Just add random data so every encrypted has to be brute forced and then you'll see the NSA applying for more Bluffingdales, a bigger budget, and more side channel attacks, like the Intel ME.
-16 karma · joined June 12, 2016
Our bodies are largely autonomous with cells communicating via a variety of methods either pumping in/out chemicals to the cell itself or the immune system placing protein markers for other parts of the body (immune cells) to deal with bearing in mind that every cell in the body has a complete copy of the DNA.
One thing I have learnt about the body, is there is alot of redundancy built in for it's survival, every cell has a complete copy of the DNA which can be altered leading to cells not functioning properly, and there are a variety of means in which the consciousness can be alerted to problems which need addressing like hormone's or nerve messages.
Simply dropping 500Mg of niacin (the non flush variety) on an empty stomach demonstrates how quickly the prostaglandlins can be stimulated into action in many different parts of the body, not just the skin but internal organs like the lungs & liver. How aware you your consciousness is about these changes and effects is perhaps also an indicator of your consciousness, just like some people are more aware of their food cravings.
When considering food craving's & how pregnant women can suddenly start craving things like coal when they perhaps have never eaten it before also indicates some sort of memory that may have been passed on by their parents, or maybe there is some other subconscious mechanism which perhaps through the nose enables the body to identify a substance which contains chemicals which the body needs.
The fact our taste and enjoyment of food and drink is altered simply by light also indicates our consciousness is easily swayed over the logic or remembered/imagined experience.
Ultimately its hard to define what consciousness is exactly because when considering the blood brain barrier and how hard it is for some chemicals to reach the brain but not other's, is our consciousness largely just a collection of learned experiences where nature has utilised cholesterol into a storage medium and consciousness itself is just a memory of chemical & electrical responses in a variety of cells which certain feedback mechanisms like nerves, immune system cells and hormones the brain is able to remember and influence its behaviour as a result?
All consumer's can do, is use fuel station's which have good CCTV fitted, and if really unsure, to pay inside.
The companies that manufacturer these card's do so for many businesses, they are a high value target, one's like Oberthur, & Gemalto to name just a few and have global franchises with many. These guy's are under pressure to get card's out to customers for various entities as quickly as possible, so you'll find many card's are similar except in print design, and stamping. As a result hacking these card's due to being globally standard, make's life easier for hacker's as well, so I wouldnt be surprised to see similar technique's like card skimming being used in other outlets that accepted payment's especially where staff are not involved like some McDonald's outlets or vending machine's.
It seem's if you have intelligence, you can live freely or vastly reduced provided you can remain anonymous when old school CCTV and other methods are used to identify you.
Remember US Mil drones only target the mobile phone's the intel is still not good enough to know if the target is still in possession of the phone. Same applies elsewhere especially when considering hackers could be phishing for spook capabilities over the decades after all what hacker wouldnt like to hack the spooks to establish fact from fiction?
To be clear what I mean is, the bios can be made to look and feel like the real bios when in fact it could be a compromised bios which still shows the manufacturers logo, menu options etc etc.
Bottom line is, if someone can make it, someone can modify it.
Only getting a SOIC clip hooked up to something like a RaspberryPi to get a copy of the chip code will you possibly be able to tell otherwise. Something like this might get people pointed in the right direction. http://www.win-raid.com/t58f16-Guide-Recover-from-failed-BIO...
One of the other attributes I have seen with this "suite of malware" is its ability to spread over the USB bus. If hit with it and it stops your usb devices including printers, mouse & keyboard, PS/2 mouse and keyboards still work so you can safely shutdown your machines instead of pressing and holding the power button to force a shutdown which can lose work. Lets face it, when looking at how USB works, its a disaster waiting to be exploited when considering how much attention goes into monitoring ethernet traffic. Having spoken with Tomasz the developer of this tool http://desowin.org/usbpcap/ on windows, you only get what windows will show you, so a separate malicious OS using CPU virtualisation could still interfere with the USB bus.
One file I've isolated when using partedmagic will not display its entire contents in the included opensource hex editor if its accessed using the hex editors file load method, but if you read the block device sector by sector, you can navigate to where the suspect file is stored and then read the entire contents of the suspect file. There seems to be a sort of magic string which prevents further investigation of suspect files including the ability to dd dev zero block devices which is a nuisance.
