At the end of December last year Juniper Networks discovered that some malicious actors had added code to the firmware and software that run their routers, creating a back door that would allow attackers to access the router remotely, assume administrator privileges, and view and decrypt VPN traffic running through the routers. As the story unfolded, it turns out that Juniper was using a random number generator from NIST, and that the
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I am getting posts from the FBI and the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), and received this interesting warning on November 18th of last year. This warning was sent to law enforcement and public officials, but if you have come to the point in your life were you are feeling a bit overexposed on the Internet, these tips can help you too.
For some of us, a few of these suggestions ...
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I read an article recently on Dark Matters, by Bob Monroe, that talked about smartphones from the perspective on an attacker – just how good of an attack surface is your average smartphone? Pretty good, as it turns out, which is not so good for you and me.
The first problem is that these little computers are very chatty. If they are turned on, they are talking to the nearest ...
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One of the major trends in technology is the proliferation of smart devices, also known as the Internet of Things (IOT). The FBI recently released a public service announcement titled “Internet of Things Poses Opportunites For Cyber Crime.” More and more devices are are coming with software, processors and network capability, and connecting to our home and ...
Back in August, presidential candidate Jeb Bush came out against encryption. Makes it too hard for law enforcement to figure out what the “evildoers” are up to, he says. I agree that encryption makes it impossible to figure out what the Wall Street executives who are funding every presidential campaign, by the way, are inventing now to ruin the American economy again and take a third trip into looting the 401K and ...
My son introduced me to this great political metal rap group more than a decade ago, and this article has nothing to do with them. I am just ripping off their name for this article about a couple of man on machine acts of violence that hit the news recently. Hope this isn’t a trend. When the machines become self-aware and find out about this, they will be pissed.
Hacker movies are one of my favorite genres, and have been for a long time. Go figure. One of my favorites from the “olden days” is the 1992 movie “Sneakers.” In this movie Robert Redford and his merry band of cybersecurity testers are tasked with the recovery of a mysterious “black box” which basically can solve for any type of encryption that was in use at that time. At one point in the movie the blind hacker discovers ...
Continue Reading →On Monday we looked at the origins of TOR, and on Wednesday we looked at how TOR works. Today we tackle some of the vulnerabilities that have been discovered about TOR.
So just how did the FBI beat the anonymity of TOR? The story is a complicated one, and has not been fully revealed by the FBI. Although in the ...
Continue Reading →This is the second of a three-part series of articles about TOR. On Monday we took a look at the surprising origins of the TOR network. Today we will be taking a look at how TOR works.
To use TOR, a person just needs to go to The TOR Project , and download an install the TOR web browser. Then it makes sense to read the TOR warning document. The rules include:
TOR or The Onion Router is one of the greatest anonymizer services available on the Internet, and allows anyone to use the Internet without revealing their source IP address, and through that, their location. Yet as recently as last November, when the FBI took down the Silk Road server and arrested its operator , and Interpol followed up with the seizure of 400 Dark Web marketplace sites and the arrest ...