NSA’s Hacker-in-Chief: We Don’t Need Zero-Days To Get Inside Your Network
January 31st, 2016I’m posting this for people in network management and security rolls who have to deal with managers who don’t really get it. This talk isn’t for you IT people, because you already know all of this. It’s for the people who block you from trying to do your job effectively.
And this is just for non-state-sponsored threats.
If you are worried about NSA/GCHQ, you are going to have a very, very hard time defending against that. I’d start with an airgapped network inside a Faraday cage. Here’s a good example to follow. Forget any commercial operating systems, or hard drives.
Have a nice day.
Via: Vice:
The NSA has caught a lot of attention in recent years when it comes to the use of zero-day exploits, the precious security holes unknown to software vendors that hackers use to infect machines and penetrate networks.
The market for these unpatched vulnerabilities is massive, driven by a seemingly insatiable demand from global intelligence services, most notably the US government. But many security experts have suggested that the role of zero-days in government-sponsored hacking has perhaps been overstated.
Including, now, the head of the NSA’s most elite and secretive hacking unit.
In an unprecedented talk on Thursday at the USENIX Enigma security conference in San Francisco, Rob Joyce, chief of NSA’s Tailored Access Operations (TAO), downplayed the importance of zero-days and the degree to which nation-state hackers like those in his unit depend on them.
“I think a lot of people think the nation states are running on this engine of zero-days. You go out with your skeleton key and unlock the door and you’re in. It’s not that,” he said.
“I will tell you that persistence and focus will get you in, will achieve that exploitation without the zero-days,” he continued “There’s so many more vectors that are easier, less risky and quite often more productive than going down that route.”
Project Skybender: Google Working on Solar Powered Drones for 5G Internet Access
January 31st, 2016Via: Guardian:
Google is testing solar-powered drones at Spaceport America in New Mexico to explore ways to deliver high-speed internet from the air, the Guardian has learned.
In a secretive project codenamed SkyBender, the technology giant built several prototype transceivers at the isolated spaceport last summer, and is testing them with multiple drones, according to documents obtained under public records laws.
In order to house the drones and support aircraft, Google is temporarily using 15,000 square feet of hangar space in the glamorous Gateway to Space terminal designed by Richard Foster for the much-delayed Virgin Galactic spaceflights.
The tech company has also installed its own dedicated flight control centre in the nearby Spaceflight Operations Center, separate from the terminal.
Lawyers, Doctors and Public Servants in Firing Line from Rise of the Machines
January 30th, 2016Via: Canberra Times:
Machines will end about 40 per cent of today’s Australian jobs within two decades and they’re coming for middle class occupations, one of the nation’s automatisation experts has warned.
University of Sydney professor of data science and machine learning Hugh Durrant-Whyte said Canberra’s public servants would be among those in the firing line.
“All jobs that are primarily analysis are capable of automation,” he said. “Those middle jobs will go, the question is whether these people move up to better policy making, or simply out.”
Australia was one of the world’s largest users of robotics in the mining, transport and agriculture sectors, but the “hollowing out” of middle-tier white collar roles was just beginning, he said.
“The curious thing about automatisation and particularly computerisation is that the jobs that are going are not the ones at the low end of the market, it’s the people in the middle like journalists, doctors, lawyers, assistants, bank tellers,” he said.
Official Projections for Solar Adoption May be Much Too Conservative
January 29th, 2016Disclosure: I sell solar power systems in New Zealand.
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Via: FastCompany:
If solar power prices fall in line with other technologies, we could see continued price-drops of 10% a year. That’s according to an historical analysis of 53 technologies that finds a distinct pattern in how major innovations perform over time.
If so, the world could generate at least 20% of its electricity from the sun by 2027, researchers say, and thus allow us to move more swiftly away from fossil fuels than some official projections have indicated.
Mathematicians at the Oxford Martin School, in the U.K., base their forecast on Moore’s Law—the famous 1975 prophecy that computing speed doubles every 18 months because of the increased capacity of integrated circuits.
For the study, Doyne Farmer and François Lafond pretended they knew nothing about the actual progress of technology, putting “themselves in the past” as it were. They then predicted how each of the technologies—from transistors to televisions to various chemicals—would play out, while normalizing out different rates of technological improvement and volatility.
“In contrast, the [high renewable] scenario of the International Energy Agency, which is presumably based on expert analysis, assumes that PV will generate 16% of total electricity in 2050,” Farmer says in a press lease. “Thus, even in their optimistic forecast, they assume PV will take 25 years longer than the historical trend suggests, to hit what is a lower target.”
