Friday, May 2, 2014

TechEye

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UK phones support US drone strikes

Posted: 02 May 2014 03:10 AM PDT

The UK's telecommunications infrastructure is being used as part of a global defence intelligence network to help the US government conduct drone strikes.

Computer Weekly  has revealed that the situation is just as damaging as the situation where illegal US rendition flights to land at UK military sites, or permitting the US government to launch air strikes from its airforce bases in the UK.

Apparently the US depends on the UK to provide part of the core communications backbone used by drone operations.

The UK government and BT both deny any knowledge of the specific purposes for which the network is used, but then they would, wouldn't they?

Legal charity Reprieve alleged last year that the UK connection is used for drone strikes on suspected terrorists outside the usual parameters of war but a lack of evidence about the UK connection has blocked the charity's attempts to hold BT and the government to account.

However Computer Weekly thinks it has found the smoking gun which has established that the UK connection is part of a US military network that is used to target drone strikes.

The UK connection is a high-security communications line that forms part of the Defence Information Systems Network (DISN), which provides vital support to drone operations.

Key information revealing the role of the UK connection went unnoticed among various technical acronyms in a contract specification. In the specification, the US Defence Information Systems Agency (DISA) outlined instructions for a fibre-optic connection it had contracted BT to provide between a US military communications hub at RAF Croughton, Northamptonshire and Camp Lemonnier, the regional headquarters for US operations on the Horn of Africa.

The BBC and the Washington Post worked out that Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti is the base for US drone operations against suspected terrorists in Yemen and Somalia. These operations have bumped off civilians and are controversial.

The base has also conducted other military operations in support of states in the region, as well as extensive humanitarian, infrastructure and state-building missions.

What appears to have happened is that over the last 15 years show how DISN has enabled a transformation of the US war machine under the doctrine of network-centric warfare.

DISN has a dedicated military internet that spans over 3,500 US facilities in at least 88 countries and the US has an ongoing strategy to connect all its communications, forces, commanders, vehicles, weapons, surveillance sensors, satellites, radios, computer systems, intelligence agencies and allies into one network.

Drones use DISN to disseminate mission data and for long range command and control. Its 2005-2030 Roadmap named Reaper and Global Hawk as specific drones that use DISN. The DoD's ongoing work seeks to make drones a more closely integrated part of GIG, which is the foundation of net-centric warfare. 

Nvidia's Jetson board is out

Posted: 02 May 2014 03:02 AM PDT

Nvidia's  Jetson TK1 -  dubbed as the first supercomputer for developing embedded applications and devices, is finally shipping.

Writing in his bog  Nvidia's Will Park announced yesterday that the board, and will be available at Newegg or Microcenter for $192.

The kit contains the board, an AC adaptor with power cord, a USB cable for flashing, and a quick start guide.

Park said that Jetson TK1 is a great development platform for computer vision and CUDA applications for robotics, medicine, security, automotive, and defence applications, among others.

The board is based around the new Kepler-based Tegra K1, which was revealed earlier this year. The chip is packed with 192 CUDA cores that can be used for general purpose processing when not in use for graphics rendering, delivering more than 300 Gigaflops of computing power.

Another important part of the board is the fact that it is Nvidia's first mobile chip that is CUDA capable.

"All of Tegra K1's power can be unlocked with CUDA, the same pervasive, easy-to-use parallel processing platform used on Kepler-powered workstations and supercomputers," Park said.

The board was shown off at Nvidia's GPU Technology Conference in March.

It includes 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, one half mini-PCIe slot, one full size SD/MMC connector, and a full size HDMI port.

The board has a USB 2.0 port (micro AB), one USB 3.0 port (A), one RS232 serial port, one Realtek Audio codec, one RTL8111GS Realtek GigE LAN port, and a SATA data port.

The board runs on Linux for Tegra which is a modified version of Ubuntu 14.04 provided by Nvidia. There's out-of-the-box support for cameras and other peripherals. 

