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Meet “badBIOS,” the mysterious Mac and PC malware that jumps airgaps
by Eugen Leitl 03 Nov '13

03 Nov '13

http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/10/meet-badbios-the-mysterious-mac-and… Meet “badBIOS,” the mysterious Mac and PC malware that jumps airgaps Like a super strain of bacteria, the rootkit plaguing Dragos Ruiu is omnipotent. by Dan Goodin - Oct 31 2013, 3:07pm CET BLACK HAT HACKING Aurich Lawson / Thinkstock Three years ago, security consultant Dragos Ruiu was in his lab when he noticed something highly unusual: his MacBook Air, on which he had just installed a fresh copy of OS X, spontaneously updated the firmware that helps it boot. Stranger still, when Ruiu then tried to boot the machine off a CD ROM, it refused. He also found that the machine could delete data and undo configuration changes with no prompting. He didn't know it then, but that odd firmware update would become a high-stakes malware mystery that would consume most of his waking hours. In the following months, Ruiu observed more odd phenomena that seemed straight out of a science-fiction thriller. A computer running the Open BSD operating system also began to modify its settings and delete its data without explanation or prompting. His network transmitted data specific to the Internet's next-generation IPv6 networking protocol, even from computers that were supposed to have IPv6 completely disabled. Strangest of all was the ability of infected machines to transmit small amounts of network data with other infected machines even when their power cords and Ethernet cables were unplugged and their Wi-Fi and Bluetooth cards were removed. Further investigation soon showed that the list of affected operating systems also included multiple variants of Windows and Linux. "We were like, 'Okay, we're totally owned,'" Ruiu told Ars. "'We have to erase all our systems and start from scratch,' which we did. It was a very painful exercise. I've been suspicious of stuff around here ever since." In the intervening three years, Ruiu said, the infections have persisted, almost like a strain of bacteria that's able to survive extreme antibiotic therapies. Within hours or weeks of wiping an infected computer clean, the odd behavior would return. The most visible sign of contamination is a machine's inability to boot off a CD, but other, more subtle behaviors can be observed when using tools such as Process Monitor, which is designed for troubleshooting and forensic investigations. Another intriguing characteristic: in addition to jumping "airgaps" designed to isolate infected or sensitive machines from all other networked computers, the malware seems to have self-healing capabilities. "We had an air-gapped computer that just had its [firmware] BIOS reflashed, a fresh disk drive installed, and zero data on it, installed from a Windows system CD," Ruiu said. "At one point, we were editing some of the components and our registry editor got disabled. It was like: wait a minute, how can that happen? How can the machine react and attack the software that we're using to attack it? This is an air-gapped machine and all of the sudden the search function in the registry editor stopped working when we were using it to search for their keys." Over the past two weeks, Ruiu has taken to Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus to document his investigative odyssey and share a theory that has captured the attention of some of the world's foremost security experts. The malware, Ruiu believes, is transmitted though USB drives to infect the lowest levels of computer hardware. With the ability to target a computer's Basic Input/Output System (BIOS), Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI), and possibly other firmware standards, the malware can attack a wide variety of platforms, escape common forms of detection, and survive most attempts to eradicate it. But the story gets stranger still. In posts here, here, and here, Ruiu posited another theory that sounds like something from the screenplay of a post-apocalyptic movie: "badBIOS," as Ruiu dubbed the malware, has the ability to use high-frequency transmissions passed between computer speakers and microphones to bridge airgaps. Bigfoot in the age of the advanced persistent threat At times as I've reported this story, its outline has struck me as the stuff of urban legend, the advanced persistent threat equivalent of a Bigfoot sighting. Indeed, Ruiu has conceded that while several fellow security experts have assisted his investigation, none has peer reviewed his process or the tentative findings that he's beginning to draw. (A compilation of Ruiu's observations is here.) Also unexplained is why Ruiu would be on the receiving end of such an advanced and exotic attack. As a security professional, the organizer of the internationally renowned CanSecWest and PacSec conferences, and the founder of the Pwn2Own hacking competition, he is no doubt an attractive target to state-sponsored spies and financially motivated hackers. But he's no more attractive a target than hundreds or thousands of his peers, who have so far not reported the kind of odd phenomena that has afflicted Ruiu's computers and networks. In contrast to the skepticism that's common in the security and hacking cultures, Ruiu's peers have mostly responded with deep-seated concern and even fascination to his dispatches about badBIOS. "Everybody in security needs to follow @dragosr and watch his analysis of #badBIOS," Alex Stamos, one of the more trusted and sober security researchers, wrote in a tweet last week. Jeff Moss—the founder of the Defcon and Blackhat security conferences who in 2009 began advising Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on matters of computer security—retweeted the statement and added: "No joke it's really serious." Plenty of others agree. "Dragos is definitely one of the good reliable guys, and I have never ever even remotely thought him dishonest," security researcher Arrigo Triulzi told Ars. "Nothing of what he describes is science fiction taken individually, but we have not seen it in the wild ever." Been there, done that Triulzi