France to Pave 1000km of Roads with Solar Panels
January 29th, 2016Disclosure: I sell solar power systems in New Zealand.
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😯
Via: Treehugger:
Over the next five years, France will install some 621 miles (1,000km) of solar roadway using Colas’ Wattway solar pavement.
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No, this is not the crowdfunded solar road project that blew up the internet a few years ago, but is a collaboration between Colas, a transport infrastructure company, and INES (France’s National Institute for Solar Energy), and sanctioned by France’s Agency of Environment and Energy Management, which promises to bring solar power to hundreds of miles of roads in the country over the next five years.
One major difference between this solar freakin’ roadway and that other solar freakin’ roadway is that the new Wattway system doesn’t replace the road itself or require removal of road surfaces, but instead is designed to be glued onto the top of existing pavement. The Wattway system is also built in layers of materials “that ensure resistance and tire grip,” and is just 7 mm thick…
F-35 Software Overrun with Bugs, DoD Testing Chief Warns
January 29th, 2016Via: Ars Technica:
The F-35’s flight plan appears to have delays written all over it. A previously unreleased memo from Michael Gilmore, the Department of Defense’s director for Operational Test and Evaluation (OT&E), details a list of problems that will likely hold up the testing of the final configuration of the aircraft—and will mean the “Block 2B” aircraft now being delivered to the Marine Corps soon will continue to be full of software bugs for years to come.
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Of particular concern to Gilmore was the F-35’s “Autonomic Logistics Information System” (ALIS), which he said “continues to struggle in development with deferred requirements, late and incomplete deliveries, high manpower requirements, multiple deficiencies requiring work-arounds, and a complex architecture with likely (but largely untested) cyber deficiencies.” ALIS is a system that spans from the aircraft itself to the entire supply chain for its maintenance and repair parts, and it includes portable computing gear required to check if the right parts are installed properly before flight. The software is still a work in progress, and testing of potential security vulnerabilities—which could potentially keep aircraft from being able to take off—has largely been deferred for now while Lockheed Martin and the JPO focus on getting the software to actually work as intended.
Israeli Drone Feeds Hacked By British and American Intelligence
January 29th, 2016Via: The Intercept:
AMERICAN AND BRITISH INTELLIGENCE secretly tapped into live video feeds from Israeli drones and fighter jets, monitoring military operations in Gaza, watching for a potential strike against Iran, and keeping tabs on the drone technology Israel exports around the world.
Under a classified program code-named “Anarchist,” the U.K.’s Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, working with the National Security Agency, systematically targeted Israeli drones from a mountaintop on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. GCHQ files provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden include a series of “Anarchist snapshots” — thumbnail images from videos recorded by drone cameras. The files also show location data mapping the flight paths of the aircraft. In essence, U.S. and British agencies stole a bird’s-eye view from the drones.
Several of the snapshots, a subset collected in 2009 and 2010, appear to show drones carrying missiles. Although they are not clear enough to be conclusive, the images offer rare visual evidence to support reports that Israel flies attack drones — an open secret that the Israeli government won’t acknowledge.
“There’s a good chance that we are looking at the first images of an armed Israeli drone in the public domain,” said Chris Woods, author of Sudden Justice, a history of drone warfare. “They’ve gone to extraordinary lengths to suppress information on weaponized drones.”
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Anarchist operated from a Royal Air Force installation in the Troodos Mountains, near Mount Olympus, the highest point on Cyprus. The Troodos site “has long been regarded as a ‘Jewel in the Crown’ by NSA as it offers unique access to the Levant, North Africa, and Turkey,” according to an article from GCHQ’s internal wiki.
Research Credit: DF
France: FedEx Staff Found Fake Bombs Headed to U.S. Embassy in Tunisia
January 29th, 2016Via: AFP:
Employees of the American courier service at Charles de Gaulle airport were shocked to find a pressure cooker filled with nuts and bolts inside a package in transit from the US to Tunisia.
On further inspection they discovered a container of other similar devices, along with what appeared to be detonators, said Frederic Petit, who represents the company’s employees for the CGT union.
The staff alerted authorities of “imminent danger,” and officials arrived to test the device using sniffer dogs and X-ray machines.
A security source at the airport said the devices were actually decoys bound for the US embassy in Tunisia that were being used for a training exercise.
Research Credit: Jb
And Now: “Genetically Modified Mosquitoes Join The Fight To Stop Zika Virus”
January 28th, 2016Here’s what happened in Brazil, where Oxitec has been conducting massive experiments with genetically modified mosquitoes.
