Face Recognition At Home

In a previous post, Biased Privacy Violation I mentioned two web sites, DontDateHimGirl.com, DontDateHerMan.com and the associated privacy implications out of these. Just came across to MyHeritage.com whose face recognition feature works remarkably well -- for relatives and everyone in between varying on the sample."Recognizing faces is done by algorithms that compare the faces in your photo,

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Cyber Terrorism Communications and Propaganda

Further expanding the previous discussion on Tracking Down Internet Terrorist Propaganda, and patterns of Arabic Extremist Group Forum Messages' Characteristics, there've also been some recent developments on Hezbollah's never-ending use of U.S hosting companies as a media/communication/fund raising/recruitment/propaganda platform:"Hezbollah used the Broadwing Communications fiber-optic network

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Virus Outbreak Response Time

In a previous posts I discussed various trends related to malware families, and mentioned CipherTrust's Real Time PC Zombie Statistics. You might also be interested in IronPort's Virus Outbreak Response Times for the last 24 hours which currently tracks, IronPort themselves, Sophos, Trend Micro, Symantec, and McAfee. Although vendor's bias often exist, let's just say that self-serving statements

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U.S Air Force on MySpace

Seems like the U.S Air Force is joining MySpace:"The Air Force profile will show users five video clips that the Recruiting Service says gives them “a behind-the-scenes look at the extraordinary things airmen accomplish every day,” according to a press release. Users will be able to view longer videos of airmen as they fly jets, call in air strikes, navigate satellites and jump out of airplanes,

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North Korea's Strategic Developments and Financial Operations

Catching up with the latest developments at the hottest -- at least from a national security point of view -- zone in Asia. North Korea seems to be taking external provocations rather seriously, and feeling endangered for the colapse of its regime is actively working on its nuclear test sites development, disinformation in between for sure. According to a recent article at Reuters, North Korea

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On the Insecurities of Sun Tanning

You definitely don't need a CISSP certificate to blog on this one, just make sure you don't forget that there should be a limit on everything, even the hugs on the beach.

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AOL's Search Queries Data Mined

While one of AOL's searchers was publicly identified, enthusiasts are tweaking, and randomly scrolling the then leaked, now publicly available search queries data. Here's someone that's neatly data mining and providing relevant summary of the top result sites, and the top keywords. SEO Sleuth :"was created out of the recently released AOL search data. Welcome to the AOL Keyword Analyser. This

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Bed Time Reading - Symbian OS Platform Security: Software Development Using the Symbian OS Security Architecture

Prr, did I hear someone start counting mobile malware samples, prr?Try getting to know the OS itself, the main proof of concept faciliator representing today's constantly growing mobile malware family. A review of this recommended bed time reading book :"Symbian OS is an advanced, customizable operating system, which is licensed by the world's leading mobile phone manufacturers. The latest

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Anti Satellite Weapons

Continuing the discussion on the ongoing weaponization of space, and the consequently emerging space warfare arms race. Micro satellites directly matching other satellites trajectories, and taking advantage of high energy concentration in the form of lasers? For sure, but why bother damaging an entire reconnaissance satellite when you can basically spray its lenses to prevent it from using its

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China's Internet Censorship Report 2006

Censorship is as bad, as looking directly into the sun which causes blindness, and still remains the among the few key prerequisites for successfully running a modern communism type of government, namely the leader's appearance. And while it's obvious that wearing eyeglasses is supposedly making you look smarter, I'm certain that it's not reading on candles, but censorship that's causing the

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Malware Statistics on Social Networking Sites

Huge traffic aggregators such as the majority of social networking sites,attract not only huge percentage of the Internet's population on a regular basis, but also malware authors taking advantage of the medium as an infection vector -- and why not as a propagation one as well?ScanSafe just came up with some nice stats on the average number of social networking pages hosting malware - based on

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Analyzing the Intelligence Analysts' Factors of Productivity

