Vault 7: CIA Hacking Tools Revealed
March 7th, 2017If you have an active U.S. Government security clearance, you probably shouldn’t click on this.
Via: Wikileaks:
Today, Tuesday 7 March 2017, WikiLeaks begins its new series of leaks on the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Code-named “Vault 7” by WikiLeaks, it is the largest ever publication of confidential documents on the agency.
The first full part of the series, “Year Zero”, comprises 8,761 documents and files from an isolated, high-security network situated inside the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence in Langley, Virgina. It follows an introductory disclosure last month of CIA targeting French political parties and candidates in the lead up to the 2012 presidential election.
Recently, the CIA lost control of the majority of its hacking arsenal including malware, viruses, trojans, weaponized “zero day” exploits, malware remote control systems and associated documentation. This extraordinary collection, which amounts to more than several hundred million lines of code, gives its possessor the entire hacking capacity of the CIA. The archive appears to have been circulated among former U.S. government hackers and contractors in an unauthorized manner, one of whom has provided WikiLeaks with portions of the archive.
“Year Zero” introduces the scope and direction of the CIA’s global covert hacking program, its malware arsenal and dozens of “zero day” weaponized exploits against a wide range of U.S. and European company products, include Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows and even Samsung TVs, which are turned into covert microphones.
Since 2001 the CIA has gained political and budgetary preeminence over the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). The CIA found itself building not just its now infamous drone fleet, but a very different type of covert, globe-spanning force — its own substantial fleet of hackers. The agency’s hacking division freed it from having to disclose its often controversial operations to the NSA (its primary bureaucratic rival) in order to draw on the NSA’s hacking capacities.
By the end of 2016, the CIA’s hacking division, which formally falls under the agency’s Center for Cyber Intelligence (CCI), had over 5000 registered users and had produced more than a thousand hacking systems, trojans, viruses, and other “weaponized” malware. Such is the scale of the CIA’s undertaking that by 2016, its hackers had utilized more code than that used to run Facebook. The CIA had created, in effect, its “own NSA” with even less accountability and without publicly answering the question as to whether such a massive budgetary spend on duplicating the capacities of a rival agency could be justified.
In a statement to WikiLeaks the source details policy questions that they say urgently need to be debated in public, including whether the CIA’s hacking capabilities exceed its mandated powers and the problem of public oversight of the agency. The source wishes to initiate a public debate about the security, creation, use, proliferation and democratic control of cyberweapons.
Who Controls Your Computer? (And How to Make Sure It’s You)
March 7th, 2017Good luck with that.
My paranoia doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of this thing. Keep going, keep pushing through, and the next thing you know, you’re falling through fractals of fuckedness that endlessly reveal more fuckedness the deeper you descend.
Via: François-René Rideau:
At least in theory, we therefore know how to build ourselves small paradises of trusted code. Unhappily, we also know that even if you can trust all the source code on the system, you still cannot blindly trust the system — because as Gödel once established, the source code is not and can never be all the code. Your code always relies on semantic foundations to tell what the code means; and even if you manage to formalize these foundations, you’ll find they in turn rely on further meta-foundations, to which there is no end. It’s Turtles All The Way Down.
Indeed, Ken Thompson, in his Turing Award lecture, Reflections on Trusting Trust, famously demonstrated how, by subverting the compiler, he could introduce a security backdoor in the login program despite its source code being correct; furthermore, the compiler modification that introduced this security backdoor would also reproduce itself when you recompiled the compiler, even when compiling the compiler from unmodified source code. Therefore, after initially bootstrapping this attack, there was no malicious source code left in the system to distinguish a safe system from a subverted system, yet a subverted system would remain backdoored forever (well, until someone manages to subvert the subversion).
German Institute Successfully Tests Underwater Energy Storage Sphere
March 7th, 2017Viable anytime soon? No.
Cool idea anyway? Yep.
Via: Ars Technica:
A German research institute has spent years trying to tailor pumped storage to ocean environments. Recently, the institute completed a successful four-week pilot test using a hollow concrete sphere that it placed on the bottom of Lake Constance, a body of water at the foot of the Alps. The sphere has a diameter of three meters and contains a pump and a turbine. Much like traditional pumped storage, when electricity is cheap, water can be pumped out of the sphere, and when it’s scarce, water can be let into the sphere to move the turbine and generate electricity.
The Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy and Energy Systems Engineering envisions spheres with inner diameters of 30m, placed 700m (or about 2,300 ft) underwater. Assuming the spheres would be fitted with existing 5 MW turbines that could function at that depth, the researchers estimate that each sphere would offer 20 MWh of storage with four hours discharge time.
In an underwater “energy park,” dozens of these spheres could be connected near an offshore wind farm to create a system that would be able to add extra reliability to a renewable-heavy grid. The institute admits that the economics of this project only work on a large scale. It estimates that more than 80 spheres would be needed “to achieve a relevant overall performance/capacity for the energy market.”
Open Thread: Trump Wiretap Claims
March 6th, 2017I haven’t posted anything about this because I have no idea what all the fuss is about.
Where is the uproar over the spook’s data center in Utah? Man, if you think that place is only used to store information gleaned from taps on foreigners, I’ve got a bridge to sell you. Retroactive surveillance? Remember that one? It was a warning about what evil regimes would do with increasingly powerful—but cheaper—surveillance technology. And then we had parallel construction, which was met with a collective yawn and then quickly washed away down the memory hole.
Anyway, Trump’s tapped, you’re tapped, I’m tapped. We’re all tapped.
The news is almost unreadable because of this Trump wiretapping flap. All of my feeds are polluted with it. I’m ready wind down with green tea and an audiobook. Maybe you guys have something to add.
