I can't believe that came from your mouth!
Archive for July, 2006
Zango and MySpace
Jul 10th
I first saw this at Trench’s MyCrimeSpace and then on TechCrunch. I previously wrote about Zango, the new supervillain of spyware and popup ads in this post here.
Zango is distributing funny videos, but in order to view them, you have to accept a license agreement, which then installs the Zango Toolbar. Sure, there is other content that Zango offers, but right now it is rather limited. But each video comes with a snippet of code that you copy onto your MySpace page, which then allows other common user profiles to become spyware distributors! You can see some screenshots over here at VitalSecurity.
You have to hand it to someone that uses MySpace as a way to spread the spyware. If Zango gets their hands on a really good piece of video that would go “viral,” then MySpace will become even more annoying when you browse the pages than it already is.
Yet one more reason for parents to block MySpace- It prevents Spyware. And here is a prediction: Next up will be a virus that crawls through the friends lists.
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Loading ...Chechen Muslim Terrorist Leader Eliminated
Jul 10th
I’m not too sure what the deal is with Russia all of the time. They often oppose the US in its efforts to prosecute the War on Terror, despite the fact that Russia was the scene of some of the most horrifying terrorist attacks in recent memory.
In 2002, a Moscow theater was invaded by a team of 40 plus muslim terrorists. At the end of this siege, the terrorists and 120 trapped performers and audience members were dead. See the whole story here.
In 2004, on the first day of school, Muslim terrorists took over a school in the Russian city of Beslan. The terrorists moved all of the children into the school gym and rigged explosives to the basketball hoops. In the ensuing aftermath, almost 350 people were killed, including 185 school children. See the whole story here.
Both of the above stories strike at the heart of everyday life. It is almost unimaginable that any group of people can be so evil, but these muslims are that evil. US agencies carefully studied the above terror scenarios and have practiced and prepared how to respond to such incidents. But the best defense against such terror attacks is killing terrorists.
The Russians apparently got the man behind the above brutal attacks. Shamil Basayev is a dead man. According to Hot Air, he may have died spectacularly in an explosion. They had to identify his body using skull fragments. I say good for the Russian people. Too bad Baseyev didn’t suffer before his timely demise.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...UK Approves Extradition of McKinnon
Jul 7th
The Interior Minister approved the extradition of the World’s Dumbest Hacker. McKinnon has two weeks to appeal, and then he will arrive in the US to face charges for his cyber crimes.
From CNET here:
Interior Minister John Reid has signed an order for his extradition, his ministry said.
McKinnon, who could face up to 70 years in jail and fines of up to $1.75 million, said he was planning to appeal against the decision, telling BBC News 24: “I am very worried and feeling very let down by my own government.”
The ministry said McKinnon now has 14 days to appeal.
He had tried to fight extradition, saying he was “already hung and quartered over there” and would not receive a fair trial.
Prosecutors said McKinnon hacked into sensitive networks over a one-year period from February 2002, crippling U.S. defense systems in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Hey Gary- The correct phrase is “Drawn and Quartered.” Stupid. You can see the other stories on McKinnon and his legacy of stupidity here.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...VA Laptop Sold On Back of Truck
Jul 7th
As a followup to the VA laptop stories, the Register reports that the laptop stolen from the home of a VA employee was sold on the black market. The buyer saw a flyer in the grocery store wanting the laptop back, and the buyer arranged for the return of the laptop via a friend who worked for the Park Service.
From the Reg here:
NBC reporter Pete Williams has been able to fill in some of the blanks after talking to investigators involved in the case.
The famous laptop and its hard drive ended up for sale on a “black market” near a subway station near Wheaton outside of Washington DC. We’re talking about the type of market where goods are sold off the “back of a truck”, according to Williams’s sources.
The unnamed buyer – who bought both components – later chanced upon flyers requesting the return of the kit at a local supermarket. After discovering that the serial numbers of his newly acquired laptop matched those of the stolen equipment, he reportedly brokered the return of the laptop through a friend in the US Park Police. No doubt the $50,000 reward offered for the return of the laptop greased the wheels of this deal. We’d be a tad suspicious about the circumstances of this return but, in the absence of any concrete evidence, let’s give the man involved the benefit of the doubt. The return of the laptop has allowed VA officials to breathe a collective sigh of relief.
Information held on the laptop included the names, dates of birth and Social Security numbers of millions of former US servicemen and women dating back to 1975. VA officials went public to warn veterans of the incident. FBI and local law enforcement officials were involved in investigating the security breach.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Coke Employees Busted Selling Secrets to Pepsi
Jul 6th
This isn’t exactly a cyber story, but it does involve protecting information, so I’ve filed this one under cyber anyways. And I also used to work with Coke in information security. If there is another organization that takes security as seriously as Coca Cola does, I would like to know who it is.
