The European Union Times |
- North Korea holds military drill near South Korea simulating capture
- North Carolina black cop kills innocent white woman, no media outrage
- Kaspersky Reveals HDD firmware virus infecting computers since 2001
- US sending two servicemembers to Mars
- IMF aid pushes Ukraine gas prices up 280%
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Posted: 21 Feb 2015 03:34 AM PST
 The exercise simulated the assault and capture of an enemy island, reported the North’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). The drills took place on the islands of Mu and Jangjae “in the biggest hotspot in the southernmost part of southwestern front,” KCNA reported. North Korean detachments involved in the training launched anti-ship Silkworm missiles and ground-to-air missiles, as well as multiple rocket launchers, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported.  North Korean troops on Mu Island that took part were honored with the accolade the ‘Hero Defense Detachment’ when Kim Jong-un visited Mu and Jangjae in 2012. A year later, in 2013, he threatened to “wipe out” Yeonpyeong Island and other South Korean islands in the disputed border zone in the Yellow Sea, which saw armed clashes in 1999, 2002 and 2009.  North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was reportedly very pleased with the results of the drills and urged the troops to be combat-ready to repel an attack from the US.  Official Seoul believes Pyongyang’s weapons training exercise was a response to next month’s US-South Korean drill, which North Korea condemned as a dummy run for an invasion. According to Koh Yu-hwan, a professor of North Korean Studies at Dongguk University in Seoul, Pyongyang tends to reduce the number of troops participating in drills to save money. However, North Korea has willingly demonstrated its newest weapons in recent years, the professor told AP. Washington and Seoul insist their regular military training near North Korean borders are defensive in nature and have nothing to do with possible acts of aggression against Pyongyang. In January, the North Korean leadership proposed to the US that it would temporarily ban its nuclear tests in return for Washington giving up military training with Seoul in 2015, AP reported, but this was refused. Source           |
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Posted: 21 Feb 2015 03:08 AM PST
 Betty Sexton a mother of two, called the police after she saw two strangers on the territory of her house. The recording of her 911 call says that the victim knew both of those individuals. She called the police so that the latter could help her remove the intruders from her home. While waiting for the police to arrive, the woman grabbed an antique copy of a musket gun to scare the intruders. When the police arrived, the first thing they saw it Betty Sexton, armed with a musket. “My sister would not hurt anyone,” Debra Kennedy, the victim’s sister said. According to Debra, her boyfriend told police that the gun was not loaded or functioning, and when the cops ordered her to put the weapon down, she cooperated. Afterwards, officer LaDoniqua Neely shot the woman dead in the chest. Officer Neely was sent on administrative leave for the time of the investigation. Noteworthy, the police of the town, where the incident occurred, has shot and killed three people this year. Despite all of this, there was almost zero media coverage and zero outrage. No one called anyone racist and there were no riots. Should the races be reversed there cars would have been torched, markets destroyed and nation-wide Ferguson-style protests holding idiotic signs that say “black lives matter”. Well it seems that they do matter, while white lives do NOT matter and probably never mattered since white people just can’t come together and stand up for their own rights.       |
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Posted: 21 Feb 2015 02:45 AM PST
 Since 2001, a group of hackers, dubbed the “Equation Group” by researchers from Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab, have infected computers in at least 42 countries (with Iran, Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, and Syria most infected) with what Ars Technica calls “superhuman technical feats” indicating “extraordinary skill and unlimited resources.” The exploits, including the ‘prized technique’ of the creation of a secret storage vault that survives military-grade disk wiping and reformatting, cover every hard-drive manufacturer and have many similar characteristics to the infamous NSA-led Stuxnet virus. According to Kaspersky, the spies made a technological breakthrough by figuring out how to lodge malicious software in the obscure code called firmware that launches every time a computer is turned on. Disk drive firmware is viewed by spies and cybersecurity experts as the second-most valuable real estate on a PC for a hacker, second only to the BIOS code invoked automatically as a computer boots up. “The