Crime does pay!

Internet crime has become a major commercial activity, reveals a report by computer security company Symantec.

The report said cyber crime had become increasingly professional and was now a multi-billion dollar industry.

The underground economy has its own auction sites and marketplaces that sell valuable data such as credit card numbers and bank accounts.

They also sell toolkits for novice cyber criminals who lack technical know-how to craft their own attacks.

BBC story.

Hackers hit US stockbroker TD Ameritrade

Only email addresses? Yea right...

Stock broking firm TD Ameritrade has revealed a breach to one of its databases resulting in the theft of user data.

The company confirmed that, while online account numbers and passwords were not compromised, customer names, email addresses and phone numbers had all been stolen.

The database also contains Social Security numbers, although TD Ameritrade claimed that there is no evidence to suggest that the numbers were among the stolen data.

A spokesperson for the company told vnunet.com that the compromised database stored information on all of the company's 6.3 million customer accounts. It is not yet known how many customers were directly affected.

Story here.

Osama bin Laden, drove a Canadian-flagged motorcade through two security checkpoints in Sydney

Members of an Australian comedy TV show, one dressed as Osama bin Laden, drove a Canadian-flagged motorcade through two security checkpoints in Sydney Thursday before being stopped near a hotel where U.S. President George W. Bush is staying.

The stunt-embarrassed Sydney police had imposed the tightest security measures in the city's history. The Australian city is hosting a summit of leaders from Pacific Rim countries, including Bush and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who arrived Thursday.

Police arrested 11 cast and crew from the TV program, The Chaser's War on Everything, and impounded three vehicles, the Australian Broadcasting Corp., which airs the show, said on its website.

Full story here.

The First Amendment, Satellite Imagery and National Security

So what should MS of done?

Recently a photograph appeared on the Internet of the propeller on an Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine at Trident Submarine Base in Bangor. A key to the submarine's ability to deploy and remain undetected, propeller designs have been kept under wraps for years, literally. When out of the water, the propellers typically are draped with tarps.

The propeller image appeared on Microsoft's mapping tool, Virtual Earth. It was discovered accidentally by Dan Twohig, a deck officer with the Washington state ferry service who was using the program to examine real estate on the west side of Puget Sound.

More here.

ShmooCon '08

Start planning now... TSG is happy to announce that ShmooCon '08 will take place at the Wardman Park Marriott in Washington DC, February 15-17.

17th episode of The Silver Bullet Security Podcast

Gary talks with Eric Cole, CEO of Secure Anchor. Eric has written seven books on computer security, including books on steganography and network security. Gary and Eric discuss how to demostrate security ROI in different types of organizations (ranging from government to corporate), the academic approach to security versus practitioner certification models, and what kinds of training makes for good network security practitioners. They also discuss the difficulty of certifying software developers.

How the FBI Wiretap Net Operates

The FBI has quietly built a sophisticated, point-and-click surveillance system that performs instant wiretaps on almost any communications device, according to nearly a thousand pages of restricted documents newly released under the Freedom of Information Act.

The surveillance system, called DCSNet, for Digital Collection System Network, connects FBI wiretapping rooms to switches controlled by traditional land-line operators, internet-telephony providers and cellular companies. It is far more intricately woven into the nation's telecom infrastructure than observers suspected.

Wired story here.
EFF has the document here.

The Burning Man Project 07

Oh my... Premature burning...

(Black Rock City - August 28, 2007) The Man at the center of Black Rock City will be rebuilt after an overnight fire which damaged the effigy at the center of the Burning Man event. Rebuilding is expected to take about two days.

Black Rock City officials say there was structural damage to the figure of the Man, but relatively little damage to the art and exhibits at the base of the Man. No injuries were reported.

An arson investigation is underway, and one arrest was made shortly after the fire was set. No charges have been announced, and the name of the suspect is being withheld. There has been no discussion of motive in the episode.

Burning Man

No more vacation - Back to work...

Take the back roads when taking the back road...

Adulterers, beware: Your cheatin' heart might be exposed by E-ZPass. E-ZPass and other electronic toll collection systems are emerging as a powerful means of proving infidelity. That's because when your spouse doesn't know where you've been, E-ZPass does.

"E-ZPass is an E-ZPass to go directly to divorce court, because it's an easy way to show you took the off-ramp to adultery," said Jacalyn Barnett, a New York divorce lawyer who has used E-ZPass records a few times.

More here.

