Pierow's Prattle » Privacy

Passcode Feature in iOS4

pierow — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 21:34:14 +0000

A while back we had a post showing how to add a strong passcode to your iPhone. Thanks to the recent release of iPhone OS 4 this feature is now built in!

To enable this feature go to Settings -> General -> Passcode Lock, toggle Simple Passcode to off, and enter your preferred alphanumeric passcode.

What Does DHS Know About You?

pierow — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:53:54 +0000

Philosecurity.org has posted a real copy of an American citizen’s DHS Travel Record retrieved from the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol’s Automated Targeting System (ATS). This was obtained through a FOIA/Privacy Act request and sent in by an anonymous reader. The document reveals that the DHS is storing the reader’s:

Full credit card number and expiration

IP address used to make web travel reservations

Hotel information and itinerary

Full Name, birth date and passport number

Full airline itinerary, including flight numbers and seat numbers

Cruise ship itinerary

Phone numbers, including business, home & cell

Every frequent flyer and hotel number associated with the subject, even ones not used for the specific reservation

[Article on Philosecurity.org] [PDF of the original document]

Sonik Dynamik Magnetic Card Encoder

admin — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 20:50:17 +0000

Jaroslaw Lupinski has built a device that will generate magnetic signals to spoof a magnetic stripe reader – you know, the things that open doors and allow you to pay for your groceries. Instructables has a write-up on a similar device using an iPod but Jaroslaw’s device will allow you to change the data on the fly. Combine this with Stripe Snoop and you’ve got quite a powerful combination…

[Link]

Free Temporary Telephone Numbers from inumbr

admin — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 09:09:58 +0000

Whether you’re posting an item for sale on Craigslist or trying to avoid stalkers while dating online, sometimes you need a telephone number that you can use for a temporary time period and then throw away. Enter inumbr. You choose a telephone number from a list of major cities and have that number forward to another telephone number or to voicemail. After a pre-set period of time, the number disconnects and (allegedly) is never reused.

[Link]

Near Washington, D.C., construction crews watch for mystery ‘black’ wire

admin — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 18:47:08 +0000

Near Washington, D.C., construction crews watch for mystery ‘black’ wire

A Metrorail extension risks hitting communications lines, including some used for top-secret government intelligence operations.

By Amy Gardner
June 07, 2009

Reporting from Washington — This part happens all the time: A construction crew putting up an office building in the heart of congested Tysons Corner in McLean, Va., hit a fiber-optic cable no one knew was there.

This part doesn’t: Within moments, three black SUVs drove up, half a dozen men in suits jumped out, and one said, “You just hit our line.”

Whose line, you may ask? The guys in suits didn’t say, recalled Aaron Georgelas, whose company, the Georgelas Group, was developing the Greensboro Corporate Center. Georgelas assumed that he was dealing with the federal government and that the cable in question was “black” wire — a secure communications line used for some of the nation’s most secretive intelligence-gathering operations.

“The construction manager was shocked,” Georgelas recalled about the incident in 2000. “He had never seen a line get cut and people show up within seconds. Usually you’ve got to figure out whose line it is. To garner that kind of response that quickly was amazing.”

Black wire is one of the risks of the construction that has come to Tysons, where miles and miles of secure lines are thought to serve such nearby agencies as the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the National Counterterrorism Center and, a few miles away, the CIA. With work underway on a Metrorail extension, crews are stirring up tons of dirt where the black lines are located.

“Yeah, we heard about the black SUVs,” said Paul Goguen, the engineer in charge of relocating electric, gas, water, sewer, cable, telephone and other communications lines to make way for Metro.

“We were warned that if they were hit, the company responsible would show up before you even had a chance to make a phone call.”

So far, so good, Goguen added. But the peril remains for a project that will spend $150 million moving more than 75 miles of conduit along a three-mile stretch.

The Tysons corridor is also home to part of MAE-East, one of the nation’s primary Internet pipelines installed years ago by the government and private companies. Most major telecommunications carriers link to the pipeline, meaning there’s a jumble of fiber-optic wire under the new rail route.

