Tag Archive for: creates

America’s original hacking supergroup creates a free framework to improve app security


Cult of the Dead Cow (cDc), a hacking group known for its activist endeavors, has built an open source tool for developers to build secure apps. Veilid, launched at DEF CON on Friday, includes options like letting users opt out of data collection and online tracking as a part of the group’s mission to fight against the commercialization of the internet.

“We feel that at some point, the internet became less of a landscape of knowledge and idea sharing, and more of a monetized corporate machine,” cDc leader Katelyn “medus4” Bowden said. “Our idea of what the internet should be looks more like the open landscape it once was, before our data became a commodity.”

Similar to other privacy products like Tor, cDc said there’s no profit motive behind the product, which was created “to promote ideals without the compromise of capitalism.” The group emphasized the focus on building for good, not profit, by throwing slight shade at a competing conference for industry professionals, Black Hat, held in Las Vegas at the same time as DEF CON. “If you wanted to go make a bunch of money, you’d be over at Black Hat right now,” Bowden said to the audience of hackers.

The design standards behind Veilid are “like Tor and IPFS had sex and produced this thing,” cDc hacker Christien “DilDog” Rioux said at DEF CON. Tor is the privacy-focused web browser best known for its connections to the “dark web,” or unlisted websites. Run as a non-profit, the developers behind Tor run a system that routes web traffic through various “tunnels” to obscure who you are and what you’re browsing on the web. IPFS, or the InterPlanetary File System, is an open-source set of protocols behind the internet, mainly used for file sharing or publishing data on a decentralized network.

The bigger Veilid gets, the more secure it will be as well, according to Rioux. The strength doesn’t come from the number of apps made on the framework, but by how many people use the apps to further the routing of nodes that make up the network. “The network gains strength by a single popular app,” Rioux said. “The big Veilid network is supported by the entire ecosystem not just your app.” In the…

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US military creates space unit in SKorea amid NKorea threats


SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The U.S. military formally launched a space force unit in South Korea on Wednesday, a move that will likely enable Washington to better monitor its rivals North Korea, China and Russia.

The activation of the U.S. Space Forces Korea at Osan Air Base near Seoul came after North Korea test-fired a barrage of nuclear-capable ballistic missiles designed to strike the U.S. mainland and its allies South Korea and Japan in recent months.

“Just 48 miles north of us exists an existential threat; a threat that we must be prepared to deter, defend against, and – if required – defeat,” Lt. Col. Joshua McCullion, chief of the new space unit, said during the activation ceremony at Osan. He apparently refered to North Korea, whose heavily fortified border with South Korea is just an hour’s drive from Seoul, the South’s capital.

The unit belongs to the U.S. Space Force, which was launched in December 2019 under then-President Donald Trump as the first new U.S. military service in more than 70 years.

The Space Force was seen soberly as an affirmation of the need to more effectively organize for the defense of U.S. interests in space — especially satellites used for civilian and military navigation, intelligence and communication. A previous Pentagon report said China and Russia had embarked on major efforts to develop technologies that could allow them to disrupt or destroy American and allied satellites in a crisis or conflict.

The U.S. Space Forces Korea is a subordinate of a bigger U.S. Space Force unit established within the Indo-Pacific command in Hawaii last month.

Jung Chang Wook, head of the Korea Defense Study Forum think tank in Seoul, said the U.S. Space Force was created to bring together diverse surveillance assets including space-based satellites in one organization to manage and develop them in an effective, systemic manner. He said its unit in South Korea would work like a field unit while the other one in the Indo-Pacific Command would be its headquarters.

“The U.S. Space Forces Korea would maintain, operate and asses related equipment. Simply speaking, I…

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Rutgers Professor Creates App to Secure Virtual Assistants from Hacking


WearID compares the vibration and audible patterns of speech to authenticate users

Before virtual assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant became ubiquitous household technology, thieves needed to gain physical access into a home to inflict harm. Now all they need is their voice.

Artificial intelligence-powered voice assistants have a not-so-secret vulnerability: They can be hacked with audible cues, ambient noise or even ultrasound, leaving sensitive personal information such as credit card numbers and passwords open to theft. Yingying Chen, a Rutgers professor of electrical and computer engineering, created an application called WearID to address these exploits.

“We’re a long way away from The Shining, when it took brute force to hurt someone,” Chen said. “In the digital age you can dissect people’s lives and access their most important information simply by speaking from behind a closed door.”  

Since 2020, Chen and her colleagues Yan Wang at Temple University and Nitesh Saxena at Texas A&M University have been developing a user-authentication framework that captures human voice patterns in the vibration domain and uses them as an identity token to verify spoken commands given to a virtual assistant.

The solution, WearID, works like this: When someone issues a command to a voice assistant, the WearID app, which is installed on the user’s smartphone or wearable device, uses the device’s accelerometer to capture the vibration characteristics of the person speaking and compare them with the audio captured by the voice assistant’s microphone.

If a legitimate user has given the command, the spectral pattern between the vibration and audio domains will be similar. If the pattern doesn’t match, the voice assistant will ignore the prompt.

Chen is working with Rutgers to patent the technology and with Silicon Valley industry leaders to help bring WearID to market. She hopes to have the app available for download sometime next year.

“Because this is a software solution that requires no backend hardware, it should be straightforward to deploy,” she said.

“As internet-connected devices rise in popularity and voice prompts…

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Startup Creates Simulator for Info-Warfare Ops


JUST IN: Startup Creates Simulator for Info-Warfare Ops

iStock image.

LONDON — A U.K. startup has introduced computer-based training software that simulates the information environment warfighters encounter during conflict.

 

London-based Conducttr recently released its Pulse training system that allows intelligence officers to participate in military exercises where they monitor local populations’ attitudes through social media and other platforms. 

 

The internet-based simulation exercises influence operations, also known as psychological operations, hybrid warfare, countering disinformation and counterterrorism, said Robert Pratten, CEO and founder of the company.

 

“People that work in intelligence, media operations, psy-ops, they don’t have an exercise environment. Now they do,” Pratten said April 27 on the sidelines of the IT2EC conference in London. 

 

Participants can log onto popular social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook to look for simulated disinformation campaigns created by enemy operators. They can look for bots, inauthentic accounts and signs of “information laundering,” where operators push misinformation or bad news and cover their tracks by making look like it came from legitimate media sources.

 

“We can also simulate a cyber attack where we take your whole website down. What do you do now?” He said.

 

So called gray zone warfare — where nations operate below the threshold of armed conflict to create instability within rival nations — has been a hallmark of 21st century rivalries. Nations such as Russia have employed such tactics as disinformation operations with great success.

 

“If you have been following what’s happening in Ukraine, [President Volodymyr] Zelinsky has proven what it means to be a good communicator … This is the only platform able to simulate that situation,” Pratten said.

 

“People want to emulate what works and you can take those lessons and apply them in another conflict,” he added. 

 

The new product…

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