In all, who ever is behind this is IMO hacking chips so that even if you do a full disk wipe to whatever standard and reinstall the OS, you'll never get rid of it unless you reprogram the chips, it like a complex zero day spread over hardware and software, so in isolation parts look innocent enough but when combined becomes malicious. Its very very clever whoever is behind it and theres not many entities with the resources or knowledge to pull something like this off IMO.
Plus when considering the NDA's that exist with chip/cpu/hardware manufacturers, the knowledge at this level is even more restricted.
If you want to get lucky, dont always follow industry standard practices, its sometimes the only way to spot the anomalies.
As speakers can be used as microphones (technology is essentially the same just different ohms and materials used for the cone) and modern motherboards can detect when a 3.5mm jack plug is plugged into a headphone socket, it might be possible to have the speakers acting as a microphone in some situations. Its something I'm still looking into, but I have noticed the some DJ mixes on Youtube will play up ie going quiet when you have headphone's plugged in but not when using built in speakers like those found on a laptop. You can reset the mix going quiet by unplugging the 3.5mm stereo jack, now whether this is some sort of DRM technology being used as some of the DJ mixes will be illegal copies uploaded to Youtube, I dont know yet just like I dont know if these are related or separate events to BadBios. Its not unheard of big corps to employ methods to disrupt illegal copies of music & films, the Sony rootkit on some of their music CD's is one such example of big corporations hacking their customers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...
An example using bridge to packet capture. https://github.com/williamknows/PiTap
1 "usage is driven by high-level frameworks, which impacts POSIX’s portability goals.", that's the libraries/frameworks fault, plus have they heard of GCC? It works on many OS's.
2 "extension APIs, namely ioctl, dominate modern POSIX usage patterns as OS developers increasingly use them to build support for abstractions missing from the POSIX standard" Perhaps they have missed the point, that without the POSIX standard these extensions would not exist in the first place. They might just complain about procedural coding practices being outdated when comparing to OOP coding practices, even though OOP brings slow bloat to the table as well. Perhaps a better question to ask is, why has a framework/library got some functionality which could have used some of the POSIX api's but didn't? Was it expedient to keep it within the framework/library and bypass the Posix API's altogether?
3."new abstractions are arising, driven by the same POSIX limitations across the three OSes, but the new abstractions are not converging." So abstractions are a new name for libraries and framework and not the concept like OOP coding is an abstraction. Perhaps complaining to the authors of libraries and frameworks that don't port would be better? POSIX is like a foundation that allows creativity to take place. This is why we see the differences in libs/frameworks, different OS's have different parameters, different design ethos or objectives. Even in Windows, some API's are used more frequently than others, for example I cant remember when I last used the API's involved in getting a dial up modem to work, or using API's to print direct to a dot matrix printer. This paper just seems to be an analysis of API's not used as frequently as they used to be, sometimes because libraries/frameworks have rightly or wrongly replaced them for a myriad of reasons.
Qudos to them for downloading so many apps and analysing them though. Just what you need if you are looking for backdoors en-masse or exploitable bugs.
But then what if the person is a travelling salesman? Has the $1m prize for this problem been solved and awarded yet? Not that I know of.
On your point about limiting how much a vacuum cleaner can use, try this simple test, pick up some dirt, put on the palm of your hand and blow it. You don't need much blow to get it off your hand. Now try the same but in reverse ie suck the dirt. Did you breath it all in? I'd say no and this is why rules restricting how powerful the vacuum cleaner can be is stupid. Its the same as using eco friendly light bulbs if working from home during the winter months. These contribute to depression & SAD, so get yourself a brighter light that's still a CFL but gives you more light (lux) for the same wattage as the old style incandescent. Technology is designed to make life better for us, not to go backwards because some politician said so.
If politicians were really bothered about the planet, your health etc, they would not spends millions on defence, they would invest massively in research whilst also spending more on education to further drive the research. The fact they don't just confirms to me, they are there for big business only.
The West's population would be in decline and has been in decline since the 70's if it wasn't for immigration. Immigration is needed because we have a messed up financial system which needs constant growth to keep driving inflation. If we didn't have inflation, very quickly you would see the financial system is just a generational Ponzi scheme as the baby boomers who stole your future have demonstrated. If you wont have to work for longer before you get your pension then the boomers have not stolen your future.
In fact I would go so far to suggest that someone in their 40's has learnt enough about the ways of the world to know alot better the differences in the rights and wrongs of the world. In other words, you are set up to fail if you follow the traditional educational route.
