It's sad how many people who 'write code' have never heard of input sanitization or output encoding, let alone parameterized queries. They all think it's someone else's job.
I agree that everyone has something to hide, just as everyone is a target of 'cyber' attacks. However, while I have not yet read the full bill and the linked article is a bit sparse on actual fact, sharing attack data would be tremendously helpful. If private companies are able to share STIX/IOC's (with information deemed private stripped out) that information would be very useful. While I worked for an Amazon sub, we couldn't even get attack data amoungst companies that were, essentially the same. Currently if you were to ask your biggest competitor to share data, you will get a 'No, thanks' at best. Most of this seems to be from lawyers/compliance people that seem to think sharing the data will make the sky fall. There are some private companies attempting to do this but the solutions are immature and not really ready for any sort of meaningful exchange. Facebook is doing their Intel sharing but it hasn't gotten off the ground yet.
I would agree that the government is probably not the best clearing house for true threat data. Look at infraguard & cert, sure they send out useful data but it's usually late and if you want the really interesting bits, you need a clearance (which working at a private company is practically a non-starter). The security industry needs to figure this out for itself before the fed steps in and makes it the same black hole sharing data with them currently is.
Sadly this is too true. A lot of the shops out there don't understand mitigating controls or 'we tweaked a configuration so we aren't vulnerable, despite what the banner says and here's output from us actually using the exploit....see not vulnerable'. That's one of the major issues I have with PCI, it's far to common for the auditors to not understand the context of the controls, let alone how the network is configured. I remember having to argue with an auditor about how umask worked and sudo.
When we evaluate third party companies we request the most recent pentest report (depending on the data being shared) and most of what we get back is simply screenshots from some vuln scanner and clearly it says Apache so it must be vulnerable. I would love for the end customers to be more educated on what the deliverables should be for a pentest.
And this is why there are a ton of shitty 'pentesters' out there who seem to mistake running nessus or nmap scripts as a penetration test. No, it's not 'secret' knowledge and can easily be learned if want to spend the time but running metasploit doesn't make you a pentester.
Like defenders, pentesters generally need to find all the vulnerabilities (sadly many customers accept the first one which ends up being a scoping issue) and understand how to mitigate anything that was discovered/exploited. That requires an understanding of protocols, networking, applications, web frameworks, etc.. I have found that the best tend to have the capacity to think maliciously. IMO, that is a critical skill. I have seen far too many people that just don't understand why anyone would want to abuse a protocol, which makes them substandard pentesters.
As for the original question, there are plenty of tools out there that can help you learn. Metasploitable, WebGoat, Kali, SamuraiWTF (disclosure, I am good friends with the lead for that), ZAP, Burp Suite (pro is great and super reasonable). If you have corporate funding, there are some decent trainings out there Offensive Security has their classes (and certs, I have heard mixed results). There is also SANS, which I have been increasing disappointed with but if you want a bunch of knowledge shoved in your head (at a pretty high dollar cost), they tend to do it. Also, some drift more towards network pentesting or application, personally, I think people should be versed in both (leveraging a remote code execution bug in a webserver is great unless you have no clue what to do within the OS).
For cheaper options there are bunch of books that can teach you a ton of 'tips and tricks' around pentesting (web Hackers Handbook 2nd Edition is particularly good). Having a solid background as a sysadmin makes it much easier IMO (my background is similar), since you are most likely familiar with troubleshooting, networking, multiple OS's and what not.
It is sad but hopefully companies (and others) will realize that compliance with things like PCI doesn't really mean all that much, though I think it will take a few more.
Say you work for company, which gets compromised and data is exfiltrated out of the network to a known source (the attacker used scp so the ip address, username and password are left within bash history or some other bash log). You find it within minutes or before the scp is completed. How do people feel about logging into the machine the data is being exfiltrated to and erasing it from the remote server? Even if the 3rd party box is one they popped and not the attackers true machine, your not damaging the machine, network, etc., you are just removing 'unauthorized data' (granted, it may be a very fine line).
We have other venues such as the chromium-discuss mailing list and our feedback forums where it is appropriate to share your opinions. The forums are a place where we are set up to track user feedback and surface the most critical issues to the team without impacting the productivity of us developers who are busy trying to make Chrome work better.
Maybe it would have been useful for pkasting@chromium.org to actual link to the forums (perhaps one specifically for UI/Design issues...) or the mailing list instead of just the slightly snarky comments.
I think the greater point is that corruption doesn't always look like corruption. Other countries have helped mitigate this problem, but I seriously doubt the public knows about even a fraction of how often this happens on a global scale. Especially given how many countries are not open books when it comes to these sort of things. Not to mention the rampant corruption organized crime helps create. While a bribe is always a bribe, a bride doesn't always look like one.