said he's seen plenty of firmware-targeting malware in the laboratory. A client of his once infected the UEFI-based BIOS of his Mac laptop as part of an experiment. Five years ago, Triulzi himself developed proof-of-concept malware that stealthily infected the network interface controllers that sit on a computer motherboard and provide the Ethernet jack that connects the machine to a network. His research built off of work by John Heasman that demonstrated how to plant hard-to-detect malware known as a rootkit in a computer's peripheral component interconnect, the Intel-developed connection that attaches hardware devices to a CPU. It's also possible to use high-frequency sounds broadcast over speakers to send network packets. Early networking standards used the technique, said security expert Rob Graham. Ultrasonic-based networking is also the subject of a great deal of research, including this project by scientists at MIT. Of course, it's one thing for researchers in the lab to demonstrate viable firmware-infecting rootkits and ultra high-frequency networking techniques. But as Triulzi suggested, it's another thing entirely to seamlessly fuse the two together and use the weapon in the real world against a seasoned security consultant. What's more, use of a USB stick to infect an array of computer platforms at the BIOS level rivals the payload delivery system found in the state-sponsored Stuxnet worm unleashed to disrupt Iran's nuclear program. And the reported ability of badBIOS to bridge airgaps also has parallels to Flame, another state-sponsored piece of malware that used Bluetooth radio signals to communicate with devices not connected to the Internet. "Really, everything Dragos reports is something that's easily within the capabilities of a lot of people," said Graham, who is CEO of penetration testing firm Errata Security. "I could, if I spent a year, write a BIOS that does everything Dragos said badBIOS is doing. To communicate over ultrahigh frequency sound waves between computers is really, really easy." Coincidentally, Italian newspapers this week reported that Russian spies attempted to monitor attendees of last month's G20 economic summit by giving them memory sticks and recharging cables programmed to intercept their communications. Eureka For most of the three years that Ruiu has been wrestling with badBIOS, its infection mechanism remained a mystery. A month or two ago, after buying a new computer, he noticed that it was almost immediately infected as soon as he plugged one of his USB drives into it. He soon theorized that infected computers have the ability to contaminate USB devices and vice versa. "The suspicion right now is there's some kind of buffer overflow in the way the BIOS is reading the drive itself, and they're reprogramming the flash controller to overflow the BIOS and then adding a section to the BIOS table," he explained. He still doesn't know if a USB stick was the initial infection trigger for his MacBook Air three years ago, or if the USB devices were infected only after they came into contact with his compromised machines, which he said now number between one and two dozen. He said he has been able to identify a variety of USB sticks that infect any computer they are plugged into. At next month's PacSec conference, Ruiu said he plans to get access to expensive USB analysis hardware that he hopes will provide new clues behind the infection mechanism. He said he suspects badBIOS is only the initial module of a multi-staged payload that has the ability to infect the Windows, Mac OS X, BSD, and Linux operating systems. Dragos Ruiu Julia Wolf "It's going out over the network to get something or it's going out to the USB key that it was infected from," he theorized. "That's also the conjecture of why it's not booting CDs. It's trying to keep its claws, as it were, on the machine. It doesn't want you to boot another OS it might not have code for." To put it another way, he said, badBIOS "is the tip of the warhead, as it were." “Things kept getting fixed” Ruiu said he arrived at the theory about badBIOS's high-frequency networking capability after observing encrypted data packets being sent to and from an infected laptop that had no obvious network connection with—but was in close proximity to—another badBIOS-infected computer. The packets were transmitted even when the laptop had its Wi-Fi and Bluetooth cards removed. Ruiu also disconnected the machine's power cord so it ran only on battery to rule out the possibility it was receiving signals over the electrical connection. Even then, forensic tools showed the packets continued to flow over the airgapped machine. Then, when Ruiu removed the internal speaker and microphone connected to the airgapped machine, the packets suddenly stopped. With the speakers and mic intact, Ruiu said, the isolated computer seemed to be using the high-frequency connection to maintain the integrity of the badBIOS infection as he worked to dismantle software components the malware relied on. "The airgapped machine is acting like it's connected to the Internet," he said. "Most of the problems we were having is we were slightly disabling bits of the components of the system. It would not let us disable some things. Things kept getting fixed automatically as soon as we tried to break them. It was weird." It's too early to say with confidence that what Ruiu has been observing is a USB-transmitted rootkit that can burrow into a computer's lowest levels and use it as a jumping off point to infect a variety of operating systems with malware that can't be detected. It's even harder to know for sure that infected systems are using high-frequency sounds to communicate with isolated machines. But after almost two weeks of online discussion, no one has been able to rule out these troubling scenarios, either. "It looks like the state of the art in intrusion stuff is a lot more advanced than we assumed it was," Ruiu concluded in an interview. "The take-away from this is a lot of our forensic procedures are weak when faced with challenges like this. A lot of companies have to take a lot more care when they use forensic data if they're faced with sophisticated attackers."

