German-owned Patriot missiles stationed in Turkey were briefly taken over by hackers, according to media reports on Tuesday.
The attack took place on anti-aircraft ‘Patriot’ missiles on the Syrian border. The American-made weapons had been stationed there by the Bundeswehr (German army) to protect Nato ally Turkey.
According to the civil service magazine, the missile system carried out “unexplained” orders. It was not immediately clear when these orders were carried out and what they were.
The magazine speculates about two weak spots in the missile system which could be exploited by hackers.
One such weakness is the Sensor-Shooter-Interoperability (SSI) which exchanges real time information between the missile launcher and its control system.
The second exposed point is a computer chip which controls the guidance of the weapon.
Attackers might have gained access in two different ways, one that takes over the operating of the missile system and one that steals data from it.
The patriot missile has been in service in the US army since 1984 and was first used in operation in the first Gulf war in 1991.
In 2012 Turkey asked that its Nato partners support it by stationing Patriot missile systems there, after the civil war in Syria drew closer to its southern border.
In June 2015 Germany announced that it would replace its Patriot missiles with MEADS, an air defence system designed in cooperation with the USA and Italy.
Plenty of people these days are prepared to augment their bodies with face furniture, piercings, rings and tattoos.
But would you implant a chip in your hand to show how easy it is to exploit an Android phone?
That’s what former US navy petty officer Seth Wahle did, in an attempt to demonstrate how business networks could be compromised.
Wahle took an NFC chip, similar to the kind found in many of today’s smartphones, and injected it between the thumb and finger of his left hand. According to Forbes, the injection was something of an eye-watering experience.
But implants aren’t for the squeamish. Wahle says the needle was bigger than he’d expected when he had the chip implanted by an “unlicensed amateur” for $40, enough to make him want to vomit. He says he had to go through a backstreet operation due to Florida’s restrictive body modification laws.
Unfortunately for lovers of Hollywood techno-thrillers, the attack itself is fairly lame.
As the article in Forbes describes, for the exploit to be successful the victim has to click on a link sent to his Android device by the implanted NFC chip:
It has an NFC (Near Field Communications) antenna that pings Android phones, asking them to open a link. Once the user agrees to open that link and install a malicious file, their phone connects to a remote computer, the owner of which can carry out further exploits on that mobile device.
Put simply, that Android device is compromised. In a demo for FORBES, Wahle used the Metasploit penetration testing software on his laptop to force an Android device to take a picture of his cheery visage.
Google manager of information security Heather Adkins
New startups looking for ways to keep their users secure should know one thing, a top Google security executive said Tuesday: “Passwords are dead.”
Speaking on a TechCrunch Disrupt panel called “Spies Like Us,” Heather Adkins, Google’s manager of information security, told moderator Greg Ferenstein that in the future, the “game is over for” any startup that relies on passwords as its chief method to secure users and their data.
Adkins, speaking alongside Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers managing partner Ted Schlein and author James Bamford, said that looking ahead, “our relationship with passwords are done,” and that “passwords are done at Google.”
She talked briefly about Google’s use of two-step authentication and the fact that the search giant has been working to innovate in the area of non-standard password security. As a result, she said, any startup that still relies on standard passwords needs to ensure that it has an abuse team set up to deal “with customers getting compromised.”
Although Adkins didn’t offer any real specifics on how Google will innovate beyond today’s security, she did say the company is experimenting with hardware-based tokens as well as a Motorola-created system that authenticates users by having them touch a device to something embedded, or held, in their own clothing. “A hacker can’t steal that from you,” she said.
Later in the conversation, which also touched on the NSA scandal, cybersecurity, and the weaponization of offensive cyber technologies, Adkins pointed out that hackers intent on making money from their bad acts had consistently found ways to exploit Google users who had yet to turn on two-factor authentication. Essentially, she explained, hackers were able to get into such users’ accounts, turn on two-factor authentication themselves, and lock the users out before utilizing those accounts to send spam. “They are finding new ways to make money off it,” she said. “Ways we hadn’t anticipated.”
Finally, Adkins argued, technology companies need to step up and build products that protect users so “they don’t rely on not getting fooled.” Ultimately, she said, anyone starting a new technology company should be sure that one person is designated to focus on security and privacy, and that one of the first 25 employees should work full time on security and privacy. – cnet.com
Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom is upbeat about the investigation against his now-defunct file-storage site, his possible extradition to the US, the future of Internet freedoms.