Apple encryption is like the Loch Ness Monster

Posted: 02 May 2014 03:00 AM PDT

German researcher Andreas Kurtz has found out that the fruity cargo cult Apple might not be telling the full truth when it claimed that email attachments sent from iOS were encrypted.

Writing in his bog, Kurtz said he found email attachments for POP, IMAP and ActiveSync accounts were available in clear text on iPhone 4, 5s and iPad 2 devices.

Email attachments within the iOS 7 MobileMail.app were not protected by Apple's data protection mechanisms...considering the long-time iOS 7 is available and the sensitivity of email attachments many enterprises share on their devices - fundamentally relying on data protection - I expected a near-term patch.

Email attachments were exposed on firmware iOS 7.1.1, 7.1 and 7.0.4 which Kurtz looked at by voiding the warranty on his shiny toys by using jailbreaking devices.

Apple's claims on its website that email attachments on all devices newer than the iPhone 3GS were protected by encryption.

Kurtz said Apple was aware of the problem but did not say when a patch would be ready. Of course, Apple is not saying anything.

Email attachments are safe on new devices such as the iPhone 4s, 5s and 5c running the latest iOS platforms. It appears to be because the jailbreak security modification was required for users to access the internals of iDevices including the ability to nab email attachments.

Kurtz suggested users of affected devices consider disabling mail synchronisation as an albeit inconvenient workaround. 

Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple are revolting....

Posted: 02 May 2014 02:58 AM PDT

It looks like the tech companies are revolting against US government spooks and their demands for data.

According to the Washington Post, if the government demands your personal, private email or other data, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple, and others are reportedly taking steps to notify you faster and more frequently than they did in the past

This is getting them in trouble with prosecutors who believe such notifications can interfere with ongoing investigations and evidence gathering.

The Washington Post said that the industry is keen to distance itself from the government after last year's disclosures about National Security Agency surveillance of online services.

Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and Google all are updating their policies to expand routine notification of users about government data seizures, unless specifically gagged by a judge or other legal authority, officials at all four companies said. The big four are following Yahoo which announced similar changes in July.

It will not stop the spooks from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court or from National Security letters, which are automatically gagged as a matter of law, but it could cause a few headaches for internal spying.

Google already has its policy in place, which includes exemptions of imminent harm and criminal activity. It said in a statement:

It notifies users about legal demands when appropriate, unless prohibited by law or court order. Believe that, and you'll believe anything.

Apple made a rare comment too, saying it would update its policies so that in most cases when law enforcement requests personal information about a customer, the customer will receive a notification from Apple. Microsoft is working on revising its disclosure policies too. 

Sony slashes profits again

Posted: 02 May 2014 02:55 AM PDT

Sony is warning that it will have another steep decline in profits, which suggests that chief executive Kazuo Hirai might be making a trip to the car park, writing a haiku about the briefness of life before hacking into his stomach with a steak knife while his secretary covers him with cherry blossom.

Hirai is not fulfilling the promises he made upon becoming Shogun of the electronics giant two years ago to push electronics into the black. There is also his five cuts to earnings guidance during his reign and this is just two weeks before Sony announces full year results.

What makes matters worse is that he is doing all this while rebuffing advice from billionaire hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb's to spin off Sony's profitable entertainment business.

Sony cut its forecast for operating profit to $254.53 million for the business year ended in March from a previous estimate.

The problem appears to be the Vaio PC unit which is still costing the company a fortune and the disk production unit,  which is being kicked to death by  online streaming services.

Sony widened its annual net loss estimate to 130 billion yen from the 110 billion it forecast in February, when it reversed a previous profit outlook.

Its rival Panasonic has staged a revival from deep losses by embracing industrial products and selling to businesses rather than consumers. But it has beaten its conservative forecasts while Sony has become known for missing overly optimistic outlooks.

Before Thursday's cut, Sony had missed its forecasts in 10 of the prior 12 years, excluding gains from asset sales, the worst among 30 Japanese consumer electronics makers, analysts at brokerage firm Jefferies calculated in March.

By comparison, Panasonic, with the best record, exceeded its guidance nine times over the same period.
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