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Re: Meet “badBIOS,” the mysterious Mac and PC malware that jumps airgaps
by brian carroll 03 Nov '13

03 Nov '13

naive perhaps, though would it be possible to transmit such 'radio code' via a small transmitter, say at short range in another building, that could send a stream of infecting code into a building (and thus the infection could begin outside the USB framework), such as via a small programmed microcontroller with radio antenna, either networked or running autonomously (or would this be a pirate radio issue, closed-in on quickly by HAMs monitoring misuse of spectrum). further, if this radio broadcast of code were possible, one-way or bidirectional, what would prevent this from scaling city or region wide if a transmitter were overtaken and sending out signals to computers en masse, to reprogram firmware, targeting via equipment statistics or OS/hardware demographics. just wondering if software-defined radio may be a context for hacking computers beyond the peripherals directly attached to the computers, such that a different security situation, boundary, or perimeter may exist yet not be accounted for or protected against.

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Re: [Cryptography] [RNG] on RNGs, VM state, rollback, etc.
by Theodore Ts'o 02 Nov '13

02 Nov '13

On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 08:12:00AM -0400, John Kelsey wrote: > This gets back to the threat model discussion. If your attacker is > watching you from the outside as you generate your key, then > interacting with stuff over the local net won't help you much. (You > may get a bit or two of entropy from the attacker not being able to > know exactly which clock-tick you were on when the interrupt was > serviced, but not much.). If he's not watching you then, you can > rule out a whole category of attackers. Yes, absolutely. For example, if you assume that the attacker has network taps at Fort Meade and in a phone closets of companies like AT&T, they are very likely not going to be able to watch your LAN traffic. OTOH, if they have physical access to your LAN such that they can drop an agent close to your computer that can monitor all of the packets hitting your computer, we have to ask how are they doing this? If they can someone break into your local ethernet switch remotely, then you might be in a world of hurt (although usually switches generally don't have enough of general purpose CPU that this is likely). If you posit a "black bag" job where they physically break into your house, and replace your ethernet switch, then they could presumably place a keyboard bug on your keyboard, or otherwise physically tamper with your computer, install audio/video surveillance equipment in an HVAC duct, etc. --- and then you're either doing something really black hatish, or I have a tin foil hat to sell to you, or possibly both. :-) My challenge as someone who is designing things like a general purpose /dev/random is that it's challenging to determine which assumptions about the threat environment might make sense in a large set of hypothetical scenarios, and which do not. I can imagine scenarios where the adversary is on a public network --- say, at a University dorm network --- who might be able to watch interpacket network arrival times, but who probably can't make a lot of assumptions about HDD completion drive times --- and the user might want to generate a securely long-term public key for their ssh host key or for GPG. I'm less willing to accept as a valid threat model one where the adversary has near-total control over _all_ entropy sources, *and* can divine the state of the prng, but has no other access to the system so they can't break root in other ways, *and* where if you can't prove that you can make the prng secure again, it's somehow horrible and your rng is not robust (and that the authors of said paper should deserve lots of citations so they can get a suitably high impact score on their way to achieving tenure :-). But maybe there are scenarios where such a threat environment is actually realistic. I'm certainly willing to hear someone try to give me an example of such a threat environment; it would probably be quite educational. - Ted _______________________________________________ The cryptography mailing list cryptography(a)metzdowd.com http://www.metzdowd.com/mailman/listinfo/cryptography

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threat-model clarification
by brian carroll 02 Nov '13