The United States government says that Dotcom, a German millionaire formerly known as Kim Schmitz, masterminded a vast criminal conspiracy by operating the file-storage site Megaupload. Dotcom, on the other hand, begs to differ. One year after the high-profile raid of his home and the shut-down and seizure of one of the most popular sites on the Web, Dotcom hosted a launch party for his latest endeavor, simply called Mega.
Dotcom says president Obama and the Obama administration for colluding with movie companies in order to orchestrate this giant arrest in New Zealand.
The driving force, of course, is Chris Dodd, the chairman of the MPAA [Motion Picture Association of America]. And he was senator for a long time and he is — according to [US Vice President] Joe Biden — Joe Biden’s best friend. And the state attorney that is in charge of this case has been Joe Biden’s personal counsel, Neil MacBride, and [he] also worked as an anti-piracy manager for the BSA, the Business Software Association, which is basically like the MPAA but for software companies.
“The fundraisers in Hollywood had to have some sort of Plan B, an alternative for SOPA [the Stop Online Piracy Act], because the president certainly was aware — and his team at the White House was aware — that if they don’t have anything to give at those fundraisers, to those guys in Hollywood who are eager to have more control over the Internet, they wouldn’t have probably raised too much. And Hollywood is a very important contributor to Obama’s campaign. Not just with money, but also with media support. They control a lot of media: celebrity endorsements and all that,” says Dotcom.
“So I’m sure the election plays an important role. The relationships of the people that are in charge of this case play an important role and, of course, we have facts that we want to present at our extradition hearing that will show some more detail about this and that this is not just some conspiracy theory but that this actually happened.”
The US Justice Department wants to extradite the German citizen living in New Zealand operating a business in Hong Kong.
“It is a very interesting question because the extradition law, the extradition treaty in New Zealand, doesn’t really allow extradition for copyright. So what they did, they threw some extra charges on top and one of them is racketeering, where they basically say we are a mafia organization and we set up our Internet business to basically be an organized crime network that was set up and structured the way it was just to do criminal copyright infringement. And anyone who has every used Megaupload and has any idea about how that website worked knows immediately that it was total nonsense. But they needed to chop that on in order to have even a chance for extradition. But in our opinion, you see, all of that was secondary. The primary goal was to take down Megaupload and destroy it completely. That was their mission and that’s why the whole thing in Hong Kong, for example, they called it Operation Takedown. And I think everything that’s happening now, they are trying on the fly to doctor it around, and found a way to find a case. They probably came here and thought, “We will find something; that these guys have done something wrong.” In the indictment, if you actually read that, it’s more like a press release. There’s nothing in there that has any merits.”
Dotcom says his case is a crucial case for Internet freedom. “I think more and more people realize that and the government is quite exposed here because they really went in with completely prosecutorial abuse and overreach and ignoring due process, ignoring our rights, spying on us, illegal search warrants, illegal restraining orders, illegal spying. The whole picture, when you look at it, shows that this was an urgent mission, done on a rush. “Take them down, I want them to go.” And it was a political decision to do that. And the execution was extremely poor, and the case is extremely poor, because that is something they thought that they could worry about later. It was all about the takedown: ‘Let’s send a strong message to Hollywood that we are on their side.’”
The new program, Mega, is fully encrypted, but do people need more encryption on the Internet?
Says Dotcom: “I think it’s important for the Internet that there is more encryption. Because what I have learned since I got dragged into this case is a lot about privacy abuses, about the government spying on people. You know, the US government invests a lot of money in spy clouds: massive data centers with hundreds of thousands of hard drives storing data. And what they are storing is basically any communication that traverses through US networks. And what that means they are not spying on individuals based on a warrant anymore. They just spy on everybody, permanently, all the time. And what that means for you and for anybody is that if you are ever a target of any kind of investigation, or someone has a political agenda against you, or a prosecutor doesn’t like you, or the police wants to interpret something in a way to get you in trouble — they can use all that data, go through it with a comb and find things even though we think we have nothing to hide and have done nothing wrong. They will find something that they can nail you with and that’s why it’s wrong to have these kinds of privacy abuses, and I decided to create a solution that overtime will encrypt more and more of the internet. So we start with files, we will then move to emails, and then move to Voice-Over-IP communication. And our API [Application Programming Interface] is available to any third-party developer to also create their own tools. And my goal is, within the next five years, I want to encrypt half of the Internet. Just reestablish a balance between a person — an individual — and the state. Because right now, we are living very close to this vision of George Orwell and I think it’s not the right way. It’s the wrong path that the government is on, thinking that they can spy on everybody.”
