The Trembling Uterus

The Future of Cyber Threats

2013-03-03T14:27:00.001-08:00

Cyber threats appear as quickly as new technologies themselves, and with computers now being such a critical part of our infrastructure – from our smartphones and cars to national energy systems and even prisons – the potential for damage is catastrophic. Large global multinationals and small local businesses and startups use the online infrastructure to facilitate economic and technological innovation. Defense and intelligence agencies depend on cyber networks to manage far-flung operations, analyze intelligence data and implement homeland security, military logistics and emergency services.

Global dependence on the Internet grows every day and many nations are now depending on a cyber infrastructure that enables the operation of financial markets, transportation networks, taxation and energy grids, as well as the public agencies protecting the health and security of their citizens. With this growth come ever-greater risks as well as opportunities.Advanced persistent threats reflect the risks posed by adversaries with the sophistication, resources and determination to cause real and permanent damage by exploiting the architecture of networks, and of cyberspace itself.

The biggest threat is state involvement. Where a rogue phisher or malware attack might be the criminal equivalent of a street mugger, state-sponsored attacks come with all the resources and technological sophistication of James Bond. Resistance is extremely hard and these attacks are very difficult to attribute to anyone; they can be routed via any country or written in any language.

Because the Internet is an evolving technology that carries enormous potential and vulnerabilities, cybersecurity problems implicate questions of Internet freedom, network architecture and the economic potential for cyberspace. We are at the beginning of a new and dangerous era of cyberwarfare and governments should be encouraged to cooperate in order to identify and punish the criminals. But let's not be naïve about it, they will also be engaging in cyber espionage against each other.

Cyberthreats for 2013

Cloud-Based Botnets

The trend to move the computer infrastructure to the cloud can not only jeopardize data, but can also be used to quickly create a “zombie army” – also known as botnet. Over the last years, Africa has become highly connected but many of the operating systems in use are pirated, meaning they are not receiving patches or updates. Therefore, Africa is a huge target for hackers and it is being used as a hub to target other countries – using command and control attacks, denial of service, phishing and spam.

The new undersea fiber optic cable along the east coast of Africa has enabled rapid growth in the number of users obtaining high speed connections to the internet creating a great opportunity for attackers to infect new machines and create new bots. A growing number of users in countries served by the cable had access to broadband links but without awareness about the need for computer protection, opening a new front for botnets.

Now, Africa is not attacking – they are being attacked and used. While businesses in Africa get some security, government and end users are totally exposed due to a of lack of awareness and money to invest in safe and legitimate software.
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Cyber Threats History: A New Cold War (Present)

2013-02-26T11:12:00.001-08:00

This is the decade of cloud computing, the rise of hacktivism and the birth of real cyberwarfare. Who knows what else is going to happen? Cyber attacks continue to rise at a great pace, increasing 42 percent in 2012 from the previous year and IT security experts have no reason to believe that it'll slow down. On the contrary, most experts believe cyber threats will not only grow in frequency, but will also become more sophisticated. Hackers are now either criminals out to make money, activists out to protest or governments engaged in targeting their own citizens or attacking other governments, whether for espionage or cyberwarfare. This new level of resources and sophistication makes life very difficult for those charged with defending networks from attack.

Historical Landmarks

2010

Dozens of technology companies - most in Silicon Valley - have their computer networks infiltrated by hackers located in China. Google publicly reveals that it has been sustaining a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on their corporate infrastructure also originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property. The attacks are named Operation Aurora and official Chinese media responds stating that the incident is part of a U.S. government conspiracy.

Britain announces it will devote $1 billion to building new cyber defenses. Iain Lobban, the director of the Government Communications Headquarters, says the country faces a "real and credible" threat from cyber attacks by hostile states and criminals as government systems are targeted 1,000 times each month, threatening Britain's economy.

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Cyber Threats History: A New World (2000s)

2013-02-06T11:16:00.000-08:00

In this new decade, the average consumer is persuaded to use the credit card on the Internet for purchases, raising the risks of cyber theft. Insurance policies are offered by most credit cards companies and former hackers are hired by the industry to design improved security measures.