TSA Warns Local Police About Its New Airport Pat-Downs
March 6th, 2017Via: Bloomberg:
The U.S. Transportation Security Administration has declined to say exactly where—and how—employees will be touching air travelers as part of the more invasive physical pat-down procedure it recently ordered.
The most important business stories of the day.
But the agency does expect some passengers to consider the examination unusual. In fact, the TSA decided to inform local police just in case anyone calls to report an “abnormal” federal frisking, according to a memo from an airport trade association obtained by Bloomberg News. The physical search, for those selected to have one, is what the agency described as a more “comprehensive” screening, replacing five separate kinds of pat-downs it previously used.
The decision to alert local and airport police raises a question of just how intimate the agency’s employees may get. On its website, the TSA says employees “use the back of the hands for pat-downs over sensitive areas of the body. In limited cases, additional screening involving a sensitive area pat-down with the front of the hand may be needed to determine that a threat does not exist.”
Automated Mining Will Cost Jobs and Tax Income
March 6th, 2017And the remaining employees, living in “company-run mining camps” are to be monitored by the same sensor technology used to monitor the machines:
Thousands of Rio Tinto personnel live in company-run mining camps, spending not just work hours but leisure and home time in space controlled by their employer – which in this emerging era of smart infrastructure presents the opportunity to hoover up every detail of their lives.
Rio Tinto is no stranger to using technology to improve efficiency, having replaced human-operated vehicles with automated haul trucks and trains controlled out of a central operations centre in Perth.
The company is embarking on an attempt to manage its remaining human workers in the same way, and privacy advocates fear it could set a precedent that extends well beyond the mining industry.
Via: Guardian:
From a distance, everything looks normal at Rio Tinto’s Yandicoogina and Nammuldi mines in Pilbara, Western Australia. Huge trucks trundle along the mines’ reddish-brown terraced sides laden with high-grade iron ore. Back and forth, almost endlessly.
Watch for long enough, however, and you’ll see that no-one ever steps out of the cab. No lunch stops. No toilet breaks. No change of shift. That’s because these house-sized trucks are being remotely operated by ‘drivers’ based 1,200 kilometres away in Perth.
Automation is fast becoming a reality in the world of mining. Rio Tinto is reportedly trialling driverless trains and robotic drilling at its Pilbara sites too. Tele-remote ship loaders, automated rock breakers and semi-autonomous crushers are just some of the high-tech equipment now being rolled out by the sector’s leading edge companies.
Canada: No Plans to Clamp Down at Border to Deter Illegal Immigrants Fleeing U.S.
March 6th, 2017I’m no rocket scientist, but if “hundreds” are willing to take the shoe leather express to Canada in February and March, what’s going to happen when the snow melts?
Via: Reuters:
Canada will not tighten its border to deter migrants crossing illegally from the United States in the wake of a U.S. immigration crackdown because the numbers are not big enough to cause alarm, a government minister said on Saturday.
Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said the issue had not risen to a scale that required hindering the flow of goods and people moving across the world’s longest undefended border.
Hundreds of people, mainly from Africa and the Middle East, have defied winter conditions and walked across the border, seeking asylum. They are fleeing President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, migrants and refugee agencies say.
It is not common to have so many asylum seekers in the United States looking for refuge in Canada over such a short period. The influx poses a political risk for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who faces pressure from the left, which wants more let in, and from the right, which fears an increased security risk.
Russia: Small House 3D Printed in Place in 24 Hours
March 6th, 2017Via: Mashable:
Located in Russia, this 400-square-foot home (37 square meters) was built in just a day, at a cost of just over $10,000.
3D-printing company Apis Cor built the house using a mobile printer on-site.
Company Website: ApisCor
Britain: Surge in Children Being Admitted to Hospital for Sleeping Disorders
March 5th, 2017Via: Telegraph:
Three times as many children under 14 are being admitted into hospital with sleeping disorders than ten years ago as technology keeps many awake at night.
Households where both parents work are also pushing bedtimes later, with a lack of sleep raising fears of poor school performance and later life health woes.
It puts children at greater risk of developing mental health issues, catching viruses and becoming obese, according to past research. Studies have also linked a lack of sleep to low levels of emotional control.
Specialists fear the problem could worsen unless it is addressed now, and believe moves should be made to tackle it on the public health agenda.
Aussie’s Weird Immigration Interview in the U.S.
March 5th, 2017Via: news.com.au:
“Have you been here before?”
“Yes.”
“How long are you here?”
“10 days.”
“What will you be doing?”
“Vacationing.”
Thornton told news.com.au he got the sense he was about to be allowed in, so he picked up his bags as the officer asked one last question.
“What do you do for a living?”
“I told him I’m a software engineer. He asked if I knew Python code, and I said yes. It’s a programming language, like C or Java, and it’s pretty standard,” Thornton said.
The follow-up question was something he’d ever been asked before.
“‘I’ve got a problem, I’m trying to write a computer program, can you help me?’”
Thornton said he was so surprised he didn’t know what to think.
“I was a little bit taken aback, because I thought I was going to get straight in.
“He started to read off his computer, and I got the feeling he was trying to trick me. I just wanted to get into the US, so I said: ‘Of course’.”
He said the officer appeared to be mid to senior level, and there’s no chance the conversation would have been overheard by anyone else in line.
For the next few minutes, he was forced to prove his worth — even given a pen and paper to record his answers.
“He administered a literal computer science test. It wasn’t a savant-level one like you hear of at Google, but it was definitely a test.
“The vibe I got was weird. He asked me a question, then asked me a follow-up question to prove I wasn’t lying.
“Do they not allow bad software engineers into the United States?” Thornton joked.
