Blog

The dark web’s criminal minds see Internet of Things as next big hacking prize

John Hultquist, vice president of intelligence analysis at Google-owned cybersecurity firm Mandiant, likens his job to studying criminal minds through a soda straw. He monitors cyberthreat groups in real time on the dark web, watching what amounts to a free market of criminal innovation ebb and flow.

Groups buy and sell services, and one hot idea — a business model for a crime — can take off quickly when people realize that it works to do damage or to get people to pay. Last year, it was ransomware, as criminal hacking groups figured out how to shut down servers through what’s called directed denial of service attacks. But 2022, say experts, may have marked an inflection point due to the rapid proliferation of IoT (Internet of Things) devices.

Attacks are evolving from those that shut down computers or stole data, to include those that could more directly wreak havoc on everyday life. IoT devices can be the entry points for attacks on parts of countries’ critical infrastructure, like electrical grids or pipelines, or they can be the specific targets of criminals, as in the case of cars or medical devices that contain software.

“What I wish is that the vulnerabilities of cybersecurity could never negatively affect human life and infrastructure,” says Meredith Schnur, cyber brokerage leader for US & Canada at Marsh & McLennan, which insures large companies against cyberattacks. “Everything else is just business.”

Keep reading

Researchers: California’s Digital License Plates Could Allow Hackers to Track Location

Security researchers were able to gain “super administrative access” to Reviver, the sole provider of California’s digital license plates, and track the GPS location of all of vehicles they are associated with.

A team of security researchers successfully obtained “full super administrative access,” which allowed them to perform a slew of tasks involving the company’s user accounts and vehicles, according to a blog post by researcher Sam Curry.

After gaining access, a hacker could track the physical GPS location of all license plates of Reviver customers, as well as change the slogan or personalized message at the bottom of the plates to arbitrary text.

The personalized messages on the license plates involves a feature that allows customers to digitally update the bottom section of their plates to display different messages, such as, “Go Team!” or “looking for a trail.”

Additionally, a hacker could update any vehicle status to “STOLEN,” which would alert authorities.

“An actual attacker could remotely update, track, or delete anyone’s REVIVER plate,” Curry wrote in his blog post, revealing that he and his team had found security vulnerabilities across the automotive industry, not just with Reviver.

Keep reading

JFK Murder: Evolving Strategies for Damage Control

After 60 years, establishment figures are increasingly voicing the belief that government agencies and officials might have at least covered up critical information about the assassination plot to kill President John F. Kennedy. And one major interpreter of history is even going so far as to suggest a key governmental entity took delight in JFK’s demise. 

Nonetheless, they’re still behind the curve of public opinion. And even in their new posture, they appear to be playing a game of denial. 

Most Americans don’t buy the official story of one disgruntled loner coincidentally  securing a job along an as-yet-undetermined presidential motorcade route, then, once the route information was public, deciding spontaneously to bring a rifle and thereby altering the course of history.

And most people who have studied the copious research done over the years are even more sure that it’s hooey. (As was a 1970s panel, the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which concluded there was seemingly some kind of conspiracy involving more than one person). That’s why at least some of us keep on digging. 

After Oliver Stone’s movie, JFK, swung public opinion on the issue in the early 1990s, Congress unanimously mandated that the government find and release all documents on the assassination. By 2017, a quarter-century later, all the documents were supposed to be out. But delays dragged on as federal agencies sought more time to review, redact, or outright withhold documents that might somehow breach individuals’ privacy or harm national security. 

Still, more documents have slowly emerged, and finally, in December, the National Archives and Records Administration (“Archives”) let loose online another pile of faint, eye-straining documents related to the Kennedy assassination — 13,173 of them. The agency says that pretty much everything covered by the JFK Records Act of 1992 is now out, except a handful of papers protected by other laws involving IRS documents or those protected by rules around judicial proceedings like grand juries. 

The commercial media’s reaction to this “final” release was, with one notable exception, pretty much what you would expect.

Oswald did it alone. Nothing to see here folks, move right along.

Oswald did it alone. And here’s more proof that he did it.

Oswald did it alone. The CIA has been hiding things, but for reasons that had nothing to do with the assassination.

The exception: Oswald alone pulled the trigger — but maybe others were involved.

Keep reading

Real-Life ‘Training Day’: Inside the Corruption Scandal That Brought Down the Oakland PD

Nobody really knows how Ghost Town got its name, but the moniker fits. Walled off from most of Oakland by freeways on its northern and eastern borders and warehouses to the west, Ghost Town—known formally as the Hoover-Foster neighborhood — has been haunted since the mid-twentieth century by the combined forces of racism, deindustrialization, and chronic unemployment. It was always a working-class community, but for most of its existence, Ghost Town residents could find decent-paying jobs on the East Bay’s burgeoning industrial waterfront. That changed starting in the 1950s as factories closed, and Oakland’s economy descended into a multi- decade decline.