Cyber attacks become more frequent and destructive and kids using automated programs that perform functions they could not perform on their own, conduct many of these actions, hitting big companies and causing severe financial losses. The denial-of-service attack becomes a tool of war and the attacks are designed to paralyze websites, financial networks and other computer systems by flooding them with data from outside computers.

Alongside with these criminal attacks against banks and every wire dependent industries, there a rise of the cyber terrorism threat. This is the 9/11 decade and the attacks in the United States spawn diverse reactions from different groups, with the FBI issuing warnings of potential terror attacks through the Internet. Some believe that the threat is real and possible at any given moment, while some countered that it is not that easy, and is almost impossible with all the existing security systems.

Historical Landmarks

2000

Michael Calce, a 15-year-old Canadian with the handle "MafiaBoy", launches a series of DoS attacks against huge companies with high levels of security and numerous e-commerce sites. Amongst those attacked are computer manufacturer Dell, media giant CNN, and shopping sites Amazon and Ebay. In order to do so, MafiaBoy gains illegal access to 75 computers in 52 different networks and plants a DoS tool on them which he then activates and uses to attack several Internet sites causing about $1.7 billion losses.

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Cyber Threats History: The Internet Expansion (1990s)

2013-01-14T12:30:00.000-08:00

Although hacking expanded and enjoyed glorification during the 80s, a divide was forming within the hacking community by the end of the decade. The hacker principle of “freedom of technology” was changing, and a younger generation interested in individual gain emerged leading to an increase in the number of hackers that were no longer satisfied with benign exploration of systems merely to learn how they worked.

This obscure side fragmented even further as several independent groups formed “electronic gangs,” driven to tap into the sensitive information housed within large institutions, like government and educational research centers. Similarly to what happens with conventional street gangs, it did not take long for these groups to begin fighting each other, and the early 1990s saw an escalation of infighting that jammed phone lines and networks, and ultimately led to the demise and criminal prosecution of several groups. On top of this, the end of the cold war is a very significant factor as it allows the Internet to spread freely across the former URSS, with great impact on both sides of the now rusty Iron Curtain.

Historical Landmarks:

1990

The Great Hacker War begins with Legion of Doom and Masters of Deception engaging in almost two years of online warfare –jamming phone lines, monitoring calls, trespassing in each other's private computers.

In response to the AT&T telephone system crash that left 60,000 customers without a phone line for nine hours on January 15, federal authorities burst into Mark Abene's (Phiber Optik) bedroom, guns drawn, and confiscate his computer equipment. Abene and other MOD members have their homes searched and property seized by the U.S. Secret Service largely based on government suspicions of having caused AT&T Corporation's network crash. Some weeks later, AT&T themselves admit that the crash was the result of a flawed software update to the switching systems on their long distance network, thus, human error on their part.

A role-playing game company called Steve Jackson Games in Austin, Texas is raided. The Secret Service seizes computers and disks at the company‘s offices and also at the home of one of their employees, Loyd Blankenship (The Mentor) a former member of the Legion of Doom. Blankenship is writing a role-playing game called GURPS Cyberpunk, which the agents interpret as a handbook for computer crime.

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Cyber Threats History: Rise of the Hacker Culture (1980s)

2012-10-25T13:33:00.001-07:00

After John Draper and his electronic whistling abilities gained a wide audience, there was a major shift in computing and hacking enjoyed a golden era of sorts in the 1980s. Society started becoming aware of hackers as computers became increasingly accessible and as networks grew in both size (number of terminals) and popularity (number of users) throughout the late seventies and early eighties.

During the 80s, the hacker population probably went up 1000-fold and there are mainly three events credited with doing the most in this area. Personal computer and clones were made available to the public at cheap prices. People could afford to buy a terminal and set up a BBS. And, where you find BBS's, you find hackers.

The movie War Games depicted the existence of hacking and the potential power associated with it. War Games displayed hacking as a glamorous thing and made it look easy. The movie shone a flashlight onto the hidden face of hacking, and introduced the wider public to the phenomenon. This created a degree of mass paranoia with the threat of hackers getting into any computer system and launching nuclear missiles. However, for a vast teenager audience, the movie gleaned a different message. It implied that hacking could get you girls. Cute girls…

Almost simultaneously, two novels had a great impact in popular culture: Cyberpunk, by Bruce Bethke, and Neuromancer, by William Gibson. The combination of the aforementioned factors catapulted hacker culture into the mainstream media.

