- NSA building a ‘quantum computer’ capable of breaking all forms of encryption
- ACLU follows through on vow to appeal decision to dismiss NSA suit
- Facebook sued for alleged monitoring of users’ private messages
- ‘Dead’ banker who embezzled tens of millions arrested for fraud in Georgia
- Syrian Electronic Army hacks Skype
|
Posted: 02 Jan 2014 06:52 PM PST
 The National Security Agency is reportedly building a ‘quantum computer’ capable of breaking encryption used to protect the most vital records around the world.The US spy agency is seeking an advanced-speed, “cryptologically useful quantum computer” that can bypass encryption that currently shields global banking, business, medical and government records. The quantum computer is part of a $79.7 million research project called “Penetrating Hard Targets,” according to documents supplied by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and reported by The Washington Post. Much of the program is hosted in a College Park, Maryland laboratory under classified contracts. Past Snowden-fueled revelations have shown the NSA has worked to deliberately weaken common encryption standards. Yet the NSA’s own technology capable of shattering all forms of public key encryption – including that which protects state secrets – is no closer to success than any other attempts in the scientific community, according to the leaked documents. “The application of quantum technologies to encryption algorithms threatens to dramatically impact the US government’s ability to both protect its communications and eavesdrop on the communications of foreign governments,” according to one Snowden-leaked document. The NSA appears to consider its efforts running at the same pace as competitors sponsored by the European Union and the Swiss government, with incremental progress yet little hope of much of a breakthrough. “The geographic scope has narrowed from a global effort to a discrete focus on the European Union and Switzerland,” one NSA document says. The NSA did not respond to The Washington Post’s request for comment. The documents indicate that the NSA runs some of the research in large, protected rooms designed to shield electromagnetic energy from entering or leaving and “to keep delicate quantum computing experiments running,” as one description goes. The basic principle in quantum computing is “quantum superposition,” or the idea that an object simultaneously exists in all states. A classic computer uses binary bits, or zeroes and ones. A quantum computer uses quantum bits, or qubits, that are simultaneously zero and one. While a classic computer must do one calculation at a time, a quantum computer can achieve a correct answer much faster and efficiently through parallel processing, with no need to run those calculations. A difficulty in quantum computing is that the particles that make up such computers must be carefully isolated from external environments. “Quantum computers are extremely delicate, so if you don’t protect them from their environment, then the computation will be useless,” said Daniel Lidar, a professor of electrical engineering and the director of the Center for Quantum Information Science and Technology at the University of Southern California. A quantum computer would break the strongest encryption tools, including RSA, which scrambles communications enough to render them unreadable to anyone outside of the intended recipient, without using a shared password. RSA security is based on the extreme difficulty in finding two large prime numbers. In 2009, classical methods took almost two years and hundreds of computers to discover primes in a 768-bit number. Breaking the 1,024-bit encryption, standard for online transactions, would take 1,000 times longer, scientists estimated. Quantum computers could home in on 1024-bit encryption much faster. And though such capabilities have a variety of uses, including the development of artificial intelligence, the NSA claims to fear the national security implications of not attaining the technology first. A decade ago, experts estimated a large quantum computer was 10 to 100 years away. Five years ago, Seth Lloyd, professor of quantum mechanical engineering at MIT, said such a computer was 10 years away. “I don’t think we’re likely to have the type of quantum computer the NSA wants within at least five years, in the absence of a significant breakthrough maybe much longer,” Lloyd recently told the Post. Some companies claim to have already built small quantum computers. D-Wave Systems says it has produced them since 2009. The company sold a US$10 million version to Google, NASA and the Universities Space Research Association, according to reports. Though this technology is still far from cracking, for example, RSA encryption. Experts say a top difficulty in building a quantum computer is achieving an adequate number of qubits, which is tough given the computers’ fragile state. The NSA expected to have basic architecture in place by September, or as it was described in the leaked documents, a “dynamical decoupling and complete quantum control on two semiconductor qubits.” “That’s a great step, but it’s a pretty small step on the road to building a large-scale quantum computer,” Lloyd said. This step “will enable initial scaling towards large systems in related and follow-on efforts,” according to the National Intelligence Program’s “black budget” details on the “Penetrating Hard Targets” project. Another program on the NIP budget is known as “Owning the Net,” which uses quantum research to target encryptions like RSA, the leaks show. “The irony of quantum computing is that if you can imagine someone building a quantum computer that can break encryption a few decades into the future, then you need to be worried right now,” Lidar told The Washington Post.       |