The 100 year old secret formula for Coca Cola is under constant armed guard at the Headquarters. Every piece of written or printed information, from SEC filings to internal corporate memos are assigned a classification level. Cameras are everywhere. Every employee undergoes a rigorous background check. Coke only hires the very best in the field of security, both physical and electronic. Security specialists from Coke also work very closely with Homeland Security as advisors, and they maintain other private partnerships with security organizations to help shape the future of security. Literally, they write books on security and how to secure things.
All of this so they can sell water mixed with sugar.
Despite all of this security expertise, Coke suffered a breach when three employees colluded to steal corporate secrets and sell them to Pepsi for 1.5 million bucks. The thieves were stupid, however, in that they presumed incorrectly that Pepsi was in the business of buying stolen secrets. Pepsi wanted no part in this plot and instantly turned the stolen information over to Coke.
So while this story is not quite like breaking into Fort Knox to steal gold, if you understand a little about the security history and background of Coke, you can understand how utterly shocking this is to the company.
From the AP here:
3 charged with stealing Coca-Cola secrets
ATLANTA – Coca-Cola and Pepsi are usually bitter enemies, but when PepsiCo Inc. got a letter offering to sell Coke trade secrets, it went straight to its corporate rival.
Six weeks later, three people face federal charges of stealing confidential information, including a sample of a new drink, from The Coca-Cola Co. and trying to sell it to PepsiCo Inc.
The suspects arrested Wednesday the day a $1.5 million transaction was to occur include a Coke executive’s administrative assistant, Joya Williams, who is accused of rifling through corporate files and stuffing documents and a new Coca-Cola product into a personal bag.
Williams, 41, of Norcross, Ga., and 30-year-old Ibrahim Dimson of New York and 43-year-old Edmund Duhaney of Decatur, Ga., were charged with wire fraud and unlawfully stealing and selling Coke trade secrets, federal prosecutors said.
Coke thanked Pepsi for its assistance.
Video surveillance showed Williams at her desk at Coke headquarters going through multiple files looking for documents and stuffing them into bags. She also was observed holding a liquid container with a white label, which resembled the description of a new Coca-Cola product sample, before placing it into her personal bag, prosecutors say, adding that Coca-Cola later verified the sample was genuine and is a product the company is developing.
So you see that even the offices inside Headquarters are under video surveillance. You can be sure that the guards that were supposed to monitor those cameras is going to be fired. And Coke is going to crack down on background checks even more now.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...4th July Clowns
Jul 6th
I am not too sure when it was in my life that I started hating clowns. I don’t recall being frightened of them as a child, or traumatized by them at a circus. They just simply freak me out. Maybe its the big floppy shoes. Maybe its the white makeup. Maybe its the bulbous red nose. Or the stupid tie and suspenders.
The Herndon 4th of July celebration was Maggoty with Clowns.
I have never seen Stephen King’s “It” nor “Killer Clowns from Outer Space.” And I don’t plan on seeing those movies any time soon.
Maybe its that I think, that if I were to be a criminal or a pedophile who had my big mug plastered all over the Post Office’s Most wanted list, I would think the best way to stay near to children and hide my identity would be to dress like a clown.
Don’t write me with hate emails. I completely understand that the vast majority of clowns are just normal people with odd compulsions to dress funny. Not all of them are murderers like John Wayne Gacy.
I went to the Herndon July 4th celebration and there were two of those bastards there.
Notice how the asian kid is not at all impressed by the chubby white man’s large black inflatable phallic symbol, which he then proceeds to twist into likenesses of animals. The kid’s body language suggests that he is “just here to get a baloon critter, and please, for the love of God, don’t touch me.”
This clown has a big red Derby and has apparantly lost control of his Balloon Figurines. The little girl cautiously keeps her distance from the huge bright yellow wig. Obviously, the clown is wearing a prisoner’s uniform of black and white stripes. His bulging biceps are tatooed with Aryan screeds, but the prison uniform hides those from casual photographers.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Hacker Wannabe’s Buying Soap-on-a-Rope
Jul 5th
A group of young men stole and falsified credentials to break into a Law Enforcement database last year, and they are going to trial this month. They had unauthorized access to over 310,000 people’s personal information such as banking records, home addresses and social security numbers, including many famous celebrities.
They even used the information to download the photos from Paris Hilton’s cell phone. They also swapped info on Laurence Fishburn, Governor Swarzenegger and Demi Moore.