The companies that offer bribes also need to be punished for doing so. The US enacted the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (http://www.justice.gov/criminal/fraud/fcpa/) to combat this problem but few companies ever get more than a slap on the wrist and a wink & nod. Both sides need to realize that offering or accepting a bribe is something that can cost them more than just a few dollars (or whatever the currency).
Just thinking about this briefly, I can think of at least one concern (though not directly related to privacy). Power companies (at least in the US) have shown that they are unable to secure their infrastructure. So allowing them to 'control' your settings *might* be allowing an attacker to do the same (or worse).
Hell yah. I wouldn't recommend maggots for everything. I think they use them heavily in severe burn victims to clean out the bacteria and dead tissue. I have also seen them packed in wounds, but it usually takes some convincing, since a lot of patients are kinda freaked out about it (and really, who can blame them).
As the parent for my reply indicates, maggots are still used extensively in the UK and in US hospitals. Maggots eat dead tissue, and only dead tissue. They are perfectly suited for treating extensive infections and a few other conditions. In fact it appears that there use is very common:
From Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maggot_therapy
The current use of maggot therapy is estimated to involve over 3,000 doctors, clinics, and hospitals in over 20 countries. In 2003, approximately 30,000 treatments were administered to an estimated 6,000 to 10,000 patients.
As for leaches, the FDA allowed there use (as a medical device) in 2004: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5319129/. Which goes to show, everything old is new, and everything new is old. In some cases, the medieval 'doctors' (and I use that word with some hesitation), got the treatment right (though they had no idea why). So as my parent post says, don't discount a treatment because it is old, and seems archaic.
I have no idea how accurate my statement is, but it seems to me, that the secondary risk (with the primary being IEDs) would be from snipers, gunmen, or RPGs fired from positions on top of rooftops or building. Given the open nature of the turrent, it would be an ideal place to attack (imho), even if you just walked up and tossed a grenade, or some other explosive device (perhaps aproaching from the back of the vehicle). Hopefully, the soldier up top would be able to notice someone sneaking up from the rear, though when the sh!t hits the fan, who knows (they could be engaged with another target and not be covering the rear). I would imagine that the open nature also gives the soldier operating the turrent a much better field of view, they would have full access to their peripheral vision, which of course comes at the price of exposure.
I myself am not a lawyer, but unless I am misunderstanding your statement, it looks like your interpretation of both doctor & patient and attorney & client privilege is a bit off.
A doctor can decide to alert the police if he knows you are going to endanger yourself, or someone else. Usually this results in a person being committed for some period of time. If you tell your shrink that you had harmed someone in the past, they aren't bound to tell the police about it. In fact, I don't think they can tell even if they wanted to. A patient can decide to allow a doctor, but the doctor is only released after a patient dies (without consent).
For example, let us say a below-age of consent girl came to a doctor with a sexually transmitted disease. The doctor is usually required to obtain a list of the patient's sexual contacts to inform them that they need treatment. This is an important health concern. However, it is likely that the girl might reveal her partners were older, and this could result in a fear that they would be charged with a crime such as statutory rape. In some jurisdictions, the doctor cannot be forced to reveal the information revealed by his patient to anyone except the appropriate health authorities, and they too are required to keep that information confidential. If, in the case, the police become aware of such information, they are not allowed to use it in court as proof of the sexual conduct.
As for Lawyers, they are bound by not only privilege, but by ethic constraints as well. There are some interesting distinctions between Washington state law (which only allows privilege protection for the extent that a conversation contains or reveals client communications). Where California law protects all communications between a client and attorney (again wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attorney-client_privi lege). At the same time, an attorney cannot let you testify that you are innocent of something, if you have divulged your guilt to him. This explains why some lawyers don't want to know the exact details, since not knowing leaves more options open. At the same time, if a lawyer steps over the bounds and gets caught they can be disbarred or worse.
There is also a privilege for accountant-client and for clergy-parishioner.
Can you site a case, or an actual law that prohibits forwarding of emails?
Though I have only found one http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2006_11.php#00501 7article that is directly on point (after a quick google search). The article specifically mentions a 2006 reversal by the California Supreme Court, (original case Barrett v. Rosenthal http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/Barrett_v_Rosenthal /ruling.pdf) which upholds that blogs, websites, listservs, etc. are protected under the Communications Decency Act (CDA 1996) Section 230. This section explicitly states that "[n]o provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider."
Other relevant portions of the article:
"The issue raised in Barrett v. Rosenthal was whether Section 230's protection applies to individuals who frequently use the internet to pass on information obtained elsewhere, whether by forwarding an email written by someone else or, as was the case in Barrett, posting an email from someone else to a newsgroup."
