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  1. #1

    CIA Spied on Its US Investigators

    CIA Spied on Its US Investigators

    Aside from spying on foreign politicians, it looks like the CIA was also snooping on members of the Senate Intelligence Committee who had been sent to investigate its own antics. As a result, the Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein became furious and accused the CIA of breaking laws and breaching constitutional principles. She claimed the CIA undermined her multi-year investigation of a controversial torture program.


    Dianne Feinstein claimed that the agency secretly removed documents, searched PCs used by the committee and tried to intimidate congressional investigators by forcing the FBI to arrest them.All this is happening after the Senate Intelligence Committee nears completion of a 6,000-page report expected to become a scathing historical record of the CIA use of waterboarding and other brutal interrogation methods on terrorism suspects after the 9/11.

    Dianne Feinstein promised to soon deliver the report to the White House and push for declassification of a document which would lay bare the horrible details of the CIA program. In the meantime, the agency and the Committee are at odds over the conclusions about the effectiveness of the program and the way the investigation was handled.

    So, the CIA set up a secret facility with computers where Committee investigators were offered unhampered access to operational cables, executive memos and other data on the interrogation program.But there was a row over whether CIA or Committee sabotaged the latter’s efforts from the outset, loading a massive amount of files on PCs with no index, structure or ability to search.

    It took years for investigators to pore over 6.2 million classified records furnished by the CIA, but the agency suddenly claimed the Committee somehow gained access to data that the CIA never intended to share – in other words, they managed to hack the CIA.

    In response, the Committee was careful not to say precisely how those documents were obtained – by the CIA or by a whistle-blower. As a result, the CIA seems very upset that its plan to hamper the investigation by dumping lots of paperwork on the Committee failed thank to some whistle-blower,who simply revealed important information. So, the CIA referred the matter to the Department of Justice and accused the Committee of spying on the US. Surveillance is all around.

  2. #2

    Re: CIA Spied on Its US Investigators

    A Marine’s Incredible Letter to Senator Dianne Feinstein
    Posted on January 2, 2013

    This is an incredible letter from Joshua Boston, Corporal United States Marine Corps, to gun grabber extraordinaire and political oligarch Senator Dianne Feinstein.

    Senator Dianne Feinstein,

    I will not register my weapons should this bill be passed, as I do not believe it is the government’s right to know what I own. Nor do I think it prudent to tell you what I own so that it may be taken from me by a group of people who enjoy armed protection yet decry me having the same a crime. You ma’am have overstepped a line that is not your domain. I am a Marine Corps Veteran of 8 years, and I will not have some woman who proclaims the evil of an inanimate object, yet carries one, tell me I may not have one.

    I am not your subject. I am the man who keeps you free. I am not your servant. I am the person whom you serve. I am not your peasant. I am the flesh and blood of America. I am the man who fought for my country. I am the man who learned. I am an American. You will not tell me that I must register my semi-automatic AR-15 because of the actions of some evil man.

    I will not be disarmed to suit the fear that has been established by the media and your misinformation campaign against the American public.

    We, the people, deserve better than you.

    Respectfully Submitted,
    Joshua Boston
    Cpl, United States Marine Corps
    2004-2012

    Dianne Feinstein, go back to sleep. You have been served by a true patriot, an honorable solider who takes his oath to the Constitution seriously and who will never obey treasonous orders from cowardly cronies like you.

  3. #3

    Re: CIA Spied on Its US Investigators

    NSA Is Going to BuildSpy Botnets
    Added: Sunday, March 23rd, 2014

    The National Security Agencyis going to set up botnets and use their victims to spy on people, according to new leaksfrom Edward Snowden. Apparently, the NSA is rapidly expanding its ability to hack into PCs on a mass scale through automated systems that almost don’t require human oversight in the process.
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    In short words, the American spooks may be going to infect millions of machines all over the world with kinds of malware "implants" able to break into targeted PCs and to extract information from foreign Internet and phone networks.

    GCHQ, the UK intelligence agency, seems to have also played an integral role in helping to develop this tactic. Actually, this is getting annoying – apparently, what the US can't invent on its own, it relies on someone else to do for it.

    In one case, the NSA pretended a fake Facebook server, thus using the social network as a launching pad to infect people’s computers and exfiltrate files from a hard drive. In another case, it has sent out spam emails laced with the malware. The latter could be tailored to covertly record audio from a device’s microphone along with taking snapshots with its webcam. Finally, the hacking systems have also allowed the agency to carry out cyber attacks by corrupting and disrupting file downloads or denying access to Internet sites.

