Sunday, 13 December 2015

Have You been Pwned? Has your email been hacked after Tesco, Ashley Madison, Sony data breaches?

This website tells you if your email has been leaked in ANY big website hack

This website tells you if your email has been leaked in ANY big website hack

2015 has been particularly bad in respect with cyber attacks. Such attacks have affected millions of users with their email addresses being leaked or stolen. While some of these emails may have been used for phishing the victim others could have been sold off on the dark web.
In recent years data breaches have been experienced by huge companies including Tesco, Adobe, Ashley Madison, VTech, Adult Friend Finder, Sony and Minecraft Pocket edition.
If you are worried your details might have leaked in high-profile website hacks such as TalkTalk and Adobe – where millions of addresses were leaked online? Or are you just curious whether your other half was using infidelity site Ashley Madison?
The site HaveIBeenPwned lets you enter your email address and see instantly if your details were leaked in ‘big’ hacks mentioned above.
If your email account is there, the screen will turn red and it will inform you that your email has been leaked as part of ‘dumps’ posted online by hackers – and if you’ve reused that password, you could be in trouble.
The website of the same name will help put minds at ease. It contains 66 ‘pwned’ websites which can be accessed here.
The latest data breach was at VTech involved the exposure of 4.8million accounts belonging to children, who had logged into the mini tablet.
If you discover you’ve been affected,it is advisable to change your password. It is also advisable to keep separate passwords for different services.
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Saturday, 12 December 2015

Next iPhone 7 could not only be armored, but float on water too

Your next iPhone could not only be armored, but float on water too

Does an armored iPhone sound like a great idea to you?

Apple has been able to pack a lot of technology in its latest iPhones, so that does not leave a lot of room for the company to put in more technology right? Looks like our claims will be put to rest thanks to the latest patent, which states that the next iPhone could have an armored body, which will have several benefits, which we will obviously get to later. A document has been published by the US Patent and Trademark Office that describes the iPhone being protected thanks to a very hard body, as well as prevent the mobile phone from submerging into water.
iphone-bumper-patent-01
In other words, not only is the next iPhone going to have a very strong body, but that particular body is apparently going to be less than the density of water, allowing it to stay afloat. According to the details of the document, the system will utilize the phone’s onboard sensors in order to determine when a free fall occurs. Before the iPhone is about the hit a very hard surface, surface dampeners present at each corner of the phone will prevent the gadget from suffering immense damage.
iphone-bumper-patent-02
The surface dampeners will also have an added benefit; they will be able to prevent the iPhone from receiving damage from the corner, which is the highest probability where the device receives majority of its damage from. The other very interesting thing about the smartphone is that its outer shell is apparently going to be lighter than the overall density of water, which will allow it to stay on the surface of water. This is going to be quite beneficial since it prevents the device from reaching its watery grave.
Since the patent has been filed right now, it is quite unlikely that this particular setup is going to be found in the next iPhone, but you never know, we could be immensely surprised.
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Top 9 hacking groups sponsored by governments

Top 9 hacking groups sponsored by governments

Read about the top 9 hacking groups who are sponsored by governments around the world

All the while we read about hacking groups like Impact Team, NullCrew, Anonymous, Lizard squad etc who conduct hacking operations on their own but we seldom get to hear about hacking groups who are sponsored by governments across the world. These state sponsored hacking groups are doubly dangerous as they have top notch resources and technologies at their disposal by virtue of being state sponsored.
Today we look at the top nine such state sponsored hacking groups who wreak havoc on the Internet :

1. Tailored Access Operations – Sponsor NSA, USA

Active since at least 1998, the Office of Tailored Access Operations is a cyber-warfare intelligence-gathering unit of the National Security Agency (NSA). A document leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden describing the unit’s work says TAO has software templates allowing it to break into commonly used hardware like routers and switches.
With 600 employees gathering information around the world, their motto is “Your data is our data, your equipment is our equipment – anytime, any place, by any legal means.”