02 Nov '13

(was: Re: Meet "badBIOS") additional clarification regarding my last post... https://cpunks.org//pipermail/cypherpunks/2013-November/001957.html i did not thoroughly think through my explanation and a large gap exists in reasoning, and so want to provide additional explanation about how it could be possible to defeat existing security measures via this approach +------+ attacker ---> | SCIF | +------+ basically the idea of a boundary or wall around a SCIF, even if acoustically and electromagnetically shielded, is proposed possible to bypass via resonance and-or also quantum effects if they were to function in a similar way so even though a boundary could exist for EM and sound, that separates what is outside from what is inside, it is proposed that an attacker could potentially move through this boundary and still interact with interior equipment via acoustic and electromagnetic principles what was missing from the explanation was that this attack could occur within a context of 'other dimensions' or additional dimensionality, versus 4D of space-time that is presumably standardized for the basic security evaluation [4D] ---> [otherD] ---> [4D] in other words, what is proposed is that resonance could occur outside of only a 4 dimensional context, as part of the larger nested circuitry of the cosmos, and bypass the bounded "physics" of limited 4D space-time and its rules, to reemerge on the inside of the SCIF security perimeter, in a context accessed by electromagnetism and sound (as these may be connected with, interdimensionally) f l a t l a n d ...................... +------+ attacker ---> | SCIF | +------+ in other words, this is to recontextualize the SCIF in the realm of multiple dimensions beyond space-time, that hierarchically could exist in N-dimensions, which is proposed to correlate with a state of absolute truth like Flatland the novel, higher dimensions may exist unseen due to parameters or limits, and thus beyond imagination, unless somehow accessing keys to the threshold condition, the structure connecting layers (note: relation of electromagnetism, sound; the aether) so while an attack against a SCIF could be defeated by electromagnetic and acoustic shielding that would not allow such emissions to escape in 4D, seemingly, this condition may not exist within higher dimensions that can bypass the secure boundary, threshold, 'wall' f l a t l a n d ...................... (otherD)--------. | | | | | v | +------+ attacker ---> | SCIF | +------+ if an attacker, for instance, had equipment that could access this higher dimensionality, likely using acoustic and electromagnetic technology to do so, it may involve a circuit that exists outside 4 dimensional space-time, and moves through a higher-dimensionality to breach the protective barrier, reemerging on the other side of the wall, inside the SCIF, via acoustic and EM effects, such as resonance or perhaps quantum-correlations due to entanglement of matter, energy, information f l a t l a n d ...................... (otherD) (attacker) | | v +------+ secure ---> | SCIF | +------+ likewise, a true security threat could today exist that in this way appears entirely *invisible* because it is functioning beyond normal perception in a 4D context which is actually nested within higher dimensionality and thus omniscient-like observation, surveillance, if not political meddling and exploitation could occur from beyond the normal realm of perception, via similar means yet remain officially unaccounted for and unacknowledged, though be the actual context for events that are occurring, which tends towards a Matrix red pill or blue pill situation in other words, the attackers could be invisible and have the advantage of different physics, and be siphoning data and information from other dimensionality yet basically remain unseen or removed from immediate interactions, though rely on avatar-like secondary relations as part of a management scheme, in a realm as if "make believe" note: in this context, "binary computation" could relate to dimensionality and in this way: mathematics in 4D could be differently patterned in higher dimensions if not solvable via unseen correlations (math based on patterns, dimensionality effecting their functionality, how the patterns relate, 'compute', via structures) attacker [4D] ==> [otherD] ---> SCIF: ==> [4D] equipment thus, even in the four dimensional context, if this could be circumvented to defeat the security barrier or wall of the SCIF, a principle that is interdimensional such as resonance could appear on both side of this boundary and yet not pass through it in 4D space-time, instead the attack would leave this realm, move into a higher dimensionality and reappear elsewhere in 4D, within acoustic and electromagnetic principles that involve pairing or matching can that be remotely correlated, as with entangled objects and acoustic resonance sound/em [4D] ==> [otherD] ---> SCIF: ==> [4D] sound/em thus to clarify: the 'magic flute' of some unknown technology would access other dimensionality via its acoustic or other principles, and perhaps this is also potentially ~natural or automatic- and could reappear on the other side of the boundary, via this] resonance or entanglement, even while the SCIF is designed to protect against any such outside/inside interactions, because it goes beyond 4D spacetime and involves interdimensional circuits of connection, seemingly fundamentally involving information itself as this connects to matter and energy structurally (perhaps in some ways related to information and its hypothesized ability to escape a blackhole) (such structures are what CERN could be dealing with in the unmentionable Da Vinci Code realm, where the recontextualization of dark matter and dark energy could involve bridging into higher dimensionality) i.e. the hack is literally "out of this world" & back or could start in higher dimensionality from the start or be coordinated across the dimensional boundary by a shared-identity group attacker in multiple dimensions, e.g. agents in 4D coordinated with higher dimensionality where the stealth attacks could be multipronged, ~magical. of ceiling cat voyeurism involving higher dimensionality Š « Ȑ

