I know this is late in coming, but real life has a better framerate sometimes. Anyway, a security research outfit called Secure Medicine, following in the footsteps of security researcher Gadi Evron raised some interesting questions about the current generation of biomedical cardiac implants in use these days, such as pacemakers and LVADs (left ventricular assist devices). Due to the fact that these devices are remotely controllable to a certain extent via wireless data link they are vulnerable to compromise by attackers and may be manipulated. This sounds asanine, but LVADs are implanted …
Earlier this month, George W. Bush authorized a classified government directive that authorizes the National Security Agency to monitor the data networks of other US government agencies as well as monitoring the communications traffic of American citizens and foreign countries. The specifics can't be released due to the security classification but it is known that the US government is very concerned about its information security posture (no jokes, please) and their first remediation step involves understanding what's going on inside their networks. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is charged with coordinating efforts to track down the sources …
The SWAT team charged with the town of Lake Forest in Washington state was dispatched to the house of a local family after being informed that a heavily armed drug dealer had killed at least one individual and was in possession of a large stock of distributable drugs on the premises. As one would expect, they geared up for a full assault and hit the house like gang busters. There's one important fact which they didn't have at the time, and this fact made all the difference: The original 911 call that alerted police to this house was faked. Computer …
Gary McKinnon, the cracker famous for infiltrating NASA and United States military networks in search of information pertaining to UFOs was granted leave so that he could appeal his extradition to the House of Lords. McKinnon is facing multiple counts of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 (18 USC 1030) as well as the USA PATRIOT Act.. if extradited to the United States, in all likelihood he's facing years at Guantanmo Bay as they try to figure out to their own satisfaction what he was up to. Knowing the state of cyber-law enforcement these days, it'll take …
Every year at Defcon they assemble a huge computer network and populate it with machines of all kinds as part of a competition. The objective is simple: Crack as many of the system on the network as you can, find the flag (it's a Capture the Flag competition), and defend your turf as best you can. The game requires the competitors to think fast on their feet because they don't know what they'll run into on the CtF network, and they'll be faced with network services that they may never have seen before. The challenge is to find vulnerabilities in …
One Gary McKinnon, the cracker known for compromising computer networks in the United States in his search for information pertaining to UFOs has lost a significant fight in his battle to prevent extradition. McKinnon, who ran under the handle 'Solo', is known for compromising a considerable number of data systems run by the United States military in his quest for information about alien contact and reverse engineered technologies. The Appeal Court heard his case yesterday but ruled that the extradition to the US should proceed apace. The best he can do now is appeal to the House of Lords, but …
It seems that The Bad Guys (for some value of Bad Guys) are now carefully choosing their targets, and are also carefully choosing personnel who work at those targets and are e-mailing trojan horses, in the form of MS Office documents to those people in the hope that they'll open the bad files and run the exploits. The nature of the payload isn't clear in the article - it sounds like the trojans open connections to systems that the attackers control, and the attackers tunnel back through into the target networks. The scary thing is that the targets include various federal …
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, also known as the Tamil Tigers, is a group of rebels active in the country of Sri Lanka who demand the formation of a separate state for the Tamil majority in the northern and eastern regions of Sri Lanka, or a terrorist group, depending on who you talk to about them. They're pretty nasty customers as sepratist movements go, even having separate strike and black ops teams. They also have an unusual degree of technological sophistication - they have their own television station, a bank, a customs service, and it's been discovered that they can …
Gary McKinnon, who cracked US government and military networks under the alias 'Solo' in search of information on unidentified flying objects and unusual power sources will be extradited to the United States to stand trial, possibly under the USA PATRIOT Act because he infiltrated a number of sensitive data systems and networks. They're calling it the largest compromise of military systems in history (92 boxen known compromised) but somehow I doubt this because McKinnon certainly wasn't the first person to go wandering around inside their systems after breaking in - Hans "Pengo" Hubner beat him to it by fifteen years, give …
