The end of the year post

There is still so much nonsense relating to wireless penetration.

...... and, of course, Windows 10

Lauri Love and TalkTalk

I am surprised that Lauri had not found my page on him.

As a "bedroom hacker" for rural Suffolk who was the target of a US (FBI Most Wanted CyberCriminal) and was under an extradition order for hacking into the Department of Defense, it is amusing that he was an expert on the ins-and-outs of SQL injection on the BBC's Newsnight program.

Windows 10 pre-installed in the UK

I am getting very frustrated that there is nothing to buy with this specification apart from an expensive Microsoft Surface.

Sure I can purchase all manner of hardware with 8.1 but I don't see why I should do either the manufacturers or retailers jobs for them! Windows 10 has been out for a month now and still nothing.

Additionally if I get a Windows 8.1 machine and decide that I will stay with 8.1 that I will be constantly "nagged" to do so? I have nothing against Windows 8 and would be perfectly happy to run with it. It is just that I feel that it is a stupid move to purchase an old technology.

Who's to say that I can either successfully upgrade to 10 if I buy such a machine. It is not that I think that 10 is going to be any "better" that 8.1, but I do have an interest in the way that 10 works with limited amounts of memory (16-32G of eMMC and only 2G for the o/s)

Where to buy the Medion Akoya S2218

There are only a few reports of these computers being found in Aldi stores.

I have a full review of my findings on my website - tempusfugit.ca

 

The Windows 10 TV ad

What a load of nonsense.

Smile - puke more like!

and I am actually waiting to purchase a new pc with W10 pre-installed.

Windows 10 is released today!

There don't seem to be many retail outlets offering Windows 10 computers (with Windows 10 pre-installed).

Best Buy has pre-order on 3 laptops in Canada that is). John Lewis are just listing Windows 8.1 machines with free updates to 10.

If is also interesting that my "bootleg" copies of Windows 7 are not showing the "Update to Windows 10 for free" icons on the task bar. My computer that I am using Windows 7 as it was pre-installed does. It looks like Microsoft have worked out a way to determine copies of Windows that have been activated using programs such as the Daz Loader.

The BBC, in a news article and an interview with Microsoft, were saying that owners of Windows 7 computers will get a free upgrade. This is only part of  the story as owners of machines with Windows 8 and 8.1 will also get the free upgrade.

However, I am of the opinion that upgrades are "bad news" and I am waiting for a machine with Windows 10 pre-installed. This is not because I think that Windows is the superior operating system or that there will be vast improvements seen in Windows 10, it is just the fact that I can return to factory settings by just doing a simple "restore".

Wayne McAlpine and Complaints to Google

I don't know what else I was looking at but I came across this:

Funny, I suspected as much in April 2012 but this is proof. Doubly amusing as although the "Action Taken: is "Yes", the post still exists on this blog. I guess that Google determined that there was no basis to remove the post.

You would think that 2 years would be enough time

To make sure that any information "leaked" by Edward Snowden had been protected so that there was no risk to agents in the field or to national security in general.

Or is there strength in the argument that this is just part of a "scare" technique perpetuated by those that would like to have the powers suggested by Theresa May's "Snoopers Charter" adopted into legislation?

Why in June 2015 is it necessary for this: British spies 'moved after Snowden files read' - BBC news 14 June 2015? Surely in 24 months any critical details have been expunged from anything that was allegedly "stolen" by Snowden. In any case I was of the opinion that all Snowden was saying was that the US and UK were spying on its citizens NOT that it had detailed information on them.

Also if the Chinese and the Russians have "decoded" the Snowden files and are now aware of what (then) was being done, things would have been changed as damage control on the part of the security services.

Now that would not make a good news story for the Daily Mail or the BBC!

Office of Personnel Management Hack June 2015

I find it strange that this is being reported in June 2015 with reference to the "Sony Hack" of December 2014.

Also, the indictment of China's involvement in this whereas it was the North Koreans last year.