The CDA basically covers anyone from being sued, prosecuted {in my non-legal opinion) for posting forwarding emails from other sources. It is unclear from the article, and I don't have time to reread the CDA at the moment, if this also covers emails that include the 'privacy' footer. However, email is a public method of passing data around, there isn't any expectation of privacy in this form of communication. Finding and ferreting out a private email, either from a mail server, or while it is traveling through a network, isn't a very tough thing to do. You just have to know where to look.
Loudcloud was a managed hosting provider, that also made software that allowed servers/network devices to be monitored, deployed and controled with a small number of highly technical staff. The benefit to the customer is/was that they don't have to pay for the high priced technical staff that is needed to host their site. Loudcloud had some of the best people I have ever worked with. It was a great place to work at. Sadly, because of some mistakes, Loudcloud ended up running very low on cash and management decided to sell the hosting part of the company to EDS (which already had a hosting division).
If you have the chance to look at Opsware's newest products (NAS & SAS), you should. I recently saw a demo of the NAS product (Network Automation tool), and it is super slick. The product flat out rocks. You can manage all of your switches, firewalls, routers, and load balancers, through a very slick web interface. A very nice product.
You are 100% correct, any sensitive data should be kept secure and from prying eyes. However, this does not solve the problem. The users you have to watch out for are the ones that have legitimate reasons for viewing/accessing the data. They are in the position to abuse trust. People would notice someone walking around the office taking pictures of sensitive data. Have you ever tried to photograph a piece of paper? It's not like in the movies where you just lay it flat and start snapping pictures. If you are using a regular digital camera, you have to get the document in focus, if you are trying to get the whole document you have to make sure that all of it can be read from the shot (also make sure that the flash doesn't go off - nothing like attracting attention). If you are taking the picture in sections, you need to make sure that you get the whole thing with enough overlap that you can reasemble the document. If you are using a camera phone, then you can't be casually walking around snapping pictures over peoples shoulders. To get a readable shot on most camera phones you need to be up super close, and you are only getting a few lines at a time. Even if you have one of the super duper spy cameras you still need to be over the document.
The article seems to be talking about using the 'hard drive' capabilities of the cameras and not the photo angle (which a clean desk policy would not help prevent). Most of the newer cameras have usb connecters, some have firewire, and almost all of them support some sort of removable storage. Adapters for these storage cards are all over the place, and some of them are supper small. This is just like people going into computer stores and using iPods to steal applications off the demo computers.
i seroiusly doubt they were 20 years ahead. the military operated in a misguided semi-vacuum state back in the 80's; when 3DES was slammed. i'd say some individuals were ahead of the game, but not the establishment, and not 20 years.
Did you read the link that pointed to Schneier's article? Just to quote a bit of it. By the way this took place in the 1970's:
When IBM submitted DES as a standard, no one outside the National Security Agency had any expertise to analyze it. The NSA made two changes to DES: It tweaked the algorithm, and it cut the key size by more than half. ... It took the academic community two decades to figure out that the NSA "tweaks" actually improved the security of DES. This means that back in the '70s, the National Security Agency was two decades ahead of the state of the art.
Granted the end of the article indicates that this is no longer true. Cryptography has become a respected and legitimate study all around the world. So it is doubtful that the rest of the world and researchers in the states, haven't closed that gap significantly. But the fact that it took researchers outside of Ft. Meade two decades to discover that the 'tweaks' made to DES by the NSA, actually made it stronger to an attack that didn't even exist (again, to anyone outside of Ft. Meade) means that the NSA had to be ahead of the curve (about 20 years ahead).
While I like the idea of it being a small device I still prefer 'always' having Wireless Broadband if the hotel does not have it. There is usually another hotel in the same vacinity that does have a wireless network which can usually be hijacked. The basic set up I use is my 17" powerbook, an Apple Airport Extreme base station (just because I have one, you can get much cheaper base stations from other manufacturers), a can antenna(yes I am too lazy to build my own), and a Dlink Bridge.
Basically you set up the base station to DHCP from the bridge (via ethernet). Now the Dlink Bridge has a pretty lame antenna attatched to it. So what I do is use the Cantenna (yes, see lazy comment above) and point it in the direction that I want it to. If the network is encrypted I use the wireless card that came in my original airport base station (an Orinoco silver card), since the Airport Extreme one has closed source drivers (that have not been reversed yet), too sniff and collect packets. Kismac is an excellent wireless tool for the Mac. It supports several different cards and supports Wordlist, Brute Force, and Scheduling Attacks (which I find usually get me into most networks). The Dlink Bridge has a pretty simple web interface that allows you to set it up to join a specific network. It also supports scanning for networks, though I find that it doesn't seem to pick up everything that maybe out there. I set this up on top of those ridiculously tall TV cabinets and I can kick back on the bed without those pesky ethernet cables. This can also be useful if you have a large house (or a small house with interferance) to connect up in rooms that were previously spotty.