    Snowden leaks also mention an automated system dubbed TURBINE, which allowed the current implant network to scale to millions of implants by creating an automated system controlling them by groups rather than individually.

    The idea of the NSA is to create a botnet operating“like the brain”. In other words, the system should manage the applications and functions of the implants and be able to decide what tools they need to siphon out information from people’s computers.

  4. #4

    Re: CIA Spied on Its US Investigators

    OS Developers Found Backdoor to Android
    Added: Sunday, March 23rd, 2014

    Developers working on the Replicant OS, a free and open-source spin of Google’s Android, have discovered a backdoor into the device’s filesystem.The backdoor is question works on a number of Samsung Galaxy mobile devices with the stock Android image, but the official announcement claimed that it was present in "most proprietary Android systems running on the affected Samsung Galaxy devices, including the ones that were shipped with the devices".

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    In other words, Samsung Galaxy devices which run proprietary Android versions have a backdoor allowing for remote access to the information stored on the mobile device.It was found in the proprietary software responsible for handling the communications with the modem. The security experts confirmed that via the Samsung IPC protocol, it implemented a class of requests called RFS commands. They allow the modem to perform remote I/O operations on the device’s storage.

    Apparently, when the modem is running proprietary software, it offers over-the-air remote control, which could later be used to issue the incriminated RFS messages and obtain access to the file system of the affected device. In other words, anyone aware of the backdoor is able to walk directly into the Nexus S, Galaxy S, Galaxy S2, Galaxy S3, Galaxy Note,Galaxy Note 2, and Galaxy Tab 2. Actually, the Galaxy S appeared to be the most insecure, because the backdoor software is running there as root.

    Replicant developers believe that the vulnerable software could possibly be added for legitimate purposes, without the intent of doing harm by providing a backdoor. The most interesting fact is that the problem in security was reported on the Replicant Wiki page weeks ago, but none of the software developers appear to have noticed it.

    you need to get rid of stock os on android, no matter what model of phone.

  5. #5

    Re: CIA Spied on Its US Investigators

    Android App Pirates Plead Guilty to Criminal Copyright Infringement

    By Ernesto
    on March 25, 2014

    Two men associated with the "pirate" Android store Appbucket have pleaded guilty to criminal copyright infringement. The Department of Justice estimates that the site generated over $80,000 in revenue during the two years it was active. The fate of the third Appbucket defendant is still unknown.

    appbucketWith help from French and Dutch police, the FBI took over the “pirate” Android stores applanet.net, appbucket.net and snappzmarket.com during the summer of 2012.

    The domain seizures were the first ever against “rogue” mobile app marketplaces and followed similar actions against BitTorrent and streaming sites.

    Yesterday the Department of Justice announced that two of the three admins of the Appbucket site have plead guilty to criminal copyright infringement. Nicholas Narbone, 26, and Thomas Dye, 21, both signed a plea deal with the Government and are currently scheduled to be sentenced in June.

    No information was provided on the third Appbucket defendant, Thomas Pace, who was primarily responsible for finding copies of Android apps and managing the site’s servers.

    The authorities estimate that more than a million Apps were traded via Appbucket, with a retail value of approximately $700,000. Over the course of two years the site itself generated little over $80,000 in proceeds from subscriptions.

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    seizure

    Acting Assistant Attorney General David O’Neil is happy with the guilty pleas, which are the first of their kind.

    “These mark the first convictions secured by the Justice Department against those who illegally distribute counterfeit mobile apps,” O’Neil says.

    “These men trampled on the intellectual property rights of others when they and other members of the Appbucket group distributed more than one million copies of pirated apps.”

    Besides Appbucket, there are also cases pending against the operators of Snappzmarket and Applanet. The founder of Applanet previously launched a crowdfunding campaign to pay for his defense, but only managed to raised $1,029 of the required $50,000.

    The FBI, meanwhile, is already on the lookout for their next targets.

    “The FBI will continue to work with its various law enforcement partners in identifying, investigating, and presenting for prosecution those individuals and groups engaged in such criminal activities that involve the attempt to profit from the hard work and the developed creative ideas of others,” FBI Special Agent Johnson says.

