Meddling

It would’ve worked, too, if it weren’t for those meddling kids!

There are 617 posts filed in Meddling (this is page 27 of 62).

Blackhole exploit detected

I was putting some dinner on the table for the kids this evening when I walked by my laptop. There were two new tabs open on my Ubuntu Firefox browser that I didn’t remember opening. Popping one of these mystery URLs into urlquery.net indicated that the URL in question has been associated with distributing browser malware, essentially letting Russian criminals access my web browser.

URL http://disruptingplayhouse.biz/closest/i9jfuhioejskveohnuojfir.php
IP 93.171.174.224
ASN AS29182 ISPsystem Autonomous System
Location [Russian Federation] Russian Federation
Report completed 2013-09-04 23:50:04 CET
Status Report complete.
urlQuery Alerts Detected BlackHole v2.0 exploit kit URL pattern
Detected live BlackHole v2.0 exploit kit

Now, the fact that I’m running Linux and I usually keep my laptop updated might help keep me from being infected by this exploit kit. I can’t tell for sure, though, so I’m running a good virus scan on my system first. It just goes to show that you can never let your cyber guard down.

I recall some mention this week about a potentially huge cyber attack taking place soon. Can’t find the link now but I’ll see if I can find it.

Ex-spooks debate Snowden’s actions

I’m a member of a Facebook group called United States Navy Cryptologic Technicians. Last week a member authored a post which questioned why NSA leaker Edward Snowden wasn’t being hunted down with all available resources. It spawned a very lively debate amongst ex-spooks about Snowden’s motives and those of the NSA, a debate which continues as I post this. There are many former spooks like myself who find the NSA’s new reach to be quite alarming, while others seem to be comfortable with Americans’ almost complete lack of online privacy. Several point out that Snowden took an oath to protect this information and broke his oath.

I took a similar oath when gained my security clearance. Like every other servicemember, however, the first oath I took was support and defend the Constitution of the United States “against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” To the extent that the latter conflicts with the former, the former (being the law of the land) always takes precedence. In addition, it was drilled into us as sailors that it was our duty to disobey an unlawful order. In hindsight this is far easier to say than do, as in practice disobeying a lawful order would most likely put you in a world of hurt. At least the government would come out looking good during your court-martial.
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NSA spying on Americans proves not too effective

I was reading this Wired article from last year, well before Edward Snowden’s leak that revealed to the world the massive overreach of the NSA. Kevin Paulson pointed out these terrorist incidents the NSA failed to uncover:

And while there is little indication that [NSA’s] actual effectiveness has improved—after all, despite numerous pieces of evidence and intelligence-gathering opportunities, it missed the near-disastrous attempted attacks by the underwear bomber on a flight to Detroit in 2009 and by the car bomber in Times Square in 2010.

You can also add the Boston Marathon bombing and the Fort Hood mass shooting to this list, too. News came out earlier this week that the FBI monitored Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan’s communications a full year in advance. The mass murderer even sent emails discussing jihad to a cleric in Yemen, which would be a kosher intercept in anyone’s book (even mine). Yet, he still committed his crime.
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U.S. allows states to legalize recreational marijuana within limits

This is great news. I’ve said it before but I hope North Carolina’s leaders will become enlightened and the guns will disappear from Raleigh’s streets. Yeah, that’s asking a lot but this is a huge step in the right direction.

The Justice Department said it would refocus marijuana enforcement nationwide by bringing criminal charges only in eight defined areas – such as distribution to minors – and giving breathing room to users, growers and related businesses that have feared prosecution.

The decisions end nearly a year of deliberation inside President Barack Obama’s administration about how to react to the growing movement for relaxed U.S. marijuana laws.

Advocates for legalization welcomed the announcement as a major step toward ending what they called “marijuana prohibition.”

via U.S. allows states to legalize recreational marijuana within limits | Reuters.

Distracted driving day

As if to prove yesterday’s point about distracted driving, on my way home from work I had the unfortunate luck to be driving next to a young woman busy texting. Her car was weaving over both sides of her lane, on Wade Avenue, nontheless, where opposing traffic whizzes by only a foot or two away. I honked the time she nearly nudged me off the road and spent the rest of my drive glowering at her in my rear-view mirror, hoping she had enough sense to notice if I stopped.