hardware will be able to infect the computer over and over,” lead Kaspersky researcher Costin Raiu said in an interview. Kaspersky’s reconstructions of the spying programs show that they could work in disk drives sold by more than a dozen companies, comprising essentially the entire market. They include Western Digital Corp, Seagate Technology Plc, Toshiba Corp, IBM, Micron Technology Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd. The group used a variety of means to spread other spying programs, such as by compromising jihadist websites, infecting USB sticks and CDs, anddeveloping a self-spreading computer worm called Fanny, Kasperky said. Fanny was like Stuxnet in that it exploited two of the same undisclosed software flaws, known as “zero days,” which strongly suggested collaboration by the authors, Raiu said. He added that it was “quite possible” that the Equation group used Fanny to scout out targets for Stuxnet in Iran and spread the virus. Which, as Reuters reports, strongly suggests the “extraordinary skills and unlimited resources” were funded by the NSA… The U.S. National Security Agency has figured out how to hide spying software deep within hard drives made by Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba and other top manufacturers, giving the agency the means to eavesdrop on the majority of the world’s computers, according to cyber researchers and former operatives. That long-sought and closely guarded ability was part of a cluster of spying programs discovered by Kaspersky Lab, the Moscow-based security software maker that has exposed a series of Western cyberespionage operations. Kaspersky said it found personal computers in 30 countries infected with one or more of the spying programs, with the most infections seen in Iran, followed by Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, Mali, Syria, Yemen and Algeria. The targets included government and military institutions, telecommunication companies, banks, energy companies, nuclear researchers, media, and Islamic activists, Kaspersky said. The firm declined to publicly name the country behind the spying campaign, but said it was closely linked to Stuxnet, the NSA-led cyberweapon that was used to attack Iran’s uranium enrichment facility. The NSA is the agency responsible for gathering electronic intelligence on behalf of the United States. A former NSA employee told Reuters that Kaspersky’s analysis was correct, and that people still in the intelligence agency valued these spying programs as highly as Stuxnet. Another former intelligence operative confirmed that the NSA had developed the prized technique of concealing spyware in hard drives, but said he did not know which spy efforts relied on it. The global coverage is clearly focused in a particular region (and not in the US)…  As Kasperskey exposes, victims generally fall into the following categories: • Governments and diplomatic institutions • Telecommunication • Aerospace • Energy • Nuclear research • Oil and gas • Military • Nanotechnology • Islamic activists and scholars • Mass media • Transportation • Financial institutions • Companies developing cryptographic technologies As an interesting note, some of the “patients zero” of Stuxnet seem to have been infected by the EQUATION group. It is quite possible that the EQUATION group malware was used to deliver the STUXNET payload. So far, Kaspersky have identi?ed several malware platforms used exclusively by the Equation group. They are: EQUATIONDRUG – A very complex attack platform used by the group on its victims. It supports a module plugin system, which can be dynamically uploaded and unloaded by the attackers. DOUBLEFANTASY – A validator-style Trojan, designed to con?rm the target is the intended one. If the target is con?rmed, they get upgraded to a more sophisticated platform such as EQUATIONDRUG or GRAYFISH. EQUESTRE – Same as EQUATIONDRUG. TRIPLEFANTASY – Full-featured backdoor sometimes used in tandem with GRAYFISH. Looks like an upgrade of DOUBLEFANTASY, and is possibly a more recent validator-style plugin. GRAYFISH – The most sophisticated attack platform from the EQUATION group. It resides completely in the registry, relying on a bootkit to gain execution at OS startup. FANNY – A computer worm created in 2008 and used to gather information about targets in the Middle East and Asia. Some victims appear to have been upgraded ?rst to DoubleFantasy, and then to the EQUATIONDRUG system. Fanny used exploits for two zero-day vulnerabilities which were later discovered with Stuxnet. EQUATIONLASER – An early implant from the EQUATION group, used around 2001-2004. Compatible with Windows 95/98, and created sometime between DOUBLEFANTASY and EQUATIONDRUG. Although the implementation of their malware systems is incredibly complex, surpassing even Regin in sophistication, there is one aspect of the EQUATION group’s attack technologies that exceeds anything Kaspersky has ever seen before. This is the ability to infect the hard drive firmware. The plugin version 4 is more complex and can reprogram 12 drive “categories”  So to summarize: 1) US sanctions Russia 2) a Russian-based research group (Kaspersky Lab is an international group operating in almost 200 countries and territories worldwide. The company is headquartered in Moscow, Russia, with its holding company registered in the United Kingdom. Kaspersky Lab currently employs over 2,850 qualified specialists) reveals that through Equation group’s code, there is NSA presence across the supply chain of the highest margin US products . 