Dec 31
Criminals will go to all lengths
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Dec 31
We already knew that the NSA had developed a taste for intercepting packages to put backdoors in electronics
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Dec 30
Whether you have sensitive information on your laptop or if you’re just simply a private person, having your laptop tampered with either by a nosey sibling or by a corporate spy is a big no-no on your list, and while there are ways for you to check if your computer has been messed around with, it seems that one cheap and reportedly effective way to do so is through the use of nail polish! This is according to security researchers, Eric Michaud and Ryan Lackey, both of whom gave a presentation at the Chaos Communication Congress (the same event in which Jacob Appelbaum presented his NSA findings as well) where they revealed that nail polish, along with a host of other cheap methods, could be used to see if your computer has been tampered with.
While there are seals that one could use, they claim that these seals can be easily broken, not to mention if one takes their time, could replace it with a new seal in almost the same same spot, leaving you to think none the wiser. The idea behind nail polish is to create what seems like a random pattern which makes it harder for the tamperer to replicate. The use of glitter nail polish is similar to what astronomers use to detect changes in the night sky, called blink comparison. Because each application of nail polish seemingly creates a random pattern in the glitter, it would be almost impossible for the tamperer to reapply it in exactly the same way.
Of course once the device has been tampered with, and with data possibly stolen or malware installed, it might be too late, but at the very least you know that it has been messed with and you can take the appropriate action, as opposed to finding out at the last minute.
Nail Polish Can Be Used To Tell If Your Computer Has Been Tampered With original content from Ubergizmo. 
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Dec 30
Think that putting a password on your WiFi network will keep away pesky leechers and hackers? Think again. Speaking at the Chaos Communications Congress, security researcher Jacob Appelbaum revealed that the NSA had a device that is able to hack your WiFi from as far as 8 miles away! In fact Appelbaum speculates that the exploits used to hack your WiFi could even be delivered by drone, but concluded that it would be simpler and possibly more discreet to use an unmarked van parked at the side of the road.
For those unfamiliar, Appelbaum is the author of the Der Spiegel article that first revealed the NSA’s catalog. While the catalog in question dates back to 2007, Appelbaum believes that these tactics are still being employed by the NSA, if they haven’t been improved upon and advanced over the years already. One of the examples that he gave was how Julian Assange’s home at the Ecuadorian Embassy received welcome messages from a Ugandan telephone company, where the messages were later found to have originated from a foreign base station device installed on the roof, and that whoever owned it had forgotten to format the device which might have been used during an operation in Uganda.
If you’d like to learn more about the hack and some of the NSA’s catalog in general, you can check out the video above in which Appelbaum delivers his findings. It’s pretty long at over an hour but definitely worth taking a look at.
The NSA Has A Device That Can Supposedly Hack Your WiFi From 8 Miles Away original content from Ubergizmo. 
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Dec 29
The hardware hacker Bunnie Huang gave a talk at the Chaos Compute Club Congress where he offered some good news and some bad news. The good news? SD cards contain powerful, handy micro controllers that are useful to hackers and hobbyists. The bad news? SD cards are woefully insecure.
In a detailed and readable post, Huang describes the exact problems with Flash memory. In order to reduce the price and increase the storage space, engineers have to fight a never-ending form of internal entropy that slowly but surely scrambles the data on every Flash drive.
Huang writes:
Flash memory is really cheap. So cheap, in fact, that it’s too good to be true. In reality, all flash memory is riddled with defects — without exception. The illusion of a contiguous, reliable storage media is crafted through sophisticated error correction and bad block management functions. This is the result of a constant arms race between the engineers and mother nature; with every fabrication process shrink, memory becomes cheaper but more unreliable. Likewise, with every generation, the engineers come up with more sophisticated and complicated algorithms to compensate for mother nature’s propensity for entropy and randomness at the atomic scale.
To take up arms against these errors, SD cards are essentially over-engineered to ensure an acceptable level of data retention. They also contain firmware that can, for example, change the visible available space on the card without changing the actual available space. This means you could sell a 2GB card as a 4GB card – your computer wouldn’t notice a difference until it started filling up that fake space. You can, incidentally, check your cards with this tool.
Here’s the worse news: because these cards contain firmware, this firmware can be updated. Huang reports that most manufacturers leave this update feature unsecured. In other words, don’t ever assume a Flash device is empty after you wipe its contents. For example, the card could make a copy of the contents in a hidden memory area or it could run malicious software while idle.
And the good news: Huang also notes that these cards could be reprogrammed to become Arduino-esque open source microcontroller and memory systems. “An Arduino, with its 8-bit 16 MHz microcontroller, will set you back around $20. A microSD card with several gigabytes of memory and a microcontroller with several times the performance could be purchased for a fraction of the price,” he writes.
So, in short, destroy your SD cards if you have any dirty info on them and keep your eyes peeled for ultra-small, ultra-fast Arduino hacks.
Dec 29
The NSA revelations keep on coming, and if you’re feeling desensitized to the whole thing it’s time to refocus and get your game face on for 2014. Because shit continues to get real.
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Dec 28
In an age where the Web and all its "Cyber Space" matters more than ever, it is interesting to think and understand why is it so important to be safe when browsing, this is, the importance of Cyber Security. Reasons for this go from the economical to the conjunctures of our world, and have multiple origins behind it. Let’s have a look at them.
Dec 27
It would appear that the debacle Target is facing this holiday season is turning over as we speak. Though they’d previously suggested that findings showed no PIN data to have … Continue reading
Dec 27
After admitting yesterday that some encrypted data had been pulled by the hack potentially affecting 40 million customers
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Dec 27
In a ruling on federal phone-tracking this week a U.S. District Judge based in New York has ruled that the NSA’s actions thus far have been legal. Judge William Pauley … Continue reading
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