geekosystem

America is under attack. There's a serious threat targeting the country's air travel system that, if left unchecked, could lead to put hundreds, if not thousands, of citizens in jeopardy. What's the cause of this growing problem, you ask? Little kids waving laser-pointers at airplanes. The FBI is concerned about it, so they've created a new task force, the Laser Strike Working Group National Initiative, devoted to study and stop people who try to blind pilots with lasers.

We've been worried about the government using security cameras and other devices to track our lives for a little while now. Well, what may have started as paranoia is rapidly becoming a serious concern: The FBI has announced that they plan to spend one billion dollars to build a new type of facial recognition database that will allow the agency to identify suspects and people of interest using security footage from public cameras.

Earlier today, we reported that hacker group AntiSec had celebrated their Labor Day weekend in the traditional manner: with a barbecue, followed by releasing more than one million (1,000,001, to be precise) identification numbers for Apple products like iPhones and iPads into the wild. The hacker group claimed to have gathered these from a hacked laptop belonging to an FBI agent, but the FBI is now crying foul, claiming they have no idea what file AntiSec is talking about and stating that wherever they got it, it wasn't from the FBI.

In what looks to be one of the worst privacy disasters yet, the hacking collective known as AntiSec has released a list of 1,000,001 Apple Unique Device Identifiers (UDIDs) that they've allegedly obtained from an FBI breach. This is supposedly from a much larger cache of 12 million UDIDs that the group managed to purloin during their raid. Not only did the files include the UDIDs, but many of these had other identifying information attached, such as usernames, cell phone numbers, and addresses. Lovely.

In what is surely a sign of the end times, the Insane Clown Posse has announced that they intend to sue the Federal Bureau of Investigation over the fact that Juggalos were labeled a gang last year. The lawsuit itself isn't the sign; the sign's that this perfectly reasonable action comes from the group wondering how magnets work. Due to their classification, suddenly crimes performed by young Juggalos are considered gang activity rather than your typical slew of teenage mistakes.

Ever since the big MegaUpload takedown early this year, there's been a question as to what would happen to all the data on the seized servers. In the past six months, much of the data has been in danger of deleltion, and subject to scrutiny by the MPAA, but nothing has really happened to it. Now, a New Zealand High Court has ordered the FBI to prepare to copy the 150 terabytes of data from the seized MegaUpload servers in preparation to provide a copy to Kim Dotcom, for his defense.

Remember that old FBI warning before movies that you probably don't notice anymore because there's a decent chance you exclusively use streaming services to watch your movies and television shows now? Remember how it was always annoying that, whenever you popped in a DVD, you couldn't skip that warning, as your DVD player would inform you that the operation could not be completed? Well, it's about to get even more annoying for DVD and Blu-ray owners. That single, unskippable FBI warning is multiplying, and now DVDs and Blu-rays from six major studios will carry two unskippable, ten second warnings.

The FBI secured a pimp's Samsung Android phone as part of a case following a former pimp released on parole who seemed to be partaking in pimping activities once again. The pimp previously signed a Fourth Amendment search rights waiver, which allowed the FBI to search his home and property at any time without a court order. When he turned over his phone, he didn't unlock the device, even though his parole conditions prevented him from hiding or locking digital files, but claimed the phone belonged to his sister. Amusingly, the FBI couldn't crack the phone's unlock pattern, and then served a warrant to Google, Android's developer, to help them unlock the phone.

If you can't access the Internet come March 8th, the FBI may be to blame. On that date, a number of domain name servers are due to be taken offline, rendering all computers that use them net-less. Before you go get upset about this, or even worried, there's a pretty legitimate justification here; the action is being taken in order to deal with a scourge called the DNSChanger Trojan, which modifies an infected computer's DNS settings to direct traffic to some rather unsavory sites. The FBI is looking ti put the sucker out of commission for good.

During this recent spell of Internet-endangering-legislation craziness, everyone's favorite loosely organized group of Guy Fawkes-mask-wearing hackers, Anonymous, has been relatively quiet aside from some (alleged) empty threats thrown Sony's way and a flurry of DDOS attacks following the MegaUpload takedown. Now, Anonymous has kicked it up a notch and leaked the spoils of one of their more impressive hacks to date: Audio of a conference call between the FBI and the Scotland Yard.