The pre-made Can Antenna can be purchased for $49.99 (via CompUSA or the web), the Dlink Bridge is $109 from Fry's, Airport Express for $199 (various vendors).
I have found that some hotels have pretty crappy coverage in the outer rooms, so they let you 'barrow' (for a deposit) one of the Dlink Bridges, preconfigured to join their networks. Pretty handy. So if you happen to be in a hotel toward the outside and the coverage is spotty, you may want to check with the front desk to see if they have one. It could make your life much easier. =)
Oakley has a pair of sunglasses that include an MP3 player. Here is a link for some reviews. The prices are somewhat high (at least to me), here is the link for the two different versions (128/256 $395/$495).
I think the main point is that he did not opt in at all, neither did any of the address's that were located in the file he had the company man open. Did you read the conversation that he had with the lawyer?
WebGuy is the victim (or at least the anit-spammer).
Lawless is the general counsel for the company that owns the spammers (page 1 indicates that they are the owner and operator of the website in question).
WebGuy: And uh, I keep receiving emails from cruise.com erroneously claiming that I have subscribed to some type of list. Uh, this is actionable under Oklahoma Statutes.
Lawless: Probably under Virgina Statutes too. We (laughing) we have, we have like a subscriber list.
WebGuy: Uh, huh.
Lawless: _for people who want information on cruises and _
WebGuy: Uh, huh.
Lawless: _ apparently - you're on the list - uh and you_
WebGuy: Well, I didn't "opt-in" to the list the way that the email claims happened.
The lawyer further goes on to ask if there is an "opt-out" option/link. Which WebGuy responds to by indicating that the majority of those are used by spammers to verify that the address is valid. He also indicates that since he did not "opt-in" that he should not have to "opt-out". Which can be seen as being a pain in the ass, but he does have a valid point. If you never gave that address to the spammer, why should you have to follow an opt-out procedure that may or may not be a trick to confirm an email address?
At the end of the conversation, he asks the lawyer "how soon can we expect to stop receiving mail from cruise.com". To which the lawyer responds with "I'm going to take them down right now".
Even if we all agree that giving them a text file filled with several names is somewhat unreasonable, the lawyer still aggreed to it. He still responded that he was going to remove those address. If you go to WebGuy's site, you can see that after the lawyer agreed to remove them from the list, he (webguy) started to receive even more spam, which can be seen as a retaliation from the company.
The money he offered to settle for was $.05 on the dollar for the maximum damages allowed under the law. Given that this is not a frivolous law suit, that would seem like an extremely reasonable amount to settle for (most people would never settle that low).
He may seem like he is being sort of an ass, but I don't think he is completely in the wrong, providing that the facts are as he represents them. Even if the company sells a legitimate service does not give them license to spam people. If you can subscribe a thrid party to their mailing list, then the controls are too weak and need to be fixed.
One thing in this post just doesn't sit right with me (though I still enjoyed the post).
That said, the overall risk of plane crashes from this form of attack is low. If the airport and immediate area are kept secure (and they should be if only to guard against Stinger-style missile attacks), it's very unlikely someone with a commercial laser could get close enough to completely blind a pilot.
Have you ever flown into Mccarran International Airport in Las Vegas, Nv.? Not only does the approach path fly over a vast part of Henderson and Las Vegas but any nut job in a hotel on the strip facing Henderson (a suburb of Vegas) can watch airplanes land. This along with the 'lookout' which is a parking lot on the airport land with about 15 or so spots (with only a fence seperating it from the runway), makes this sort of attack very real. Also the San Diego and San Fransico airports have approaches over water, so a wacko can sit in a boat and try this. Even the military base in Las Vegas has a flight path that puts them over the vast majority of the town, and we house one of the larger fighter wings (at least I think we do).
The sad fact is that these airports were all built when such things were not a consideration and they can't very well go knocking on peoples doors and make them move to put up a protective perimeter or completely seal a harbor. Not to mention (at least in the case of Las Vegas) there are numerous mountains with public access (Vegas sits in a valley, mountains on both sides) where a potential attacker could have a grand time.
So goggles wouldn't be totally effective but is there something that could be added to the window of the cockpit to prevent these sort of attacks? Maybe some coating to deflect the laser or bounce it off like radar (all I know about lasers I learned from watching Real Genius). I just can't think of a realistic method of protecting the grounds around the airport. In my mind the security would have to come from something on the plan (a technological solution), something to totally defuse it.