White residents left the neighborhood, and much of the rest of Oakland, for the prosperity of expanding suburbs. At one point, a high proportion of houses and storefronts in Ghost Town were vacant and boarded up. Huey Newton, cofounder of the Black Panther Party (BPP), referred to West Oakland in his autobiography as a “ghost town but with actual inhabitants.” Newton’s sour comment stuck in the minds of locals, who started using the epithet themselves. If there was any doubt about whether the area should be called a ghost town, it was settled by the 1980s.

The federal “War on Drugs,” launched the previous decade by President Richard Nixon, transformed Ghost Town into a battlefield between rival dealers, and between dealers and cops. For the Oakland police, Ghost Town was hostile territory — a place to drive through cautiously while on patrol, meandering back and forth between West Street and San Pablo Avenue on long, numbered streets crowded with parked, semi-operable cars. In the 1990s Ghost Town truly felt abandoned. Darkness enveloped entire blocks of dilapidated bungalows, run-down apartment buildings, and weathered Victorians illuminated only by the neon glow of corner liquor stores. The sounds of gunfire and sirens were common. Murders were frequent. By this point, the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s were spent, no longer a counterforce offering hope and some measure of order to the mostly Black residents of Oakland’s flatlands. The social decay of racism and poverty could not be held at bay.

Keep reading

Scientists Say They’re Now Actively Trying to Build Conscious Robots

2022 was a banner year for artificial intelligence, and particularly taking into account the launch of OpenAI’s incredibly impressive ChatGPT, the industry is showing no sign of stopping.

But for some industry leaders, chatbots and image-generators are far from the final robotic frontier. Next up? Consciousness.

“This topic was taboo,” Hod Lipson, the mechanical engineer in charge of the Creative Machines Lab at Columbia University, told The New York Times. “We were almost forbidden from talking about it — ‘Don’t talk about the c-word; you won’t get tenure’ — so in the beginning I had to disguise it, like it was something else.”

Consciousness is one of the longest standing, and most divisive, questions in the field of artificial intelligence. And while to some it’s science fiction — and indeed has been the plot of countless sci-fi books, comics, and films — to others, like Lipson, it’s a goal, one that would undoubtedly change human life as we know it for good.

“This is not just another research question that we’re working on — this is the question,” the researcher continued. “This is bigger than curing cancer.”

“If we can create a machine that will have consciousness on par with a human, this will eclipse everything else we’ve done,” he added. “That machine itself can cure cancer.”

Keep reading

Satanic child abuse ring shut victims in oven, forced them to kill animals and filmed themselves gang raping them, court hears

A satanic child abuse ring tortured children by putting them in an oven, forcing them to kill animals and gang raping them, a court has heard.

Seven men and four women are accused of abusing three young children over the course of 10 years in Glasgow which saw them attempt to ‘call on spirits and demons’. 

Two girls – one of whom was allegedly shut in a microwave, fridge, oven and freezer in an attempted to kill her – and one boy were forced to kill animals as well as being sexually abused by the group, it is claimed.

Members of the group have been charged with 43 offences with among the most serious being attempted murder and rape of young children.

Iain Owens, 44, Elaine Lannery, 38, Lesley Williams, 41, Paul Brannan, 40, Marianne Gallagher, 38, Scott Forbes, 49, Barry Watson, 46, Mark Carr, 49, Richard Gachagan, 45, Leona Laing, 50, and John Clark, 46, all deny the offences.

Four other people alleged to have been involved in the ring –  Maureen Goudie, Steven McHendrie, Robert Brown, James McLean and Douglas Gachagan – have since died, according to court papers.

The High Court in Glasgow was told on Friday that the offences took place between January 2010 and March 2020 at a number of addresses in the city.

The group are alleged to have run a wheelchair over the legs of one of the girls, as well as putting a plastic bag over her head.

It’s claimed she was made to eat cat food, as well as take drugs and alcohol, with the other girl also made to eat pet food.

The second girl was allegedly chased by an adult wearing a devil mask and hung by her jumper from a nail on the wall. 

This culminated with her being pushed into and trapped inside a microwave, an oven, a fridge freezer and various cupboards, the court heard.

It is claimed one of the girls was threatened with being sent to Turkey with a male stranger, while the boy was put in a bath which they said was filled with blood. 

The boy and older girl are alleged to have been made to take part in ‘seances (and) use a Ouija board…to call on spirits and demons’.

The children were also involved in ‘witchcraft’ leading them to believe that they themselves had ‘metamorphosed into animals’.