I also cannot see why this continues to be a problem in 2015 - have those that are charged with the maintenance of security, especially those in government agencies, been asleep at the wheel? 

Will Infosecurity Europe 2015 change the World?

It sounds more like a marketing opportunity to me!

There is a lot of money to be made in this sector what with Snowden and the FUD put out by the media.

This is good - more money for the likes of engineers like me!

The NSA gets its wings clipped

I am sure that we will all be far more unsafe as a consequence!

Rand Paul must be "Public Enemy #1" - it is a good job that he is a Republican or there would be charges of "left-wing" liberalism wanting an open-door to the "commies" and terrorists.

Ross William Ulbricht gets his just deserts

But will it stop "copy-cat" sites being setup to sell illegal drugs online?

What's all the fuss about referrer spam?

Sure it can skew your Analytics reports but you can just ignore it!

If you publish your reports or logs, then more fool you. 

Theresa May and Encryption

Now that the Conservatives have a clearer mandate, having divested themselves of the measure of rationality of the Liberal Democrats, can now pass all sorts of legislation to prevent the use of "secure communication".

While it is not clear what the Daily Mail's undercover investigation revealed to Scotland Yard, Theresa seeing this as the "seriousness of the threat we face from Isil".

The BBC suggest that "secure communications" made using a Smartphone app were used to organize the "Syria Trip" thwarted a British schoolgirl's plan to travel to Syria to join Islamic State.

The app or apk was not specified, but this was all the consequence of developments by "Civil Libertarians" creating such apps. 

tempusfugit.ca is my main website

This blog is just a sideline and only gets updated when I am bored.

Unlike my website that gets updated on a daily basis

ISSWorld Conferences

ISS - Intelligence Support Systems for Lawful Interception

Today I saw a visit to my website from someone that seemed to be interested in Vupen. They landed on my page on ISSWorld Spnsors.

VUPEN were mentioned in an article by Glen Greenwald on the relationship between hackers and government agencies on his website The Intercept.

Vupen are a French security company that were cited as selling information that they find during their surveillance activities to Law Enforcement agencies. However, they claim not to share this information unless the countries and government agencies are "trusted".  

TalkTalk and BT Telephone Scams

It appears that there is a resurgence in cold calls that are supposedly from Talk Talk or BT claiming that your computer or router is sending out errors. The caller will then try to fool you to grant them access to your computer. If you do you will soon find that you will be in bad shape and you will have a problem with your computer. The scam-artist with control of your computer can do pretty much as they wish including locking you out and definitely asking for a payment to let you back in and/or remove the viruses and malware that is sending out the errors.

I have documented this before with a company called Fast Heal. There are many others and they seem to originate from call centres in India or another Asian location. Other names that I have come across are Andrea International, BT support team, PC Experts and various people with the surname Watson.

The common theme is that the caller tries to convince the victim by showing the computer owner (Microsoft Windows in this case) messages generated by the Windows operating system in its normal operation. Eventviewer and TeamViewer also factor in this scam.

The ISC Report

The Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament makes some interesting points.

There is a claim that MI5 could have had a significant possibility to prevent the attack and murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby if they had access to the online exchange between Michael Adebowal and an extremist overseas at the time before the attack. They DID know, or claim to know about the exchange AFTER the attack - as far as I know nothing had changed before or after the attack with respect to the capabilities or the actual activities of the Security Agencies. So did they know? or didn't they know? It is also highly speculative (IMO) that they could have prevented the attack.

The quote:

However, others consider that liberty is most real where security also exists: if the internet is an ungoverned space it can also be a dangerous space, threatening the liberty of all. This was illustrated in this Committee’s Report into the intelligence relating to the murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby, in which we outlined how Michael Adebowale had expressed his desire to carry out his murderous terrorist attack in an online exchange with an extremist overseas. The Agencies did not have access to this exchange before the attack: had they had access to it at the time, there is a significant possibility that MI5 would have been able to prevent the attack.