Outstanding perspective, given the author is an ex-CIA analyst himself. Controversial to the common wisdom of a Project Manhattan type of departamental seperation -- everyone's working to achieve the same goal, whereas no one knows what the others are doing -- there's a growing trend of better analyzing and responding to an intelligence analyst's productivity needs. Watchin' the Analysts greatly

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AOL's Search Leak User 4417749 Identified

A Chief Privacy Officer and basic common sense anyone?As you all know, during the weekend 20M search queries of 650,000 AOL users leaked, and are all over the Internet available for download. It's simple unbeliavable that the only measure to ensure the privacy of the data was the "unique ID", and how often does the excuse of improving search results pop out. No need for subpoenas this time, but

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Big Momma Knows Best

Wish it was the Chinese equivalent of Big Brother I'm refering to, in this case it's a mother of six tracking down teenagers who toilet-papered her house, and mind you, she didn't even bother to use MySpace, instead :"Base persuaded supermarket managers to tally daily toilet-paper buys for the week and a Stater Bros. manager said there was a run on bathroom tissue two days before her home was

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JitterBugs - Covert Keyboard Communication Channels

WarTyping, keyboard acoustic emanations, and here comes a full-scale covert espionage tool recently discussed in an in-depth research at the 15th USENIX Security Symposium. Researchers at the CS department of University of Pennsylvania developed a working prototype of a JitterBug Covert Channel :"This paper introduces JitterBugs, a class of inline interception mechanisms that covertly transmit

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Malware Bot Families, Technology and Trends

In case you want to know more about the evolution of bots, and ease of assembling a botnet, why families take the largest zombie share compared to single bachelors only, or which technologies dominate the threatscape - go through the slides of this study on identifying "interesting" bot technologies within a large malware collection. Bot Feature & Technology Trends by Robert Lyda also highlights

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DVD of the Weekend - The Final Cut

This weekend's featured DVD is a marvelous representation of a full-scale 1984 type of mass surveillance society, but compared to an utopian party acting as the caring BigBrother, here it's the inavitable advances of technology, and availability of services leading to the ultimate digital preservation of our entire living -- through our own eye-embedded implants. Worth taking your time to watch

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Future in Malicious Code 2006

What's new on the malware front? Quite some new developments to be included in Q2's summary for 2006, I'm about to finalize any time now. Just came across to a great continuation of my original Malware - Future Trends publication, this time courtesy of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, quoting and further expending the discussion on my key points :- Mobile malware will be successfully monetized-

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Mobile Devices Hacking Through a Suitcase

Define:nerd "Luca Carettoni and Claudio Merloni are security consultants at Milan, Italy-based Secure Network. The two created the BlueBag to raise awareness about the potential of attacks against Bluetooth-enabled devices, they said in an interview at the Black Hat security event in Las Vegas. The BlueBag is a roll-aboard suitcase filled with hardware. That gear is loaded with software to scan

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Achieving Information Warfare Dominance Back in 1962

The point here isn't the consolidation indicated in the article :"The consolidation involves Singer’s headquarters staff, and subordinate Naval Security Group Activities (NSGA) and detachments (NSGD). When fully completed, the action will combine the Navy's enlisted Cryptologic Technicians and Information Warfare officers into the same organization as the Navy’s Information Systems Technicians

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One Time Password Generating Credit Card

This is cute as it solves a major problem with customers having to use, and more easily lose tokens. Neat integration with the push of a button on the one time password generating credit card :"It took InCard four years to develop the card, Finkelstein said. The company combined technology from a Taiwanese display maker, a U.S. battery manufacturer and a French security team, he said. A Swiss

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But Of Course It's a Pleasant Transaction

Great example of automated bots attacking Ebay's core trust establishing process- the feedbacks provided by users taking advantage of the wisdom of crowds to judge on their truthfulness :"Again, a sharp eye may notice that feedback comments received from sellers are identical, and read almost in the same order. This is because most 1-cent-plus-no-delivery-cost sellers automate the whole

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