2. Sofacy Group – APT28 – Pawn Storm – Sponsor Russia

Believed to have ties to the Russian Government and said to have been operational from 2007, the group is known to target government, military, and security organizations. Characterised as an advanced persistent threat, the group employs spear phishing attacks, using malware to gain control of systems via a command and control infrastructure.
The group is said to have had involvement in the TV5Monde cyber attack and the six-month long attack on the German parliament that began in December 2014.

3. Bureau 121 – Sponsor North Korea

Bureau 121 is a North Korean cyberwarfare agency, which is part of the General Bureau of Reconnaissance of North Korea’s military. According to American authorities, Bureau 121 was created in 1998, with the agency coming to public attention following the Sony hack.
Bureau 121 has been blamed for the cyber breach, but North Korea has rejected this accusation. It is thought that many of the agency’s activities are directed at South Korea and, Prior to the Sony hack, reports emerged that 30,000 PCs in South Korea had been attacked.

4. Unit 61398 / Comment Crew /Putter Panda – Sponsor China

Putter Panda is the name of bad actor responsible for a series of cyber espionage operations originating in Shanghai, with security experts linking its operation to the activity of the People’s Liberation Army 3rd General Staff Department 12th Bureau Unit 61486.
The group has been operating since at least 2007 and appears very interested in research companies in the space and satellite industry, experts at CrowdStrike have collected evidence of a numerous attacks against these industries.

5. Hidden Lynx – Sponsor China

Dubbed Hidden Lynx by Symantec, the professional hackers for hire were dubbed best of breed by Symantec following various targeted attacks or Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs). Given the breadth and number of targets and regions involved, we infer that this group is most likely a professional hacker-for-hire operation that are contracted by clients to provide information.
They steal on demand, whatever their clients are interested in, hence the wide variety and range of targets. The group are assumed to have extensive hacking expertise, up to 100 people in the group and enough time and effort to carry out attacks on a large and varied scale.

6. Tarh Andishan – Sponsor Iran

In 2009, Iran was left with a badly compromised and diminished computer infrastructure after the widely publicized Stuxnet worm attack. Iran responded by elevating its hacking capabilities from simple website defacement to full-blown cyber warfare. Thus, a state-sponsored hacker group dubbed “Tarh Andishan” (“Thinkers” or “Innovators” in Farsi) was born.
The group gained prominence with “Operation Cleaver,” a campaign that has been active since around 2012 and has targeted at least 50 organizations throughout the world in the military, commercial, educational, environmental, energy, and aerospace fields. Chillingly, they have also targeted major airlines and in some cases even gained “complete access” to airline gates and control systems, “potentially allowing them to spoof gate credentials.”
Cyber security firm Cylance, who has yet to reach a conclusion as to the group’s long-term goals, released an early report on Tarh Andishan (which represents only a fraction of the group’s activities) because of fears that Operation Cleaver already poses a “grave risk to the physical safety of the world.”

7. Dragonfly / Energetic Bear – Sponsor Eastern Europe

A group that Symantec calls “the Dragonfly gang” and other security firms have called “Energetic Bear” has been operating out of Eastern Europe and targeting mostly energy companies since around 2011. Before that, it was targeting airline and defense sectors, usually in the US and Canada. Symantec says that the hacker group “bears the hallmarks of a state-sponsored operation, displaying a high degree of technical capability.” It was first discovered by the Russian-based security firm Kaspersky Labs.Dragonfly uses remote access Trojans (RATs) such as their own Backdoor.
Oldrea and Trojan.Karagany malware tools to spy on energy industry targets, although the methods could also be used for industrial sabotage. The malware is usually attached to phishing e-mails, although the hackers have recently upgraded to “watering hole” methods of targeting: compromising sites that a target is known to frequent. The targets are then sent on a series of redirects until Oldrea or Karagany can be introduced into a victim’s system. In the later stages of their campaign, they even managed to infect legitimate software, which would be downloaded and installed as usual along with unwanted malware.