Slashdot Mirror
It's sad how many people who 'write code' have never heard of input sanitization or output encoding, let alone parameterized queries. They all think it's someone else's job.
The description you are referencing is their shooting star memorial, they do claim to have a lunar one at: http://elysiumspace.com/produc...
They don't call them corporate 'drones' for nothing...... ;-}
I agree that everyone has something to hide, just as everyone is a target of 'cyber' attacks. However, while I have not yet read the full bill and the linked article is a bit sparse on actual fact, sharing attack data would be tremendously helpful. If private companies are able to share STIX/IOC's (with information deemed private stripped out) that information would be very useful. While I worked for an Amazon sub, we couldn't even get attack data amoungst companies that were, essentially the same. Currently if you were to ask your biggest competitor to share data, you will get a 'No, thanks' at best. Most of this seems to be from lawyers/compliance people that seem to think sharing the data will make the sky fall. There are some private companies attempting to do this but the solutions are immature and not really ready for any sort of meaningful exchange. Facebook is doing their Intel sharing but it hasn't gotten off the ground yet.
I would agree that the government is probably not the best clearing house for true threat data. Look at infraguard & cert, sure they send out useful data but it's usually late and if you want the really interesting bits, you need a clearance (which working at a private company is practically a non-starter). The security industry needs to figure this out for itself before the fed steps in and makes it the same black hole sharing data with them currently is.
Sadly this is too true. A lot of the shops out there don't understand mitigating controls or 'we tweaked a configuration so we aren't vulnerable, despite what the banner says and here's output from us actually using the exploit....see not vulnerable'. That's one of the major issues I have with PCI, it's far to common for the auditors to not understand the context of the controls, let alone how the network is configured. I remember having to argue with an auditor about how umask worked and sudo.
When we evaluate third party companies we request the most recent pentest report (depending on the data being shared) and most of what we get back is simply screenshots from some vuln scanner and clearly it says Apache so it must be vulnerable. I would love for the end customers to be more educated on what the deliverables should be for a pentest.
And this is why there are a ton of shitty 'pentesters' out there who seem to mistake running nessus or nmap scripts as a penetration test. No, it's not 'secret' knowledge and can easily be learned if want to spend the time but running metasploit doesn't make you a pentester.
Like defenders, pentesters generally need to find all the vulnerabilities (sadly many customers accept the first one which ends up being a scoping issue) and understand how to mitigate anything that was discovered/exploited. That requires an understanding of protocols, networking, applications, web frameworks, etc.. I have found that the best tend to have the capacity to think maliciously. IMO, that is a critical skill. I have seen far too many people that just don't understand why anyone would want to abuse a protocol, which makes them substandard pentesters.
As for the original question, there are plenty of tools out there that can help you learn. Metasploitable, WebGoat, Kali, SamuraiWTF (disclosure, I am good friends with the lead for that), ZAP, Burp Suite (pro is great and super reasonable). If you have corporate funding, there are some decent trainings out there Offensive Security has their classes (and certs, I have heard mixed results). There is also SANS, which I have been increasing disappointed with but if you want a bunch of knowledge shoved in your head (at a pretty high dollar cost), they tend to do it. Also, some drift more towards network pentesting or application, personally, I think people should be versed in both (leveraging a remote code execution bug in a webserver is great unless you have no clue what to do within the OS).
For cheaper options there are bunch of books that can teach you a ton of 'tips and tricks' around pentesting (web Hackers Handbook 2nd Edition is particularly good). Having a solid background as a sysadmin makes it much easier IMO (my background is similar), since you are most likely familiar with troubleshooting, networking, multiple OS's and what not.
It is sad but hopefully companies (and others) will realize that compliance with things like PCI doesn't really mean all that much, though I think it will take a few more.
I'm not gonna ask. A moose's business is its own.
Amen to that!
Say you work for company, which gets compromised and data is exfiltrated out of the network to a known source (the attacker used scp so the ip address, username and password are left within bash history or some other bash log). You find it within minutes or before the scp is completed. How do people feel about logging into the machine the data is being exfiltrated to and erasing it from the remote server?
Even if the 3rd party box is one they popped and not the attackers true machine, your not damaging the machine, network, etc., you are just removing 'unauthorized data' (granted, it may be a very fine line).
We have other venues such as the chromium-discuss mailing list and our feedback forums where it is appropriate to share your opinions. The forums are a place where we are set up to track user feedback and surface the most critical issues to the team without impacting the productivity of us developers who are busy trying to make Chrome work better.
Maybe it would have been useful for pkasting@chromium.org to actual link to the forums (perhaps one specifically for UI/Design issues...) or the mailing list instead of just the slightly snarky comments.
