the way radio signals vary in a wireless network can reveal the movement of people behind closed doors. Joey Wilson and Neal Patwari have developed a technique called variance-based radio tomographic imaging which processes the signals to reveal signs of movement. They’ve even tested the idea with a 34-node wireless network using the IEEE 802.15.4 Read more about Wireless network modded to see through walls[…]
We should all know by now that the fingerprint biometric is a bad one: not only can you duplicate it fairly easily using just gummy bears, or increase the risk of having your finger cut off for you, they also give too many false negatives; some people will never be able to use fingerprint scanners. Read more about Dutch passports require unsecure fingerprints[…]
Because we all know how safe centralised government databases are, the Dutch are now preparing to store all fingerprints the get. At first this will happen per region and later all the databases will be linked and centralised. Dutch privacy organisations have protested at the EU, but they have declined the protest as the European Read more about Dutch government will store fingerprints in central database[…]
The odds of a coin coming down heads or tails are not 50/50: they’re actually 51/49! A great precis of an article explaining why, and how to leverage it. The Coin Flip: A Fundamentally Unfair Proposition? – Coding the Wheel.
If you get breathalised, make sure the cop isn’t covering the exit port for the air when you blow, or the purported alcohol consumption will go up! Breath tests – Bing Video.
Even though they keep supporting Internet Explorer 6, they’re not going to support XP? Microsoft had stated the reason for continuing support for IE6 was that it came with Windows XP and so they had to keep supporting it. Now it turns out that they’re not supporting XP either. Not exactly their road map, but Read more about XP no longer being patched by MS[…]
Using SQL injection and the recent IIS faults, a grey hat hacker called Unu from Romania has hacked 4 large banks and a UK government website. He’s on a roll, and MS has no fix for their IIS holes… Hacker ‘Unu’ valt Europese banken aan | Webwereld.
True to the Labour Governments’ form, yet ANOTHER serious data breach has been executed by government agencies. What’s surprising this time, is that it was done by a trained MI6 operative, who lost all the details about covert anti-drug operations in Columbia! Yes, that would be contact names, agent names and adresses and other details, Read more about MI6 gets into the secret losing business[…]
If the government isn’t handing out your personal data on USB sticks, laptops or just through their unsecure own networks, they’ll dump computers containing your hospital and patient data unencrypted on the streets for you to take home with you. They can’t give it away fast enough! Now, let’s make a database with all the Read more about The UK will lose your data one way or another[…]
Not only does the UK seem to have an uncanny way of losing their huge centralised databases unencrypted, they also have a hand in losing the physical cards the data is supposed to go on. Which means that it won’t be a problem to fake ID’s in the UK, no matter what biometrics and clever Read more about ID card staff lose security passes[…]
Debian comes installed standard without much in the way of active security (such as a firewall, a file state checker, disk encryption, etc) but has got the packages to implement an actively secure environment. Given a little work you can securify Debian with existing packages quite nicely. This article has a nice list of the Read more about Debian Security Tools[…]
Researchers are allready looking into the security of quantum computers. Basically they throw up a castle of fake data and take the computer off the network for a loooooong time compared to normal computers. This is necessary due to the inherent fragility of the states of the qubits, but surprisingly doesn’t really contribute to slower Read more about Secure your Quantum Computer[…]
Christopher Soghoian set up a site that allowed you to print your own boarding passes, exploiting a big hole in US domestic flight security, which allows anyone to board domestic flights without showing IDs if they allready have a boarding pass.
Vista is upsetting everyone, with rumours that you can’t turn off the starting sound or have access to the kernel etc. but now it’s getting quite serious. First, Patchguard has been compormised by Authentium prompting a backlash from Redmond stating that companies have no business even trying to compromise the kernel protection because it makes Read more about Vista woes[…]
This book was reccomended by Bruce Schneier and is now downloadable for free.
Use Linux to create a cryptographically protected laptop. Cheap and easy.
In an interesting new vector, now it’s the libraries that are attacking DRM – on the grounds that as libraries they are exempted from these DRM laws as it’s their job to provide anyone who wants it with content. Also, as copyright expires legally, so does the legality of the DRM – but will the Read more about An oblique attack on DRM[…]
Easy to do and takes, what, 5 hours on a free sunday afternoon?
DIY way to go do it
Well, we all knew wifi is unsafe – here’s how to make it unsafe for yourself using 2 laptops with wifi cards. Script kiddies eat your heart out. And this is part 2
There’s a page dedicated to hijacking your mobile phone via Bluetooth. Appropriately enough, it’s called BluejackQ. Linkie: http://www.bluejackq.com/index.shtml
LAND attack: Sending TCP packet with SYN flag set, source and destination IP address and source and destination port as of destination machine, results in 15-30 seconds DoS condition. Which is funny. The last time the LAND attack was seen was about 8 years ago. It’s a trivial remote DoS and you’d think that even Read more about Windows 2003 and XP vulnerable to LAND DoS attack[…]
http://msgs.securepoint.com/cgi-bin/get/bugtraq0503/73.html