box of previously unimaginable state surveillance intrusions.
For example, with all the amount of information and evolving surveillance technologies, law enforcement agencies now can:
Directly observe people’s relationships and interactions and make inferences about their intimate and protected relationships.
Examine millions of people’s communications and rapidly identify precise communications interactions on any given topic.
Track any person’s physical movements almost all of the time and draw conclusions about one’s professional, sexual, political, and religious activities, and attitudes from individuals’ associations and Internet traffic.
Routinely retain data for decades, so that statements and interactions can be searched, analyzed, and recalled long after they have been made.
Do all of the above simultaneously.