By the late 1980s, the home PC had become more prevalent but large corporations still cornered the market on the technology. However, computers were no longer limited to the realms of hardcore hobbyists and business users; anyone, including existing and yet-to-be-realized hackers, could acquire a computer for their own purposes. Modems, enabling computers to communicate with each other over telephone lines, were also more widely available and significantly extended the hacker’s reach.

While phreakers were still blowing whistles into phone receivers, a new type of delinquent emerged; the cracker. This term, disputed until today, refers to a criminal hacker who uses his skills with criminal intentions far beyond the simple exploration of computer systems. This new breed of “hacker” directed its knowledge and tenacity toward distinctly criminal pursuits, including the distribution of pirated commercial software, games, and viruses and worms that could virtually shut down systems. Hacker and cracker clubs surged in popularity becoming nothing short of an epidemic, and in 1986, the U.S. government tried to thwart the problem by passing the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA).

Historical Landmarks:

1980

Steve Bellovin, Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis develop and establish USENET for the UNIX to UNIX Copy (UUCP) architecture. USENET resembles a bulletin board system (BBS) but there is one major difference: the absence of a central server and dedicated administrator. USENET is a decentralized news network distributed among many servers that store and forward messages to one another.

1981

A group of German computer enthusiasts with a strong political orientation forms the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) in Hamburg.

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Cyber Threats History: The Age of Phreaking (1970s)

2012-10-20T16:02:00.001-07:00

The 70's were a magical decade, producing a new type of hacker, one focused on telephone systems. These hackers, known as phreakers, discovered and exploited operational characteristics of the newly all-electronic telephone-switching network that enabled them to make long distance calls free of charge. In the 1970s, the cyber frontier was wide open and hacking was all about exploring and figuring out how the wired world worked.

The phreaker movement is an important early example of anti-establishment subculture that spawns influential hackers and visionaries in the realm of the personal computer. Back then, phreaking offered hackers a potent allure. It meant unraveling a mystery and sharing the results with friends. It was not as much about the nefarious phone exploitation as it was about understanding the complexity of the system. The only thing missing for the hacking scene was a virtual clubhouse where all the best hackers could meet and to overcome that, in 1978 two guys from Chicago created the very first public dial-up Bulletin Board System.

Historical Landmarks:

1970

After monitoring around 33 million toll calls to find phreakers, AT&T scores 200 convictions. Universities and defense contractors begin connecting to ARPANET and the network keeps expanding.

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Cyber Threats History: The Beginning (1960s)

2012-10-14T16:08:00.001-07:00

In the early years of the 21st century the word "hacker" has become associated with people lurking into dark rooms and anonymously terrorizing cyberspace. But hacking and phreaking have been around since the 1960s when computers were true behemoths housed in restricted laboratories accessible only to a few geeks. Back in those days it was impossible for any teenager to buy a computer and only accredited professionals were allowed the privilege of programming these powerful machines.

The original hackers were only students, computer programmers and systems designers, adherent of a new subculture that originally emerged in the 1960s around the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)'s Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC). The members of this model train group "hacked" their electric trains, tracks, and switches to make them perform faster and differently. A hack was simply an elegant or inspired solution to any given problem.

Later, a few of the members of the TMRC transfer their curiosity and rigging skills to the new mainframe computing systems being studied and developed on campus. At this time, MIT employed some nerds to do some artificial intelligence and computer research. These guys actually created the models for the machine you are working on right now and were truly the first programmers and engineers in the field of IT.
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Cyber Threats History: An Overview

2012-10-12T15:09:00.001-07:00

Before going over the history of cyberspace threats, let me take a moment to define what they are and to categorize them according to my personal view.

A cyber threat can be loosely defined as a conscious attempt to obtain unauthorized access to a computer system to extract or manipulate data or to violate the confidentiality, integrity, authenticity or availability of data inside the system.

There are numerous ways to organize these activities and you can find thousands of different takes on the subject, this one is mine and I say cyber threats can be grouped into 4 main categories:

Cyber Terrorism

Cyberterrorism has become one of the most significant threats to the national and international security of modern states, and cyberattacks are occurring with increased frequency. Being a politically and emotionally charged subject, it was never possible to reach an international consensus regarding the development of an accepted comprehensive definition of the term "terrorism".