I think the greater point is that corruption doesn't always look like corruption. Other countries have helped mitigate this problem, but I seriously doubt the public knows about even a fraction of how often this happens on a global scale. Especially given how many countries are not open books when it comes to these sort of things. Not to mention the rampant corruption organized crime helps create. While a bribe is always a bribe, a bride doesn't always look like one.
The companies that offer bribes also need to be punished for doing so. The US enacted the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (http://www.justice.gov/criminal/fraud/fcpa/) to combat this problem but few companies ever get more than a slap on the wrist and a wink & nod. Both sides need to realize that offering or accepting a bribe is something that can cost them more than just a few dollars (or whatever the currency).
Now for the obligatory wiki link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_corruption
The global costs are quite large.
Just thinking about this briefly, I can think of at least one concern (though not directly related to privacy). Power companies (at least in the US) have shown that they are unable to secure their infrastructure. So allowing them to 'control' your settings *might* be allowing an attacker to do the same (or worse).
*sigh*
http://adland.tv/search/node/outpost.com
Hell yah. I wouldn't recommend maggots for everything. I think they use them heavily in severe burn victims to clean out the bacteria and dead tissue. I have also seen them packed in wounds, but it usually takes some convincing, since a lot of patients are kinda freaked out about it (and really, who can blame them).
t _clinical_experience) uses a strain of the green bottle fly (Phaenicia sericata http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phaenicia_sericata).
If I remember the wiki article, the FDA has certain rules regarding how the maggots are raised and which type are used. It looks like the FDA approved their use (as a medical device) in 2004, but the doctor that is 'quoted' as reintroducing the therapy in 1989 (Dr. Ronald Sherman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maggot_therapy#Recen
I guess I wouldn't want just any maggot eating my tissue either.
From Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maggot_therapy
The current use of maggot therapy is estimated to involve over 3,000 doctors, clinics, and hospitals in over 20 countries. In 2003, approximately 30,000 treatments were administered to an estimated 6,000 to 10,000 patients.
As for leaches, the FDA allowed there use (as a medical device) in 2004: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5319129/. Which goes to show, everything old is new, and everything new is old. In some cases, the medieval 'doctors' (and I use that word with some hesitation), got the treatment right (though they had no idea why). So as my parent post says, don't discount a treatment because it is old, and seems archaic.
I have no idea how accurate my statement is, but it seems to me, that the secondary risk (with the primary being IEDs) would be from snipers, gunmen, or RPGs fired from positions on top of rooftops or building. Given the open nature of the turrent, it would be an ideal place to attack (imho), even if you just walked up and tossed a grenade, or some other explosive device (perhaps aproaching from the back of the vehicle). Hopefully, the soldier up top would be able to notice someone sneaking up from the rear, though when the sh!t hits the fan, who knows (they could be engaged with another target and not be covering the rear). I would imagine that the open nature also gives the soldier operating the turrent a much better field of view, they would have full access to their peripheral vision, which of course comes at the price of exposure.
I myself am not a lawyer, but unless I am misunderstanding your statement, it looks like your interpretation of both doctor & patient and attorney & client privilege is a bit off.
i vilege):
i lege). At the same time, an attorney cannot let you testify that you are innocent of something, if you have divulged your guilt to him. This explains why some lawyers don't want to know the exact details, since not knowing leaves more options open. At the same time, if a lawyer steps over the bounds and gets caught they can be disbarred or worse.
A doctor can decide to alert the police if he knows you are going to endanger yourself, or someone else. Usually this results in a person being committed for some period of time. If you tell your shrink that you had harmed someone in the past, they aren't bound to tell the police about it. In fact, I don't think they can tell even if they wanted to. A patient can decide to allow a doctor, but the doctor is only released after a patient dies (without consent).
An example (from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physician-patient_pr
For example, let us say a below-age of consent girl came to a doctor with a sexually transmitted disease. The doctor is usually required to obtain a list of the patient's sexual contacts to inform them that they need treatment. This is an important health concern. However, it is likely that the girl might reveal her partners were older, and this could result in a fear that they would be charged with a crime such as statutory rape. In some jurisdictions, the doctor cannot be forced to reveal the information revealed by his patient to anyone except the appropriate health authorities, and they too are required to keep that information confidential. If, in the case, the police become aware of such information, they are not allowed to use it in court as proof of the sexual conduct.
As for Lawyers, they are bound by not only privilege, but by ethic constraints as well. There are some interesting distinctions between Washington state law (which only allows privilege protection for the extent that a conversation contains or reveals client communications). Where California law protects all communications between a client and attorney (again wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attorney-client_priv
There is also a privilege for accountant-client and for clergy-parishioner.
