ONLINE PRIVACY

ONLINE PRIVACY

Social media has taken the world by storm and has provided the powers that be, the ideal way to hack you and me.  Adult dating sites, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Xing, YouTube, Google+, Meetup, Disqus, Medium, Renren, Pinterest, Instagram, Secret, Vine, WhatsApp, Flickr, Qzone, VK, Tumblr, and the rest of the social media slice of the Internet can be equated to a  global collection of profiles, admissions, personal ledgers, or even diaries. It constitutes the largest collection of volunteered personal information ever and the greatest incentive to would be hackers to mark you. In days gone by, personal ledgers were kept by many in which to tabulate their thoughts, record their ideas and purposefully expose their fears to a book. A  book that played the role of a non-human psychologist, if you like.  It merely acted as a wall to bounce ideas off, tell your secrets to, share you deepest thoughts, reveal you innermost desires, even talk to if needs be, though never expecting a reply. 

Personal diaries and personal ledgers helped many people to retain their sanity and deal with their demons, but as personal ledgers slowly died out, it was replaced by the psychologist and his couch. For many a "would be patient", bouncing the mental anguish off a quack was often a futile and expensive exercise, whereas for many a physiologist, a very lucrative money spinner. The more people who thought they needed the help of a psychologist, the more psychologist brain washed them into using their services. 

I don't deny nor dispute that there is a need for psychologist in society, but they tend to diagnose everyone with  some sort of schizophrenia or the other. Prescribing the same regimen of drugs to everyone from Retalin, to Adderall, to Concerta, to Vyvanse, to Imipramine, to Inderal, to Invega Sustenna, to Ambien, to Celexa, to Prozac, to Thorazine, to Valium, to Zoloft, to mention but a few, even  though we all have a biochemical individuality, in fact and absolutely  unique biochemical individuality.

Some parents even felt the need to send their children to psychologist for evaluation who then became regular couch subjects. This turned out to be an ingenious cash cow model that kept psychologist near the top of the food chain for some time and also kept the masses sedated and conditioned to be perfect zombies. But the psychologist are being phased out by the social media networks, where the masses are comparing notes,  with fake  friend discussing their personal issues, their mental issues, their health issues, their psychological issues, etc...  entrusting their deepest and darkest secrets to strangers, and others soliciting commentaries who are as effed-up. Besides bolstering their own achievements and lying through their teeth about it, exposing themselves, divulging personal data and volunteering way too much information about themselves. So much so, that the bullshit on the social media networks is fast replacing the bullshit that their patients construed as insight. 

As if it's not bad enough that everyone out there have their own share of problems, be they chicks with daddy issues, or guys with mommy issues, sex addictions, drug dependencies, need for acceptance, dependency syndrome, peddling drugs, kleptomania, alcoholism, prostitution, bullying, theft, lies, cheating wives and sugar daddies, etc. The NSA and the FBI are also added to this mix. Yes, the NSA has been pushing for cooperation from Google, Yahoo and other search engines to feed them with profiles of "misfits", suspect offenders, pedophiles, etc... This means that you and I and everyone else we know, are being poured though a sieve, being judged for what we say or do online, for what we buy and sell online, and the websites that we visit. 

Google is god of the internet and stores all your search history and I'm not talking about your browser history that is stored on your computer which can easily be erased or configured by selecting the paranoid tick in your control panel  Control panel \ Internet Properties \ General \ browser history \ settings \ history \ 0 days. Here I'm referring to your Web & App Activity that may go back several years and can by found in the settings menu in the bottom right hand side of Google's search page. Why you may ask, why does Google do this?  Because governments compelled them to do so. Google and Yahoo have maps on their sites that you can visit to see how many of your fellow countrymen or women is in the NSA's spotlight, all thanks to social networks.

The Tor browser is an option  if you feel that its best to surf anonymously but the FBI is trying their utmost to get the profiles of people who surf anonymously and wish to enjoy some privacy. There are rumours that the FBI hackers are too lame to do it themselves, so they agreed to pay Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh, USA, $1 million to hack the Tor network and deanonymize its users.  So who’s hacking who? However, the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation)  is doing their level best to get court injections against the FBI and the NSA's abuse of power and save us all from becoming suspects or victimized for what we say online..  



Meanwhile, a type of malware known as ransomware has been restricting users from accessing their own website or computer system by uploading the above notice, locked by the FBI or Justice Department on their systems. It forces   "offenders" to pay a ransom / fine in Bitcoins via specified online methods before they can  get your own systems or data back. The hacker known as Slavik  who also wrote the Zeus banking trojan, is responsible for the   CryptoLocker Ransomware Virus and has been using the FBI  to extort money from victims. 