From the Register here:
Accused hackers deny ID theft
US investigators have arrested five men on suspicion of involvement of hacking into the database of LexisNexis Group in a crime linked by prosecutors to a breach that led to the disclosure of the personal details of more than 310,000 people last year.
Some of the quintet are further suspected of swiping photos and data from an account tied to the mobile phone of heiress Paris Hilton. The suspects used “stolen or illegally created accounts at LexisNexis subsidiaries to look up Social Security numbers and other personal information on dozens of other Hollywood celebrities,” the Washington Post reports, adding that the five are likely to be charged with aggravated identity theft as conspiracy and computer hacking offences.
The accused have been named as: Jason Daniel Hawks, 24, of Winston Salem, North Carolina; Zachary Wiley Mann, 19, of Maple Grove, Minnesota; Timothy C. McKeage, 21, of Woonsocket, Rhode Island; Justin A. Perras, 19, of New Bedford, Massachusetts; and Jeffrey Robert Weinberg, 21, of Laguna Beach, California.
According to prosecutors, McKeage (AKA Krazed) broke in a computer run by police in Port Orange, Florida and used stolen credentials from this systems to access Accurint, a law enforcement database service, maintained by Seisint, a local subsidiary of LexisNexis.
The Accurint login credentials allowed the group to look up police records and other data on various high-profile celebrities. Among those targeted were California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and actors Laurence Fishburne and Demi Moore as well as Paris Hilton.
Mann (AKA Majy) admitted accessing personal data on Laurence Fishburne and other celebrities but denied accusations that he and his cohorts did anything wrong. “I don’t think what we did was that bad. We never used anyone’s identity. Besides, don’t you think it’s wrong that a company like that has all this information that’s available to anyone who’s willing to pay for it?”
Ol’ Zach Mann is whining about how wrong it is to broker security information in a law enforcement database? Is he intending to use that old “information just wants to be free” gimmick as his defense at his trial? So the ends justifies his means because the “database was the one that was bad.” Riiiggght. Good luck at your trial, stupid.
While doing research on this story, I went to the original article published by the Washington Post here. The Washington Post tracks everyone who links to the article. Another member of the hacking crew, Justin Perras, has posted his whinings on his MySpace Page, and linked his page to the article. Another brilliant move by another dope who thinks he knows better than everyone else.
On his blog, Justin writes:
That story upsets me a little bit. I didn’t tell the secret service anything was true, not to mention he twisted everyone’s words around. I am not comfortable with what he wrote. So much for utilizing ‘defensive journalisim’ to shape public opinion to workin our favor. Instead, his editor chopped the story up to portray us all as a group of hackers trying to compromise the identities of multiple celebrities.
Contrariwise, Kevin Poulsen from wired.com might also be publishing a story for wired. Hopefully, his will portray things a little differently. As far as my thoughts concerning the case and consequences, I don’t think about that. It makes me suicidal.
So the hacker team is hoping that they can get a favorable news article written that will diminish the extent of their crime? Good luck. Messing around in law enforcement databases is considered an attack on national critical infrastructure. It may not be cyber-terrorism, but the government takes this sort of thing very seriously.
The group is charged with aggravated identity theft, which has a minimum of two years. Justin and Zach- make sure you get soap on a rope. And don’t forget your shower slippers. Here is another list of tips for you and your friends.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Kanye Dropped His Box O’ Porn
Jul 5th
Kanye was performing at a private concert designed to raise money for AIDS research and prevention. When he left, he forgot something. His big box of Porn.
From Page Six here:
Kanye West, who just played a private concert at Cipriani Wall Street the other night, left something behind at a recent photo shoot. The platinum-selling artist posed at a downtown loft for a “major music magazine,” our source said, and “was pretty nice, considering how he usually is.”
But when West was done, he left behind a present for the photographer and stylist: “There was a huge box full of porn. It was all white girls with black guys.”
West did not call to ask for the pictures back, so we assume he had his fill.
I said it before that this sex addict and pervert is steamrolling his way into a rape case, and incidents like this will not be able to help his defense.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Herndon’s Patriotic 4th
Jul 5th
Last night we attended the awesome July 4th celebration in downtown Herndon. It was very family oriented, with Moms, Dads and kids all dressed in reds, whites and blues. There was a big field for frisbee and soccer, moon bounces, and funnel cakes, ice cream, and clowns.
The Emcee invited school kids to participate in July 4th trivia, such as signers of the Declaration of Independence and how some of those signers were killed by the British during the war for Independence. There was a beautiful soprano voice that led the crowd in the Star Spangled Banner, and at the conclusion of the song, fireworks commenced, with bombs bursting to Patriotic music.