The significant possibility that they could prevented the attack is highly dubious as it would seem that the Security Agencies have not had a good track record in this including terror attacks and school girls traveling to Syria.

The technical competence of politicians

The technical competence of politicians.

I wonder when I read and hear some of the arguments that politicians and world leaders make when it comes to technological matters related to security. I think that it is safe to say that they are not experts in this field and have to rely on those that are. However, there are those that are supposed to be these experts and are the key people in agencies such as GCHQ and the NSA who when interviewed show a similar lack of understanding of what capabilities the security services have and what they would like to be able to do.

This phenomenon is  not restricted to any one particular country or administration. In my case it is the governments of the UK and the US that are of primary interest. However I am also interested in what the Steven Harper government are suggesting that will keep the Canadian population and businesses safe from cyber criminals. This is minor to the pronouncements from the likes of David Cameron, Teressa May and those that claim to speak for the NSA and GCHQ.

Artificial Intelligence

Was woken in the twilight to a discussion on Artificial Intelligence - probably BBC World Service.

Similar to a lot of things you hear when you are half asleep there are some things that make sense others that are either too complex for you to understand or they are nonsense. I have no doubt that those that were being interviewed on the programme were experts in their fields but I am not so sure that teaching computers to think and the discussion of "Machine Learning" techniques does actually make any sense.

This was further compounded by an article on the BBC Morning programme where the merits and dangers of living with A.I. is going to be an issue in the near future. In both cases it seemed to me a case of putting the cart before the horse - A.I. is still a subject of science fiction in my mind (and I have worked in related fields and consider myself cognizant of such matters).

Government Monitoring of Social Media

You can't have it both ways. If you want your government to detect whether your kids are being radicalised on Twitter or Facebook then you have to accept that all your Internet activity is being observed.

The UK government keep on asking for greater powers to monitor what its citizens are doing on the Internet and yet they miss much of what is going on. This includes those that are planning to go to Syria on Jihad or those that are going to shoot cartoonists. Even when individuals have been determined their activities are still ignored and they still commit the atrocities that they were planning all along. So my question is: Do governments really have all the powers that Snowden says that they do? If so, they are pretty incompetent.

Why Windows 10 is irrelevant

All those users that have complained about the interface that Windows 8 introduced have long figured out ways to make Windows 8 run and look like Windows 7.

Adding back some of the features that were part of 7 and not forcing the user to have a start screen full of ugly tiles are just secondary issues that Windows users face. Microsoft Windows is still the most popular operating system and as such is the biggest target for hackers and purveyors of malware. It is no better or worse than its alternatives, Mac or Linux.

Wayne - Core Data Recovery

Am I saying anything about you?

It seems that you were looking. Perhaps you should checkout my website tempusfugit.ca

NSA/GCHQ and The Intercept

I really don't know how to view all this. In some respects it is all old-news.

The Guardian and Glen Greenwald's latest ventures  have made capital on the Snowden and other revelations (just recently the Carbanak/Kasperski money going missing from banks). Now it is the hacking of encryption keys from SIM cards.

Sure, governments spy on people - what do we expect? So do a lot of other disreputable entities. One would think that all is lost and we are all totally insecure and nobody can count on having any wealth and/or privacy due to all these advances in technology. 

Wzlom WiFi pirate

There have been quite a few searches for Взлом WiFi Pirate.

As far as I know there is no such application that is called this and the Russian website that promotes it is a sham.

Carbanak - Russian Gang steals $1B from banks

I am amused by the stories that the BBC picks up on a "slow news day".

This morning I awoke to a story on Kaspersky saying the banks worldwide have been targeted by a gang that they have called Carbanak.

I may be wrong but this seems than more than a little self-serving and a promotion for their services and a report that is due for release today.

After all, Kaspersky are in the business in selling software to protect the "computing public" from such attacks.

A quote from the BBC News article:
The gang, which Kaspersky dubbed Carbanak, used computer viruses to infect company networks with malware including video surveillance, enabling it to see and record everything that happened on staff's screens.