However its also worth pointing out, the age old problem of spotting giftedness. Einstein was mediocre at school and during his early year's at Uni, in fact it wasnt until his 30's that he started to come up with decent theories, so alot of companies hinder their growth & innovation potential by recruiting youngsters fresh out of an educational establishment.
You need to decide what your work life balance is to be. If you want to do more soaking up the culture, consider the above option, if you want to do more work and learning then decide what area you want to work in and then look for companies that might present those opportunities. You'll have a mix of costs where ever you go in the world and within a country. I could say lots of jobs in and around Cambridge, and whilst the city is expensive to buy, many students manage the costs of renting shared accomodation, but move outside the city heading anywhere but south towards London and costs can fall.
I guess its a case of setting your standards accordingly. You dont say where your Aunt lives either which might also limit your options.
Here in the UK you can get on the job training as an apprentice, but I dont know if its restricted to just UK Citizens or people from overseas as well.
Perhaps a bit more detail in your Ask HN might help you get more detailed useful info.
However having just read this https://www.facebook.com/dragosr/posts/10151655183445588 I can see he has explained much of what I was witnessing on some systems as well.
Cant rule out a modern day version of one of these https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel considering the Windows MSR partition I have copies of which effectively stripes the Windows Partition as well.
Some people are desperate to keep this quiet though, so perhaps suggesting what you have is your way to introduce doubt into an argument which is after all a valid debating technique.
I'm not suggesting Russia is any better or worse than the US or any other country but scientific data and other known facts can lead others to conclude differently.
The fundamental flaw for humanity is the belief that hierarchical forms of governance are best, when all the science shows that people in power become corrupted especially when they set the laws that allow the deniable op's and other coverups.
Perhaps the best metric to consider for a balanced least corrupted society is the difference between the richest and poorest in that society. In other words, the less social cohesion you have the greater the corruption. Considering the US has the richest people in the world, the data suggests the US is the most corrupt nation on the planet.
And with the US now hacking the world whilst it tries to hack Russia whilst blaming Russia, I refer back to my analogy about being forced to play for the school sports team whether you like it or not. Its the same problem migrants face, no one asked to be born and no one asked to be born in a repressive country or a country where the psychopaths rule the roost.
So does the above now make you think these sociopaths who like winning popularity contests (what else is an election) enjoying tricking and misdirecting people who dont think through the consequences?
Perhaps its high time to start Questioning More as the Russia Today tag line suggests. In other words dont be so easily led or to put it even more bluntly stop behaving like a dog fetching the stick your master keeps throwing you.
Why do Russian oligarchs move their money outside of Russia?
Have you considered all sides of the argument?
In ubuntu for example, whilst booting, ubuntu starts loading more of the malware from the metacache which suggest the hard drive cache may have been filled by the initial boot loader for the malware, again helping to hide the malware from detection. When booting different OS's, it works with XP, Ubuntu, Parted Magic, Kali, Tails and others. The OS's seem to actively hide the malware if you use a hex editor to scan the drive or infected files, so over time, some of that open source code has become compromised, and lets not forget the Dirty Cow exploit has been around since 2007 potentially making it possible to hack many different packages that make up the core Linux OS. It also seems to use SNMP to hack into managed switches, so whether this is getting into the Stuxnet/DuQu/DuQu2 territory, remains to be seen, but I would suggest it is, this then narrows it down to one country, because in maths its possible to calculate unknowns.
Remember, software always does what its told, unlike Humans and here in lies its weakness!
It also appears to load some of its code into cache controllers on various block devices where possible which then gets loaded by some Linux distro's during boot up by SquashFS looking inode's and metadata cache entries. For Window's systems you have the Microsoft System Reserved partition which stripes your hard disk hiding the malware that distributes malware. The Windows MSR also report's itself as being 128MB in size when its actually alot bigger than that, but various OS's hide this, but early bioses which let you run it at command line (so count out your branded PC's like HP & Dell) will show you the partition is alot larger than it really is.
Once compromised you can say bye bye to your system, I only found this by inserting an infected sansdisk mem stick in an old PC made in 2004 which uses ribbon cables (EIDE) and pausing the bios during boot up which you cant do on most new systems that use SATA.
