The Little-Known Company That Enables Worldwide Mass Surveillance
October 23rd, 2016Via: The Intercept:
It was a powerful piece of technology created for an important customer. The Medusa system, named after the mythical Greek monster with snakes instead of hair, had one main purpose: to vacuum up vast quantities of internet data at an astonishing speed.
The technology was designed by Endace, a little-known New Zealand company. And the important customer was the British electronic eavesdropping agency, Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ.
Dozens of internal documents and emails from Endace, obtained by The Intercept and reported in cooperation with Television New Zealand, reveal the firm’s key role helping governments across the world harvest vast amounts of information on people’s private emails, online chats, social media conversations, and internet browsing histories.
The leaked files, which were provided by a source through SecureDrop, show that Endace listed a Moroccan security agency implicated in torture as one of its customers. They also indicate that the company sold its surveillance gear to more than half a dozen other government agencies, including in the United States, Israel, Denmark, Australia, Canada, Spain, and India.
Some of Endace’s largest sales in recent years, however, were to the United Kingdom’s GCHQ, which purchased a variety of “data acquisition” systems and “probes” that it used to covertly monitor internet traffic.
Documents from the National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, previously disclosed by The Intercept, have shown how GCHQ dramatically expanded its online surveillance between 2009 and 2012. The newly obtained Endace documents add to those revelations, shining light for the first time on the vital role played by the private sector in enabling the spying.
AT&T Announces Purchase of Time Warner for Nearly $86 Billion
October 22nd, 2016Via: BBC:
The US telecoms giant AT&T has announced that it will buy entertainment group Time Warner for nearly $86bn (£70bn).
The deal was agreed at a meeting of the two boards on Saturday but will still need to be approved by regulators.
Correspondents say it is the biggest deal in the world this year.
It reflects the desire of the telecoms company to acquire content to stream over its high-speed network and attract more online viewers.
If the deal is approved by regulators, AT&T would gain control of the HBO and CNN TV networks in addition to the Warner Bros film studio and other prized media assets.
AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said he did not anticipate any regulatory obstacles to the merger, saying any concerns could be overcome if concessions were made.
“This is a perfect match of two companies with complementary strengths who can bring a fresh approach to how the media and communications industry works for customers, content creators, distributors and advertisers,” he said.
Police Drones Zapping Suspects with Stun Guns: ‘The Public Is Going to Initially be Alarmed by This’
October 21st, 2016Via: Wall Street Journal:
In a conference room away from the busy San Diego Convention Center floor where law-enforcement officials from around the world perused the latest police technology, a Taser employee showed some police leaders a drone, and discussed how different things could be attached to it, including a camera, a light and a stun gun—a less-lethal weapon that discharges an electric shock.
Mr. Tuttle said the drone was an off-the-shelf model, and not a prototype worked on by Taser.
America, Land of Opportunity? Not for Young People
October 21st, 2016Via: McClatchy:
The United States is supposed to be a land of opportunity where young people can expect their quality of life will be better than their parents’. But the U.S. isn’t even in the top 20 countries when it comes to opportunities for young people.
The U.S. ranks 23 on a list of 183 countries based on 18 indicators that measure progress for youth ages 15 to 29. All of the top nine countries are in Europe, with Japan rounding out the top 10.
U.S. Warship Challenges China’s Claims in South China Sea
October 21st, 2016Via: Reuters:
A U.S. navy destroyer sailed near islands claimed by China in the South China Sea on Friday, drawing a warning from Chinese warships to leave the area.
The U.S. action was the latest attempt to counter what Washington sees as Beijing’s efforts to limit freedom of navigation in the strategic waters, U.S. officials said.
The Chinese Defense Ministry called the move “illegal” and “provocative,” saying that two Chinese warships had warned the U.S. destroyer to leave.
The guided-missile destroyer USS Decatur challenged “excessive maritime claims” near the Paracel Islands, among a string of islets, reefs and shoals over which China has territorial disputes with its neighbors, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The latest U.S. patrol, first reported by Reuters, is expected to anger Beijing and could further escalate tensions over the South China Sea. The destroyer sailed within waters claimed by China, close to but not within the 12-nautical-mile territorial limits of the islands, the officials said.
Google Has Quietly Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking
October 21st, 2016Via: ProPublica:
When Google bought the advertising network DoubleClick in 2007, Google founder Sergey Brin said that privacy would be the company’s “number one priority when we contemplate new kinds of advertising products.”
And, for nearly a decade, Google did in fact keep DoubleClick’s massive database of web-browsing records separate by default from the names and other personally identifiable information Google has collected from Gmail and its other login accounts.
But this summer, Google quietly erased that last privacy line in the sand – literally crossing out the lines in its privacy policy that promised to keep the two pots of data separate by default. In its place, Google substituted new language that says browsing habits “may be” combined with what the company learns from the use Gmail and other tools.
The change is enabled by default for new Google accounts. Existing users were prompted to opt-in to the change this summer.
The practical result of the change is that the DoubleClick ads that follow people around on the web may now be customized to them based on your name and other information Google knows about you. It also means that Google could now, if it wished to, build a complete portrait of a user by name, based on everything they write in email, every website they visit and the searches they conduct.
The move is a sea change for Google and a further blow to the online ad industry’s longstanding contention that web tracking is mostly anonymous. In recent years, Facebook, offline data brokers and others have increasingly sought to combine their troves of web tracking data with people’s real names. But until this summer, Google held the line.
DDoS on Dyn’s DNS Infrastructure Cripples Access to Popular Websites
October 21st, 2016Update: Someone on Twitter Claims “Just a Dry Run”
[???]
