Probable Government Backdoors Found on Juniper Firewalls
December 19th, 2015Via: Wired:
On Thursday, tech giant Juniper Networks revealed in a startling announcement that it had found “unauthorized” code embedded in an operating system running on some of its firewalls.
The code, which appears to have been in multiple versions of the company’s ScreenOS software going back to at least August 2012, would have allowed attackers to take complete control of Juniper NetScreen firewalls running the affected software. It also would allow attackers, if they had ample resources and skills, to separately decrypt encrypted traffic running through the Virtual Private Network, or VPN, on the firewalls.
“During a recent internal code review, Juniper discovered unauthorized code in ScreenOS that could allow a knowledgeable attacker to gain administrative access to NetScreen devices and to decrypt VPN connections,” Bob Worrall, the companies’ CIO wrote in a post. “Once we identified these vulnerabilities, we launched an investigation into the matter, and worked to develop and issue patched releases for the latest versions of ScreenOS.”
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The security community is particularly alarmed because at least one of the backdoors appears to be the work of a sophisticated nation-state attacker.
“The weakness in the VPN itself that enables passive decryption is only of benefit to a national surveillance agency like the British, the US, the Chinese, or the Israelis,” says Nicholas Weaver, a researcher at the International Computer Science Institute and UC Berkeley. “You need to have wiretaps on the internet for that to be a valuable change to make [in the software].”
Wal-Mart Hires Lockheed Martin for “Intelligence Gathering” on Union Organizers
December 19th, 2015Via: Bloomberg:
OUR Walmart, a group of employees backed and funded by a union, was asking for more full-time jobs with higher wages and predictable schedules. Officially they called themselves the Organization United for Respect at Walmart. Walmart publicly dismissed OUR Walmart as the insignificant creation of the United Food and Commercial Workers International (UFCW) union. “This is just another union publicity stunt, and the numbers they are talking about are grossly exaggerated,” David Tovar, a spokesman, said on CBS Evening News that November.
Internally, however, Walmart considered the group enough of a threat that it hired an intelligence-gathering service from Lockheed Martin, contacted the FBI, staffed up its labor hotline, ranked stores by labor activity, and kept eyes on employees (and activists) prominent in the group. During that time, about 100 workers were actively involved in recruiting for OUR Walmart, but employees (or associates, as they’re called at Walmart) across the company were watched; the briefest conversations were reported to the “home office,” as Walmart calls its headquarters in Bentonville, Ark.
Amazon Building Its Own Overnight Airfreight Operation
December 18th, 2015Via: Cargo Facts:
Amazon.com Inc. is creating a logistics operation that will include overnight air operations in the US domestic market, potentially including the acquisition of at least 20 freighter aircraft, Cargo Facts has learned.
Currently, Amazon ships most of its parcels through United Parcel Service, FedEx, and the United States Postal Service. The change to an inhouse logistics venture would seismically change the airfreight industry, as the majority of new air cargo activity around the world has come from e-commerce companies — and much of it from Amazon, in particular.
The Secret Surveillance Catalogue
December 18th, 2015Via: The Intercept:
Concerned about the militarization of law enforcement, a source within the intelligence community has provided The Intercept with a secret, internal U.S. government catalogue of dozens of cellphone surveillance devices used by the military and by intelligence agencies. Some of the devices are already in use by federal law enforcement and local police forces domestically, and civil liberties advocates believe others will eventually find their way into use inside the U.S. This product catalogue provides rare insight into the current spy capabilities of local law enforcement and offers a preview of the future of mass surveillance of mobile communications.
Congress Snuck a Surveillance Bill Into the Federal Budget Last Night
December 18th, 2015StarWarsStarWarsStarWarsStarWarsStarWarsStarWars
Via: The Verge:
After more than a year of stalemate, Congress has used an unconventional procedural measure to bring a controversial cybersurveillance bill to the floor. Late last night, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) announced a 2,000-page omnibus budget bill, a last-minute compromise necessary to prevent a government shutdown. But while the bulk of the bill concerns taxes and spending, it contains a surprise 1,729 pages in: the full text of the controversial Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015, which passed the Senate in October.
CISA has been widely criticized since it was first introduced to congress in 2014, with Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) calling it “a surveillance bill by another name.” The bill would make it easier for private sector companies to share user information with the government and other companies, removing privacy and liability protections in the name of better cybersecurity. But critics like Wyden say removing those protections would turn internet backbone companies into de facto surveillance organs, with no incentive to protect users’ privacy.