Therefore, there are literally hundreds of definitions of terrorism, many of them biased by the political view of its creators. I won't get into that debate but I will quote a political description of terrorism used by the United Nations General Assembly, back in 1994: "Criminal acts intended or calculated to provoke a state of terror in the general public, a group of persons or particular persons for political purposes are in any circumstance unjustifiable, whatever the considerations of a political, philosophical, ideological, racial, ethnic, religious or any other nature that may be invoked to justify them." With this in mind, how can we define cyberterrorism? It is obviously a very controversial term with many possible definitions depending on the scope of the actions performed.

Trying to avoid all the debate around the motivation, targets and methods involved I would define cyberterrorism as the use of the Internet and information technologies to organize and execute attacks against networks, computer systems and telecommunications infrastructures with ideological motivations.

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Nanotechnology Applications

2012-01-23T12:18:00.001-08:00

Nanobiotechnology

Nanobiotechnology is the unification of biotechnology and nanotechnology, thus it's a hybrid discipline dealing with the making of atomic-scale machines by imitating or incorporating biological systems at the molecular level, or building tiny tools to study or change natural structure properties atom by atom. This goal can be attained via a combination of the classical micro-technology with a molecular biological approach.

Tiny medical hardware can interact with tissue in the human body at a molecular level to conduct more precise diagnosis and healing of malignancy. Many illnesses and injuries have their origins in nanoscale processes. Accordingly, practical usage of nanotechnology to the practice of medical care and biomedical investigation unlocks opportunities to treat illnesses, repair injuries, and enhance human functioning beyond what is possible with larger scale techniques.

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How nanotechnology affects everything

2012-01-20T12:33:00.001-08:00

Nanotechnology scientific impact

While there is a commonly held belief that nanotechnology is a futuristic science with applications 25 years in the future and beyond, nanotechnology is anything but science fiction. In the last years over a dozen Nobel prizes have been awarded in nanotechnology, from the development of the scanning probe microscope (SPM), to the discovery of fullerenes. Almost every university in the world has a nanotechnology department, or is expecting the funds to create one.
Nanotechnology offers opportunities in creating new features and functions and is already providing the solutions to many long-standing medical, social and environmental problems. Because of its potential, nanotechnology is of global interest, attracting more public funding than any other area of technology.

There is an unprecedented multidisciplinary convergence of scientists dedicated to the study of a world so small, we cannot see it - even with a light microscope. That world is the field of nanotechnology, the realm of atoms and nanostructures, something so new; no one is really sure what will come of it.

One of the exciting and challenging aspects of the nanoscale is the role that quantum mechanics plays in it. The rules of quantum mechanics are very different from those used in classical physics, which means that the behavior of substances at the nanoscale can sometimes contradict common sense by behaving erratically. You cannot walk up to a wall and immediately teleport to the other side of it, but at the nanoscale an electron can - it's called electron tunneling. Substances that are insulators, meaning they cannot carry an electric current, in bulk form might become semiconductors when reduced to the nanoscale. Melting points can change due to an increase in surface area. Much of nanoscience requires that you forget what you know and start learning all over again.

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Signcryption standard increases cyber security

2012-01-12T06:12:00.000-08:00

Signcryption, which University of North Carolina at Charlotte professor Yuliang Zheng created, is a technology that protects confidentiality and authenticity, seamlessly and simultaneouslyis and is particularly useful in cloud computing for ensuring confidential, authenticated transmissions. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has published a standard for a public-key technology that combines signing and encrypting a message in a single step.

The first signcryption scheme was introduced by Professor Yuliang Zheng in 1997 and he continued his research in this revolutionary new technology at the College of Computing and Informatics. After nearly a three-year process, the International Organization of Standardization (ISO) has formally recognized his research efforts as an international standard.

News of the ISO adoption comes amidst daily reports of cyber attack and cyber crime around the world. Zheng says the application will also enhance the security and privacy of cloud computing. "The adoption of signryption as an international standard is significant in several ways," he said. "It will now be the standard worldwide for protecting confidentiality and authenticity during transmissions of digital information."