CIA AND FBI HACKED

THE CIA AND THE FBI HAVE BEEN HACKED

The young Black Hat hacker crew that hacked into CIA Director John Brennan personal correspondence and that of other  government officials acquired very sensitive security information regarding top-secret Intelligence matters. This enabled them to struck again, but  now infiltrated the FBI. They identified themselves as CWA - "Crackas With Attitude" and subsequently hacked into an  even more important target, which according to them is a private law enforcement portal that granted them access to the US arrest records database and at least  a dozen more law enforcement tools. Amongst which are the  Enterprise File Transfer Service, a tool for sharing files, as well as Intelink the United States Government computer system Justice Enterprise File Sharing, and so much more.

The CIA and the FBI just got hacked

Cracka the leader of the hacker crew provided a screenshot of the arrest records database called JABS which stands for Joint Automated Booking System. This could give them carte blanche to erase criminals records of anyone who has one, for a price and even clean their own slates if they have criminal records or were previously incarcerated. This portal also grants them access to arrest  information of suspected terrorists, gang members and drug merchants.  I wouldn't be surprised if this  information end up on Tor network or Alpha Bay on the deep web for sale to the highest bidder.

JABS database query tool infiltrated by the CWA hacker crew.

However yesterday CWA posted a list of names, phone numbers, and email addresses of more than 3000 government employees, military personel and FBI agents working at various local police departments through the country into Pastebin and Cryptobin. This was done to coincide with Guy Fawkes Day and in solidarity with the "million mask march" of  hacker crew "Anonymous" from the Philippines. As an indication of their seriousness, they named this release  “Part 1” implying that there is more to follow.  Cracka, also said it is their way to hurt the government and not innocent people and that  they are doing this to help the people of Palestine and not for name and fame.

CWA has certainly opened up a can of worms by targeting both the CIA and the FBI of the United States and is sure to become public enemy number one. If they haven't been on the intelligence agencies radar before, they certainly are now.

CYBER WARS

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

THE INTERNET OF THINGS

THE INTERNET OF THINGS

ICT and Cybersecurity experts warned that companies need to pay greater attention to their computer networks' cybersecurity and add that Telecoms company TalkTalk got hacked because “it wasn’t paying enough attention to its cybersecurity,” and that the recent  Ashley Madison attack,  is just the “the tip of  iceberg”.  They add that the growing threat by hackers is very real and that the cyber attacks comparable to the 9/11 event can be expected but needs to be thwarted before they happen.  With the arrival of the Internet of Things (IoT) a lot more devices are connected to the Internet and this number is constantly growing,  and provides new ways for hackers to gain access to private and confidential data. Experts recommend that network security must be part of a company’s core infrastructure because the few professional cybersecurity companies globally just aren't  enough to stop the constant barrage of cyber threats. 

 Barack Obama and  Xi Jinping

President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping met as recent as the 25 Sept 2015 in Washington and reached an “understanding” not to use cyber spies to commit economic espionage and not to hack private firms in each other’s country for economic gain. But in less tan 20 days  a U.S. cybersecurity company claims that it has evidence that hackers linked to the Chinese government tried to violate a recent agreement between Washington and Beijing. American business have complained for a number of years that Chinese hackers have sought to steal trade secrets from U.S. corporate computers. In retaliation U.S. spy organizations have hacked into Chinese companies claiming that American officials performed these hacks  for national security purposes and not to steal Chinese trade secrets. Washington’s determination to eradicate Chinese cyber theft and ban all forms of digital protectionism resulted in regional trade pact with Pacific Rim countries  requiring  them to criminalize hacking attacks on U.S. companies.

US officials currently working on the Iran policy determined that the recent surge of cyber attacks by the Iran’s Revolutionary Guards to email and social media accounts of Obama administration officials it possibly  linked to arrest of  Siamak Namazi an Iranian-American businessman. The Iranian military  Revolutionary Guards have regularly made hacking attacks on US government agencies in recent years but has increased  after the landmark international agreement to eased severe economic sanctions on Iran in return for Tehran curbing its nuclear program.  

The World  Wide Web is the direct consequence of  all the hacking taking place globally but even though these hacks cost global business move than  £200bn last year, the Internet is non-the-less an indispensable  global resource which no country can function without. It is in this sense that ministers of the Obama administration are demanding answer with respect to the protection of the vital undersea Internet cables.  The Russian government recently spooked US officials by dispatching a submarine equipped to cut undersea cables along the East Coast of the United States. 

However the threat is much closer to home. A  teenage hacker crew has been casing John Brennan director of the CIA and other  government officials. A hacker with the alias "Cracka",  hacked into an email account belonging to the FBI Deputy Director Mark Giuliano  getting into a Comcast email that’s under Giuliano’s wife’s name.  They even provided several screenshots to prove they hacked the account but declined to reveal how they did it.