The chart below is from, Zika Virus, Explained in 6 Charts and Maps:
Also, from 2012: Brazil Rolls Out GM Mosquito Farms:
Brazil has opened its first-ever, large-scale genetically modified mosquito farm in an effort to reduce the incidence of dengue fever.
The mosquitoes are a genetically modified (GM) version of the Aedes aegypti, the species responsible for transmitting the dengue virus to humans. The farm was inaugurated early last week and is expected to produce millions of GM insects each month.
Scientists at the British-based Oxitec developed a method of shortening the lifespan of the mosquitoes and reducing mosquito populations by, essentially, sterilizing them. The mosquitoes are engineered to need the antibiotic tetracycline to develop beyond adolescence. Male mosquitoes in the laboratory are given the antibiotic to reach adulthood and then released into the wild to breed with wild females. The larvae, unable to access tetracycline, die before they are fully-grown. After a few days, both the offspring and the released males are dead.
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The primary concern, de Mier said, was the uncertainty and lack of scientific data regarding potential the GM mosquitoes will pose long-term harm to Key West’s ecosystem and its inhabitants.
She and others who oppose the research also point out the potential risk of females being released along with the males, the possibility that the gene will mutate, and any unforeseen potential negative effects it might have on the area’s insects and wildlife.
Researchers, however, dismiss these concerns.
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De Mier and her cohort in Key West aren’t the only skeptics. Earlier this year, Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology looked at information from Oxitec’s trials in Malaysia and Grand Cayman, and accused the company of having a lack of transparency. Its findings suggest “deficits in the scientific quality of regulatory documents and a general absence of accurate experimental descriptions available before releases start.”
In other words, Oxitec has been producing genetically modified mosquitoes on an industrial scale for years in Brazil, the country that now finds itself at ground zero of this Zika outbreak. With regard to Oxitec’s trials in Malaysia and Grand Cayman, Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology found, “Deficits in the scientific quality of regulatory documents and a general absence of accurate experimental descriptions available before releases start.”
These are fascinating coincidences.
And here’s one more: Bill Gates: GM Mosquito Trial Strains Ties in Gates-Funded Project:
Oxitec has received $5 million from the Gates program…
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Update: In August 2015 Oxitec was purchased by U.S.-based Intrexon Corp in a deal valued at $160 million.
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Update: Zika Virus Made Available to Researchers by Rockefeller Foundation in 1953
Via: NPR:
The rapid spread of the Zika virus has raised interest in a British company that has developed a genetically modified mosquito. Oxitec has produced a genetically engineered line of the Aedes aegypti mosquito, the mosquito that carries dengue fever and chikungunya. Those tropical diseases have become common in Latin America and are now showing up in Florida.
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The company breeds and releases into the wild male mosquitoes that don’t produce viable offspring. When females mate with the GMO males, they lay eggs that hatch but the larvae die before adulthood. Oxitec says trials conducted in Brazil and other countries over the past decade show releasing bioengineered male mosquitoes can reduce the wild Aedes aegypti population by 90 percent.
Nazis Researched Use of Mosquitoes for War at Dachau
January 28th, 2016I’ve been reading about the Zika virus situation and came across this article from 2014.
Probably not related to Zika.
Hopefully not.
Via: BBC:
German scientists at Dachau concentration camp researched the possible use of malaria-infected mosquitoes as weapons during World War Two, a researcher has claimed.
Dr Klaus Reinhardt of Tuebingen University examined the archives of the Entomological Institute at Dachau.
He found that biologists had looked at which mosquitoes might best be able to survive outside their natural habitat.
He speculates that such insects could have been dropped over enemy territory.
Heinrich Himmler, the leader of the SS, set up the institute at Dachau in 1942.
Disease
The organisation’s work was believed to have focused on insect-borne diseases such as typhus, which afflicted the camp inmates.
Dr Reinhardt, writing in the journal Endeavour, has found evidence that the unit’s researchers investigated a particular type of mosquito which could live without food and water for four days.
That means it could be infected with malaria and then dropped from the air – and survive long enough to infect large numbers of people, he says.
He speculates that the scientists were investigating the possible use of malaria – transmitted via mosquitoes – as a biological weapon.
It is not known whether there is a connection between the work of the Entomological Institute at Dachau and the experiments carried out by Dr Claus Schilling at the camp.
Schilling used prisoners as experimental subjects in his research on malaria – deliberately infecting them – and was sentenced to death by hanging at the Dachau trials held after the war.