Via: CBC:
Could millions of connected cameras, thermostats and kids’ toys bring the internet to its knees? It’s beginning to look that way.
On Friday, epic cyberattacks crippled a major internet firm, repeatedly disrupting the availability of popular websites across North America and Europe such as Twitter, Netflix and PayPal.
The hacker group claiming responsibility says that the day’s antics were just a dry run and that it has its sights set on a much bigger target.
And the attackers now have a secret weapon in the increasing array of internet-enabled household devices they can subvert and use to wreak havoc.
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Update: DDoS Affecting Cryptogon’s Host
I’m noticing access to Cryptogon coming and going today. Bluehost is on Twitter saying they’re doing everything they can to keep the lights on, so to speak. If you aren’t able to reach Cryptogon, just try again later… Assuming that whoever is behind this isn’t just dialing in a larger attack for later…
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Via: Reuters:
Cyber attacks targeting a little known internet infrastructure company, Dyn, disrupted access to dozens of websites on Friday, preventing some users from accessing PayPal, Twitter and Spotify.
Dyn, whose customers include some of the world’s most widely visited websites, said it did not know who was responsible for the outages that began in the Eastern United States, and then spread to other parts of the country and overseas.
The outages were intermittent, making it difficult to identify all the victims. But technology news site Gizmodo named some five dozen sites that were affected by the attack. They included CNN, HBO Now, Mashable, the New York Times, People.com, the Wall Street Journal and Yelp.
Dyn said attacks were coming from tens of millions of Internet-connected devices — such as web cams, printers and thermostats — infected with malicious software that turns them into “bots” that can be used in massive distributed denial of service attacks.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security last week issued a warning about this powerful new approach, noting it was concerned about the potential for new attacks after code for malware used in these attacks was published on the internet.
Dyn said late on Friday that it was fighting the third major wave of attacks, which were being launched from locations spread across the globe, making them harder to fight.
Nano-Spike Catalysts Convert Carbon Dioxide Directly Into Ethanol
October 20th, 2016Via: PhysOrg:
In a new twist to waste-to-fuel technology, scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed an electrochemical process that uses tiny spikes of carbon and copper to turn carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, into ethanol. Their finding, which involves nanofabrication and catalysis science, was serendipitous.
“We discovered somewhat by accident that this material worked,” said ORNL’s Adam Rondinone, lead author of the team’s study published in ChemistrySelect. “We were trying to study the first step of a proposed reaction when we realized that the catalyst was doing the entire reaction on its own.”
The team used a catalyst made of carbon, copper and nitrogen and applied voltage to trigger a complicated chemical reaction that essentially reverses the combustion process. With the help of the nanotechnology-based catalyst which contains multiple reaction sites, the solution of carbon dioxide dissolved in water turned into ethanol with a yield of 63 percent. Typically, this type of electrochemical reaction results in a mix of several different products in small amounts.
“We’re taking carbon dioxide, a waste product of combustion, and we’re pushing that combustion reaction backwards with very high selectivity to a useful fuel,” Rondinone said. “Ethanol was a surprise—it’s extremely difficult to go straight from carbon dioxide to ethanol with a single catalyst.”
Research Credit: dale
Tesla: Self-Driving Car Navigates Around Palo Alto, Drives Through Intersections, Finds Parking Spot
October 20th, 2016“Google’s cars drive around like that,” you might say.
Yep, but you can’t buy one of those, and Google is nowhere near having a car for sale. My guess is that Tesla’s practice of iterating their AI from cars that actual customers are driving is causing their lead over everyone else to keep widening.
Watching the Tesla car below look for an available parking space and then park itself—that was a sort of oh shit moment for me. That felt like a significant milestone had been crossed.
I personally thought the last 20 to 100 meters of the journey wasn’t going to be solved for another several years…
Wrong!
Via: Electrek:
Tesla released a video demonstration of a Model X equipped with its latest self-driving sensor suite, which is going into Tesla’s vehicles right now, and using the most advanced version of the software, which will be pushed to owners gradually throughout the coming year.
The demo shows the Model X self-driving around Palo Alto, near Tesla’s headquarters.
There are parts of the video on the highway which might look just like the Model X is on the current Autopilot, but once the SUV is on the streets of Palo Alto, it becomes clear that the vehicle is powered by something else.
You can watch the car navigate through intersections and take exits. For the grand finale, the “driver”, who is actually just a passenger but in the driver’s seat for legal purposes, exits the vehicle at Tesla’s HQ and the Model X tries to find its own parking space…
…
Tesla CEO Elon Musk says that “when searching for parking, the car reads the signs to see if it is allowed to park there, which is why it skipped the disabled spot.”
When you have to get back to your car, of course, Tesla will not make you try to find it. You can tap ‘Summon’, like the current feature in ‘Tesla Autopilot 1’, but with the new hardware suite Musk says that “it will eventually find you even if you are on the other side of the country” instead of the 39 feet the first generation Autopilot can travel.
NSA Contractor’s Alleged Theft ‘Breathtaking’ in Scope
October 20th, 2016Via: Baltimore Sun:
The alleged theft of classified documents by a former NSA contractor from Glen Burnie was “breathtaking” in its scope, federal authorities said in a court filing Thursday, including information produced over two decades that detailed some of the country’s most sensitive intelligence operations.
…
Authorities seized some 50,000 gigabytes of digital information from Martin’s home and car, which they raided in late August. Authorities have produced no evidence that Martin shared the information he took with anyone, but the volume of data involved potentially dwarfs the amount that Edward Snowden, another agency contractor, shared with news organizations.
Prosecutors said Martin began stealing material when he first obtained a security clearance in 1996 — when Snowden was in middle school — and continued until he was arrested.