The 11 are further said to have worn cloaks and devil horns as well making the young boy stab a budgie to death.

The group are also accused of killing a number of dogs including getting the children to attack the animals.

It is claimed that all three children were raped and sexually assaulted by members of the ring, with some cheering and clapping while recording the offences.

Prosecutors allege that some members of the group paid for ‘sexual services’ from three of the children.

The court heard that when the older girl called the police she was threatened by members of the group and had her call disconnected. 

Keep reading

Federal judge blocks enforcement of many parts of NJ’s new carry restrictions

It’s far from the last decision in the case, but Second Amendment advocates and gun owners in New Jersey won a big victory on Monday as a federal judge granted a temporary restraining order blocking several aspects of New Jersey’s latest restrictions on the right to carry from being enforced for the time being.

The lawsuit, which was brought a coalition of Second Amendment groups including the Second Amendment Foundation, Firearms Policy Coalition, Coalition of New Jersey Firearm Owners, and New Jersey Second Amendment Society, doesn’t challenge every part of the new laws. Instead, it takes aim specifically at the number of newly designated “sensitive places” enacted by Gov. Phil Murphy and the legislature in late December, and U.S. District Judge Renée Marie Bumb believes that many of these “gun-free zones” aren’t likely to pass constitutional muster. From today’s opinion:

As Plaintiffs lament, the challenged provisions force a person permitted to carry a firearm in New Jersey to “navigate a ‘veritable minefield.’” [Pls’. Br. at 12.] Their view is a legitimate one. The Court knows of no constitutional right that requires this much guesswork by individuals wanting to exercise such right.

With such sweeping legislation that includes catch-alls, Plaintiffs cannot decipher what constitutes a “sensitive place,” and so they have abandoned their constitutional right to bear arms out of fear of criminal penalty. Relatedly, Plaintiffs argue that these provisions sweep so broadly that the legislation “effectively shuts off most public areas from carrying for self-defense.” [Pls.’ Br. at 30.] In the final analysis, at some point on the line, when a constitutional right becomes so burdensome or unwieldy to exercise, it is, in effect, no longer a constitutional right. Plaintiffs have made a convincing case that this legislation has reached that point.

Bumb enjoined enforcement of the ban on concealed carry in libraries and museums, bars and restaurants that serve alcohol, and entertainment facilities, as well as the de-facto designation of all private property as “gun-free zones” and the portion of the new law requiring concealed carry holders to unholster and unload their firearm and keep it stored in a “secure container” while they’re in a vehicle. In her opinion, Bumb pointed out that the historical record as established has led other courts to conclude that banning concealed carry in public transportation is a no-no, and the evidence for government barring the lawful bearing of arms in private transportation is in essence non-existent.

Keep reading

Biden admin asked Twitter to silence Robert F. Kennedy Jr

A recently published email has provided more evidence of President Joe Biden’s administration asking tech platforms to censor content that challenges the federal government’s Covid messaging.

The email shows the Biden White House’s Digital Director for the COVID-19 Response Team, Clarke Humphrey, requesting that Twitter remove a tweet from environmental health lawyer and author Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

“Wanted to flag the below tweet and am wondering if we can get moving on the process for having it removed ASAP,” Humphrey wrote to Twitter in the January 2021 email. “And then if we can keep an eye out for tweets that fall in this same ~genre that would be great.”

Keep reading

From the Twitter Files: Pfizer board member Scott Gottlieb secretly pressed Twitter to hide posts challenging his company’s massively profitable Covid jabs

On August 27, 2021, Dr. Scott Gottlieb – a Pfizer director with over 550,000 Twitter followers – saw a tweet he didn’t like, a tweet that might hurt sales of Pfizer’s mRNA vaccines.

The tweet explained correctly that natural immunity after Covid infection was superior to vaccine protection. It called on the White House to “follow the science” and exempt people with natural immunity from upcoming vaccine mandates.

It came not from an “anti-vaxxer” like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., but from Dr. Brett Giroir, a physician who had briefly followed Gottlieb as the head of the Food & Drug Administration. Further, the tweet actually encouraged people who did not have natural immunity to “Get vaccinated!”

No matter.

By suggesting some people might not need Covid vaccinations, the tweet could raise questions about the shots. Besides being former FDA commissioner, a CNBC contributor, and a prominent voice on Covid public policy, Gottlieb was a senior board member at Pfizer, which depended on mRNA jabs for almost half its $81 billion in sales in 2021. Pfizer paid Gottlieb $365,000 for his work that year.

Gottlieb stepped in, emailing Todd O’Boyle, a top lobbyist in Twitter’s Washington office who was also Twitter’s point of contact with the White House.

The post was “corrosive,” Gottlieb wrote. He worried it would “end up going viral and driving news coverage.”

Keep reading