Earlier this year, an Iranian hacker broke into servers belonging to a reseller for certificate authority Comodo and issued himself a range of certificates for sites including Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo! Mail. With these certificates, he could eavesdrop on users of those mail providers, even if they use SSL to protect their mail sessions.
By on 31/08/2011
A Chicago woman was acquitted Wednesday of felony eavesdropping charges for recording two police officers on her BlackBerry phone without their consent.
The case points to a legal gray area, in which the recording was clearly against state law, but a jury acquitted Tiawanda Moore because it felt she was trying to expose wrongdoing within the department. The two internal affairs investigators were allegedly trying to pressure her to drop a complaint she had filed against a Chicago police officer who she said had fondled her and given her his personal phone number after he responded to a domestic disturbance call in her home.
By on 29/08/2011
While social networking sites are not accessible from school computers, Lila Mularczyk, the deputy president of the NSW Secondary Principals’ Council, recently argued that cyber-bullying connected with school was treated in the same way, no matter when it occurred.
By on 15/08/2011
BERLIN (Reuters) – A Berlin security firm has cracked the encryption code for some mobile phones using the Internet, German newspaper Handelsblatt reported on Wednesday, citing the company’s chief.
The discovery of a way to eavesdrop so-called General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) technology allows a user to read emails and observe the Internet use of a person whose phone is hacked, said Karsten Nohl, head of Security Research Labs.
“With our technology we can capture GPRS data communications in a radius of 5 km,” he told the paper before heading to a meeting of the Chaos Computer Club, a group that describes itself as Europe’s largest hacker coalition.
Phones using the newer UMTS standard are safer, Nohl said, but the crack effects industrial equipment, toll systems and anything using GPRS — including newer devices like Apple Inc’s iPhone or iPad which switch to the older GPRS in remote areas.
(Writing by Brian Rohan; Editing by Richard Chang)
By on 12/08/2011
Caption: Mike Tassey (l) and Rich Perkins (r) describe how they retrofitted a U.S. Army surplus target drone.
(Credit: Declan McCullagh/CNET)
LAS VEGAS–Forget Wi-Fi war driving. Now it’s war flying.
A pair of security engineers showed up at the Black Hat security conference here to show off a prototype that can eavesdrop on Wi-Fi, phone, and Bluetooth signals: a retrofitted U.S. Army target drone, bristling with electronic gear and an array of antennas.
By on 08/08/2011