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Re: Meet ?badBIOS, ? the mysterious Mac and PC malware that jumps airgaps
by Softy 01 Nov '13

01 Nov '13

> > > perhaps i misunderstand it, though must 'resonance' > > be audibly acoustic, and would a SCIF actually defend > > against "vibrations" at all frequencies. > the question highlights how ill-suited the 'spy agencies' are for conducting asymmetric anything. Unless they had a Brain inside think of a mechanism and explain it to an Engineer to propose to a Facilities Security Manager who obtained confirmation from a Director, they would be vulnerable. For instance, TEMPEST security - every SCIF has it because inside it was well documented/implemented. SEISMIC security - no SCIF*** is isolated from seismic vibrations modulated with data. So, to ex-filtrate data, have those passing circus elephants stomp their feet in predetermined patterns. Or make one of those "Dune" style thumpers. The worms in this case being .... ? *** I'm suppose some very few SCIFs are vibration isolated for various reasons, but not as an exfil channel. -daniel

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cypherlinks （網址）
by brian carroll 01 Nov '13

01 Nov '13

// hacking the interstate and road system... (via digg) Meet The Guy Who Drove Across The U.S. In A Record 28 Hours 50 Minutes http://jalopnik.com/meet-the-guy-who-drove-across-the-u-s-in-a-record-28-h-… "After Alex Roy set the transcontinental driving record, he waited a year to come forward – until the statute of limitations expired on every single illegal act he committed. Ed and Dave waited less than three weeks." (a great story involving strategic preparation, musical flow... risky, daring, record-breaking in mass surveillance context) // everything electronic potentially bugged and networked? // wat if this is the unaccounted for norm instead of exception DON'T BREW THAT CUPPA! Your kettle could be a SPAMBOT (via drudge) Russian report says Chinese appliances hide Wifi slurping spam-spreaders http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/29/dont_brew_that_cuppa_your_kettle_co… // security from solar flare & solar wind protection, CME EMP-like. // also moves into metaphysics, 'reading the signs' a Rorschach test... 28 solar flares in the last seven days -- video (via drudge) http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-solar-flare-20131031,0,… 'A sunspot is an area of the sun where the magnetic fields have gotten all twisted up. "You get a tangled bunch of magnetic fields, and they get too tangled and too stressed, they end up erupting," said Holly Gilbert, a solar physicist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.' // excellent site to learn language of sun signs... // varying patterns akin to observing man on moon photographs and videos via solar telescope http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexandra4/ (also, consider Van Gogh's sunflowers in this context) https://www.google.com/search?q=Van+Gogh+sunflowers+original&tbm=isch This is how you blow up a planet, according to Neil deGrasse Tyson http://sploid.gizmodo.com/astrostud-neil-degrasse-tyson-explains-how-to-blo… Left Or Right Tail Wags Elicit Different Emotional Responses From Dogs http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/left-or-right-tail-wags-elicit-diff… (via digg) '"Where this paper is a step forward is to show that those [brain hemisphere] side biases are actually read or interpreted by another member of the species," she said. "We have very little if any other evidence of that."' Designing an acoustic diode // metamaterial http://phys.org/news/2013-11-acoustic-diode.html "How the Acoustic Diode Would Work: Sound waves easily flow in two directions. Yet in nature, total reflection of sound in one direction is known to occur at the air-water interface. This gave investigators the idea that an acoustical diode could be constructed by transmitting acoustic waves using an asymmetric prism to create total unidirectional reflection." ¶ ½ Ü

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INDECT: Intelligent Information System Supporting Observation, Searching and Detection for Security of Citizens in Urban Environment
by Eugen Leitl 01 Nov '13