Following the surprise takedown of MegaUpload, the countless thousands who had been using MegaUpload's cloudspace for perfectly legitimate purposes - -sending files across the globe, for instance -- have been wondering what's to become of their data. As it turns out, there's a good chance it's going to disappear. Forever.

Today, the FBI launched a number of raids pertaining to Anonymous DDOS attacks and has reportedly made 14 arrests nationwide. Arrests were made in New York, California, New Jersey and Florida and four of the raids in New York (Brooklyn, the Bronx, as well as Baldwin and Merrick on Long Island) resulted in the seizure of personal computers thought to have been used in the attacks. This isn't the first time hackers, or specifically, suspected Anonymous members have been arrested. Five Anonymous-related arrests were made back in January, Ryan Cleary, a suspected Lulzsec affiliate, was arrested about a month ago, and three men suspected of ties to Anonymous were arrested in Spain a few weeks prior to that. Still, this is the largest push to arrest Anonymous affiliated hackers in the U.S. to date.

According to a report issued by The Guardian and backed by the publisher of hacker quarterly 2600, a whopping 25% of U.S.-based 'hackers' "may have been recruited by the federal authorities to be their eyes and ears." The reason is as old as crime movies: When a cybercriminal is busted, the feds have a lot of leverage in asking him or her to go turncoat, as the alternative may be a harsh legal sentence. The Guardian:

"Owing to the harsh penalties involved and the relative inexperience with the law that many hackers have, they are rather susceptible to intimidation," [2600 publisher Eric] Corley told the Guardian. "It makes for very tense relationships," said John Young, who runs Cryptome, a website depository for secret documents along the lines of WikiLeaks. "There are dozens and dozens of hackers who have been shopped by people they thought they trusted."

A quibble with this report, which may well be true with respect to cybercriminals, is the use of the word 'hacker' as synonymous with credit card thief or Sony breacher, when the more constructive sort of folks who hang around places like Hacker News who self-identify with the word see it quite differently. In the words of Eric S. Raymond, "Real hackers mostly think crackers are lazy, irresponsible, and not very bright, and object that being able to break security doesn't make you a hacker any more than being able to hotwire cars makes you an automotive engineer. Unfortunately, many journalists and writers have been fooled into using the word "hacker" to describe crackers; this irritates real hackers no end." (via The Guardian)

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In an unprecedented move, the FBI has seized control of a malicious botnet and remotely disabled the malicious software on infected computers. The botnet in question, called "Coreflood" allows its operators to harvest financial information from over 2 million infected machines for nearly a decade. The FBI's attack on the coreflood botnet began Tuesday, after receiving permission from the Department of Justice. In their request to the DOJ, the FBI sought to allow the Internet Systems Consortium to assist in the beheading and hijacking of the coreflood. Wired reports:

According to the filing, ISC, under law enforcement supervision, planned to replace the servers with servers that it controlled, then collect the IP addresses of all infected machines communicating with the criminal servers, and send a remote “stop” command to infected machines to disable the Coreflood malware operating on them.

Interestingly, Coreflood reactivates each time the infected computer reboots, meaning that the FBI must continue to broadcast its kill command. As part of a long-term solution, the FBI is using IP information to inform infected users and Microsoft included an update to its Malicious Software Removal tool to remove Coreflood. This is the first time that United States law enforcement has not only disabled a botnet, but broadcast information directly to private computers.

Remember how the Internet vigilantes of loosely 4chan-affiliated online collective Anonymous launched waves of distributed denial of service [DDoS] attacks in protest of current copyright law enforcement? Well so does the FBI, according to a hot-off-the-presses CNET report, and they're none too happy about it. 4chan's/Anonymous' DDoS protests managed to take down, among other targets, the websites of the MPAA and the RIAA, the personal site of rocker and outspoken file-sharing hater Gene Simmons, who said that the attackers "might find their little butts in jail, right next to someone who’s been there for years and is looking for a new girl friend," and the United States Copyright Office's site. While the FBI says the attacks had been on its radar for some time, the DDoS on the U.S. Copyright Office's site has upped the stakes.