8. Ajax Security Team / Flying Kitten
Iran

Ajax started out in 2010 as a group of “hacktivists” and website defacers from Iran, but they went from activism to cyber espionage and outing of political dissidents. They deny being state sponsored, but many believe that they were hired by the Iranian government—an increasingly common pattern where a group gains the attention of a government through its public activities in order to gain state sponsorship.
Ajax came to the attention of security firms and groups like CrowdStrike when a series of mistakes (one of which gave investigators a member’s real e-mail address) exposed attempts to target the US defense industry and Iranian dissidents. The firm FireEye believes that Ajax was responsible for “Operation Saffron Rose”—a series of phishing attacks and attempts to spoof Microsoft Outlook Web Access and VPN pages in order to gain information and credentials within the US defense industry. The group also exposed dissidents by luring them in with corrupt anti-censorship tools.

9. Axiom

A coalition of security-related groups including Bit9, Microsoft, Symantec, ThreatConnect, Volexity, and others have identified another dangerous group, which they have dubbed “Axiom.” The group specializes in corporate espionage and targeting of political dissidents, and it may have been behind the 2010 attack on Google. Axiom is believed to come out of China, but no one has yet been able to identify where in mainland China the group operates.
A report from the coalition stated that Axiom’s activities overlapped with “the area of responsibility” attributed to the Chinese government’s intelligence agencies, a judgment also supported by an FBI flash released to Infragard.
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Friday, 11 December 2015

Who’ll Be The Winner: Human Intelligence Vs. Artificial Intelligence

human intelligence artificial intelligence

Short Bytes: The emergence of highly advanced technologies allowing generic  selection and fabrication of complex traits, including the selection of logical reasoning abilities, suggests that Human Intelligence will co -evolve with Artificial Intelligence.
While the belief in the abundance of availability and ease of fabrication of ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) is  rather exaggerated, there is yet a streak of hope as there will expectedly be a speedy evolution of HUMAN INTELLIGENCE (HI) as well. On one hand, while it is estimated that by the year 2050, AI would gain human ability and super-human ability by 2080, other facts like the cost to sequence a human genome $1,000 and the existence of highly advanced technologies allowing generic  selection and fabrication of complex traits. This includes the selection of logical reasoning ability, which leaves us in anticipation of the colossal potential of human ability.

Although by 2015, cognitive engineering is expected to produce individuals with an IQ of over 1,000, this only enlightens the fact that future smarter people and smarter machines shall be interwoven in a complex cycle of mutual interdependence.
History has been the witness of a handful of such geniuses with extraordinary cognitive abilities like Alan Turing- who broke the German Enigma Code and conceptualized the notion of “ mechanized thoughts”. The other exceptional example being Von Neumann, who laid practical realization of  first electronics, computers through his revolutionary von Neumann Architecture
alan turing
While some fear that with the advancement in AI in the future, the ordinary human may lose the ability to comprehend advancement in technologies,  there lies a counter theory to this being that ordinary human beings of future will accept MI without deep understanding of it just like we use high technology smart-phones now without any prior knowledge about its knowledge or architecture.
von neumann
History stands as the witness of how great scientists back in 20th Century feared about the ignorance of the future generation about Quantum Theory in Physics. While in Today’s world a good fraction of people  not only has successfully understood the theorems, but also found brilliant applications of the same.
With advancements in technologies, human minds shall be uploaded with AI to create the beginning of “ shared thoughts “ – which shall lead to the dawn of new horizon of AI.


source:fossybyte.com

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WhatsSpy Public : WhatsApp status tool lets stalkers track you bypassing privacy settings

WhatsSpy Public : WhatsApp status tool lets stalkers track you bypassing privacy settings

“WhatsSpy Public” a tool for spying on WhatsApp users bypassing security settings