01 Nov '13

http://www.openaire.eu/en/component/openaire/project_info/default/619?id=21… Project: INDECT Title: Intelligent Information System Supporting Observation, Searching and Detection for Security of Citizens in Urban Environment Call: FP7-SEC-2007-1 Grant agreement number: 218086 Start date: 01/01/2009 End date: 31/12/2013 Special clause 39: no Scientific area: Security Programme: SP1-Cooperation Detailed project information (CORDIS) Publications Use of the bio-inspired algorithms to find global minimum in force directed layout algorithms DoS attacks targeting SIP server and improvements of robustness Impact of network Jitter on effective equipment impairment factor Video files recording and playback with VoiceXML Objective assessment of IP video calls with Asterisk Delay model of RTP flows in accordance with M/D/1 and M/D/2 Kendall's notation Monitoring the quality of speech in the communication system BESIP Remote control of asterisk via web services E-model modification for case of cascade codecs arrangement Methodology of the direct measurement of the switching latency Performance analysis of virtualized real-time applications SIP end to end performance metrics Improvement of network efficiency on the grounds of change communication protocol Software designed 64-QAM demodulator of OFDM signal implemented into FPGA elements Fundamental frequency extraction method using central clipping and its importance for the classification of emotional state The interactions of SOAP-based web services for recording and replaying video files Malicious traffic monitoring and its evaluation in VoIP infrastructure Automated speech quality monitoring tool based on perceptual evaluation Approach to stress tests in SIP environment based on marginal analysis Applied multiprotocol routing in IP telephony Advanced concept of voice communication server on embedded platform SIP registration stress test Delay variation model for RTP flows in network with priority queueing E-model improvement for speech quality evaluation including codecs tandeming Jitter buffer loss estimate for effective equipment impairment factor Overview of the security components of INDECT project VoIP based system for the message distribution Security infrastructures: towards the INDECT system security Mathematical model of subscriber extension line Performance evaluation of INACT - INDECT advanced image cataloguing tool Influence of atmospheric parameters on speech quality in GSM/UMTS Danger alert communication system Development of a speech quality monitoring tool based on ITU-T P.862 IP telephony based danger alert communication system and its implementation Multimedia services in Asterisk based on VoiceXML Impact of emotions on fundamental speech signal frequency Speech quality monitoring in czech national research network Delay variation model with RTP flows behavior in accordance with M/D/1 Kendall's notation SIP threats detection system Interactive VoiceXML module into SIP-based warning distribution system Web-based IP telephony penetration system evaluating level of protection from attacks and threats Non-intrusive speech quality assessment in simplified e-model Replication-Based Information Sharing in Multi-Agent System for Monitoring the Internet Feature selection for acoustic events detection M-JPEG Robust Video Watermarking Based on DPCM and Transform Coding Traffic Danger Ontology for Citizen Safety Web System How to Build an Objective Model for Packet Loss Effect on High Definition Content Based on SSIM and Subjective Experiments Web-Based Knowledge Acquisition and Management System Supporting Collaboration for Improving Safety in Urban Environment A New Method for Automatic Generation of Animated Motion A no reference metric for the quality assessment of videos affected by exposure distortion On Occlusion-Handling for People Detection Fusion in Multi-camera Networks Agent-based Modelling of Social Organisations Content protection in grayscale and color images based on robust digital watermarking Anchor-Free Localization Algorithm with Low-Complexity Method for Node Distance Estimation Enhancement Using ToA Analysis of privacy vulnerabilities in single sign-on mechanisms for multimedia websites Scenario-Driven System for Open Source Intelligence Correction Trees as an Alternative to Turbo Codes and Low Density Parity Check Codes Prototypes of a Web System for Citizen Provided Information, Automatic Knowledge Extraction, Knowledge Management and GIS Integration Recent advances in multimedia networking INDECT Security Architecture LDA for Face Profile Detection Audio-Visual Surveillance System for Application in Bank Operating Room Software Implementation of New Symmetric Block Cipher Malicious traffic monitoring and its evaluation in VoIP infrastructure Approach to stress tests in SIP environment based on marginal analysis Graph-Based Relation Mining Detection and Localization of Selected Acoustic Events in 3D Acoustic Field for Smart Surveillance Applications Distributed Framework for Visual Event Detection in Parking Lot Area Object Detection and Measurement Using Stereo Images Semantic Structure Matching Recommendation Algorithm Acoustic Events Detection Using MFCC and MPEG-7 Descriptors Quality Assessment for a Licence Plate Recognition Task Based on a Video Streamed in Limited Networking Conditions Automatic quality control of digital image content reconstruction schemes Broadcast news audio classification using SVM binary trees Analysis of Particular Iris Recognition Stages Determining image quality requirements for recognition tasks in generalized public safety video applications: Definitions, testing, standardization, and current trends INSTREET - Application for Urban Photograph Localization Quantum cryptography - The analysis of security requirements Implementation of the New Integration Model of Security and QoS for MANET to the OPNET A new approach to high-capacity annotation watermarking based on digital fountain codes A Novel JPEG Steganography Method Based on Modulus Function with Histogram Analysis Hierarchical Multi-Agent System for Heterogeneous Data Integration INCR — INDECT Multimedia Crawler Performance of Basic Spectral Descriptors and MRMR Algorithm to the Detection of Acoustic Events Towards Hardware Implementation of INDECT Block Cipher Multi-camera Vehicle Tracking Using Local Image Features and Neural Networks Video Watermarking Based on DPCM and Transformcoding Using Permutation Spectrum and QIM Camera Angle Invariant Shape Recognition in Surveillance Systems A Statistical Blind Image Steganalysis Based on Image Multi-classification Integrating Applications Developed for Heterogeneous Platforms: Building an Environment for Criminal Analysts A new symmetric block cipher based on key-dependent S-boxes INACT — INDECT Advanced Image Cataloguing Tool QoE as a Function of Frame Rate and Resolution Changes Monitoring the quality of speech in the communication system BESIP Brightness Correction and Stereovision Impression Based Methods of Perceived Quality Improvement of CCTV Video Sequences Performance Measurements of Real Time Video Transmission from Car Patrol Multiple Sound Sources Localization in Real Time Using Acoustic Vector Sensor Vehicle Classification Based on Soft Computing Algorithms Quality Assessment in Video Surveillance Performance Evaluation of the Parallel Codebook Algorithm for Background Subtraction in Video Stream A High-Capacity Annotation Watermarking Scheme Fast Face Localisation Using AdaBoost Algorithm and Identification with Matrix Decomposition Methods Detection of Moving Objects in Images Combined from Video and Thermal Cameras A novel approach to adaptive image authentication Recent Progress in Development of Language Model for Slovak LVCSR Automated qualitative assessment of multi-modal distortions in digital images based on GLZ Assessing Task-Based Video Quality — A Journey from Subjective Psycho-Physical Experiments to Objective Quality Models Extensible Web Crawler – Towards Multimedia Material Analysis Efficient Method for Content Reconstruction With Self-Embedding Face Detection using Color based Skin Localization and Facial Features Extraction Security Infrastructures: Towards the INDECT System Security Verification of the Parameterization Methods in the Context of Automatic Recognition of Sounds Related to Danger Resolving Conflicts in Object Tracking in Video Stream Employing Key Point Matching One Approach of Using Key-Dependent S-BOXes in AES >From Algorithm to Agent Quantum Cryptography Protocol Simulator A novel method of image steganography in DWT domain A scheme for censorship of sensitive image content with high-quality reconstruction ability Detecting Predatory Behaviour from Online Textual Chats Classification of video sequences into specified Generalized Use Classes of target size and lighting level SIP Registration Burst Load Test Comparison of Different Feature Types for Acoustic Event Detection System Multicriteria Metadata Mechanisms for Fast and Reliable Searching of People Using Databases with Unreliable Records Evolutionary Tuning of Compound Image Analysis Systems for Effective License Plate Recognition Redefining ITU-T P.912 Recommendation Requirements for Subjects of Quality Assessments in Recognition Tasks Analysis of Malware Network Activity