"This will also allow smaller devices, such as smartphones and PDAs, 3G and 4G mobile communications, as well as emerging technologies, such as radio frequency identifiers (RFID) and wireless sensor networks, to perform high-level security functions," Zheng said. "And, by performing these two functions simultaneously, we can save resources, be it an individual's time or be it energy, as it will take less time to perform the task."

There are also many other signcryption schemes that are proposed throughout the years, each of them having its own problems and limitations, while they are offering different level of security services and computational costs.

Anonymous targets Finland due to PirateBay blocking

2012-01-12T03:45:00.000-08:00

Anonymous has urged its followers to target Finnish anti-piracy body the Copyright Information and Anti-Piracy Centre (CIAPC) after it persuaded the Helsinki District Court to force one of the country's biggest ISPs (Elisa) to block access to The Pirate Bay.

CIAPC, a non-profit group, took The Pirate Bay to court in Helsinki last year on behalf of the Finnish recording industry association, ruling that Elisa must block access to the website. It complied with the ruling on Monday.

Elisa, one of the largest internet service providers in Finland, has been forced to block access to The Pirate Bay for its customers and issued a press release on the matter. The decision was given by a local district court in Helsinki. Elisa has stated that they will seek correction to the decision in supreme court.

Anonymous member and suspected former leader of LulzSec, ‘Sabu', encouraged a focus on Finland "and every country like it who [sic] has begun a campaign of censorship". He added: “Let us show the Government we will no longer allow censorship to take place.”

Sabu also got embroiled in a debate on Twitter with Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at Finnish anti-virus vendor F-Secure, over the company's stance on privacy and its backing for this move. He accused F-Secure of supporting the censorship in Finland and Elisa and said: "Anyone using F-Secure products should boycott immediately. They are in accordance with the Finnish government to censor their web."

History of Nanotechnology

2011-12-19T15:35:00.001-08:00

Traditionally, the origins of nanotechnology are traced back to December 29, 1959, when Professor Richard Feynman (a 1965 Nobel Prize winner in physics) presented a lecture entitled “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom” during the annual meeting of the American Physical Society at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). In this talk, Feynman spoke about the principles of miniaturization and atomic-level precision and how these concepts do not violate any known law of physics. Feynman described a process by which the ability to manipulate individual atoms and molecules might be developed, using one set of precise tools to build and operate another proportionally smaller set, and so on down to the needed scale.

He described a field that few researchers had thought much about, let alone investigated. Feynman presented the idea of manipulating and controlling things on an extremely small scale by building and shaping matter one atom at a time. He proposed that it was possible to build a surgical nanoscale robot by developing quarter-scale manipulator hands that would build quarter-scale machine tools analogous to those found in machine shops, continuing until the nanoscale is reached, eight iterations later.

Richard Feynman

Printed Carbon Nanotube Transistor

2011-12-05T03:59:00.001-08:00

Researchers from Aneeve Nanotechnologies have used low-cost ink-jet printing to fabricate the first circuits composed of fully printed back-gated and top-gated carbon nanotube-based electronics for use with OLED displays. OLED-based displays are used in cell phones, digital cameras and other portable devices.

But developing a lower-cost method for mass-producing such displays has been complicated by the difficulties of incorporating thin-film transistors that use amorphous silicon and polysilicon into the production process.

In this innovative study, the team made carbon nanotube thin-film transistors with high mobility and a high on-off ratio, completely based on ink-jet printing. They demonstrated the first fully printed single-pixel OLED control circuits, and their fully printed thin-film circuits showed significant performance advantages over traditional organic-based printed electronics.

This distinct process utilizes an ink-jet printing method that eliminates the need for expensive vacuum equipment and lends itself to scalable manufacturing and roll-to-roll printing. The team solved many material integration problems, developed new cleaning processes and created new methods for negotiating nano-based ink solutions.

Ink-jet-printed circuit. (Credit: University of California - Los Angeles)

For active-matrix OLED applications, the printed carbon nanotube transistors will be fully integrated with OLED arrays, the researchers said. The encapsulation technology developed for OLEDs will also keep the carbon nanotube transistors well protected, as the organics in OLEDs are very sensitive to oxygen and moisture.