Social media is growing at a fast pace nowadays but with growing socialization the safety measures and privacy option should also be developed so that one’s information cannot be leaked at any endpoints. Social apps such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Hike, Instagram etc. are used by several people without knowing that how safe they really are or if their messages or personal information are not leaked.
The smartphone stand alone instant messaging App, WhatsApp is once again in the news due to a certain tool which can break its security features.  WhatsSpy Public tool which was recently released can give you status updates of any WhatsApp user, even if privacy options have been enabled.
WhatsSpy Public uses the web-based utility to trace the moments of a WhatsApp user and shows them in a dashboard with events being displayed in a timeline. The tool can be used to compare activities from one user to those of another for a more comfortable experience.
WhatsSpy Public : WhatsApp status tool lets stalkers track you bypassing privacy settings
WhatsSpy Public has been created by Maikel Zweerink, who started working on it as a hobby. While working on it he found that some of the events sent out by the messaging app could be intercepted by anyone, and the list includes the current status (online/offline, despite setting privacy options to “nobody”) of a user, change of profile pictures, modification of privacy settings and of status messages.
Also the data collected in the dashboard offers good insight into the time frame a user is available on WhatsApp, with logs showing the exact moment when the user starts to use the service and when he/she disconnects from it.
WhatsSpy Public can record the profile picture and privacy settings for the status messages when turning it on.
Zweerink says he released the tool on GitLab as a proof-of-concept to demonstrate the weakness in WhatsApp in terms of privacy. Zweerink said that “his only motive behind this project was to realise how broken the privacy options actually are. It just started out as experimenting with WhatsApp to build a Bot, but I was stunned when I realised someone could abuse this ‘online’ feature of WhatsApp to track anyone.” He further added that the privacy in the messaging app was broken by design and there was no hack or exploit leveraged.
The developer has provided complete instructions for installing WhatsSpy Public. For this you had to have a secondary WhatsApp account, a rooted/jailbroken mobile phone or PHP knowledge, a server that can run 24/7 (Raspberry Pi is recommended as a cheap alternative), Nginx or Apache with PHP and PostgreSQL.

Recently, 17-year-old Indrajeet Bhuyan, 17-year-old boy discovered that images that were shared from the mobile device and then deleted were still visible in the online version of the service. Bhuyan also found that a profile picture set to be available only to contacts can be accessed by individuals outside this contact list.

Privacy issues have been circling around WhatsApp for a long time now. If the privacy features of WhatsApp are not improved by Facebook, WhatsApp may face a SnapChat like leak in the near future.
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Wednesday, 2 December 2015

Top ten operating systems for ethical hackers and security researchers



A comprehensive list of most popular operating systems among hackers all around the world.

Back in August, we had posted a list of top ten hacker tools. Now we have advanced it one step further to bring you the best operating systems for hackers.

This time it is about operating systems, which have almost every necessary tool provided within. But before we dive deep, it would be great to know why a machine with a hacking oriented OS installed in it is way better than a machine running a casual OS with some platform based hacking tools. It is because a dedicated machine has benefits of hardware utilisation, anonymity (it is a major issue of interest ), and software efficiency.
Here is the list of top ten. Note that these are based on Linux kernel hence are free and open source:

1- Kali Linux:

Kali Linux is an advanced penetration testing tool that should be a part of every security professional’s toolbox. Penetration testing involves using a variety of tools and techniques to test the limits of security policies and procedures. What Kali has done is collect just about everything you’ll need in a single CD. It includes more than 300 different tools, all of which are open source and available on GitHub.You can get it
here.

2-BackBox:

Backbox is a linux distribution based on Ubuntu. It has been developed to perform penetration tests and security assessments. BackBox is a lightweight OS and requires less hardware capacity. The power of this distribution is given by its Launchpad repository core constantly updated to the last stable version of the most known and used ethical hacking tools. The integration and development of new tools inside the distribution follows the commencement of open source community and particularly the Debian Free Software Guidelines criteria.