Moving utilities quickly and cheaply is a big part of any construction work. But the $5.2-billion rail project, which will extend service to Dulles International Airport, is particularly complex.

Construction crews have been digging for more than a year to shift the wires of more than 21 private utilities out of the path of the rail line — and they have another year to go.

And they have snapped, accidentally, dozens of those carriers’ lines, because even not-so-secret commercial lines sometimes don’t show up on utility maps. Goguen, the utility manager, estimates that the rail project has already hit three dozen lines.

Such issues are likely to resurface this summer, when tunnel construction is scheduled to begin. Above the tunnel’s path is a giant microwave communications tower operated by the U.S. Army. And if you want to know what the 280-foot tower is for, too bad. “The specific uses of the system to which this particular antenna is attached” are classified, Army spokesman Dave Foster said.

Other government agencies near Tysons also had little to say. A CIA spokeswoman would not comment. And Mike Birmingham, a spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, would say only that if a communications line used by the agency was cut, the nation’s intelligence-gathering would carry on uninterrupted.

“No particular project puts us at risk — highway construction, building construction,” Birmingham said. “We don’t have a single point of failure. Our systems are redundant.”

Georgelas, the developer whose company was overseeing the work when the Chevy Suburbans drove up, said he figured the government was involved when an AT&T crew arrived the same day to fix the line, rather than waiting days. His opinion didn’t change when AT&T tried to bill his company for the work — and immediately backed down when his company balked.

“These lines are not cheap to move,” Georgelas said. “They said, ‘You owe us $300,000.’ We said, ‘Are you nuts?’ ”

The charges just disappeared.

Gardner writes for the Washington Post. [LINK]

The DEA Uses Keyloggers Too

pierow — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 15:04:50 +0000

Keyloggers aren’t only used by identity thieves, jealous spouses and hackers in the Far East. CNET reported in July 2007 that the DEA persuaded a federal judge to authorize them to sneak into an Escondido, California office to copy computer hard drives and install a software keystroke logger. [Read the full story]

iKeePass – KeePass for your iPhone

pierow — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 18:40:13 +0000

The iKeePass team submitted the iKeePass app to the Apple App Store for review back in December of 2008. Apparently Apple wants them to make some changes before the app will be released. Once it becomes available, you should be able to import your existing database and carry all of your passwords on your iPhone. We’re anxiously awaiting this one!

[LINK]

New Device Lets Celebs Flash Paparazzi

pierow — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 07:02:30 +0000

New York University grad student Adam Harvey has come up with a rather clever invention to thwart unwanted photography. His “anti-paparazzi device,” which is built into a small clutch purse, uses a photo cell that picks up a photographer’s flash and responds by firing flashing LED lights back at paparazzi – ruining their photos and ensuring that no facial features can be seen.

The device is meant to be used at night or in low light situations. “It works up to iso 800 at f/4, but if you’re shooting something that requires more light than that then this thing can be overpowered,” says Harvey. The device works up to a 1/125 shutter speed. “If someone’s taking a low-light shot with a long shutter-speed then it’s much more effective.”

[LINK]

Court Rules that Lifelock’s Services are Illegal

pierow — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 18:17:05 +0000

On May 24th 2009, Lifelock’s services were ruled to be illegal by a federal court. The judge stated that Lifelock has been breaking California law for years by placing fraud alerts on its customer’s credit profiles.

Lifelock’s CEO Todd Davis appeared on The Today Show back in May of 2008 stating that the claims that his identity has been repeatedly stolen were false. Todd Davis advertises his own social security number, 457-55-5462, as evidence of his firm’s prowess at protecting against identity theft – but reports have been emerging that his identity has, in fact been stolen. Matt Lauer even produced a list of some 87 people who had applied for driver’s licenses using Davis’ identity.

Considering that former co-founder Robert J. Maynard was something of a thief himself, is any of this really surprising?

[Wired Article] [Phoenix New Times] [Wired Article on Robert Maynard] [Wikipedia]