Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category

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Hackers Retaliate Against DOJ in Raging Online Piracy Fight

By Dawn in MSI Detective Services, Politics, Technology at January 24th, 2012 | No comments

 

 

 

 

Last week, the Justice Department shut down a popular website called Megaupload. The company was charged with storing and distributing pirated material, and thus robbing copyright holders of more than $500,000. This is one of the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought. The action is part of the U.S. government’s battle over online piracy.

Megaupload is a heavily visited site based in Hong Kong that’s been used to share large files, including movies, videos, television shows, e-books, games, and music. The site has 150 million registered users and 50 million visits a day.

The Justice Department released indictments against seven executives. Four were arrested at the New Zealand mansion of its founder, who goes by the name Kim Dotcom.

Within hours of the Justice Department shutting down the site, the hacker collective called Anonymous retaliated. They shut down the websites of the Justice Department and major media groups, including Universal Music and the Motion Picture Association of America.

The government’s actions came one day after last week’s online protests against anti-piracy bills in Congress. Two companies behind the online protests were Google Inc. and Wikipedia.

The protests caused congressional leaders to temporarily back-down and search for a compromise between Hollywood and Internet companies. The Hollywood lobbying group had built bipartisan backing for the proposed legislation before unprecedented Web opposition prompted at least 13 co-sponsors to abandon the bills. Read the full article »

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Supreme Court Rules: Warrant Needed for GPS Tracking

By Dawn in court cases, gps, gps tracker, invasion of privacy, MSI Detective Services, Technology at January 23rd, 2012 | No comments

GPS Tracker

 

 

 

 

 

 

In a story posted on 11/23/11, I wrote about how the Supreme court was hearing a case about a man, Antoine Jones, who was convicted of drug charges after a court supported the use of police placing a GPS tracking device on his car.

A federal appeals court in Washington had overturned Jones’ drug conspiracy conviction because police did not have a warrant when they installed a GPS device on his vehicle and then tracked his movements for a month. The Supreme Court agreed with the appeals court.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday that police must get a search warrant before using GPS technology to track criminal suspects.

The ruling represents a serious complication for law enforcement nationwide, which increasingly relies on high tech surveillance of suspects, including the use of various types of satellite technology.

A GPS device installed by police on Washington nightclub owner Antoine Jones’ Jeep helped them link him to a house used to stash money and drugs. He was sentenced to life in prison before the appeals court overturned the conviction. Read the full article »

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Malware Creeping into Portable Documents

By Dawn in Crime, Debugging - Electronic Countermeasures, Electronic Fraud, Electronic Theft, Hacking, MSI Detective Services, Technology at January 18th, 2012 | No comments

 

 

 

 

 

Although the picture in this story shows a book for “dummies,” it would take some extremely intelligent people to stay one step ahead of the constant attacks being made on corporations by cyber-criminals. This book wouldn’t really help you very much. You might need a Master’s degree in computer programming at minimum.

Malware designed to damage computer systems is now being secreted into portable documents, commonly known as PDD, by cyber-criminals whose efforts usually are thwarted by antivirus software. Everyone should have antivirus software on their computers – that is Computer Protection 101.

These PDF attacks are said to be aimed at corporate and government institutions and according to Defense analysts cited in online commentaries. The attacks are part of sophisticated schemes aimed at extracting information from systems otherwise thought to be firewalled and secure.

Several corporate sources confirmed defense organizations were targeted in the attacks. The attacks not only appear to be well-funded, but they could come from an unknown country or corporate entity. This, of course, makes it harder to track down these cyber-criminals.

This latest cyber-threat became news after warnings came from the computer software company Symantec, along with comments from defense manufacturer Lockheed Martin and software provider Adobe that acknowledged the risk.

Cyber-criminals trying to take advantage of the alleged weakness in Adobe’s PDF reading and editing software use a well-known family of malware called Sykipot, Symantec said. Read the full article »

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Scientists Create World’s Tiniest Ear

By Dawn in Debugging - Electronic Countermeasures, eavesdropping, invasion of privacy, Technology at January 17th, 2012 | No comments

 

 

 

 

Have you ever wondered what a virus sounds like? Or what noise a bacterium makes when it moves between hosts? If the answer is yes, you may soon get your chance to find out, thanks to the development of the world’s tiniest ear. The “nano-ear,” a microscopic particle of gold trapped by a laser beam, can detect sound a million times fainter than the threshold for human hearing.

Looking at this from a completely scientific perspective, this is exciting news. But with the advent of new technology, sometimes there are downsides – like when the technology gets into the wrong hands.

It’s still at the experimental stage, but this could lead to far more sensitive surveillance microphones in the future. The required laser beam could be carried by a difficult-to-detect optical fiber strand to the sensor.  Combined with DSP and advanced acoustic signal processing algorithms, this could represent a major security threat.

We already know that listening and viewing devices can be planted in homes and offices or people can carry audio listening devices on their clothing, etc. However, all of this requires a bit of work or being within a reasonable range of proximity to your target. Even then, the listening/recording quality may not be perfect. Can you imagine what a scary world this would be if people’s ears could be devised to be listening devices – not to mention with superb hearing capability? This sounds like some espionage Sci-Fi movie to me. Read the full article »

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