I will try to post a few pics later on tonight.
There was also a really good cover band that played for about an hour before the fireworks. The Jangling Reinharts played flawless covers of the Stones, Paul McCartney, Creedance Clearwater Revival and many more. They are a Richmond band, but frequently make visits to Northern Virginia. Check out their site here.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Gore’s Problem With Hyperbole
Jul 4th
Al Gore just can’t make accurate comparisons without using extremism, gloom, or outright lies. How can anyone take him seriously?
He equates a natural 1 degree rise in temperature over a century to cataclism. Cities underwater! Icebergs melting! Hurricanes the size of Australia!
Now he is comparing the extraction of oil in Alberta to a Heroin addict injecting smack between his toes.
From an Alberta Radio News station here:
ALBERTA/630 CHED – Not all influential Americans are thrilled by the tremendous reserves in the Oil Sands near Fort McMurray. Global warming opponent and former US Vice President Al Gore says what’s happening in northern Alberta is “totally nuts”.
In an interview for next week’s issue of Rolling Stone magazine Gore slams our oil sands mega projects. He says: “For every barrel of oil they extract there, they have to use enough natural gas to heat a family’s home for four days.
And they have to tear up four tons of landscape, all for one barrel of oil”.
Gore compares the extraction process to drug addiction and adds “junkies find veins in their toes.
It seems reasonable, to them, because they’ve lost sight of the rest of their lives”.
Why can’t Gore compare the extraction of oil to forestry and lumbering projects? Or use a sports analogy like a normal person? No, Gore deals in wild extremes because using disgusting images of junkies shooting between their toes are the only way that anyone will pay attention to his message.
The Oil Sands in Alberta may be the second largest deposit of Oil in the World. Getting the oil out of the sands is easier than deep drilling or going offshore with giant oil platforms. The sands are pretty close to the surface, and if an accurate comparison can be made, its more like recovering kitty urine from kitty litter.
But that comparison won’t generate ticket prices for a failing movie.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Skeksis!
Jul 3rd
As huge fans of the Henson’s Dark Crystal, my wife and I were excited to see the Henson display at the Smithsonian Museum of American History.
There was a great display there too about Polio and how Americans dealt with the disease, and the terrible heartbreaking realities of it. There were photos of parents sitting outside of quarantined hospitals, leg braces for toddlers, and even the cane and leg braces for Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Most shocking of all is that Muslim nations are allowing for Polio to make a resurgence in Islamic countries because they falsely believe that the vaccines are actually a western plot to sterilize Muslims. Nigeria and other Islamic countries are leading the way to re-introduce Polio to the world.
The museum is also currently restoring the original Star Spangled Banner that flew over Fort McHenry. In its place hangs the flag that draped over the Pentagon after the Sep 11 attacks in 2001.
Many wings of this museum are undergoing renovations, and there wasnt as much to see there as usual, but its always fun to spend time there.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Lincoln Frees Slaves. Muslims Bring Slavery Back
Jul 3rd
Over 600 Thousand Americans gave their lives in the civil war to decide the question of Slavery in the United States. Now the followers of Islam, who are only practicing their beliefs and religion, are re-introducing slavery to our country.
From the AFP here:
Egyptian couple in California plead guilty to slavery charges
LOS ANGELES (AFP) – An Egyptian couple living in southern California have pleaded guilty to slavery charges involving a now-16 year old girl they forcibly kept working in their home for two years, according to US attorneys Friday.
Abdelnasser Eid Youssef Ibrahim, 45 and his ex-wife, Amal Ahmed Ewis-abd Motelib, 43, are accused of harboring an illegal alien, obtaining labor by force, and conspiracy.
The girl worked as nanny and housekeeper for a family of seven up to 16 hours a day, seven days a week.
“She had to work all day long,” Assistant US Attorney Robert Keenan said. “They used unlawful forms of coersion such as hitting and slapping, and threats of arrest by the police if she ever went outside on her own.”
The girl began working for the couple as a domestic servant in Egypt in 1999, and the couple brought her into the United States in 2000 where her forced servitude continued for two years.
The couple kept the girl in an unfurnished, unventilated, and unlighted garage that building inspectors deemed “deplorable.”
The slaveholders, who pleaded guilty Thursday, are expected to be sentenced to three years in prison and required to pay the girl 101,516 dollars in restitution.
Let’s do the math. The girl is now 16. She became a slave in 1999. She was 9 when she was enslaved by this family. But its okay, because their Koran says so. And, according to the Koran, its okay to have sex with your slaves.
Thanks to Jawa for the story.
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