  6. #6

    Re: CIA Spied on Its US Investigators

    Judge: IP-Address Is Not a Person and Can’t Identify a BitTorrent Pirate

    By Ernesto
    on March 24, 2014

    An important ruling in Florida has made it more difficult for copyright holders to extract cash settlements from alleged BitTorrent pirates. District Court Judge Ursula Ungaro dismissed a lawsuit filed by Malibu Media, arguing that the IP-address evidence can't identify the person who actually downloaded the pirated file.

    ip-addressOver the past several years hundreds of thousands of alleged BitTorrent pirates have been sued by so-called ‘copyright trolls’ in the United States.

    The rightsholders bringing these cases generally rely on an IP address as evidence. They then ask the courts to grant a subpoena, forcing Internet providers to hand over the personal details of the associated account holder.

    The problem, however, is that the person listed as the account holder is often not the person who downloaded the infringing material. Although not many judges address this crucial issue early on, there are exceptions, such as the one raised by Florida District Court Judge Ursula Ungaro.

    Judge Ungaro was presented with a case brought by Malibu Media, who accused IP-address “174.61.81.1713 of sharing one of their films using BitTorrent without their permission. The Judge, however, was reluctant to issue a subpoena, and asked the company to explain how they could identify the actual infringer.

    Responding to this order to show cause, Malibu Media gave an overview of their data gathering techniques. Among other things they explained that geo-location software was used to pinpoint the right location, and how they made sure that it was a residential address, and not a public hotspot.

    Judge Ungaro welcomed the additional details, but saw nothing that actually proves that the account holder is the person who downloaded the file.

    “Plaintiff has shown that the geolocation software can provide a location for an infringing IP address; however, Plaintiff has not shown how this geolocation software can establish the identity of the Defendant,” Ungaro wrote in an order last week.

    “There is nothing that links the IP address location to the identity of the person actually downloading and viewing Plaintiff’s videos, and establishing whether that person lives in this district,” she adds.

    The order


    UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF FLORIDA
    Case No.: 1:14-cv-20213-UUMALIBU MEDIA, LLC,Plaintiff, v. JOHN DOE,Defendant. /
    ORDER
    THIS CAUSE comes before the Court
    sua sponte.
    THE COURT has reviewed the pertinent portions of the record, and is otherwise fullyadvised on the premises. On March 5, 2014, the Court issued an Order to Show Cause, D.E. 7,ordering Plaintiff to show good cause why the Court may reasonably rely on Plaintiff’s usage of geolocation or other technologies to (1) establish the identity of the Defendant and (2) that theDefendant may be found within this district; and to show good cause why this case should not bedismissed for improper venue; and show good cause as to why this case should not be dismissedfor improper venue. On March 14, 2014, Plaintiff filed its response to the Court’s Order. D.E. 9. Plaintiff has shown that the geolocation software can provide a location for an infringing IPaddress; however, Plaintiff has not shown how this geolocation software can establish theidentity of the Defendant. There is nothing that links the IP address location to the identity of the person actually downloading and viewing Plaintiff’s videos, and establishing whether that personlives in this district. For example, when arguing that this IP address is not a coffee shop or openWi-Fi network, Plaintiff points to the timing of the alleged infringement and the fact that theinternet service provider typically provides internet to residences. D.E. 9 at 10. Plaintiff then
    Case 1:14-cv-20213-UU Document 10 Entered on FLSD Docket 03/20/2014 Page 1 of 2

    argues that a coffee shop owner could possibly identify the Defendant.
    Id.
    Even if this IPaddress is located within a residence, the geolocation software cannot identify who has access tothat residence’s computer and who would actually be using it to infringe Plaintiff’s copyright. The Court finds that Plaintiff has not established good cause for the Court to reasonably rely onPlaintiff’s usage of geolocation to establish the identity of the Defendant. The Court also findsthat Plaintiff has not established good cause as to why this action should not be dismissed for improper venue. Accordingly it isORDERED AND ADJUDGED that Plaintiff’s Complaint, D.E. 1, is DISMISSED. It isfurther ORDERED AND ADJUDGED that, for Administrative Purposes, this case is CLOSED. DONE AND ORDERED in Chambers at Miami, Florida, this 19th day of March, 2014. ________________________________ URSULA UNGARO UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGEcopies provided: counsel of record
    2
    Case 1:14-cv-20213-UU Document 10 Entered on FLSD Docket 03/20/2014 Page 2 of 2


    Even if Malibu Media can accurately show that the copyright infringer used the Internet connection of the account holder connected to IP-address 174.61.81.171, they still can’t prove who shared the file.