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<nettime> public indifference
by allan siegel 01 Nov '13

01 Nov '13

Excuse me but is public indifference considered to be a new phenomenon is that really what it is? Remember Daniel Ellsberg, the Pentagon Papers? Levels of domestic and international surveillance have intensified logarithmically in the post-war period; just imagine what J. Edgar would have done if he could Hoover up data the way the NSA does. The highest echelons of this behemoth of a security apparatus have taken on a life of its own independent of the governmental controls that are supposed to monitor its activities. Quite presciently Norman Mailer wrote about this ages ago in reference to the CIA; he described how the various entities and fronts that it created began to take on their own economic realities far removed from any governmental controls and now, far beyond what Mailer might have imagined, the government officially and openly sub-contracts security and policing to companies effectively working outside the law. All this just increases daily despite shut-downs and economic crises (after all its sucking up tax dollars just like all the data its accumulating). Indifference is an inaccurate description of what the public is feeling right now. What might be more accurate is a profound sense of cynicism, confusion and fear because the world most of us live in is littered with enormous uncertainties and where survival is high on the daily agenda; and because politicians and government leaders are baffling in terms of their levels of incoherence; and because the omnipresent cloud of some kind of terrorist act lingers in the not far distance (and never mind the kind of atrocities that occur daily enabled by the same systems that govern the surveillance apparatus). So, indifference is not quite appropriate when you start thinking about the future and how it appears or manifests itself stitched into people’s daily routines. This is not to belittle or diminish the importance of what Snowden has done; the impact of his act is hard to quantify as its ramifications will be still felt years from now; the Pentagon Papers had a shock value when they came out also and the NY Times eagerly published them (and the Times then still had journalistic stature). But, indeed now the times they are a’changing. The real indifference lies not with the public but rather with the shamble of what we politely call the Fifth Estate and the obscene level of public discourse… bye for now allan # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime(a)kein.org

