How the NSA Plans to Infect ‘Millions’ of Computers with Malware
March 12th, 2014Via: First Look:
Top-secret documents reveal that the National Security Agency is dramatically expanding its ability to covertly hack into computers on a mass scale by using automated systems that reduce the level of human oversight in the process.
The classified files – provided previously by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden – contain new details about groundbreaking surveillance technology the agency has developed to infect potentially millions of computers worldwide with malware “implants.” The clandestine initiative enables the NSA to break into targeted computers and to siphon out data from foreign Internet and phone networks.
The covert infrastructure that supports the hacking efforts operates from the agency’s headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland, and from eavesdropping bases in the United Kingdom and Japan. GCHQ, the British intelligence agency, appears to have played an integral role in helping to develop the implants tactic.
In some cases the NSA has masqueraded as a fake Facebook server, using the social media site as a launching pad to infect a target’s computer and exfiltrate files from a hard drive. In others, it has sent out spam emails laced with the malware, which can be tailored to covertly record audio from a computer’s microphone and take snapshots with its webcam. The hacking systems have also enabled the NSA to launch cyberattacks by corrupting and disrupting file downloads or denying access to websites.
How Wall Street Has Turned Housing Into a Dangerous Get-Rich-Quick Scheme—Again
March 12th, 2014Via: Mother Jones:
You can hardly turn on the television or open a newspaper without hearing about the nation’s impressive, much celebrated housing recovery. Home prices are rising! New construction has started! The crisis is over! Yet beneath the fanfare, a whole new get-rich-quick scheme is brewing.
Over the last year and a half, Wall Street hedge funds and private equity firms have quietly amassed an unprecedented rental empire, snapping up Queen Anne Victorians in Atlanta, brick-faced bungalows in Chicago, Spanish revivals in Phoenix. In total, these deep-pocketed investors have bought more than 200,000 cheap, mostly foreclosed houses in cities hardest hit by the economic meltdown.
Wall Street’s foreclosure crisis, which began in late 2007 and forced more than 10 million people from their homes, has created a paradoxical problem. Millions of evicted Americans need a safe place to live, even as millions of vacant, bank-owned houses are blighting neighborhoods and spurring a rise in crime. Lucky for us, Wall Street has devised a solution: It’s going to rent these foreclosed houses back to us. In the process, it’s devised a new form of securitization that could cause this whole plan to blow up—again.
Research Credit: ottilie
Watch a Stun Gun Drone Tase an Intern
March 12th, 2014Via: Popular Science:
Research Credit: alvinroast
“It’s Me Against the Universe”: Developing Nuclear Fusion in a Basement with a Reclusive Gunsmith
March 12th, 2014A friend of mine does highly technical research work from his outlaw dwelling somewhere in the western part of the U.S. I sent him the link below about Doug Coulter and he wrote back:
Speaking of open source physics… I don’t know if you’re interested in this. If not, maybe some of you’re readers might like to know that a world famous physicist at Stanford, and founder of String Theory, has made a whole set of video courses available online. These are courses that cover the full range of physics from Classical Mechanics to Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity. I’ve been working through these whenever I can. The General Relativity class was very good. After the videos, I wound up learning Tensor Calculus and Differential Geometry on my own just so I could go more in depth into General Relativity. I’m working through his Quantum Mechanics courses now. Good mind-blowing stuff!
You get enough beardy weirdies living mortgage free in their rural shacks with Internet access… Who knows what’s possible?
Via: Vice:
Some people—myself not excluded—go to an office everyday because they can't think of anywhere else to go. We practice the prompt repression of wild ideas in exchange for remunerative employment, which to some is considered to be a kind of meaningful existence. Doug Coulter is not that sort of worker.
Chinese Economic Slowdown Sends Raw Materials Prices Lower
March 12th, 2014Via: Guardian:
Mining stocks have taken a hammering on world markets after the price of iron ore – Australia’s biggest export – posted the biggest one-day fall in over four years.
Figures showing an 18% fall in Chinese exports in February amplified fears of a slowdown in the world’s No. 2 economy, sending raw material prices plunging.
Iron ore for immediate delivery to China fell 8.3% to $104.70 a tonne, its largest one-day percentage fall in four and a half years, data compiled by The Steel Index shows.
Iron ore is a key ingredient in steelmaking and is the top revenue earner for Australia’s large mining concerns, BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto.
The spot price has fallen 22% this year and the companies took a battering during Monday’s trading sessions in Sydney and London as investors weighed the impact on their profitability.
The Australian listings fared a bit better on Tuesday. After a sharp fall in the morning, Rio was up 1.16% at $61.91 and BHP was down fractionally at $36.14.
The disappointing China trade data weighed on other commodities, including copper and oil, although China’s imports of most were up on the year. The weak exports suggested China’s commodity import demand could shrivel in coming months as end-users draw down swollen inventories.
