Robots

Posted November 7, 2008

Honda has designed a walking assistance gadget, which they have been researchig since 1999. It weighs about 14 pounds. It's purpose is to help reduce stress on people's knees by helping them up stairs and staying in a crouching position. Japan's largest automaker plans to test this gadget with their assembly line workers. To use: a person places its seat between his legs, puts on the gadget's shoes, and turns it on to start walking. There is a motor-driven metal legs to assist the person in walking. The battery-powered device also has a computer and sensors that respond to the person's movements. Honda has not decide how much this gadget will cost or how it will go into the market.

I thought this was pretty interesting but with robots humans are just getting lazier everyday.

Offshoring

IBM secured a 10-year deal wiht India's Bharti Retail to provide them with a range of technology and services, which operates a chain of convient stores. IBM will provide them with data center and project mangement services, and IBM will also help them manage their applications, networks, and IT security requirments.
IBM also signed a three-year technology service with a Russian retailer Lenta, which was worth about $1 million.

'Carding' Ring Bust

Posted October 17, 2008

For two years the FBI had been working undercover targeting an online "carding" forum called Dark Market. This "carding" forum trades stolen credit cards and other personal information. Dark Market has 25oo resgistered members. "FBI has resulted in 56 arrests around the world and saved $70 milllion in losses." FBI director says investigations like this, leads them to other internet forums, where criminals go and interact.

"Of the 206,884 complaints about Internet-related crimes received by the Internet Crime Complaint Center in 2007, more than 90,000, reflecting almost $240 million in reported lossess, were referred to law enforcement agaencies across the United States."

'Clickjacking'

posted September 26, 2008

This article is about a web browser technique called 'clickjacking', "it gives an atttacker the ability to trick a user into clicking on something only barely or momentarily noticeable. Therefore, if a user clicks on a Web page, they may actually be clicking on content from another page". The government security agency says that this flaw effects most web browsers such as Apple, Safari, Goggle Chrome, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera; and that there is no fix available. To avoid this risk, you should disable scripting adn plug-ins. They suggest the use of security plug ins such as FlashBlock, Adblock Plus, and CustomizeGoogle; these plugins should not be turned off. There was a disccusion with Adobe, Microsoft, Mozilla, and other major browser vendors. Adobe is not affected but it was involved because of its Flash software that can be used for clickjacking exploit. "Web sites that attempt to be more secure end up being less secure with reguard to clickjacking, because sites that try to protect againgst cross-site request forgery end up making themselves vulnerable to this attack".

Intellectual Property

Posted September 11, 2008

My article was on expanding digital copyright law. The recording industry association of America and the motion picture of America are lobbying a pair of bills to give federal government more power to police copyright violations and that it was going to run into opposition from political foes of the RIAA and MPAA. The Senate of Judiciary Committee is schedule to vote on the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act, a bill passed in July. One of the latest version permits the Justice Department to file a lawsuit against any one who is committing a copyright violation such as peer-to-peer users. A group of librians and nonprofit group says copyright holders should be the ones filing the lawsuit not the government.
The second RIAA and MPAA is called the International Intellectual Property Protection and Enforcement Act. This act will round up copyright pressure against counties that US Trade Representatives believes is not taking privacy seriously.

"We can't let other countries repeatedly rip off the movies Americans make, the products Americans desigh and the other fruits of American ingenuity without taking some action."

I agree with this quote, that we shouldn't let other countries rip off the American industry, however, how are we going to enforce this law when the federal can't extend beyound the US border??

CookieMoster attack

Posted September 11, 2008

A CookieMonster attack is on its way, it is used to gather insecure HTTPS cookies such as web-based services that involves login credentials (email, or online banking). The cookie monster records the https cookies as well as normal http cookies to Firefox cookie files. It turns out that many web sites do not set the "Encrypted Sessions Only" properly, so this allows an attacker to retrieve related cookies. The most crucial part of this cookie moster is that it can still get a list of the insecure domains from every client IP even if you're not using the site at the time. Cookie monster is now available to a limited set of security researchers and will be available to the public shortly.

Airport body scan machines made in St. Petersburg

posted September 07, 2008

L-3 communications is the nations's sixth largest defense company, they sell products that the public is not aware of. A machine made in St. Petersburg is said to be one that explicit images of traveler's bodies to find weapons under their clothes. This machine is getting alot of attention because it is not at all favorable. The transportation security Administration is testing L-3's "Millimeter wave" at 10 major airports, and will expand to 14 more. This scanner looks like a telephone booth; travelers steps into it and lift thier arms up while harmless radio waves bounces off them. Within seconds, a security agent looks over a dark-but detailed image of the travelers naked body. Civil liberties group says this is a process called "an electronic strip search" which violates peoples privacy rights. The transportation security administration says that these images are deleted after the securities had verified that the person is not carrying anything dangerous.

I feel that this is an invasion of privacy because I got my chance to go through one of these things, and all they told me was to walk in raise my arms and that they were going to do a scan, but i didn't know that that was the kind of image they get.

CSI stick grabs data from cell phones

posted August 28, 2008

An electronic capture device has been created to capture personal information from cell phones. They call it tge CSI or cellular seizure investigation stick. It is the size of a bic lighter and can be easily pluged into most motorola an samsung cell phones. This product is suppose to capture the parents who wants to monitor what their children are doing with their phones. They can have access to any activity their child is doing from the phone by using the CSI stick. This product is selling for $200 a piece.

DOJ: Credit Card thefts helped by 'well designed' Software

Posted August 5, 2008


This article is about 11 people who the Department of Justice said stole millions of dollars in credit cards through retail stores. The retails store that were targeted were BJ's Wholesale Club, TJX, DSW Shoe Warehouse, Office Max, Barnes & Noble, Boston Market, Sports Authority and Forever 21. The DOJ says this group of people used decrypted PINs, and made new cards and then took cash out of ATMs. They sold credit card datas to web sites that sold decryted PINs. This group of people drove around in their cars with a Wi-Fi enable lab top to access credit card information from these retailers. They said that the sofware found was the "core sniffer program", which reflects on college-level knowledge of programming. These people also broke into a restaurant's point-of-sale server and obtained 5,000 credit cards with this program. Some of these credit cards were used to make unauthorized purchases at various retail and online stores.
After reading this article I don't think I would want to get a store credit card. They might say they have all this security, but you don't see what they do with it afterwards. Is there going to be anything done about this selling credit card data online?

Benefit and applications of computer technology

The Disappointment of Wi-Fi
Published 80-04-08
by John C. Dvorak

This article argues about how people used to be good samaritans and not secure their wi-fi connections. Dvorak argues that you might get twenty signals from your neighbors but only one might not be secure. He also also argues that wi-fi doesn't run as fast as it's suppose to, and that there was a lack of providers. Where wi-fi should be free such as airports; they overcharge people. However, I feel that this person just wants and not to have to pay for it. It's secure so you feel that your information is somwhat safe, even I wouldn't let my wi-fi be unsecure. I feel that wi-fi speed is also impacted by your geograpical location. I am however, going to agree with him about lack of providers and that wi-fi at airports should be free. Airports shouldn't have to charge anyone to use their wi-fi service, as much money as they already make, but I guess that's where all their money comes from because everyone uses the internet.