(Adapted from PhysOrg)

35 Facebook false websites

2011-11-29T04:25:00.001-08:00

Security Web-Center found 35 Facebook phishing websites. These spammers create fake pages that look like the Facebook login page. If you enter your email and password on one of these pages, the spammer records your information and keeps it. The fake sites, like the one below, use a similar URL to Facebook.com in an attempt to steal people's login information.

The people behind these websites, then use the information to access victims' accounts and send messages to their friends, further propagating the illegitimate sites. In some instances, the phishers make money by exploiting the personal information they've obtained. Check out the list:

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Graphene bubbles improve lithium-air batteries

2011-11-29T02:20:00.001-08:00

A team of scientists from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Princeton University used a new approach to buil a graphene membrane for use in lithium-air batteries, which could, one day, replace conventional batteries in electric vehicles. Resembling coral, this porous graphene material could replace the traditional smooth graphene sheets in lithium-air batteries, which become clogged with tiny particles during use.

Resembling broken eggshells, graphene structures built around bubbles produced a lithium-air battery with the highest energy capacity to date. As an added bonus, the team’s new material does not rely on platinum or other precious metals, reducing its potential cost and environmental impact.

New botnets arrive

2011-11-24T03:57:00.001-08:00

The recent breakup of the ChangeDNS botnet which infected more than 4 million computers and was under the control of a single ring of criminals raised a new set of concerns. The biggest effect of the commoditization of botnet tools and other computer security exploits might be a new wave of major botnet attacks, driven by people who simply buy their malware from the equivalent of an app store—or who rent it as a service.

The botnet market is nothing new—it's been evolving for years. But what is new is the business model of botnet developers, which has matured to the point where it begins to resemble other, legitimate software markets. One example of this change is a Facebook and Twitter CAPTCHA bypass bot called JET, which is openly for sale online.

The JET Facebook posting bot from jetbots.com

Tor Project turns to Amazon

2011-11-24T02:32:00.001-08:00

The Tor Project offers a channel for people wanting to route their online communications anonymously and this channel has been used by activists to avoid censorship as well as those seeking anonymity for more nefarious reasons. Now the people involved in this project to maintain a secret layer of the internet have turned to Amazon to add bandwidth to the service. According to some experts, the use of Amazon's cloud service will make it harder for governments to track.

Amazon's cloud service - dubbed EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) offers virtual computer capacity. The Tor developers are calling on people to sign up to the service in order to run a bridge - a vital point of the secret network through which communications are routed. According to Tor developers, by setting up a bridge, you donate bandwidth to the Tor network and help improve the safety and speed at which users can access the internet.

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World’s lightest material

2011-11-22T08:02:00.001-08:00

Ultra light (<10 milligrams per cubic centimeter) cellular materials are desirable for thermal insulation, battery electrodes, catalyst supports, and acoustic, vibration, or shock energy damping. A team of researchers from UC Irvine, HRL Laboratories and the California Institute of Technology have developed the world's lightest material – with a density of 0.9 mg/cc. The new material redefines the limits of lightweight materials because of its unique "micro-lattice" cellular architecture. The researchers were able to make a material that consists of 99.99 percent air by designing the 0.01 percent solid at the nanometer, micron and millimeter scales. "The trick is to fabricate a lattice of interconnected hollow tubes with a wall thickness 1,000 times thinner than a human hair," said lead author Dr. Tobias Schaedler of HRL.

Photo by Dan Little, HDR Laboratories

The material's architecture allows unprecedented mechanical behavior for a metal, including complete recovery from compression exceeding 50 percent strain and extraordinarily high energy absorption. "Materials actually get stronger as the dimensions are reduced to the nanoscale," explained UCI mechanical and aerospace engineer Lorenzo Valdevit, UCI's principal investigator on the project. "Combine this with the possibility of tailoring the architecture of the micro-lattice and you have a unique cellular material."

William Carter, manager of the architected materials group at HRL, compared the new material to larger, more familiar edifices: "Modern buildings, exemplified by the Eiffel Tower or the Golden Gate Bridge, are incredibly light and weight-efficient by virtue of their architecture. We are revolutionizing lightweight materials by bringing this concept to the nano and micro scales."

Adapted from PhysOrg

Butterfly wings inspire new design

2011-11-21T15:47:00.001-08:00

Engineers have been trying to create water repellent surfaces, but past attempts at artificial air traps tended to lose their contents over time due to external perturbations. Now an international team of researchers from Sweden, the United States, and Korea has taken advantage of what might normally be considered defects in the nanomanufacturing process to create a multilayered silicon structure that traps air and holds it for longer than one year.