3-Parrot Security OS:

Parrot Security is an operating system based on Debian GNU/Linux mixed with Frozenbox OS and Kali linux in order to provide the best penetration and security testing experience. it is an operating system for IT security and penetration testing developed by the Frozenbox Dev Team. It is a GNU/Linux distribution based on Debian and mixed with Kali.
Parrot uses Kali repositories in order to take latest updates for almost all the tools, but it also has its own dedicated repository where all the custom packets are kept. This is why this distro is not just a simple Kali “mod” but entire new concept which relies on Kali’s tool repositories. As such, it introduces a lot of new features and different developing choices.Parrot uses MATE as a Desktop Environment. Lightweight and powerful interface is derived from famous Gnome 2, and thanks to FrozenBox highly customizable with captivating icons, ad-hoc themes and wallpapers. System look is proposed and designed by the community members and also members of Frozenbox Network, who are closely following the development of this project.
Click here to download.

4-DEFT:

Deft is Ubuntu customization with a collection of computer forensic programs and documents created by thousands of individuals, teams and companies. Each of these works might come under a different licence. There Licence Policy describe the process that we follow in determining which software we will ship and by default on the deft install CD.
It can be downloaded here.

5-Samurai Web Security Framework:

The Samurai Web Testing Framework is a live linux environment that has been pre-configured to function as a web pen-testing environment. The CD contains the best of the open source and free tools that focus on testing and attacking websites. In developing this environment, we have based our tool selection on the tools we use in our security practice. We have included the tools used in all four steps of a web pen-test.
You can simply click here to download.

6-Network Security Toolkit:

Network Security Toolkit (NST) is a bootable live CD based on Fedora Core. The toolkit was designed to provide easy access to best-of-breed open source network security applications and should run on most x86 platforms. The main intent of developing this toolkit was to provide the network security administrator with a comprehensive set of open source network security tools.
What we find rather fascinating with NST is that we can transform most x86 systems (Pentium II and above) into a system designed for network traffic analysis, intrusion detection, network packet generation, wireless network monitoring, a virtual system service server, or a sophisticated network/host scanner.
NST can be downloaded here.

7-NodeZero:

It is said the necessity is the mother of all invention, and NodeZero Linux is no different. There team is built of testers and developers, who have come to the census that live systems do not offer what they need in their security audits. Penetration Testing distributions tend to have historically utilized the “Live” system concept of linux, which really means that they try not to make any permanent effects to a system. Ergo all changes are gone after reboot, and run from media such as discs and USB’s drives. However all that this maybe very handy for occasional testing, its usefulness can be depleted when your testing regularly. Its there believe that “Live System’s” just don’t scale well in a robust testing environment.
All though NodeZero Linux can be used as a “Live System” for occasional testing, its real strength comes from the understanding that a tester requires a strong and efficient system. This is achieved in our belief by working at a distribution that is a permanent installation, that benefits from a strong selection of tools, integrated with a stable linux environment.
Download here.

8-GnackTrack:

GnackTrack is an open and free project to merge penetration testing tools and the linux Gnome desktop. GnackTrack is a Live (and installable) Linux distribution designed for Penetration Testing and is based on Ubuntu.
Backtrack is not only a single player in the field of ethical hacking, so you can try some other distribution as well, if you are Gnome lover than must try this, however backtrack 5 is also available on Gnome platform. Just like backtrack, Gnacktrack comes with multiple tools that are really helpful to do a effective penetration testing, it has Metasploit, armitage, wa3f and others wonderful tools.
Download here.

9-Blackubuntu:

Top ten operating systems for ethical hackers and security researchers
Blackbuntu is distribution for penetration testing which was specially designed for security training students and practitioners of information security. Blackbuntu is penetration testing distribution with GNOME Desktop Environment. It’s currently being built using the Ubuntu 10.10 and work on reference BackTrack.
Download here.

