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Anonymous has announced they intend to bring the social networking (notworking?) site Facebook down on November 5th. You might be wondering why Anon would go after Facebook when its founder Mark Zuckerberg has been idolized as a geek and a hacker in many biograph
ies and books.
Plus isn’t Facebook a place where information is freely shared by those that want to share it? Most would have thought that Facebook of all places would be safe. However, it is not and here is why.
This first thing is that Facebook has in the past taken liberty with its user’s images, personal information and has been rumored to pass information along to government agencies in people or groups that may use, let’s say inflammatory language. It has also been rumored (one that no one has been able to confirm) that Facebook maybe allowing advertiser (or governments) to view users preferences and possibly actual pages. We do know that Anonymous believes this at the very least. Now all of this would be good enough reason for the group of hackers with a cause, but there is more and this is possibly one of the real reasons. You see Facebook is getting ready to launch a facial recognition API that can pull data on people tagged in pictures from sources around the net. It is also rumored to be able to match aliases from dating sites, forums, etc. as long as the API can link the real name with the screen name. This massively privacy invading bit of software has already been declared illegal in Germany and w
e have hopes that other countries will follow. We believe this is what Anonymous is actually alluding to when they say “for the sake of your own privacy”.
Much of the rest of their press release (shown in its entirety below) also has truth in it. According to the same German lawmakers that want the Facial Recognition API removed, Facebook makes the removal of the data collected by the software almost impossible to delete even after the image that person was tagged in it removed from the profile. We think this is what Anon is talking about when they say “your personal info stays on Facebook and can be recovered at any time”, but it is also true that what you put in Facebook stays on Facebook even when you leave.
So will Anon bring down Zuckerberg and his social networking/ information collection site, or is this another threat that the group will lose interest in before the date they have set aside. A date that hold special meaning to the British and which was immortalized in the move “V for Vendetta”. Will Zuckerberg prepare and harden the Facebook servers? I guess we will see on November the 5th.
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- By Sean Kalinich
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Ugh! I know people love Apple and they do make some cool gadgets, but it is getting ridiculous when they continue to go after company after company with patent lawsuits while illegally violating other’s patents. Now Apple the ITC is reviewing a complaint claiming that rival HTC has violated Apple’s patents with even more phones and a tablet. Apple wants an injunction to prevent HTC from being able to import these devices into the US (I guess that is one way to beat the competition).
At the same time they are doing this they have been found to be illegally using patents held by graphics company S3 (now owned by HTC). I have an idea for the legal system… how about you not allow any lawsuits by ANY company not in compliance with patent laws themselves. Make them prove they are not violating the same laws they are trying to abuse before you even let them in the door. My bet is that this will stop a ton of these useless and anti-competitive wastes of time and money long before they start.
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- By Sean Kalinich
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It is a parent’s nightmare and something that happens more often that many colleges and bars would care to admit; drugging some girls drink in order to take advantage of her. We as parents go through the litany; never accept a drink from anyone, never let your drink out of your site,… if you are a parent or have a little sister you know the drill.
Well, now in addition to good advice, common sense (a stun gun, martial arts training, a body guard…) you can also give your daughter, sister (or even wife) something else to help. Some geniuses in Israel have come up with a device that can detect the most common drugs used in date rape crimes. The device is disguised to look like a swizzle stick or a straw so that the perpetrator is not aware that you are looking for anything. Inside the device is a solution that changes color in the presence of GHB (gamma-hydroxybutyric acid) and Ketamine for now, but the manufacturers are working to add even more.
They have even added a light to it so that you can use it in dark places. So far the accuracy rate has been 100% which seriously impressive. It is a brilliant idea and one that I hope they can add a few things into; like the ability to shoot a toxic dart at the person that put the drug in, or burn them with acid… hey I can dream can’t I?
Source CNET
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At Defcon 19 in Las Vegas this year the annual security show launched a new event. Called Defcon Kids the even features young “hackers” that have uncovered exploits, vulnerabilities and other security related items. One of the first to speak this year is a 10-Year Old Girl from California who found an exploit in some mobile games.
The girl, who goes by the alias CyFi (and who is a Girl Scout as well) found the new exploit because she did not want to wait for certain in-game items to complete in a farming game that she plays. To get around this boring wait she simply moved time along. When she did this it opened up the exploit. Independent researchers have verified her findings, but will not list the games that are affected by this (no will CyFi giving the authors a chance to fix things).
CyFi also said that while many games have cheat prevention systems she found that most can be circumvented with a few simple techniques. The Exploit affects both iOS and Android operating systems and illustrates how developers and security experts alike can miss something simple while overthinking their protections and applications.
Source and Image Cnet
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As the Black Hat security conference is going on this week we will be covering a lot of the exploits they find. We have already talked about the SCDA vulnerability, how cars with remote lock/unlock/start are vulnerable and even touched in HTML5 and mobile phone exploits. Now we hear confirmation of something we have known for a while: Apple’s OSX server is not secure.
Experts at the security firm Isec have shown that while individual systems can be secured (the called them islands) once you put the OSX server in play it is “two notches above trivial” to compromise the whole network. Isec showed this off by executing a local DNS exploit that allowed them to scavenge admin credentials and then gain full admin access to the network.
All was not bad news for Apple fans; Isec also said that OSX Lion now “matches” Microsoft’s Windows 7 for local permissions elevation protection and anti-exploit protection. Isec also went on to say that Apple’s marketing has been training consumers to feel safe when using Macs which actually makes them more likely to be open to targeted attacks.
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