Tag Archives: Security

Swansea police pay $750 “ransom” after computer virus strikes

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“A computer virus that encrypts files and then demands that victims pay a “ransom” to decrypt those files recently hit the Swansea Police Department.  The department had to pay $750 for two Bitcoins in order to decrypt several images and word documents in its computer system, said Swansea Police Lt. Gregory Ryan.  ‘It was an education for us that had to deal with it,’ Ryan said, adding that the virus did not affect the software program that the police department uses for police reports and booking photos.  Ryan also said that no outside third parties gained access to any personal information, and that the police department did not lose any files. ‘We were never compromised,’ Ryan said.”

http://www.tauntongazette.com/news/x2132756948/Swansea-police-pay-750-ransom-after-computer-virus-strikes

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Coin: improving credit cards, not replacing them

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“Coin, a new company today announcing that its first product is available for pre-order, intends to solve those problems while preserving everything that makes credit cards so popular.  That product is an augmented credit card that can store multiple cards’ information, notify its owner when it’s been left behind, and disable itself when it’s far enough away from its owner’s smartphone. It’s basically an entire wallet condensed into a single card that complements smartphones without relying on them beyond its initial setup. Merchants won’t notice the difference, and consumers won’t have to struggle as they try to use their smartphones to pay for goods.”

http://pandodaily.com/2013/11/14/coin-bets-that-the-future-of-payments-can-be-found-by-improving-credit-cards-not-replacing-them/

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CryptoLocker crooks charge 10 BTC for second-chance decryption service

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“If you don’t win an online auction, sometimes you receive a ‘second chance offer’ that costs whatever your highest bid was for an item. Extortion doesn’t work that way as seen by the newest second chance scheme launched by the cybercrooks behind CryptoLocker; the decryption service costs five-times as much as it would have to free your files from the ransomware in the first place.”

http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/84174

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Cracked.com Serving Malware in Drive-By Downloads

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“The popular humor website, Cracked[dot]com reportedly hosted malware that infected the machines of its visitors over the weekend and may still be doing so, according to Barracuda Labs research.  The attackers delivered their exploit with a malicious piece of javascript they embedded into cracked[dot]com.  According to the report, the javascript caused users to send a request to the domain ‘crackedCDM[dot]com.’ The malicious domain contained an iframe pointing to ‘p68ei5[dot]degreeexplore[dot]biz,’ which then sent a cocktail of malicious PDFs, Java, HTML, and javascript files into the victim’s browser. If successful, the attackers then uploaded their malware to the affected machines.”

http://threatpost.com/cracked-com-serving-malware-in-drive-by-downloads

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American Express Ex-Chief Privacy Officer On ‘The Last Days of Cash’

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“Andy Roth, a partner in Dentons’ Privacy and Security Group, and Victor Boyajian, a partner in Dentons’ Venture Technology Group, explore the evolution of digital payments, virtual currencies and security. The video examines:  Bitcoin and other virtual currencies;
Regulatory issues in connection to digital payments;  The balance between privacy and technological progress;  Privacy as a product or feature; and The outlook for consumer payments.”

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As Bitcoin booms, digital robbers take advantage

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“Digital currency holders have never felt so vindicated as they do today. They’ve also never been under so many attacks. Hackers are targeting the increasingly valuable cryptocurrency more than ever before. In just the past few weeks, three major thefts have hit the Bitcoin world.  The only foolproof way to protect anything digital with certainty–including but not limited to bitcoins–is to hold it offline. Bitcoiners, who refer to offline reserves as ‘cold storage,’ can use USB drives, physical bitcoins, offline encryption keys, or even paper wallets to prevent cyberattacks. But given the extra layer of difficulty, most Bitcoins are not stored in this way.”

http://www.dailydot.com/crime/bitcoin-scams-robbery-ransomware/

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Lavabit Owner Faces $10K Fine For Protecting Users From Federal Spying

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“Ladar Levison had a thriving business.  His encrypted email service was heavily used by corporate users that valued protecting their trade secrets.  The Obama administration, however, stepped in and crushed this American success story.  The DOJ is looking to nail Mr. Levison with the $10,000 fine.  In a just-filed appellate brief it writes: ‘Mr. Levison [illegally] alerted all of Lavabit’s users, including the target of the investigation, that Lavabit was engaged in litigation with the government and that, rather than comply with the court’s orders, he decided to shut down his business.  [..] It was within the district court’s power to compel the production of those keys.'”

http://www.dailytech.com/Owner+of+Lavabit+Faces+10K+Fine+For+Protecting+His+Users+From+Federal+Spying/article33743.htm

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Our Government Has Weaponized the Internet. Here’s How They Did It

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“The internet backbone — the infrastructure of networks upon which internet traffic travels — went from being a passive infrastructure for communication to an active weapon for attacks. According to revelations about the QUANTUM program, the NSA can ‘shoot’ (their words) an exploit at any target it desires as his or her traffic passes across the backbone. It appears that the NSA and GCHQ were the first to turn the internet backbone into a weapon; absent Snowdens of their own, other countries may do the same and then say, ‘It wasn’t us. And even if it was, you started it.’  All cleartext traffic is not just information being sent from sender to receiver, but is a possible attack vector.”

http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/11/this-is-how-the-internet-backbone-has-been-turned-into-a-weapon/

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The secret second OS that makes every mobile phone insecure

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“Take your smartphone, for instance. There’s definitely a primary OS — Android, iOS, Windows Phone — but there’s also at least two other operating systems: The baseband OS and the SIM card OS, both of which run on their own processor that’s separate from the SoC.  [..] REX OS automatically executes any commands that it receives over-the-air from the carrier’s base station — and yes, in case you were wondering, there are commands that perform a variety of heinous acts, such as turning on auto-answer, executing arbitrary code, or simply bricking your device. It goes without saying that, in theory, you could set up your own base station and cause a lot of havoc.”

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/170874-the-secret-second-operating-system-that-could-make-every-mobile-phone-insecure

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Cypherpunks, Bitcoin & the Myth of Satoshi Nakamoto

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“For those wary of Bitcoin’s pedigree, it may comfort them to know that it emerged directly from a culture of programmers who champion open-source software (also known as free software) like Sir Tim-Berners Lee, who invented the World Wide Web. The ‘shadowy hacker’ label that is sometimes ascribed to Satoshi Nakamoto is fair in some ways because that’s the way he intended it. Satoshi thus embodies all the things that the original Cypherpunks were trying so hard to impress upon us: our fundamental right to privacy. It is Bitcoin’s capacity to protect some aspects of our privacy from GCHQ and the NSA that makes it valuable – to a degree. But it’s more than that.”

http://www.cybersalon.org/cypherpunk/

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