|
Posted: 02 Jan 2014 04:06 PM PST
 The American Civil Liberties Union has filed an appeal against the US National Security Agency’s indiscriminate collection of telephone metadata after the group’s suit seeking to halt the policy was dismissed last week. The ACLU first filed suit against Director of National Intelligence James Clapper in June 2013, just after the Edward Snowden’s disclosure about the classified NSA program that regularly compels phone companies to provide the government with millions of phone records. The civil liberties advocacy group argued that the program violated Americans’ First and Fourth Amendment rights. US District Judge William Pauley disagreed, dismissing the case on December 27 and declaring that the NSA program is subject to harsh oversight and is needed to effectively fight terrorism. “There is no evidence that the government has used any of the bulk telephony metadata it collected for any purpose other than investigating and disrupting terrorist attacks,” he wrote. “While there have been unintentional violation of guidelines, those appear to stem from human error and the incredibly complex computer programs that support this vital tool.” The ACLU vowed immediately that is would press on and on Thursday filed an appeal again challenging the collection program, which does not monitor individual conversations but tracks numbers dialed, as well as the time and duration of the calls. Jameel Jaffer, ACLU deputy legal director, said he expects the Second Circuit Court of appeals to hear oral arguments on the case in the springtime. “The government has a legitimate interest in tracking the associations of suspected terrorists, but tracking those associations does not require the government to subject every citizen to permanent surveillance,” Jaffer said in a press release. “Further, as the President’s own review panel recently observed, there’s no evidence that this dragnet program was essential to preventing any terrorist attack. We categorically reject the notion that the threat of terrorism requires citizens of democratic countries to surrender the freedoms that make democracies worth defending.” Just how the appeals court will rule is impossible to predict. Judges, as well as lawmakers, are split regarding the legality of the NSA programs. US District Judge Richard Leon ruled in December that the NSA’s collection of phone metadata was likely unconstitutional, issuing preliminary injunctions to stop the metadata collection. “The question I will ultimately have to answer when I reach the merits of this case someday is whether people have a reasonable expectation of privacy that is violated when the government, without any bias whatsoever to suspect them of wrongdoing, collects and stores for five years their telephony metadata for purposes of subjecting it to high-tech querying and analysis without any case-by-case judicial approval,” Leon wrote in what was an encouraging sign for privacy advocates. Also in agreement was the panel appointed by US President Obama to review the NSA’s surveillance policies. The review group issued its recommendations early last month, advising Obama and the NSA to discontinue the phone metadata collection. Among other suggestions, the panel said it would ban such surveillance tactics and delete the large cache of phone and internet data the NSA currently has stored. Source    |
|
Posted: 02 Jan 2014 04:03 PM PST
 Social media giant Facebook is being sued for the alleged monitoring of its users’ private messages in order to gather more consumer data that it in turn shares with marketers.A federal lawsuit filed Thursday in San Jose, California alleges that Facebook traces the contents of users’ private messages, including links to other websites, “to improve its marketing algorithms and increase its ability to profit from data about Facebook users,” The Los Angeles Times reported. A link to another site is read as a “like” of that website. The information contributes to a comprehensive profile on the user’s activity that is collected by Facebook and that eventually becomes material for targeted advertising, the lawsuit claims. Two plaintiffs are seeking a class action suit on behalf of all Facebook users who have sent or received a private message in the past two years that contained links. The allegations are “without merit,” said Facebook spokeswoman Jackie Rooney. “We will defend ourselves vigorously,” she told the LA Times in an emailed statement. Hackers News was first to surface Facebook’s supposed practice of scanning private messages and converting links to “likes” in 2012. Two weeks ago, a new study showed that Facebook records everything users type on the social networking site, including notes they choose to delete instead of posting. Adam Kramer, a data scientist employed by the social network, studied the profiles of 3.9 million people for the study, dubbed “Self-Censorship on Facebook.” Kramer viewed activity on each profile by monitoring its HTML form element, which is made up of HTML code that changes whenever a user types in their Facebook chat, status update, or other areas where they speak to others. While Facebook claims it does not track the words that are written in each box, the company is able to determine when characters are typed, how many words are