10- Backtrack

The other well known linux based Operating system is backtrack that is being used from few pwevious years and best known as the OS for network cracking and pentesting. And its also the one of the best OS that can perform various network hacks with privacy. Download here.

Bugtraq:

Bugtraq isnt a operating system but  an electronic mailing list dedicated to issues about computer security. On-topic issues are new discussions about vulnerabilities, vendor security-related announcements, methods of exploitation, and how to fix them. It is a high-volume mailing list, and almost all new vulnerabilities are discussed there.
Bugtraq team is experienced freaks and developers, It is available in Debian, Ubuntu and OpenSuSe in 32 and 64 bit architectures.
sourece:techworm.com
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5 frightening hacking targets that everyone should be scared of

5 frightening hacking that all of us should be scared of

5 frightening hacking targets which include planes, guns, automobiles, Nuclear power plants and everyday devices

With nearly 5 billion non-communication devices connected to the internet worldwide ranging from watches to CT-scanners to airplanes, providing government, cyber criminals and cyber terrorists can cause confusion and damage in our everyday life.
Let’s have a look at the 5 most dangerous things that can be hacked today.

Every household electronic device

Gartner, the world’s leading information technology research and advisory company, who have provided the above 5 billion figure says that over 2,800 million consumer devices -and more than 300 million cars are already online. The figure is expected to hit 25 billion by 2020 due to the number of objects connected to the Internet of Things (IoT), which is not an unbelievable figure given that many of the household appliances these days are coming with online functions.
5 frightening hacking targets which include planes, guns, automobiles, Nuclear power plants and everyday devices
Ted Harrington, who is organizing an IoT “theme park” at DefCon, which is a leading hacker conference in August, told tech site Informationweek “One of the things we’re constantly seeing is functionality absolutely being considered first, and security implications not being considered at all,”
While giving control of the baby monitors, fridges, garage doors, and security cameras to hackers at DefCon, it would be interesting to see the hacking unfold with the dangers of it likely to be more delicate and extensive.
Earlier this year, Ken Westin, an analyst for security company TripWire, told Wired “As we interact with our devices there’s this trail of digital exhaust that we leave behind. Once you combine this data and create very rich profiles of people.”
Two sources are believed to bring dangers according to Westin and other experts. Firstly, criminals who can hack objects to get to know target behavior, steal information, and carry out financial crimes; and secondly governments, who have a new set of devices to keep an eye on people.
Over 70 percent of IoT devices have vulnerabilities that can be abused by hackers, a percentage that is disturbing according to the study conducted by HP last year.

Cars

1.4 million Jeeps were recalled by Chrysler last week after two notorious hackers hijacked a moving car from a laptop hundreds of miles away and demonstrated the same to the media.
Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek told the petrified Wired journalist whose car they had hacked and sped up and slowed down until he begged them to stop that “If consumers don’t realize this is an issue, they should, and they should start complaining to carmakers. This might be the kind of software bug most likely to kill someone.”
5 frightening hacking targets which include planes, guns, automobiles, Nuclear power plants and everyday devices
Back in 2011, Miller and Valasek had their first successful car hacks; however, their own 2013 demonstration that needed them to sit in the carjacked vehicle found no truck with automotive giants, who told them the hack was almost the same except that the brake lines were cut manually.
Looking for more susceptibilities, the two enraged Americans have now humiliated Chrysler into providing a USB stick with a fix to their customers – an offer that would probably be taken up by only a small percentage of Chrysler car owners, while the rest would hope that they do not become the targets.
And the danger is not limited to one brand.
Josh Corman from IoT security company I Am the Cavalry, said to Wired “I don’t think there are qualitative differences in security between vehicles today. The Europeans are a little bit ahead. The Japanese are a little bit behind. But broadly writ, this is something everyone’s still getting their hands around.”
Getting in the grove, of late the Congress had come up with a new bill last week that will call on regulators to introduce more strict car security standards along with a ranking system that would set manufacturers against each other.
With the autonomous car revolution around the corner, of course, the potential danger will only multiply.