Friday Fun - The Vomit-Inducing Flashlight

Picking your favorite non-lethal weapon can be tough. I'm partial to the microwave-based Active Denial System that former PopSci editor Eric Adams had the, er, courage to stand in front of a few years ago. (An experience described in detail here.) Or I might give a nod to the paralyzing, hardening foam that momentarily holds down The Hulk in the 2003 movie, and has been used by the U.S. military with mixed results.

But a California company may be developing the real winner, an LED-based flashlight that shoots out incredibly bright pulses of light, and can potentially induce vomiting. The Department of Homeland Security is funding the study, and Penn State will begin testing it this fall at the Institute of Nonlethal Defense Technology.

Story from Popular Science Blog.

Footprinting/research tool

Evolution is a program that is the brain child of Roelof Temmingh of ex-SensePost fame. It’s a tool that “associates data found in multiple search engines and social-networking Web sites… to find information behind IP addresses, Domain Name System entries, domain registration and more.

William Gibson

The present has recently caught up with William Gibson. The great prophet of the digital future, who not only coined the word 'cyberspace' in his debut novel Neuromancer in 1984, but imagined its implications and went a long way to suggesting its YouTube and MySpace culture, has stopped looking forwards. 'The future is already here,' he is fond of suggesting. 'It is just not evenly distributed.'

More story here.
New book here.

ATM Theft

Louisiana police are on the look-out for three men who staged a 1 AM smash and grab robbery at a Target store. The men rammed a truck through the store's front doors, pulled an ATM from the wall and loaded it into their vehicle as the store's cleaning crew looked on...

Police have located the truck used in the crime, as well as the emptied ATM.

US Border Security

Bush interviewed as a Illegal Jumps the Border - video powered by Metacafe

Well, it is funny anyway...

A "Visit" to Diebold Elections Systems, Inc.

A peek into their deserted, but well-lit, warehouse brought home just how easy it would be for a company employee to take advantage of any number of the myriad sixty-second hacks found to be easily carried out by Election Insiders --- such as Diebold Employees or County Election Officials --- in Bowen's independent penetration report of Diebold's voting systems [PDF].

DEFCON 15 - 12year old Bumping Medeco's Biaxial

This past weekend at DefCon Tobias ran into Jennalynn, a 12-year-old girl who appeared in a YouTube video last year bumping a Kwikset lock. (Jennalynn's mother declined to give her daughter's last name because she preferred not to have it published.) Tobias asked her to try bumping Medeco's Biaxial lock, a more secure lock. She did it three times. Below is a video showing her bumping the lock, with Tobias next to her.

Wifi in the Wall

WEJ-11G-O Wall Box Wireless Access Point/Bridge

$129.95

Usually ships in 1-2 days

The Karo Technology WEJ-11g Series are uniquely designed to fit into a standard wall box and bring the benefits of both wired and wireless connection. The WEJ-11g are full-featured Access Points that support IEEE 802.11b and 802.11g. The WEJ-11g can be installed and configured easily into any new wireless network or integrated within an existing wired network resulting in a more flexible and cost-effective wireless deployment. And, a network administrator can centrally manage the WEJ-11g Series via a Web browser or an SNMP MIB browser.

Features

• High speed 54 Mbps wireless and/or 100 Mbps wired data rate
• RF transmit power settings (5 levels)
• Auto-channel selection setting
• Security: WEP, WPA-PSK, 802.1x, EAP, TKIP, AES
• MAC address filtering
• Wireless client isolation
• AP load balancing
• Association control
• Hardware watchdog timer
• Extensive management tools via browser-based configuration utility

Fudge Packer Arrested

Shortly after midnight, Thursday morning, the Annapolis Police Department received a call from a clerk at the downtown Maryland House Hotel, who reported that a woman had come into the lobby and said she had been the victim of a sexual assault.

Officers met with Greenbelt resident Catherine Anne Delgado, 35, and determined that her assault claim was unfounded. During the course of their conversation in the lobby, the officers noticed that Delgado, wearing slacks and a sleeveless white blouse, had large slabs of fudge bulging out of her pockets.

“Smudges of fudge showed up very well on her hands and white blouse,” Officer Hal Dalton said. “You don’t see something like that every day.”

More here.

DEFCON 15 - Aug 3-5

Reporter gets snapped...

A LOT OF MAKEUP can make you prettier, but it won't make you smarter. Michelle Madigan, Associate Producer for Dateline NBC found this out the hard way at Defcon.

According to sources at the show, she was there to do a piece called Hackers for Hire, with the goal of showing the criminal hacker underground and possibly outing an undercover fed. As Michelle was said to have said, "People in Kansas would be very interested in what is going on at Defcon". She was busted hours before she walked in the door, the first slide before the keynote was this, and the speaker asked to notify a goon (security) if she was spotted.

Full story here.