Can you site a case, or an actual law that prohibits forwarding of emails?
1 7article that is directly on point (after a quick google search). The article specifically mentions a 2006 reversal by the California Supreme Court, (original case Barrett v. Rosenthal http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/Barrett_v_Rosenthal /ruling.pdf) which upholds that blogs, websites, listservs, etc. are protected under the Communications Decency Act (CDA 1996) Section 230. This section explicitly states that "[n]o provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider."
Though I have only found one http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2006_11.php#0050
Other relevant portions of the article:
"The issue raised in Barrett v. Rosenthal was whether Section 230's protection applies to individuals who frequently use the internet to pass on information obtained elsewhere, whether by forwarding an email written by someone else or, as was the case in Barrett, posting an email from someone else to a newsgroup."
The CDA basically covers anyone from being sued, prosecuted {in my non-legal opinion) for posting forwarding emails from other sources. It is unclear from the article, and I don't have time to reread the CDA at the moment, if this also covers emails that include the 'privacy' footer. However, email is a public method of passing data around, there isn't any expectation of privacy in this form of communication. Finding and ferreting out a private email, either from a mail server, or while it is traveling through a network, isn't a very tough thing to do. You just have to know where to look.
His new company is called Ning.
Loudcloud was a managed hosting provider, that also made software that allowed servers/network devices to be monitored, deployed and controled with a small number of highly technical staff. The benefit to the customer is/was that they don't have to pay for the high priced technical staff that is needed to host their site. Loudcloud had some of the best people I have ever worked with. It was a great place to work at. Sadly, because of some mistakes, Loudcloud ended up running very low on cash and management decided to sell the hosting part of the company to EDS (which already had a hosting division).
If you have the chance to look at Opsware's newest products (NAS & SAS), you should. I recently saw a demo of the NAS product (Network Automation tool), and it is super slick. The product flat out rocks. You can manage all of your switches, firewalls, routers, and load balancers, through a very slick web interface. A very nice product.
You are 100% correct, any sensitive data should be kept secure and from prying eyes. However, this does not solve the problem. The users you have to watch out for are the ones that have legitimate reasons for viewing/accessing the data. They are in the position to abuse trust. People would notice someone walking around the office taking pictures of sensitive data. Have you ever tried to photograph a piece of paper? It's not like in the movies where you just lay it flat and start snapping pictures. If you are using a regular digital camera, you have to get the document in focus, if you are trying to get the whole document you have to make sure that all of it can be read from the shot (also make sure that the flash doesn't go off - nothing like attracting attention). If you are taking the picture in sections, you need to make sure that you get the whole thing with enough overlap that you can reasemble the document. If you are using a camera phone, then you can't be casually walking around snapping pictures over peoples shoulders. To get a readable shot on most camera phones you need to be up super close, and you are only getting a few lines at a time. Even if you have one of the super duper spy cameras you still need to be over the document.
The article seems to be talking about using the 'hard drive' capabilities of the cameras and not the photo angle (which a clean desk policy would not help prevent). Most of the newer cameras have usb connecters, some have firewire, and almost all of them support some sort of removable storage. Adapters for these storage cards are all over the place, and some of them are supper small. This is just like people going into computer stores and using iPods to steal applications off the demo computers.
Did you read the link that pointed to Schneier's article? Just to quote a bit of it. By the way this took place in the 1970's:
When IBM submitted DES as a standard, no one outside the National Security Agency had any expertise to analyze it. The NSA made two changes to DES: It tweaked the algorithm, and it cut the key size by more than half.
It took the academic community two decades to figure out that the NSA "tweaks" actually improved the security of DES. This means that back in the '70s, the National Security Agency was two decades ahead of the state of the art.
Granted the end of the article indicates that this is no longer true. Cryptography has become a respected and legitimate study all around the world. So it is doubtful that the rest of the world and researchers in the states, haven't closed that gap significantly. But the fact that it took researchers outside of Ft. Meade two decades to discover that the 'tweaks' made to DES by the NSA, actually made it stronger to an attack that didn't even exist (again, to anyone outside of Ft. Meade) means that the NSA had to be ahead of the curve (about 20 years ahead).
Again the article is here
While I like the idea of it being a small device I still prefer 'always' having Wireless Broadband if the hotel does not have it. There is usually another hotel in the same vacinity that does have a wireless network which can usually be hijacked. The basic set up I use is my 17" powerbook, an Apple Airport Extreme base station (just because I have one, you can get much cheaper base stations from other manufacturers), a can antenna(yes I am too lazy to build my own), and a Dlink Bridge.