Weapons

According to a report in German newspapers, a group of digital perpetrators took control of the Patriot missile system standing on Turkey’s border. However, later the Germans officials rejected the claims, saying it was “extremely unlikely” their missile systems could be vulnerable.
5 frightening hacking targets which include planes, guns, automobiles, Nuclear power plants and everyday devices
In an interview with RT, reasoned UK-based hacker Robert Jonathan Schifreen says systems are not linked to public networks, they require special codes to fire the missile, which only a certain number of people have, and you generally need the code from two or three people to fire it, or to do anything that is of significance. I don’t think it’s actually happened, which is not to say that some of these systems are not hackable in some way.”
The ability to hack enemy military equipment could cause damage worth billions has made all the leading military powers follow them.
Earlier this year, Defense Undersecretary Frank Kendall said “It’s about the security of our weapons systems themselves and everything that touches them. It’s a pervasive problem and I think we have to pay a lot more attention to it,” after the Pentagon insisted on providing $5.5 billion dollars for cybersecurity in the next year’s budget.
The vulnerability to outside interference is more in the case of advanced equipment. Richard Stiennon, chief research analyst at IT-Harvest, last month told FCW, a US state tech procurement website, that the troubled F-35 joint strike fighter costing over $100 million per unit, has 9 million lines of code in its software, and 17 million more in all the software suites written to support its basic function. According to Stiennon, it would cost “hundreds of billions of dollars” to completely destroy the susceptibilities in all military code in all the weapons systems used by the U.S.
“If we ever go to war with a sophisticated adversary, or have a battle, they could pull out their cyber weapons and make us look pretty foolish,” said Steinnon, who believes that the problem has resulted due to the inability to predict the action in future and a reliance on supposedly proprietary tech on the part of the Pentagon.
“Many of the things that are in the field today were not developed and fielded with cybersecurity in mind. So the threat has sort of evolved over the time that they’ve been out there,” admitted Kendall.

Planes

Earlier this year, a tweet sent by Chris Roberts, a security researcher from a United Airlines flight departing from Denver to Chicago marked a event in the wider awareness that planes could be hacked. He simply plugged into the electric box underneath a standard plane seat with just a laptop and an Ethernet cable. He told the FBI he was able to figure a way from the in-flight entertainment system to the important commands that influence the plane. Roberts also said he was able to operate one of the engines, and convincingly change direction of an actual flying passenger plane off-course.
5 frightening hacking targets which include planes, guns, automobiles, Nuclear power plants and everyday devices
The vulnerabilities that were brought out were all too real. As far as 2008, the FAA had warned Boeing of susceptibility in its Dreamliner design; however, it still does not look like to have been completely resolved.
“A virus or malware planted in websites visited by passengers could provide an opportunity for a malicious attacker to access the IP-connected onboard information system through their infected machines,” said a US Government Accountability Office report from April.
This is one target that will surely be tested by terrorists in the future, which is even before the ever increasing number of drones is considered – a hard-to-calculate batch of new risks, some of which have already been abused by hackers.

