Things Money Cannot Buy

1. Love with tingles2. True Friends3. Respect, one when the results go beyond the position and size of market capitalization4. Style5. Childhood full of joy6. Knowledge, diploma and insider leaks are something else7. And obviously Innovation as you can see at this slide and compare it to the rough reality for the top tech R&D spenders. 800 pound market capitalization gorillas for sure, but not

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Japan's Reliance on U.S Spy Satellites and Early Warning Missile Systems

With China breathing down Japan's neck, and North Korea crying for attention by actively experimenting with symmetric and asymmetric warfare capabilities, Japan's need for better reconnaissance, and limiting of its imagery gathering dependence has been in the execution stage for years as Reliance on U.S. intelligence on missile launch shows need for improvement :"The two spy satellites currently

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DVD of the Weekend - Path to War

As I've been busy catching up with way too many things to list them, I'd better finalize my creativity efforts and provide you with the results as they appear during the week. Meanwhile, current events being constantly streamed and brainwashed from every TV channel you try to watch -- remember how in 1984 only the party leaders had the privillege to turn off their 24/7 propaganda streams? Feel

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The Beauty of the Surrealistic Spam Art

Given the volume of spam representing over 50% of the world's email traffic, obviously to some it represents a huge sample to draw sadness or anger out of, and of course, visualize the findings. One man's spam is Alex Dragulescu's art :"He doesn't use Photoshop but simply writes code to create computer art. For the Spam Plants, he parsed the data within junk e-mail--including subject lines,

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Splitting a Botnet's Bandwidth Capacity

Metaphorically speaking, I always say that the masssess of end users' bandwidth is reaching that of a mid size ISP, while the lack of incentives or plain simple awarenss is resulting in today's easily assembled botnets. Freaky perspective, but that's what I perceive the trade-off out of this major economic boost given the improved connectivity France Telecom is about to offer to its customers in

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Latest Report on Click Fraud

Google does have countless features, and it's not even considering to stop rolling new ones, but the secret to its huge market capitalization and revenue stream remains its advertising model fully utilizing the Long tail's concept. Therefore, click fraud remains the key issue to deal with, if they want to continue beating Wall Street's expectations. Last week Google released a commissioned report

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An Intergalactic Security Statement

Hell of a comment on the Malware Search Engine. Hackers crack secret Google malware search codes :"Hidden malware search capabilities within Google which were reserved for antivirus and security research firms just weeks ago have been cracked by hackers, according to security industry sources. The key to finding malware in Google lies in having the signature for the specific malware program,

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Searching for Source Code Security Vulnerabilities

While Google was quick enough to censor the colourful Malware Search logo -- colourful branding -- here's another recently started initiative, Bugle - a google based source code bug finder :"Bugle is a collection of search queries which can help to identify software security bugs in source code available on the web. The list at the moment is rather small (you get the idea though), hopefully

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Detailed Penetration Testing Framework

This framework is simply amazing, as it takes you through the entire process of penetration testing, step-by-step in between references to the tools necessary to conduct a test -- wish experience was commodity as well. Best practices are prone to evolve the way experience does, so consider adding some of your know-how, and going through Fyodor's Top 100 Network Security Tools list in case you're

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Anti Virus Signatures Update - It Could Wait

It's a common myth that all AV vendors exchange the malware they come across in between themselves, whereas that's obviously not always the case. And even if they don't, you'd better achieve a higher state of security in respect to ensuring your PC or network are protected from the majority of known malware threats, trouble is the average end users whose Internet connection speed is reaching that

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When Financial and Information Security Risks are Supposed to Intersect

Interesting security event at Morgan Stanley's NYC headquarters related to insider abuse, mostly interesting because the clients' list and charged fees weren't even uploaded on any removable media, but forwarded to the consultant's private email account :"A former consultant to Morgan Stanley has been arrested and charged with stealing an electronic list of hedge funds and the rates the

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Budget Allocation Myopia and Prioritizing Your Expenditures

Top management's empowerment - the dream of every CSO, or IT manager responsible for allocating the infosec budget, and requesting future increases. The biggest downsize of your current or future empowerment, is how easy it is to get lost in a budget allocating myopia compared to actual prioritizing of your expenditures. According to Gartner, security is all about percentage of budget allocation

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Open Source North Korean IMINT Reloaded

Continuing the latest coverage on North Korea, and the Travel Without Moving series, yesterday I came across to an ongoing initiative on Google-Earthing the North Korean Military pointing out that :"In fact, there are several military and intelligence employees, some retired and some active, who turn the defense job into a hobby, helping to point out and explain foreign military curiosities at

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Malware Search Engine

While it seems that it takes a publicly traded Internet filtering company to come up with quite some creativity, it's always coming back to the community to break through the FUD and release a PoC Malware Search Engine.The concept is great, excluding the dark web(closed behind authentication, and basic crawler blocking approaches), but what bothers me besides all the fuss is that it's a signature