I also have an infected file purporting to be a PDF file which also infects the machine. Your clue your system is infected is when you start seeing Input/Output errors when using things like DD to blank block devices and then finding the DD fail's or there is data on the block device still is another clue. It also seems to alter firewall rules letting itself out as well, and the code seems to be embedded in the Linux core so you cant see this using a Linux hex editor, you'll need an older dos hex editor, the linux hex editors will pretend you have reached the end of the file. Tested with Ubuntu 12.04, 14.04 and 16.04, Parted Magic & Kali to name just a few. When using the Pixel desktop from the RaspberryPi Foundation infected hardware stops the taskbar from appearing which is another clue. Other clues to suggest you may have an infected system, is your CD/DVD may start flashing the drive lights on your computer case at boot up more or longer than normal before your bios screen appears. This only appears to be on PC's made from components, Dell & HP dont react, but so far old Dell bios'es in computers made in the early 00's have destroyed themselves, but then the computers & software made in the early 00's were more secure than todays offering.
I also cant help but wonder if the 2007 Dirty Cow exploit has created the opportunity to introduce code that works with this firmware/malware. Its something I've spent about 6 years on sofar as I kept finding my systems were getting hacked but couldnt see how.
Funnily enough all the brands I can buy at my nearest major high street retailer seem to be the ones that work best with this malware. Is there a modern day equivalent of the Phoebus cartel in operation today? Time will tell.
Cant handle hacker news bandwidth requirements?
Seems to like any email address I give it, perhaps Bill Gates might like some brain.fm instead... as if..
Do you think winzip users consider those points cited by MS when zipping files?
More like a case of MS wanted to suckle the Fed's law enforcement wallet by introducing insecurity through convenience.
People can learn alot from using this little tool to see a variety of attack vectors just by using api's.
Nothing like a big bang to scare the population into projectfear.
Marriage is a religious invention designed to curb the transmission of STD's in the ancient bed hopping world.
Nothing like fear to curtail the activities of the less risk taking members of the public is there?
I recently found an unknown 64MB filesystem on a USB stick, it was in the middle of the USB exfat filesystem.
Considering the core TinyOS is only 400KB in size before addon's thats small enough to hide on many systems & devices connected to the internet.
After all, the 64MB code I found could easily store itself on a hard disk, rewrite the disk controller and hang out in the disk cache when the computer is on, and then write itself back to an unused part of the hard drive when its switched off. Switch computer back on, disk controller reloads the malware.
You wont see it unless you use a hex editor, and whose going to spend 8 hours scanning a 2TB disk sector by sector when the OS driver is already compromised?
Do you think disk controllers cant be updated even when Western Digital or Perc say it cant? Have you tried reading a RaidXYZ blade server in a hex editor when the controllers or OS is already hacked?
Are those sectors marked damaged really damaged or just a cover?
Whose's going to check their data centre at that hex editor level?
Anything that can be updated ie software or hardware has the potential to be hacked.
So as Lizard squad showed with hacked routers, who last checked their network printer cards for malware?
Who virus scans their router, who virus scanned their bios or any other hardware device? What about your mobile, sure thats not been hacked in a variety of ways?
Do you think your read only mounted *nix systems are really read only?
Remember Stuxnet? It took over a year to reverse engineer the code before an AV company declared it was a virus. Thats alot of time in the wild, and since then we have had duqu1 and duqu2 amongst others. Of the AV companies, only Kaspersky has come closest to identifying duqu2.
It doesnt matter where you look, I can show you a hack to compromise a system.
Think that linux distro is safe having checked the hashes match? What if your ISP has been hacked and switches reroute you to look-a-likey servers serving compromised distro's with matching hashes? Unless you download the code and compile source yourself, you have no piece of mind. But wait didnt someone recently hack Github? How do you know the sourcecode you have downloaded is not compromised?
Even your CA's are a liability which then compromises various HW like say Cisco.
There is simply too much trust placed in other people.
Sure buying a product offsets your liability, but its all too easy to shutdown a company and startup again once the liquidators have done their work.
So what liability have you offloaded in the scheme of things? You can be sure the insurance company if insured will wriggle out of it.
Most tech people dont have a clue how vulnerable they really are, but then its not illegal to withhold the fact a company has been hacked is it? Cant hurt the share price now can we?
Google, Microsoft, Facebook are not obliged to announce the fact they have been hacked if they even know they have been hacked. Plus considering how management have sacked many dev's over their time, just how far ahead does one plan ahead when hacking systems from the inside? A few days, weeks, months or even years ahead?
Theres nothing like hubris before a fall!
Afterall if in the wild, if you go hungry you need to innovate and be creative at feeding that belly.
Maybe people should not give some "sciences" so much of what Milgram observed as "obedience to authority" if they choose to not look at all factors which will influence their "scientific" results.