    “Even if this IP address is located within a residence, the geolocation software cannot identify who has access to that residence’s computer and who would actually be using it to infringe Plaintiff’s copyright,” Judge Ungaro explains.

    As a result, the court decided to dismiss the case for improper venue. The ruling is crucial as it’s another unique order confirming that an IP address alone is not enough to launch a copyright infringement lawsuit.

    Copyright Troll watcher SJD points out that the same Judge has also issued orders to show cause in two other Malibu Media cases, which are also likely to be closed.

    While not all judges may come to the same conclusion, the order definitely limits the options for copyright holders in the Southern District of Florida. Together with several similar rulings on the insufficiency of IP-address evidence, accused downloaders have yet more ammunition to fight back.

  7. #7

    Re: CIA Spied on Its US Investigators

    Nuking a Facebook Page on Bogus Copyright Grounds is Easy

    By Andy
    on March 21, 2014 Name:  facebook-logo.jpg
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    Sending a DMCA complaint to any site is relatively simple, but how easy is it for a giant such as Facebook to be tricked by an imposter into taking a whole page down? According to both victims and perpetrators, it's very easy indeed.

    facebook-logoCopyright holders and tech companies in the United States are currently engaged in discussions on how to move forward with the notice and takedown provisions of the DMCA. The moves are voluntary and aimed at eliminating the kind of backlash experienced during the SOPA uprising.

    Both parties have good reason to progress. Copyright holders say the are tired of taking down content only to have it reappear quickly after. On the other hand, service providers and similar web companies burn through significant resources ensuring they respond to takedown demands in a way that maintains their protection from liability.

    This fear of the law encourages service providers to err on the side of caution by taking content down quickly, and worrying about legitimacy later. Earlier this week TF spoke with a site operator with first hand experience of a major Internet company’s approach to what they believed to be a genuine copyright complaint.

    As previously reported, BeBe is the operator of Wrestling-Network, a site that links to unauthorized WWE streams. While the legality of his main domain is up for lively debate, he maintains his Facebook page was squeaky clean when a WWE lawyer moved to have it taken down. What we didn’t report at the time is that this wasn’t the first time Wrestling-Network had lost a Facebook page.

    “We’ve removed or disabled access to the following content that you posted on Facebook because we received a report from a third-party that the content infringes their copyright(s),” Facebook told BeBe in an email.

    BeBe wrote back to try and resolve matters, offering to put things right should there have been a copyright-related oversight. But Facebook weren’t interested in being the middle-man in this dispute, instead directing BeBe to contact the person who filed the complaint against him.

    “If you believe that we have made a mistake in removing this content, then please contact the complaining party directly.[..],” Facebook responded.

    Once furnished with the complainant’s details BeBe recognized them as belonging to a person he’d been in an unrelated dispute with. Despite using a Yahoo email address (rather than @wwe.com), the fake copyright complainer had convinced Facebook to shut down a page in the name of a third-party.

    Worse still, BeBe would now have to negotiate with his adversary in order to get his page back.

    “If both parties agree to restore the reported content, please ask the complaining party to contact us via email with a copy of the agreement so that we can refer to the original issue,” Facebook explained. “We will not be able to restore this content to Facebook unless we receive explicit notice of consent from the complaining party.”

    Fake copyright reports like this aren’t new. In 2011 there was a spate of false notices which saw well-known Facebook pages belonging to Ars Technica, Neowin and Redwood Pie all being taken down by fraudulent complaints.

    Three years ago it was exceptionally easy to take down a page, but here we are several years later and the process is still open to abuse. So how easy is it to nuke a Facebook page? On condition of anonymity, a person who targeted another’s Facebook page out of revenge explained.

    “Taking down the Facebook page was simple. It requires a well written and thought out mail, directly sent to Facebook, but it was a very straight forward process,” TF was told.

    “I did not pretend to be [a rightsholder] however. I claimed to be a company that handles such legal aspects for big corporations without them being directly involved, in order to avoid public backlash but at the same time protect their interests. I provided enough copyrighted posts to prove that the page was a constant abuser and the page was taken down.”