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Weaponizing Space and the Emerging Space Warfare Arms Race

Satellites Jamming, Hijacking, Space SIGINT, Space Kill Vehicles are just the tip of the iceberg in the ongoing weaponization of Space. In previous posts "Who needs nuclear weapons anymore?", "EMP warfare - Electronic Domination in Reverse", and "Is a Space Warfare arms race really comming?" I expressed my opinion on the current and emerging efforts to install and experiment with space weapons,

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Scientifically Predicting Software Vulnerabilities

I recently came across to a research on "Modeling the Vulnerability Discovery Process" discussing :"A few models for the vulnerability discovery process have just been published recently. Such models will allow effective resource allocation for patch development and are also needed for evaluating the risk of vulnerability exploitation. Here we examine these models for the vulnerability discovery

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North Korea's Cyber Warfare Unit 121

In a previous post, "Who's Who in Cyber Warfare" I commented on a very informative research on the topic, and pointed out that :"Technology as the next Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) was inevitable development, what's important to keep in mind is knowing who's up to what, what are the foundations of their military thinking, as well as who's copying attitude from who. Having the capacity to

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Spreading Psychological Imagination Streams

Wish I could reference all the copywriting materials I've ever written and got commissioned for, but I'd rather we play a "words creativity" game. There's no better personal benchmark for keeping yourself in a good shape, and most importantly, indirectly summarizing what's going on in my head at a particular moment, than of coming up with random/instant sentences out of key words I come across to

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India's Espionage Leaks

You may find this brief overview of Indian security's leaky past cases informative :- "Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) hard drive theft. The hard drives were stolen from the offices of the Scientific Analyses Group (SAG) and the Institute for System Studies and Analyses (ISSA) inside the DRDO complex. The SAG is responsible for cryptography. In other words, all codes and

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South Korea's View on China's Media Control and Censorship

Got bored of China's Internet censorship efforts, and its interest to control mobile communications as well? I haven't, and I doubt I ever will given China is among the many other countries on the world's map actively restricting access to information, and, of course, controlling the way it reaches the final audience -- if it does.A recent article at The Korean Times, makes some very good points

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Security Research Reference Coverage

I’ve recently started getting more requests on participating or guiding to a certain extend, student theses and various other research papers. There's nothing more pleasant than exchanging points of view, don't preach, but teach and question everything is what I have in mind. So, I've decided to share some publications featuring some of my previous papers, and by the way, I'm very near to

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Delicious Information Warfare - 27/07

Given the interest in the perspective, I'm continuing to share my daily reads for the last week and a half. Catch up with previous summaries, and see the big picture as well.01. The fine art of shoulder surfing - Many hackers download their tools but traditionalists skilled in shoulder surfing still pose a threat. to Security on july 202. VCs discuss the next big things - Cell phone gambling in

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$960M and the FBI's Art of Branding Insecurity

In previous posts "Are cyber criminals or bureaucrats the industry's top performer?", and "Insiders - insights, trends and possible solutions" I emphasized on how bureaucracy results in major insecurities, and provided further info on various issues related to insiders and risk management solutions -- ones the FBI is obviously far from implementing given the access control issues they have in

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Travel Without Moving - North Korea Missile Launch Pad

Seems like it's North Korea's most active PR month given the public outbreak due to their unsuccessful launch of an intercontinental missile, so in these Travel Without Moving series I decided to feature the launch pad, originally came across it, nowhere else but at Cryptome's well sorted photo gallery of the event. Whereas the U.S is activating diplomatic ties in order to put more pressure on

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How to Win the U.S Elections

Juicy barbecues, hugging babies, in between offering, and asking for the Moon days are over. E-voting is the future of technological political engineering. So, how can you win the U.S Elections?01. Ensure one company holds a virtual monopoly in E-voting systems, thus contributing to yet another monocultural insecurity. If it naturally has some competition, insist its systems are placed in key

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BBC under the Intelligence Shadow

Nothing is impossible, the impossible just takes a little while. A relatively typical practices for the ex-USSR, namely controlling the media and profiling the journalists including the readers, seem to have been going on in London during the same period as well. According to the Sunday Telegraph, the BBC let intelligence agents vet staff :"Confidential papers obtained by the Sunday Telegraph

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China's Interest of Censoring Mobile Communications

Just came across to a great article at the IHT on China's interest of tightening control of cellphones :"The new measures being contemplated for tightening control of cellphone use reportedly include mandatory user registration. Users now can easily buy cellphone cards at any convenience store, instantly obtaining a new phone number without identifying themselves. Whether through speech or short

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Hacktivism Tensions - Israel vs Palestine Cyberwars

Oops, they did it again. The most recent case of hacktivism recently occurred :"Shortly after IDF tanks rolled into Gaza, another old front of conflict was reopened early Wednesday morning, but in this battle Kassam rockets and artillery shells were replaced by worms and viruses as pro-Palestinian hackers shut down approximately 700 Israeli web domains. A range of different Web sites were

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