There are lots of nice diagrams in the Kaspersky report, but I find it strange that I was hard pressed to find out more information on this gang. As I say, I could be wrong and this story may have "legs".

In any case it may be a good idea to check you bank balances and look for anything suspicious. But, we all do that in anyway????

NetHunter Review

I recently came across the Offensive Security NetHunter project.

I will be reviewing this on my website. From what I can see it is an attempt at the Kali Linux boys to come up with their own version of the PWNIEExpress Pwn Pad. - a pentesting tablet based on an ARM
or Android device.

Many of you will be well aware of what I think of all this nonsense. However, if you have a lot of time on your hands to waste on this, then go ahead.

Tor and ExitServers

There seems to be an added interest in the use of Vidalia TOR (The Onion Router) and the selection of  Exit Servers.

My pages on tempusfugit.ca detail the use of Tor for the access of the BBC iPlayer programming from locations outside the UK. It is not known if the interest in the selection of a Tor server that is located in the UK is connected to this interest.

I describe the topics of what to place in the torrc (TOR Configuration file) and the determination of what computers that are part of the Tor Network that "exit" in a specific geographic location. Choosing a Tor participant that provides a connection to the Internet in the UK will allow the user to access the BBC servers and iPlayer programs. However, Tor will be too slow to allow streaming of media.

To determine whether a computer on the Tor Network is an EXITSERVER you can access a Torstatus report. To do this you can either read what I have posted on www.tempusfugit.ca or you can consult the Vidalia TOR website. The TorStaus report will tell you if a server actually connects to the Internet or if it is just one of the computers that provides a (somewhat) random connection to other computers on the network that effectively provides an obfuscation of how an Internet user connects to Internet services.

I may be wrong, but in today's age of surveillance the use of Tor to obscure your identity may be the reason that this topic is of interest. Accessing Web content that was originally intended to be accessed from a specific geographic location, such as the UK for the BBC, is not a reason for using Tor.

I am also surprised that there is so much out-of-date information relating to the removal of DRM from BBC downloads. The notion that all you need to do is to find a program or software to perform the appropriate file conversion it will overcome the restrictions that you find when you download using iPlayer is common.

Mass Surveillance and File Download Services

It was interesting to me that when looking for evidence that government agencies, such as the NSA and GCHQ, were "Targeting Individual Computers" to determine who the "Bad Guys" were that I came across Mr Glen Greenwald and The Intercept website.

According to Glen:

The ostensible aim of the surveillance is to sift through vast amounts of  data to identify people uploading or downloading content that could be connected to terrorism - such as bomb-making guides and hostage videos.

This was in an article on The Intercept about the surveillance being carried out by the Canadian Security Services (CSE).

Services such as Rapidshare were cited.

This was from an article dated 25 January 2015 - if this is the extent of what the so-called "Snowden Revelations" have resulted in then it would seem that the Security Services of the world have not really progressed that far when it comes to "cracking down" on the activities of terrorists. The monitoring of Social Media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter were not even mentioned.

Alka Saha - Know How to Hack

Alka Saha is doing Masters in Computer Science from University of Delhi, India. She is a passionate blogger, loves to write, plays chess and is music lover. She is blogging since 2011 and has contributed a number of great articles to the internet.

It is a pity that her articles are little more than "Click Bait"

Found when searching for "how to hack by phablet"

Vupen Security

Vupen, a French information security company, were seen in a search that found my website.

Is this a coincidence that there is major news coming out of France relating to the Charlie Hebdo Attacks?

My pages have been updated.

Vupen sell the information that they find to law enforcement and intelligence agencies which use them to achieve both defensive and offensive cyber-operations

Who knew what when and how should we all react to this.

The FBI don't seem to have a clue

They still seem to think that the North Korean's are behind the Sony Hack.

It is also strange that my page on who the FBI think are Cyber Criminals was also accessed.