Tag Archives: Hacking
Watch an interview with a well-known hacker
The most well-known hacking group is Anonymous, known for their Guy Fawkes masks and high-profile attacks against targets such as Sony, the Church of Scientology, Westboro Baptist Church (a hack that was, impressively, carried out during a live interview), an ironic very high-profile attack against security firm HBGary, even Gene Simmons’ website, and there are many others. I was impressed, in a way, when a member of Anonymous was arrested at UNLV, and turned out to be a journalism student.
However there was another group, an offshoot and sometimes-rival, known as LulzSec that carried out some hacks of its own, apparently just for the, well, the lulz. Their targets included PBS, Fox, Arizona State Police, the U.S. Senate, and, of course, everyone’s favorite target, Sony. There were many other targets.
LulzSec disbanded, however, after many of them were arrested after their leader, ‘Sabu,’ real name Hector Xavier Monsegur, turned government informant, and he has helped them in other endeavors as well. This was part of a plea deal that he said he agreed to due to his kids.
Now, he has been interviewed on CBS This Morning, and I have embedded a clip below. I couldn’t find the full interview, but if I do I’ll update this post. Even with the four minute clip, it’s still very interesting and gives some insight into the hacker mentality and law enforcement’s attempts to thwart them.
Bad USB!
First off, my apologies for the late post. I spent all day recording the lecture for the week I’ll be gone, and it turned out to be much more involved than I had anticipated. I think it ultimately came out all right, but it took about six and a half hours.
So we’ll see how it goes, in the meantime here’s a late post.
There was, earlier this year, the revelation that every single one of the billions of USB devices out there has a fatal flaw in its firmware, in which a malicious user or hacker could reprogram it to fool the machine into which it is plugged that it is some other type of device. In other words, it may be a thumb drive, but its firmware could be reprogrammed to fool a PC into thinking it’s a keyboard, which would then allow it to send keypresses to the host machine and a malicious user to then get the host to carry out malicious tasks. The flaw is known as BadUSB.
NATO: Not just for ground wars anymore
As you should all be acutely aware, there is a huge kerfuffle in the east of Ukraine, where Russian troops are attempting to establish a Russian province they refer to as “Novorossiya,” or “New Russia.”
This is a problem because the former Russian-backed president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovich, was ousted earlier this year in a revolt by Ukrainians who wanted closer ties with the European Union, the west, and even NATO, but Russia would have none of it since Ukraine shares a border with Russia, and that is too much of a strategic concern for them to give up. Not only that, one of the reasons for the existence of NATO was to defend against a Russian invasion into a member country; to have a NATO member share a border with Russia is unacceptable to the Russian leadership.
Current NATO member countries, used from Wikipedia
(It should be noted that Russia does have some memberships in NATO programs).
Once the president had been ousted in the uprising, pro-Russian rebels took up arms almost immediately and started taking back parts of eastern Ukraine, and personnel and resources allegedly supplied by Russia have been supporting them in their fight. This puts western powers, who back the desire for Ukraine to join them, in direct conflict with Russia who is unwilling to let go of at least eastern Ukraine, and now the reason NATO was created is flaring up once again. Although quite unlikely, it could cause a direct military confrontation between Russia and western powers.
Keeping all that in mind, one of the general purposes of the NATO alliance was to provide security in numbers; if one member of the alliance was attacked, it was considered as if all members were attacked, and there would be a unified response. While they have rarely mobilized troops, they have created a new type of partnership in light of current world events: A cybersecurity force.
It is widely believed that the hacks into J.P. Morgan Chase and Home Depot were the result of Russians attempting to retaliate against the crippling sanctions that have been imposed based on their response in Ukraine, although Russian hacking of US systems is nothing new – everyone hacks everyone.
Because of that, NATO has now decided that their alliance includes cyberspace as well, and member nations have signed an agreement that provides for support, expertise, and response from all members of NATO when any one member is cyberattacked.
Although you wouldn’t know it these days, it is widely stated that future wars will be fought on-line, and even with lasers and robots (don’t laugh, it’s happening) and this agreement appears to be some confirmation of that.