Department of Homeland Security Conducting Drug Raids?
March 12th, 2014Via: Gothamist:
A number of East Williamsburg and Bushwick residents were surprised by a combined federal and NYPD raid on Devoe Street early Sunday morning. Some were disturbed by a loud, low-flying helicopter, while others were simply stopped from going home because the street was blocked off.
Witnesses spotted a big Department of Homeland Security truck as well as DHS agents toting machine guns as they raided 221 Devoe Street. The NYPD was also involved, and one officer told a resident that the bust turned up “kilos of heroin.” (Apparently the drugs may have been from out of the country, hence DHS.)
Google Glass-Like Headgear for Soldiers; And “Then You’ve Got the Issue of Distraction”
March 12th, 2014Via: Mashable:
The American military may soon be filled with soldiers sporting Google Glass-like headgear that can measure distances, display 3D building layouts, transmit video from a drone and more, all on a glass display right in front of their eyes.
…
What they can’t do is ensure that the data stream doesn’t cut out or that someone can’t hack these helmets and steal drone footage. They need to know how much bandwidth it will take to transmit huge amounts of data to potentially hundreds of thousands of soldiers, how easily someone could block the transmission with a little electromagnetic interference, and how they can make sure the network is secure.
And “then you’ve got the issue of distraction,” Paul Wright, the business development lead for soldier systems at BAE Systems, told Mashable. “Whether the data is a distraction from the main task that a person is carrying out.”
Man Spends 26 Years on Death Row for Murder He Didn’t Commit
March 12th, 2014Via: CNN:
There are many ways to measure 30 years, but for Glenn Ford, the yardstick is simple.
“My sons — when I left — was babies. Now they grown men with babies,” he said, speaking as a free man for the first time in nearly three decades.
Ford, Louisiana’s longest-serving death row prisoner, walked free Tuesday after spending nearly 30 years behind bars for a murder he did not commit.
“My mind’s going all kinds of directions, but it feels good,” Ford, 64, told reporters outside the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, according to CNN affiliate WAFB.
One reporter asked whether he harbors any resentment.
“Yeah, because I was locked up almost 30 years for something I didn’t do,” said Ford, who wore a denim shirt, a hat and dark-rimmed glasses.
…
According to the Capital Post Conviction Project of Louisiana, a judge ordered that Ford be freed Monday after prosecutors petitioned the court to release him.
New information corroborated what Ford had said all along: that he was not present at nor involved in the November 5, 1983, slaying of Isadore Rozeman, the project said.
Stanford Bioengineer Develops a 50-Cent Paper Microscope
March 11th, 2014Via: Stanford:
When Manu Prakash, PhD, wants to impress lab visitors with the durability of his Origami-based paper microscope, he throws it off a three-story balcony, stomps on it with his foot and dunks it into a water-filled beaker. Miraculously, it still works.
Even more amazing is that this microscope — a bookmark-sized piece of layered cardstock with a micro-lens — only costs about 50 cents in materials to make.
In the video posted above, you can see his “Foldscope” being built in just a few minutes, then used to project giant images of plant tissue on the wall of a dark room.
Prakash’s dream is that this ultra-low-cost microscope will someday be distributed widely to detect dangerous blood-borne diseases like malaria, African sleeping sickness, schistosomiasis and Chagas.
“I wanted to make the best possible disease-detection instrument that we could almost distribute for free,” said Prakash. “What came out of this project is what we call use-and-throw microscopy.”
The Foldscope can be assembled in minutes, includes no mechanical moving parts, packs in a flat configuration, is extremely rugged and can be incinerated after use to safely dispose of infectious biological samples. With minor design modifications, it can be used for bright-field, multi-fluorescence or projection microscopy.
More: Foldscope: Microscopy for Everyone
NATO Jets to Monitor Ukraine Border
March 10th, 2014Via: BBC:
Nato is to deploy reconnaissance planes in Poland and Romania to monitor the Ukrainian crisis.
It gave the go-ahead for the flights on Monday, a Nato spokesman said.
“All Awacs [Airborne Warning and Control System] reconnaissance flights will take place solely over alliance territory,” the official said.
It comes as Russia cements its control of Ukraine’s Crimea ahead of Sunday’s referendum to join Russia. Ukraine and the West say this is illegal.
In the latest move on Monday, armed men – said to be Russian troops and local militias – seized a military hospital in Crimea.
The attackers marched into the hospital in the regional capital Simferopol, threatening staff and some 30 patients.
Pro-Russian troops are also blockading Ukrainian troops across Crimea, which is an autonomous region.
Moscow has officially denied that its troops are taking part in the blockades, describing the armed men with no insignia as Crimea’s “self-defence” forces.
The government in Kiev – as well as the US and EU – accuse Russia of invading Ukraine, in violation of international law.