    According to PCWorld, during the Department of Commerce Internet Policy Task Force’s first public forum yesterday, Ben Sheffner, vice president of legal affairs for the MPAA, said that erroneous or abusive notices were a tiny part of the DMCA picture and should be afforded appropriate levels of attention.

    Corynne McSherry, intellectual property director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, saw things quite differently.

    Takedown abuse “regularly causes quite an uproar,” McSherry said. “Any multistakeholder dialog that was talking about the notice-and-takedown system and trying to improve it that didn’t include a discussion of takedown abuse would really have no legitimacy in the eyes of many, many Internet users.”

    The problem might be small to the MPAA, but of course it’s not their Facebook page getting targeted. To smaller players the problem can be significantly more severe.

  8. #8

    Cyber Criminals Took Control of 25,000 Unix Servers

    Cyber Criminals Took Control of 25,000 Unix Servers
    Added: Wednesday, March 26th, 2014

    Security experts from ESET, together with CERT-Bund, the Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing and other agencies, discovered a cybercriminal campaign which has captured more than 25,000Unix servers all over the world.
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    The so-called “Operation Windigo” resulted in infecting servers sending out millions of spam emails. The letters were designed to hijack servers, infect the devices that visit them, and steal data. Among the victims you can find servers of cPanel and kernel.org.

    A detailed technical report was published by ESET’s security specialists, where they presented the findings of their investigations and malware analysis. The report in question also explained how to find out if your own systems were also affected, and instructed how to remove the malicious code.

    Due to the sheer size and complexity of the operation, it managed to remain largely unnoticed by the security community which was too busy in its attempts to work out how to keep the US NSA out. It turned out that Windigo has been building for more than two and a half years, and so far has 10,000 servers under its control.

    According to ESET security experts, the botnet sends out over 35 million spam messages daily to innocent users’ accounts, clogging up inboxes and putting computer systems at risk. Moreover, every day more than half a million PCs are put at risk of infection, because they visit websites already poisoned by web server malware from Operation Windigoand redirecting to malicious exploit kits and adverts.

    The experts explained that Windigo-affected sites try to infect visiting Windows PCs with malware through an exploit kit, and Mac users are normally served advertisements for dating websites. As for iPhone users,they are redirected to online porn. They also point out that it could be more serious: over 60% of the world's sites are running on Linux servers, and many might not be aware they have been hacked.

  9. #9

    Re: Cyber Criminals Took Control of 25,000 Unix Servers

    America Put Backdoors in Huawei Gear Itself
    Added: Monday, March 31st, 2014

    It seems that when the United States was complaining that the Chinese tech giant Huawei had security backdoors, it knew it for sure, because it was the one who had put them there. As you may know, Huawei was banned from competing against American companies because the backdoors in question could supposedly allow the Chinese government to spy.
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    Nevertheless, the recent leak revealed that those backdoors had been placed by the National Security Agency as part of a major intelligence offensive against China. The agency made a special effort to target Huawei on behalf of American firms which realized they can’t compete against the Chinese company.

    Five years ago, the US National Security Agency started an extensive operation dubbed “Shotgiant” against Huawei. A special unit with the NSA succeeded in infiltrating the company’s network and copied a list of 1,400 customers along with internal documents providing training to engineers on the use of Huawei products. US agents accessed the email archive and the secret source code of individual Huawei products. Since 2009, the NSA snuffled messages from company CEO and Chairwoman. Apparently, the agents had such good access and so much data that they simply didn’t know what to do with it.

    NSA justified attacking Huawei by saying that many of its targets communicate over Huawei produced products and they just wanted to make sure they know how to exploit those products. In addition, the NSA was also worried that Huawei’s widespread infrastructure could provide the Chinese with signals intelligence capability. However, the leak doesn’t state whether the NSA found any data indicating that to be the case.

    At the same time, the security agency indicates that the Chinese have been working to make the US and Western companies “less relevant”, claiming that the Chinese push opened up technology standards that were long determined by American companies, and China was controlling lots of online data. In other words, the US was declaring that Huawei networks were unsafe while itself spying on the Chinese giant.

    In response, Huawei criticized the US spying measures, saying that it was really ironic that the Unites States was doing to them what they have always charged that the Chinese were doing through them. In addition, the US spying efforts proved that the NSA knew Huawei was independent and had no ties to any government.

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