How Poverty Changes Kids’ Brains
December 16th, 2015Via: Nautilus:
When children grow up in poverty, their brains can take a different shape. That’s one of the stark and uncomfortable findings from the lab of Kimberly Noble, a pediatrician and cognitive neuroscientist at Teachers College, Columbia University. Noble has used MRI scans to study the brains of children and found that kids in different socioeconomic strata show differences in brain structure—which can correspond to variations in brain function. Nautilus spoke with her about how the stress of poverty may change the developing brain, how those anatomical differences may translate to different outcomes in school and life, and what lessons policymakers should take from her research.
Guy Builds Self Driving Car in His Garage with Commodity Computer Gear and Linux
December 16th, 2015Via: Bloomberg:
Hotz’s approach isn’t simply a low-cost knockoff of existing autonomous vehicle technology. He says he’s come up with discoveries—most of which he refuses to disclose in detail—that improve how the AI software interprets data coming in from the cameras. “We’ve figured out how to phrase the driving problem in ways compatible with deep learning,” Hotz says. Instead of the hundreds of thousands of lines of code found in other self-driving vehicles, Hotz’s software is based on about 2,000 lines.
The major advance he will discuss is the edge that deep-learning techniques provide in autonomous technology. He says the usual practice has been to manually code rules that handle specific situations. There’s code that helps cars follow other vehicles on the highway, and more code to deal with a deer that leaps into the road. Hotz’s car has no such built-in rules. It learns what drivers typically do in various situations and then tries to mimic and perfect that behavior. If his Acura cruises by a bicyclist, for example, it gives the biker some extra room, because it’s seen Hotz do that in the past. His system has a more general-purpose kind of intelligence than a long series of if/then rules. As Hotz puts it in developer parlance, “?‘If’ statements kill.” They’re unreliable and imprecise in a real world full of vagaries and nuance. It’s better to teach the computer to be like a human, who constantly processes all kinds of visual clues and uses experience, to deal with the unexpected rather than teach it a hard-and-fast policy.
In the coming weeks, Hotz intends to start driving for Uber so he can rack up a lot of training miles for the car. He aims to have a world-class autonomous vehicle in five months, something he can show off for Musk. He’s heard that Teslas struggle when going across the Golden Gate Bridge because of the poor lane markings. So he plans to film a video of the Acura outperfoming a Tesla across the bridge, and then follow that up by passing the final test on I-405 in Los Angeles where Musk lives. Hotz’s YouTube videos get millions of views, and he fully expects Musk will get the message. “I’m a big Elon fan, but I wish he didn’t jerk me around for three months,” he says. “He can buy the technology for double.” (Says Tesla spokesman Ricardo Reyes: “We wish him well.”)
There’s really no telling how effective Hotz’s software and self-learning technology ultimately will be. His self-funded experiment could end with Hotz humbly going back to knock on Google’s door for a job. “Yeah, of course there will be skepticism,” he says. “This is part of a great adventure. All I can say is, ‘Watch.’?”
Why Force Awakens Can’t Hope to Match the Box-Office Power of the Original
December 16th, 2015Via: Bloomberg:
What’s stronger than the Force? Inflation.
The Onion on Ergonomics: Health Experts Recommend Standing Up At Desk, Leaving Office, Never Coming Back
December 16th, 2015Ahhyep. Worked for me.
Via: The Onion:
In an effort to help working individuals improve their fitness and well-being, experts at the Mayo Clinic issued a new set of health guidelines Thursday recommending that Americans stand up at their desk, leave their office, and never return. “Many Americans spend a minimum of eight hours per day sitting in an office, but we observed significant physical and mental health benefits in subjects after just one instance of standing up, walking out the door, and never coming back to their place of work again,” said researcher Claudine Sparks, who explained that those who implemented the practice in their lives reported an improvement in mood and reduced stress that lasted for the remainder of the day, and which appeared to persist even into subsequent weeks.
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Sparks added that Americans could maximize positive effects by using their lunch break to walk until nothing looks familiar anymore and your old life is a distant memory.
Research Credit: Eileen
Smog Choked Chinese Buy Cans of Canadian “Fresh Mountain Air” for $28 Each
December 15th, 2015Maybe it’s time someone wrote the Twelve End Days of Christmas.
Just imagine it… The Twelve Days of Christmas using Cryptogon headlines.
Via: Independent:
As China’s pollution problems continue, a Canadian company has cashed in on the crisis by selling bottles of fresh mountain air to people for up to $28 (£18.50) each.
Beijing was issued its first ever red alert in December over its hazardous pollution levels, causing the capital to shut down schools and construction for a period of time, while attempting to take a percentage of the city’s cars off the road and telling people to stay indoors.
