Rob Joyce, Chief, Tailored Access Operations, National Security Agency.

From his role as the Chief of NSA’s Tailored Access Operation, home of the hackers at NSA, Mr. Joyce will talk about the security practices and capabilities that most effectively frustrate people seeking to exploit networks.

Continue reading “USENIX Enigma 2016 — NSA TAO Chief on Disrupting Nation State Hackers” »

Scalpers offered contact lenses guaranteed to fool any ocular-based biometric ticketing technology.

He was right, of course, which explains all those people arriving at the stadium in all the usual ways. Some came by autonomous cars that dropped them off a mile or more from the stadium, their fitness wearables synced to their car software, both programmed to make their owner walk whenever the day’s calories consumed exceeded the day’s calories burned. Others turned up on the transcontinental Hyperloop, gliding at 760 miles per hour on a cushion of air through a low-pressure pipeline, as if each passenger was an enormous bank slip tucked into a pneumatic tube at a drive-through teller window in 1967. That was the year the first Super Bowl was played, midway through the first season of Star Trek, set in a space-age future that now looks insufficiently imagined.

And so hours before Super Bowl 100 kicked off—we persist in using that phrase, long after the NFL abandoned the actual practice—the pregame scene offered all the Rockwellian tableaux of the timeless tailgate: children running pass patterns on their hoverboards—they still don’t quite hover, dammit—dads printing out the family’s pregame snacks, grandfathers relaxing in lawn chairs with their marijuana pipes.

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Existing off-the-shelf components are all you need to spy like the NSA, says a UC Berkeley researcher.

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Continue reading “Ex-NSA Boss Says FBI is wrong on Encryption” »

A development firm in Austin, Texas is working on wearable health monitors that come in the form of temporary tattoos.

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The Pentagon has quietly put out a call for vendors to bid on a contract to develop, execute and manage its new cyber weaponry and defense program. The scope of this nearly half-billion-dollar “help wanted” work order includes counterhacking, as well as developing and deploying lethal cyberattacks — sanctioned hacking expected to cause real-life destruction and loss of human life.

In June 2016, work begins under the Cyberspace Operations Support Services contract (pdf) under CYBERCOM (United States Cyber Command). The $460 million project recently came to light and details the Pentagon’s plan to hand over its IT defense and the planning, development, execution, management, integration with the NSA, and various support functions of the U.S. military’s cyberattacks to one vendor.

While not heavily publicized, it’s a surprisingly public move for the Pentagon to advertise that it’s going full-on into a space that has historically been kept behind closed doors. Only this past June, the Department of Defense Law of War Manual (pdf) was published for the first time ever and included Cyber Operations under its own section — and, controversially, a section indicating that cyber-weapons with lethal outcomes are sanctioned by Pentagon doctrine.

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Think the Google Glass camera glasses are funny looking? Check out the 3RDi. Pronounced “third eye,” it’s a new camera that lets you capture your life while you’re enjoying the moment by placing a camera smack dab in the center of your forehead, making you look like a camera cyclops.

The camera is the brainchild of a Montreal, Quebec-based startup called 3RDiTEK. Style-wise, it looks like a bright white headband with a small black camera built into the forehead section.

Continue reading “3RDi is a Camera for the Middle of Your Forehead” »

with its amazing HD camera, the 3RDi captures videos & photos just like an action camera.

3RDiTEK
capture your life.
Buy one on Indiegogo: http://igg.me/at/3rditek
Visit us on the web — http://www.3RDiTEK.com
Like Us on Facebook — https://goo.gl/evk3qQ
Join us on Google+ — https://goo.gl/5FQ6xb
Follow Us on Twitter — https://goo.gl/cxPMP9

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Every time you log in to Facebook, every time you click on your News Feed, every time you Like a photo, every time you send anything via Messenger, you add another data point to the galaxy they already have regarding you and your behavior. That, in turn, is a tiny, insignificant dot within their vast universe of information about their billion-plus users.

It is probable that Facebook boasts the broadest, deepest, and most comprehensive dataset of human information, interests, and activity ever collected. (Only the NSA knows for sure.) Google probably has more raw data, between Android and searches–but the data they collect is (mostly) much less personal. Of all the Stacks, I think it’s fair to say, Facebook almost certainly knows you best.

They can use this data for advertising, which is contentious, I suppose; but much worse, it’s boring. What’s long been more interesting to me is the possibility of interpolating from this data, i.e. deducing from your online behavior things that you never explicitly revealed to Facebook–and extrapolating from it, i.e. predicting your reactions to new information and new situations. What’s interesting is the notion that Facebook might be able to paint an extraordinarily accurate pointillist picture of you, with all the data points you give it as the pixels.

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