3) As Reuters notes, the exposure of these new spying tools could lead to greater backlash against Western technology,particularly in countries such as China, which is already drafting regulations that would require most bank technology suppliers to proffer copies of their software code for inspection. 4) And Peter Swire, one of five members of U.S. President Barack Obama’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technology, said the Kaspersky report showed that it is essential for the country to consider the possible impact on trade and diplomatic relations before deciding to use its knowledge of software flaws for intelligence gathering. “There can be serious negative effects on other U.S. interests,” Swire said. It appears the ‘boomerang’ is boomerang-ing… Source      |
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Posted: 21 Feb 2015 02:32 AM PST
 Stars and Stripes reported on Friday that the servicemembers are a Naval Reserve flight test engineer and an Air National Guard cybertransport specialist. The servicemembers are among one hundred candidates competing for 24 spots to travel to the planet through Mars One that is a Dutch-based company, according to the report. Despite all difficulties for living on Mars, the company expressed hope to land four people on the red planet in 2025 in order to establish the first extraterrestrial colony. The atmosphere on Mars is not breathable and the average temperature is minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit. The planet, which is on average about 50 million miles from Earth, is not known to have food and water is not easily obtained. Officials wrote on the Mars One company’s website that a one-way trip to Mars is currently “the only way we can get people on Mars within the next 20 years.” One of the servicemembers, Lt. Cmdr. Oscar Mathews, who is a test pilot at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md., said he was suitable for the mission. “If you’re going to go to Mars, you may as well stay on Mars because the whole reason to go to Mars is to do science and to live and to establish a habitat,” Mathews said. He added that the plan to get humans to Mars by 2025 is “an aggressive schedule but not an impossible schedule.” The other servicemember was Tech. Sgt. Carmen Paul, who serves with the California Air National Guard. Source      |
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Posted: 21 Feb 2015 02:28 AM PST
 Ukraine has agreed to increase the cost of gas to consumer by 280 percent, and 66 percent for heating, as part of the IMF terms for getting extra financial aid, says Valery Gontareva the head of the National Bank of Ukraine. “From now on, in accordance with our joint program with the IMF, the tariffs will see rather a sharp increase of 280 percent for gas and about 66 percent for heat,” said Gontareva Wednesday during the 11th Dragon Capital investment conference in Kiev. She added that as a result inflation will be 25-26 percent by the end of 2015. The tariff rises are part of the amendments to the 2015 budget the government has had to introduce in order to receive an $8.5 billion loan from the IMF by the end of the year. The changes will also see Ukraine’s budget deficit growing to 4.1 percent of GDP and forecasts a 5.5 percent decline in the Ukrainian economy. Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk had warned of future price rises for gas and heating, and stressed the IMF saved Ukraine from default, and now it’s time to make moves which should eventually result in Ukraine’s complete independence from Russian gas. The tariff increase was among the subjects Ukraine and the IMF touched upon during negotiations in January. Deputy Chairman of the Ukraine parliament’s budget committee Viktor Krivenko said the IMF had requested a sevenfold increase in prices. The head of IMF Christine Lagarde said on February 12 that the preliminary agreement reached between Kiev and Western creditors envisages increasing the aid package to $40 billion over the next four years. The program will help Ukraine receive an additional $25 billion in financial aid, of which $17.5 billion will be provided to stabilize the financial situation in the country. The latest IMF program will replace the $17 billion package agreed in April 2014. Ukraine has already received $4.5 billion under that agreement, thus the total IMF loans to Ukraine since the beginning of the crisis amount to $22 billion. Source     |