typed, and whether they are posted or deleted. Kramer, with help from student Sauvik Das, spent 17 days tracking “aborted status updates, posts on other people’s timelines, and comments on other posts.” The social network site does offer opt-outs for certain advertising features, such as whether a user’s consumer brand likes are shared with others and, perhaps tellingly, the ability to opt out of any future decision to allow third-party sites to use a user’s name or picture in advertisements. Facebook – which is again expected to pay no federal taxes this year – is not alone among major tech companies facing lawsuits that claim privacy violations. Google has been sued in federal court, accused of illegally accessing the contents of email sent through its Gmail service, a violation of US wiretapping law. Also earlier this month, documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed that the National Security Agency has quietly subverted the tools used by online advertising companies in order to track surveillance targets and improve its monitoring ability. Source    |
|
Posted: 02 Jan 2014 04:03 PM PST
 A banker wanted by the FBI for a $21 million fraud case was arrested Tuesday in Georgia after being stopped for a minor traffic violation. The man disappeared a year and a half ago after penning a note announcing his planned suicide.Aubrey Lee Price, 47, was stopped along I-95 in Glynn County, Georgia for a tinted window violation, according to local police. Officers said they soon determined he was wanted by the FBI. Price was to appear Thursday before a federal judge in Brunswick, Georgia. The arrest comes over a year since a Florida judge declared Price legally dead. Despite the ruling, the FBI continued the search, offering a reward of $20,000 for Price’s capture. Price was last seen in June 2012 boarding a ferry in Key West. Florida. He vanished after sending a letter to acquaintances and federal regulators admitting to losing the money and pledging to kill himself. In 2010, an investment group Price controlled infused enough money into the failing Montgomery Bank & Trust to earn a controlling stake. As director in charge of investing the bank’s capital, he is alleged to have then stolen, misappropriated and embezzled around $21 million from MB&T, according to his indictment. Upon the charge of wire fraud, a federal arrest warrant was issued for Price in the United States District Court in Brooklyn on June 28, 2012. The Securities and Exchange Commission froze his assets in July 2012. “In order to conceal mounting losses of investor funds, Price created bogus account statements with false account balances and returns that were provided to investors and bank regulators,” the SEC said. Price provided MB&T officials with fraudulent account statements which indicated the bank’s capital was safely held in a separate account. The former banker had financed the building of churches in South America and had done missionary work in the same areas, the FBI says. He traveled to Venezuela on June 2, 2012, weeks before he disappeared. Via a 22-page letter entitled “Confidential Confession for Regulators,” Price wrote he lost a large sum of money through trading, his arrest affidavit states. He also said he planned to commit suicide by jumping from a ferry boat off the Florida coast. “My depression and discouragement have driven me to deep anxiety, fear and shame. I am emotionally overwhelmed and incapable of continuing in this life,” said the confession letter supposedly written by Price, AP reported. “I created false statements, covered up my losses and deceived and hurt the very people I was trying to help,” he said, adding no one else knew of the fraud. MB&T failed shortly after Price’s disappearance in July 2012. Surveillance footage captured Price boarding a ferry in Key West bound for Fort Myers, Florida on June 16, 2012. Though his body was never found, a judge declared Price dead a year ago, according to AP. Source    |
|
Posted: 02 Jan 2014 04:03 PM PST
 Syrian computer hacker conglomerate, the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA), has kicked off the New Year with a number of cyber-attacks, compromising Skype’s Twitter, Facebook accounts, and its official blog.Social media accounts belonging to Skype, Microsoft’s voice-over-IP service, were hacked around 19:30 GMT. SEA posted on Skype’s Twitter account a rogue message saying “Stop spying on people! via Syrian Electronic Army.” The hacker group also urged people not to use Microsoft accounts because the company is “selling the data to the governments.” Since SEA’s inception in 2011, the organization has denied any association with the Syrian government. They claim to be self-motivated patriotic supporters of the government, but are not acting on its behalf. In 2013, SEA claimed responsibility for hacking a number of Western media outlets including the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Huffington Post and Thomson Reuters. Arguably, their biggest success was the penetration of the Associated Press twitter account that posted President Barack Obama had been injured in a White House attack. Skype has now fully regained control and deleted the false tweets from the compromised social media channels. Its blog is being automatically redirected to Skype’s homepage. “We recently became aware of a targeted cyber-attack that led to access to Skype’s social media properties, but these credentials were quickly reset. No user information was compromised,” a Skype spokesman responded to TheNextWeb query. Read More Here   |
