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Domain: abovetopsecret.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to abovetopsecret.com.
Stories · 5
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Mysterious Radio Station UVB-76 Goes Offline
leathered writes "Tinfoil hatters around the world are abuzz that UVB-76, the Russian shortwave radio station that has been broadcasting its monotonous tone almost uninterrupted since 1982, has suddenly gone offline. Of course no one knows what the significance of this is, but best brush up on your drills just in case." -
Norton Users Worried By PIFTS.exe, Stonewalling By Symantec
An anonymous reader writes that "[Monday] evening, on systems with Norton Internet Protection running, users began to see a popup warning about an executable named PIFTS.exe trying to access the internet. The file was shown to be located in a non-existent folder inside the Symantec LiveUpdate folder. There were several posts about this to the Norton customer forums asking for help or information on this mysterious program. The initial thread received several thousand views and several pages of replies in a few short hours before being deleted. Several subsequent posts to the Norton forum were deleted much more quickly. These actions — whether actively covering up, or simply not well thought through — have spurred people to begin crafting conspiracy theories about the purposes of this PIFTS program. I for one am blocking the program until more information becomes available." The current top link on Google for "PIFTS.exe" links to one of these deleted questions on Norton's support boards, which sounds innocent enough: "I searched this forum but did not see PIFTS.exe. Any idea what this is?" -
Toothy Racoon Bit Off Manhood
Ian-K writes "The Sun has a story about a man lost his 'tool' while trying to rape a raccoon. An observant reader over at ATS pointed out that luckily it wasn't a squirrel, or he may have also lost his nuts." I hope he can make something positive out of this experience, like talking at schools to warn kids about the dangers of oral sex with a raccoon. -
FBI Says Military Had Counterfeit Cisco Routers
There are new developments in the case of the counterfeit Cisco routers, which we have been discussing for some time. The NYTimes updates the story after an FBI PowerPoint presentation made its way onto the Web. It seems that experts at Cisco have examined some of the counterfeit routers in detail and proclaimed that they contain no back doors. Others don't believe we can be so sure. "Last month, [DARPA] began distributing chips with hidden Trojan horse circuitry to military contractors who are participating in the agency's Trusted Integrated Circuits program. The goal is to test forensic techniques for finding hidden electronic trap doors, which can be maddeningly elusive... The threat was demonstrated in April when a team of computer scientists from the University of Illinois presented a paper at a technical conference in San Francisco detailing how they had modified a Sun Microsystems SPARC microprocessor... The researchers were able to create a stealth system that would allow them to automatically log in to a computer and steal passwords." -
FBI Concerned About Implications of Counterfeit Cisco Gear
SpicyBrownMustard writes "An FBI PowerPoint presentation provides details about a criminal investigation into counterfeit CISCO hardware originating from China, and sold by Gold/Silver partners to numerous US government, military, and intelligence agencies. The concern of the article's author and the FBI is that the counterfeit equipment may be state-sponsored to aid in accessing otherwise secure systems (slides 46+47). Says the article author: 'The threat is real. Compromised hardware of potentially hostile foreign origin sits within secure networks of the US government, military, and intelligence services. And as you now see, the FBI has been concerned about it.'" We've mentioned the seizure of some of this equipment before, but this presentation adds quite a bit of detail, and highlights the FBI's concern of Chinese government involvement.