Basically you set up the base station to DHCP from the bridge (via ethernet). Now the Dlink Bridge has a pretty lame antenna attatched to it. So what I do is use the Cantenna (yes, see lazy comment above) and point it in the direction that I want it to. If the network is encrypted I use the wireless card that came in my original airport base station (an Orinoco silver card), since the Airport Extreme one has closed source drivers (that have not been reversed yet), too sniff and collect packets. Kismac is an excellent wireless tool for the Mac. It supports several different cards and supports Wordlist, Brute Force, and Scheduling Attacks (which I find usually get me into most networks). The Dlink Bridge has a pretty simple web interface that allows you to set it up to join a specific network. It also supports scanning for networks, though I find that it doesn't seem to pick up everything that maybe out there. I set this up on top of those ridiculously tall TV cabinets and I can kick back on the bed without those pesky ethernet cables. This can also be useful if you have a large house (or a small house with interferance) to connect up in rooms that were previously spotty.
The pre-made Can Antenna can be purchased for $49.99 (via CompUSA or the web), the Dlink Bridge is $109 from Fry's, Airport Express for $199 (various vendors).
I have found that some hotels have pretty crappy coverage in the outer rooms, so they let you 'barrow' (for a deposit) one of the Dlink Bridges, preconfigured to join their networks. Pretty handy. So if you happen to be in a hotel toward the outside and the coverage is spotty, you may want to check with the front desk to see if they have one. It could make your life much easier. =)
Oakley has a pair of sunglasses that include an MP3 player. Here is a link for some reviews. The prices are somewhat high (at least to me), here is the link for the two different versions (128/256 $395/$495).
WebGuy is the victim (or at least the anit-spammer).
Lawless is the general counsel for the company that owns the spammers (page 1 indicates that they are the owner and operator of the website in question).
The lawyer further goes on to ask if there is an "opt-out" option/link. Which WebGuy responds to by indicating that the majority of those are used by spammers to verify that the address is valid. He also indicates that since he did not "opt-in" that he should not have to "opt-out". Which can be seen as being a pain in the ass, but he does have a valid point. If you never gave that address to the spammer, why should you have to follow an opt-out procedure that may or may not be a trick to confirm an email address?
At the end of the conversation, he asks the lawyer "how soon can we expect to stop receiving mail from cruise.com". To which the lawyer responds with "I'm going to take them down right now".
Even if we all agree that giving them a text file filled with several names is somewhat unreasonable, the lawyer still aggreed to it. He still responded that he was going to remove those address. If you go to WebGuy's site, you can see that after the lawyer agreed to remove them from the list, he (webguy) started to receive even more spam, which can be seen as a retaliation from the company.
The money he offered to settle for was $.05 on the dollar for the maximum damages allowed under the law. Given that this is not a frivolous law suit, that would seem like an extremely reasonable amount to settle for (most people would never settle that low).
He may seem like he is being sort of an ass, but I don't think he is completely in the wrong, providing that the facts are as he represents them. Even if the company sells a legitimate service does not give them license to spam people. If you can subscribe a thrid party to their mailing list, then the controls are too weak and need to be fixed.
One thing in this post just doesn't sit right with me (though I still enjoyed the post).
That said, the overall risk of plane crashes from this form of attack is low. If the airport and immediate area are kept secure (and they should be if only to guard against Stinger-style missile attacks), it's very unlikely someone with a commercial laser could get close enough to completely blind a pilot.
Have you ever flown into Mccarran International Airport in Las Vegas, Nv.? Not only does the approach path fly over a vast part of Henderson and Las Vegas but any nut job in a hotel on the strip facing Henderson (a suburb of Vegas) can watch airplanes land. This along with the 'lookout' which is a parking lot on the airport land with about 15 or so spots (with only a fence seperating it from the runway), makes this sort of attack very real. Also the San Diego and San Fransico airports have approaches over water, so a wacko can sit in a boat and try this. Even the military base in Las Vegas has a flight path that puts them over the vast majority of the town, and we house one of the larger fighter wings (at least I think we do).
The sad fact is that these airports were all built when such things were not a consideration and they can't very well go knocking on peoples doors and make them move to put up a protective perimeter or completely seal a harbor. Not to mention (at least in the case of Las Vegas) there are numerous mountains with public access (Vegas sits in a valley, mountains on both sides) where a potential attacker could have a grand time.
So goggles wouldn't be totally effective but is there something that could be added to the window of the cockpit to prevent these sort of attacks? Maybe some coating to deflect the laser or bounce it off like radar (all I know about lasers I learned from watching Real Genius). I just can't think of a realistic method of protecting the grounds around the airport. In my mind the security would have to come from something on the plan (a technological solution), something to totally defuse it.