After Megaupload was shut down by the FBI last year, hacktivists with the movement Anonymous retaliated, so to speak. In response, they went and took down the websites for the FBI, the Motion Picture Association of America, the Department of Justice, the Recording Industry Association of America.
Dotcom laughs. “t’s a kind of virtual protest, you know? I think it’s not a good idea to shut down websites. I’ve been a hacker myself. I understand why they are doing it and how they are doing it, but I think there are better ways to protest. Where you organize yourself in a group and do petitions and actually email congressmen, email your local politicians, let them know about what you don’t like. Organize your movement rather than attacking. I had a sense of understanding for them because everyone had stored so much data on Megaupload, and then all of a sudden a site like that disappears and billions of files are taken offline, the majority of them perfectly legitimate. You need to understand one thing: 50 percent of all files that were ever uploaded to Megaupload have not even been downloaded once. That clearly shows the non-infringing use. People just wanted to store their stuff on our site. And of course they were outraged when that disappeared and the government said, ‘We don’t give a care and we don’t give a damn about you people. We don’t care that you have your personal documents there because we have our agenda and we are going to take over the Internet.’ And you know the White House was supporting SOPA, and only when the masses came together — and Aaron Swartz: he stopped SOPA. With his efforts, he stopped SOPA. And he became a target. A political target, okay? And that’s why all these things happened to him. There is no reasonable cause behind going after a young genius like that in the fashion they did. It’s political. Because the White House wanted SOPA. They promised it to Hollywood and they failed and they couldn’t go ahead because the White House was afraid if they keep pushing hard and they keep pushing it forward, that the people who oppose it are not going to vote for Obama in the reelection campaign. So it’s all a game to them really and we are all the little puppets that they think they can kick around. So we need to organize. There needs to be a movement that identifies these things and fights that. Not with shutting down websites but with real protests. Going out on the streets, writing to politicians and especially, most importantly, don’t vote for the guys that are against Internet freedom. Anyone who voted for SOPA, you should have a close look at that guy. Do I want to give him my vote next time around? Because that’s the only language politicians understand is your vote. And if you can bring all these votes together, somehow pooled for Internet freedom, you will see all these efforts disappear. Because at the end of the day, they represent the public. Politicians represent the public. And when they have enough pressure they can’t move forward. And SOPA was the best example for that.”
Fictional Swedish hacker Lisbeth Salander has some real-life imitators
Websites operated by Sweden’s central bank, parliament as well the security service were Friday offline or reported disturbances, the day after hackers had threatened to target them.
Hackers believed to be linked to the group Anonymous on Thursday urged supporters to conduct the so-called denial of service (DDoS) attack after an internet company was searched by Swedish police.
In a video posted on YouTube, an anonymous spokesman had warned of new attacks on Friday, citing that “the raid on PRQ disabled many of our torrent sites. We see this as a crime against freedom-to-information.”
A denial of service attack involves web addresses being hit by a flood of traffic, making the website unaccessible.
The Swedish Prosecution Authority’s website was also offline as was that of the Anti-Piracy Agency formed by Swedish film and computer game producers and distributors that challenge illegal file-sharing.
The search of the internet company, which the prosecution authority named as PeriQ Networks AB, ended Wednesday and several servers were seized. The suspicions centred on suspected copyright infringements.
Similar attacks have hit other sites earlier this week.
Some news reports suggested that PRQ had links with the file-sharing website The Pirate Bay. Four members of the website have in the past been sentenced for copyright infringement. One of its members, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, was last month extradited from Cambodia on suspicion of another case of cyber crime.
Pirate Bay, which allows users to share music and video files, was started in 2003, according to its website. It says it does not store copyrighted or illegal material. – DPA
Hackers from the group Anonymous said Wednesday they had accessed classified German files and posted them online, revealing details of the country’s military operations in Afghanistan.
Anonymous said it obtained the data from a server at the Bundestag or German parliament. The group has claimed responsibility for a series of leaks of confidential data worldwide in the past year.
The military documents were collected for an inquiry, now finished, into a September 2009 airstrike by US jets under German orders that killed more than 140 Taliban fighters and Afghan civilians.
Omid Nouripour, a Green Party legislator who was on the inquiry committee, told dpa the documents posted online were authentic. He said he had not seen anything in the online version that would put lives in danger.
The Bundestag administration said it was checking the leak. A spokeswoman said it was possible the documents had been merely appendices to the inquiry’s report.
The inquiry criticized the 2009 airstrike.
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