TechEye

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• NSA developing encryption breaking supercomputer
• Sharks tweet to swimmers in Australia
• Searching the internet for time travellers
• Blackberry hands in its Keys
• Websense warns of leaky Windows

NSA developing encryption breaking supercomputer Posted: 03 Jan 2014 01:58 AM PST The US National Security Agency is trying to develop a computer that could will break most encryption programmes and give the nation electronic control of the world. According to the Washington Post, the information was found on documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. It said that the NSA is trying to develop a so-called "quantum computer" that could be used to break encryption codes used to cover sensitive information. It will mean that US spooks could break into and control any computer it wanted. If a country, such as Germany was not doing what it was told by the glorious US Empire, the spooks could transfer the nation's bank accounts to Washington and kill off its economy. Of course, the US would never do that, it is always the guy in the White Hat who saves the world just in time; it could never be a Dr Evil. After all the fact it was founded by terrorists and criminals who conspired with the countries sworn enemy to overthrow its lawful constitutional democracy has nothing to do with it. Quantum computers are still in the developmental stage. On paper they can perform several calculations at once instead of in a single stream, could take years to develop, the newspaper said. NSA is researching the technology as part of a $79.7 million research programme called "Penetrating Hard Targets," the newspaper said. Other, non-governmental researchers are also trying to develop quantum computers, and it is not clear whether the NSA program lags the private efforts or is ahead of them.

Sharks tweet to swimmers in Australia Posted: 03 Jan 2014 01:57 AM PST Sharks in Western Australia are going to find themselves tweeting to swimmers that they are heading to shallow waters looking for a human sized snack. The Department of Fisheries has introduced a new system, in which Jaws will announce their own presence via Twitter. More shark attacks occur in Western Australia than almost anyplace else on Earth and the government is forced to spend a fortune on helicopter-based spotters and co-ordinating members of the public who report their own sightings. Now the researchers have come up with the Shark Monitoring Network, the system uses acoustic tags that are attached to the fins of individual sharks, along with buoyed monitoring devices that pick up the signals transmitted by those tags. When a tagged shark swims within range of one of the monitors, its species, size and location is automatically recorded. The data is transmitted via satellite to a computer, which immediately posts it on Twitter. It means that the shark's location is instantly known. So far, the system uses 19 satellite-linked monitors, that keep track of 338 tagged sharks – species include great whites, tigers and bulls. It does depend on the sharks being tagged in the first place, and swimmers checking twitter, but it is a start. It will not stop a determined shark eating someone it does not like either. Already Apple fanboys are warned from straying too close to the water.

Searching the internet for time travellers Posted: 03 Jan 2014 01:55 AM PST Two physicists at Michigan Technological University have been carrying out a project to search the world wide wibble for evidence of time travel. In a paper, the pair say that the idea of time travel has captured the public imagination for much of the past century, but little has been done to actually search for time travellers. It describes three implementations of Internet searches for time travellers which require a prescient mention of information not previously available. Obviously, there is the search for prescient content placed on the Internet, highlighted by a search for specific terms in tweets on Twitter. Using this method, we worked out that Techeye, with its tendency to spot the news before it happens is staffed by time travellers. In the case of Mike Magee it is someone whose time machine was locked in the 1970s and whose life depends on a leaked Intel roadmap dated 2020. William Berridge was a homeopathic doctor and sex pest who escaped the 1890s. The second technique involves looking at prescient inquiries submitted to a search engine, highlighted by a comprehensive search for specific search terms submitted to a popular astronomy web site. The third search involved a request for a direct Internet communication, either by email or tweet, pre-dating to the time of the inquiry. Given practical verifiability concerns, only time travellers from the future were investigated. Unfortunately for Michigan Technological University, they do not seem to have looked at TechEye and have ruled out the possibly of time travellers using the net. Negative results do not disprove time travel, given the great reach of the Internet, this search is perhaps the most comprehensive to date, the report said.

Blackberry hands in its Keys Posted: 03 Jan 2014 01:53 AM PST Popular beat combo artist Alicia Keys has given up on hawking Blackberry just a year after starting as the outfit’s "global creative director". Blackberry has confirmed the singer's upcoming departure which is being touted as the firms exit from consumer toys to focus on businesses, governments and other large organisations. The PR spinner described the move as “completing our year-long collaboration” and said the company enjoyed the opportunity to work with such an incredibly talented and passionate individual. It seems a long time ago but Keys was hired when the company launched its long-delayed BlackBerry 10 devices in January of last year. The Blackberry 10 was supposed to be the company’s last chance to save itself. It did not work. Sales flopped, triggering billions of dollars in losses and forcing BlackBerry to slash its staff. Recently the company has tried and failed to sell itself. The chief executive who hired Keys has left, along with many of his senior executives. Keys contributed to a collaborative project encouraging fans to submit photographs that later appeared in music videos tied to her tour.

Websense warns of leaky Windows Posted: 03 Jan 2014 01:51 AM PST Websense has found that Windows is leaking information which could be used by a hacker to craft specific attacks and compromise networks.  According to the outfit, Windows Error Reporting, known as Dr Watson,  sends out its crash logs which can be tracked  by eavesdroppers to map out vulnerable endpoints and gain a foothold within the network for more advanced penetration. WER is used by 80 percent of all network-connected PCs use it and Dr. Watson reports information that hackers use to find and exploit weak systems such as OS, service pack and update versions Crashes are especially useful for attackers since they may pinpoint a new exploitable code flaw for a zero-day attack Alexander Watson (no relation) director of security research, Websense has come up with an attack method which can snoop on Windows leaks and use them for an attack. He will be presenting his research at the 2014 RSA Conference in San Francisco next month. Microsoft says that administrators can implement fine-grained control over automated error reporting through pushing group policies to computers on the network. But Websense has discovered that by default many organizations are reporting in clear-text specific information about applications, services, and hardware through Microsoft Error Reporting. These application reports are not just limited to crashes, but also events such as failed application updates, USB device insertions, and in some cases even TCP Timeouts between computers on the network, a  large percentage of which is sent in HTTP clear text.

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