Nuclear power facilities

Infrastructure infiltrations like weapons hacks are meant not only for criminals or terrorists but also for organizations with million-dollar budgets, headquartered in Maryland, Tel Aviv and Beijing. Also, infrastructure hacks do not require an immediate war to be employed, which is the case in weapons hacks.
Though it is difficult to think that the U.S. and China would go to war, but asymmetrical disagreement between world superpowers and “rogue states” remain probable. For example, Stuxnet, supposed to be a US-Israeli piece of malware was utilized to destroy nuclear centrifuges in Iran. However, it was later found out in North Korea although with little success. Surprisingly, not many similar operations are ongoing nor this technology has been surpassed ever since. As recent as last year, South Korea charged its northern neighbor, Pyongyang of hacking into its nuclear plants, which was clearly denied by them.
5 frightening hacking targets which include planes, guns, automobiles, Nuclear power plants and everyday devices
And technology that initially cost governments massive funds to develop often does eventually become available to less responsible groups, at a fraction of the cost.
Speaking to the Jerusalem Post in April, Gabi Siboni, Director of the Cyber Security Program at the Institute for National Security Studies said “The disruption and possible infiltration of critical infrastructure is the most severe form of cyber-attack. Such attacks on airplanes or air traffic control towers, for instance, means that hackers could cause accidents, or even paralyze entire flight systems. As of now, this area of capabilities is the exclusive domain of developed states,”
“I strongly believe, however, that the next 9/11 will happen without suicide bombers aboard the plane with box-cutters, but will occur because of a cyber-incident perpetrated by a terror organization.”
Even though there has not yet been a terrorist Chernobyl, according to a survey published by the Organization of American States taken from 35 states shows that more than fifty percent of the security chiefs of critical infrastructure objects, such as dams, power plants, airports, said that there had been “attempts to manipulate” their equipment from the outside.
Tom Kellermann, Chief Cyber Security Officer for Trend Micro Inc., who compiled the report said “This is going to be the year we suffer a catastrophe in the hemisphere, and when you will see kinetic response to a threat actor.”
Source: RT.com
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Meet Hack Rod, the world’s first car designed by Artificial Intelligence (AI)



Meet Hack Rod, the world's first car designed by Artificial Intelligence (AI)

This is Hack Rod, the first car designed by AI and first vehicle with a nervous system

A company called Primordial Research Project is developing a car which is fully built by artificial intelligence. What’s more, the car is called Hack Rod, could well be the first vehicle with a nervous system.
Hack Rod is a collaboration between Primordial Research Project, design software giant Autodesk and media company Bandito Brothers.
The key persons behind Hack Road are Autodesk research fellow Mickey McManus and Bandito Brothers CEO and creative director Mouse McCoy. The idea of building Hack Road came to McCoy. Two years ago, McCoy told Fast Company, he decided to figure out the future of making things. “I knocked on the door of Autodesk,” he recalled, and ended up meeting McManus, who soon became inspired to see how his interest in digital fabrication and machine learning could be applied to the trillion-dollar auto industry.
Hack Road uses new hardware approach like like 3-D printing. His idea was to leverage machine learning. After all, the Internet of Things, “all these trillions of computers, are bored. They’ve got sensors….they’re starting to form their own opinions. [And] what’s in self-driving cars today are in your shoes tomorrow. That’s Moore’s Law,” explained McManus.
Autodesk had new tools built around the idea of reality capture—harnessing data points through photography, laser scanning, and other methods, that could then be plugged into computer systems and used to build 3-D models. McCoy saw that the Autodesk’s reality capture can be used to build a complete car.
Fast Company notes that the team developed a prototype vehicle chassis, complete with hundreds of sensors, and took it out to California’s desolate Mojave Desert. They came up with  a car resembling Shelby Cobra and powered by a Ducati engine. McCoy said that the goal was to get the same power-to-weight ratio as a Ferrari, despite it weighing just 1,000 pounds.
This is Hack Rod, the first car designed by AI and first vehicle with a nervous system
The driver of the car was hooked up with an EEG and other sensors to collect all sort of data that could put a Formula 1 driver to shame. They feeded all the data from this automotive nervous system and plugged it into Autodesk’s Dreamcatcher, a generative design software system that takes input of design objectives—including types of materials, functional goals, methods of manufacturing, performance criteria, and even cost limits—and spits out numerous design alternatives to satisfy all those requirements.

The Hack Road will be unveiled this week at Autodesk University—the company’s annual training and developers conference in Las Vegas. Still, Autodesk CEO Carl Bass will highlight the Hack Rod’s progress during his AU keynote, and the team will soon return to the Mojave to continue its work.

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