I have never before called the cops on anyone texting while driving but I swear that drivers doing this might as well be driving drunk. The next dumbshit driver that weaves into my lane, hunched over his or her phone, is going to be promptly referred to authorities. I don’t feel like playing Russian Roulette on the roads anymore.

Warner Herzog created a short, powerful film that addresses this texting problem. I’m going to make sure our kids see it.

The NSA: “The Abyss From Which There Is No Return”

Interesting commentary.

So if we already knew that the government was spying on us, what’s the big deal? And more to the point, as I often hear many Americans ask, if you’re not doing anything wrong, why should you care?

The big deal is simply this: once you allow the government to start breaking the law, no matter how seemingly justifiable the reason, you relinquish the contract between you and the government which establishes that the government works for and obeys you, the citizen—the employer—the master. And once the government starts operating outside the law, answerable to no one but itself, there’s no way to rein it back in, short of revolution.

via The NSA: "The Abyss From Which There Is No Return".

Secrets and who can keep them

I was mining my blog for some unrelated information (isn’t that always how it starts, eh?) when I came upon this post I wrote last December after the job networking site LinkedIn had its entire password database stolen. I made the point that 99% of passwords being used out there are trivially cracked by modern computers.

The post made me recall how time and again how the federal government has sounded the alarm over how vulnerable American business is to cyberattack. In light of the revelations of massive, illegal NSA spying on Americans, these warnings seem patently ludicrous. You see, the whole time the federal government has played the cybersecurity good guy in public, in reality the last thing it wants is for American business to secure its data. Make it secure, they tell us. Just don’t make it too secure.

Yeah, right.

NSA, DEA, IRS Lie About Fact That Americans Are Routinely Spied On By Our Government

This is an astonishing development in the U.S., a nation that, until recently, carefully restricted the power of its domestic spying agencies by forcing them to submit narrow requests for spying authority to a court, which would issue a warrant if the government showed probable cause to believe that the surveillance target was engaged in some sort of wrongdoing. At this point, it’s clear those limits are gone. The United States is now a mass surveillance state.

via NSA, DEA, IRS Lie About Fact That Americans Are Routinely Spied On By Our Government: Time For A Special Prosecutor – Forbes.

Email service used by Snowden shuts itself down, warns against using US-based companies | Glenn Greenwald

I didn’t know about Lavabit until they pulled their own plug yesterday, but I deeply respect its owners’ refusal to play along to the NSA’s excessive and unconstitutional spying.

A Texas-based encrypted email service recently revealed to be used by Edward Snowden – Lavabit – announced yesterday it was shutting itself down in order to avoid complying with what it perceives as unjust secret US court orders to provide government access to its users’ content. “After significant soul searching, I have decided to suspend operations,” the company’s founder, Ladar Levinson, wrote in a statement to users posted on the front page of its website. He said the US directive forced on his company “a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit.” He chose the latter.

via Email service used by Snowden shuts itself down, warns against using US-based companies | Glenn Greenwald | Comment is free | theguardian.com.

The NSA Leaks Put Our ‘Methods’ At Risk, But Bragging About Monitoring Al Qaeda Emails Doesn’t? | Techdirt

Techdirt points out the obvious: how can the entire legislative branch be crowing about detecting an imminent terrorist threat through intercepted emails and not be divulging sources and methods? Snowden pointed out that the NSA is spying on millions of innocent Americans but government leaders can tell Al Qaeda and the world that we’re reading their emails and it’s somehow okay?

Anyone else get the idea that the American public is being played for fools here?

The intercepted conversations last week between Ayman al-Zawahri, who succeeded Osama bin Laden as the head of the global terrorist group, and Nasser al-Wuhayshi, the head of the Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, revealed one of the most serious plots against American and other Western interests since the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, American intelligence officials and lawmakers have said.

So… revealing that we collect data on everyone somehow turns Snowden into a traitor, while having officials in the government tell the NY Times that we directly intercepted emails between Al Qaeda’s top leaders is somehow perfectly fine? How does that work?

via The NSA Leaks Put Our 'Methods' At Risk, But Bragging About Monitoring Al Qaeda Emails Doesn't? | Techdirt.