Don’t squid me, bro….  Read More →

In the wake of strong U.S. government statements condemning WikiLeaks’ recent publishing of 77,000 Afghan War documents, the secret-spilling site has posted a mysterious encrypted file labeled “insurance.” The huge file, posted on the Afghan War page at the WikiLeaks site, is 1.4 GB and is encrypted with AES256. The file’s size dwarfs the size of all the other files on the page combined. The file has also been posted... 

Law enforcement officials are questioning a man they say claimed to be a terrorist as US Airways Flight 2032 was preparing to depart for Boston in what might have been an attempt to get off a plane stuck on a tarmac at Reagan National Airport. Government sources, who declined to be quoted, said the passenger This story comes to us via Homeland Security – National Terror Alert. National Terror Alert is America’s trusted source for homeland... 

Selling fear: The Vivos network, which offers partial ownerships similar to a timeshare in underground shelter communities, is one of several ventures touting escape from a surface-level calamity. Radius Engineering in Terrell, Texas, has built underground shelters for more than three decades, and business has never been better, says Walton McCarthy, company president. The company sells fiberglass shelters that can…  Read More →

Hacking ATMs to spit out money, demonstrated at the Black Hat conference: The two systems he hacked on stage were made by Triton and Tranax. The Tranax hack was conducted using an authentication bypass vulnerability that Jack found in the system’s remote monitoring feature, which can be accessed over the Internet or dial-up, depending on how the owner configured the…  Read More →

Tuesday’s edition of the Wall Street Journal reported on a security flaw in Citi’s mobile banking application for the iPhone . Customers are advised to update . From the WSJ: “Citi said its iPhone app accidentally saved information—including account numbers, bill payments and security access codes—in a hidden file on users’ iPhones.” Oops — not good. According to Charlie Miller, you’d need... 

Cyber terrorists have a number of ways to mount a major cyber attack on U.S. Internet infrastructure due to the general instability of its base, the director of the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) “With decades of IT infrastructure built to support changing technologies, there is little ability to baseline the entire infrastructure This story comes to us via Homeland Security – National Terror Alert. National... 

The American Civil Liberties Union today is asking the FBI field offices in 29 states and Washington, D.C. to turn over records related to the agency’s collection and use of race and ethnicity data in local communities. According to an FBI operations guide, FBI agents have the authority to collect information about and create maps This story comes to us via Homeland Security – National Terror Alert. National Terror Alert is America’s... 

Nearly 10 years after the Sept. 11, 2001  terror attacks brought to light the dangers of fake IDs, federal undercover agents are still able to easily obtain genuine U.S. e-Passports using clearly fraudulent information that should have raised red flags at the State Department according to this ABC  News report. Gregory Kutz, an investigator for This story comes to us via Homeland Security – National Terror Alert. National Terror Alert is... 

An Army private suspected of leaking classified information to WikiLeaks was admonished as a trainee in 2008 for uploading YouTube videos discussing classified facilities, according to an Army official with direct knowledge of the incident. Bradley Manning, now 22, was three months into his 16 weeks of training as an intelligence analyst when about 25 of his fellow students got together to report him for the videos in July 2008, says the official,... 

LAS VEGAS — Attribution is one of the biggest problems on the internet when it comes to cyberwarfare. How do you hold a nation responsible for malicious attacks if you can’t determine whether the activity was state-sponsored? Retired General Michael Hayden, former director of the National Security Agency, said Thursday that one solution being discussed in government is to simply forget about trying to determine if the source of an... 

LAS VEGAS — Attribution is one of the biggest problems on the internet when it comes to cyberwarfare. How do you hold a nation responsible for malicious attacks if you can’t determine whether or not the activity was state-sponsored? Retired General Michael Hayden, former director of the National Security Agency, said on Thursday that one solution being discussed in government is to simply forget about trying to determine if the source... 

Cisco recently released the 2010 Midyear Security Report and I caught up with one of the principal authors, Mary Landesman, Senior Security Researcher at Cisco.  Read More →

“Who controls the off switch?” by Ross Anderson and Shailendra Fuloria. Abstract: We’re about to acquire a significant new cybervulnerability. The world’s energy utilities are starting to install hundreds of millions of ’smart meters’ which contain a remote off switch. Its main purpose is to ensure that customers who default on their payments can be switched remotely to a prepay…  Read More →

Was it a coincidence that agents reportedly found small trace amounts of explosives on the arm casts of two people in two different terminals at DFW airport? Lets hope so. NBC Dallas Ft. Worth reports sources within the TSA and DFW Airport Police said agents discovered the small traces of explosives on the arm casts This story comes to us via Homeland Security – National Terror Alert. National Terror Alert is America’s trusted source...