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Re: [Freedombox-discuss] Dumb idea: Alternative to Tor that promotes good behavior
by Melvin Carvalho 01 Nov '13

01 Nov '13

On 27 October 2013 21:07, Bill Cox <waywardgeek(a)gmail.com> wrote: > On 10/27/2013 3:31 PM, Melvin Carvalho wrote: > > > > > On 27 October 2013 18:26, Bill Cox <waywardgeek(a)gmail.com> wrote: > >> I would love feedback on an idea for promoting more internet freedom. >> >> Here's the problem: Tor has little public support, because most Tor >> traffic is wasted on supporting bad behavior. When I ran a Tor node, it >> became clear that most of my bandwidth was being wasted on video >> downloads. People want to promote free speech, not child pornography. >> >> Here's my solution: Build a Tor-like network for routing anonymous data, >> but track behavior of all users' secret identities, and make their >> Internet history public. Allow node operators to choose categories of >> public identities they which to support. >> >> For example, I would choose to promote all forms of non-violent free >> speech. I should be able to contribute my bandwidth to this purpose. >> If a dissident in China goes by the public ID of ChinaCat, and has a >> high reputation for promoting freedom, they are welcome to use my >> bandwidth. If someone just wants access to redtube.com, they can get >> that access from someone else. >> >> There are various technical aspects to this idea. For example, would >> prefer that the social graph between secret identities be public so I >> can use a simple network flow algorithm over trust edges between >> identities to determine how much I trust someone. The entire social >> network should be P2P, like Tor, and it should route a lot of dummy >> traffic to help hide the real traffic. With the considerably lower >> bandwidth that is needed to promote freedom rather than free porn, this >> should be no problem. >> >> What do you guys think? >> > > I like it a lot. But who is going to volunteer to do this work, when > people are already busy (not least in coding up things like freedombox) > > > I am willing to write it myself. P2P algorithms is something I enjoy > coding, and this is one of those applications that may be able to do some > real good for the world. > > > I think you would need an economy to incentivize people to do the > categorization etc. > > Maybe in return for someone helping you route your traffic, you could > keep an encrypted backup of their data or contribute a code patch to their > project etc. > > > We're thinking along the same lines. I would like to add a Ripple based > economy to the public social network, based on trust relationships between > peers as in the original Ripple algorithm. With secret identities in the > social network, it is less important to keep transactions and the trust > network secret, which was a problem in the original Ripple algorithm. I > imagine transactions being done in tiny fractions of a cent, for services > like helping download files faster in a torrent or providing encrypted > storage. > I believe the retroshare project (noted on this list many times) is in the process of implementing a P2P ripple (a la Ryan Fugger's original protocol) system, or have done so already. Dr Bob told me you can plug in other protocols such as GNUNet quite easily. I'm unsure how this would gel with Tor tho. I'm also looking at translating all of the crypto currency work to a web based system. Would be very happy to hear if you make any progress on this. Or perhaps we can discuss off list if some stuff is off topic. My current line of thinking is hacking the economy so that fbx users get their own coins that they can spend with each other, and to give, say, 10% of all new coins to the FSF to help lower hardware costs of plug computers ... > > Bill > > _______________________________________________ > Freedombox-discuss mailing list > Freedombox-discuss(a)lists.alioth.debian.org > http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss > _______________________________________________ Freedombox-discuss mailing list Freedombox-discuss(a)lists.alioth.debian.org http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss

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Dark Mail Alliance for end-to-end private and secure email
by coderman 01 Nov '13

01 Nov '13

darkmail.info: "end-to-end encrypted protocol and architecture ... [for] private and secure email", presumably a white paper is forthcoming. initial release anticipated in 2014. ... which returns on port 443: "Error 102 (net::ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED)" (~_~;) --- requirements for end-to-end secure email: - content of messages always protected; ensure authenticity and privacy of content. (plain-text content is not an option) - keys generated and kept on device / user end-point. (no server side generation or storage of private keys on behalf of users; support hardware secured private key and wrapped storage on devices with HSMs) - mail header scrubbing is performed at delivery, in transit, and on receipt to limit metadata exposure. - server-to-server communication enforces STARTTLS with PFC capable cipher suites. - client-to-server communication enforces TLS with PFC capable cipher suites. - service resistant to kleptography and covert channels. (use open and robust protocols, use robust key lengths, use fail-safe rather than fail-vulnerable configurations, ...) - for extra credit, solve the subject line as part of public header metadata problem. (solving the metadata problem for email is super extra credit ;) - what else? is it possible to build such a system without compromising privacy or usability? i remain skeptical...

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