Researchers mimicked the many-layered nanostructure of blue mountain swallowtail (Papilio ulysses) wings to make a silicon wafer that traps both air and light. The brilliant blue wings of this butterfly easily shed water because of the way ultra-tiny structures in the wings trap air and create a cushion between water and wing.

The researchers used an etching process to carve out micro-scale pores and sculpt tiny cones from the silicon. The team found that features of the resulting structure that might usually be considered defects, such as undercuts beneath the etching mask and scalloped surfaces, actually improved the water repellent properties of the silicon by creating a multilayered hierarchy of air traps. The intricate structure of pores, cones, bumps, and grooves also succeeded in trapping light, almost perfectly absorbing wavelengths just above the visible range.

US military ready for cyber warfare

2011-11-18T15:06:00.001-08:00

The US military is now legally in the clear to launch offensive operations in cyberspace, the commander of the US Strategic Command said Wednesday, less than a month after terming this a work in progress.

Air Force General Robert Kehler said in the latest sign of quickening U.S. military preparations for possible cyber warfare that "I do not believe that we need new explicit authorities to conduct offensive operations of any kind". "I do not think there is any issue about authority to conduct operations," he added, referring to the legal framework.

But he said the military was still working its way through cyber warfare rules of engagement that lie beyond "area of hostilities," or battle zones, for which they have been approved.
The US Strategic Command is in charge of a number of areas for the US military, including space operations (like military satellites), cyberspace concerns, 'strategic deterrence' and combating WMDs. The U.S. Cyber Command, a sub-command, began operating in May 2010 as military doctrine, legal authorities and rules of engagement were still being worked out for what the military calls the newest potential battle "domain."

"When warranted, we will respond to hostile acts in cyberspace as we would to any other threat to our country," the DoD said in the report. "All states possess an inherent right to self-defense, and we reserve the right to use all necessary means – diplomatic, informational, military, and economic – to defend our nation, our allies, our partners, and our interests."
The Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive, a U.S. intelligence arm, said in a report to Congress last month that China and Russia are using cyber espionage to steal U.S. trade and technology secrets and that they will remain "aggressive" in these efforts.
It defined cyberspace as including the Internet, telecommunications networks, computer systems and embedded processors and controllers in "critical industries."

The Pentagon, in the report to Congress made public Tuesday, said it was seeking to deter aggression in cyberspace by building stronger defenses and by finding ways to make attackers pay a price.

Windows 8 first malware bootkit

2011-11-16T14:48:00.001-08:00

An independent programmer and security analyst, Peter Kleissner, is planning to release the world's first Windows 8 bootkit in India, at the International Malware Conference (MalCon).

A bootkit is built upon the following broad parts:

Infector
Bootkit
Drivers
Plugins (the payload)

A bootkit is a rootkit that is able to load from a master boot record and persist in memory all the way through the transition to protected mode and the startup of the OS. It’s a boot virus that is able to hook and patch Windows to get load into the Windows kernel, and thus getting unrestricted access to the entire computer. It is even able to bypass full volume encryption, because the master boot record (where Stoned is stored) is not encrypted. The master boot record contains the decryption software which asks for a password and decrypts the drive. This is the weak point, the master boot record, which will be used to take over the whole system.

Stuxnet 3.0 released at MalCon?

2011-11-16T06:42:00.001-08:00

Security researchers were shocked to see in a twitter update from MalCon that one of the research paper submissions shortlisted is on possible features of Stuxnet 3.0. While this may just be a discussion and not a release, it is interesting to note that the speaker Nima Bagheri presenting the paper is from IRAN.

The research paper abstract discusses rootkit features and the malware authors may likely show demonstration at MalCon with new research related to hiding rootkits and advanced Stuxnet like malwares.

Stuxnet is a computer worm discovered in June 2010. It targets Siemens industrial software and equipment running Microsoft Windows. While it is not the first time that hackers have targeted industrial systems, it is the first discovered malware that spies on and subverts industrial systems, and the first to include a programmable logic controller (PLC) rootkit.

What is alarming is the recent discovery (On 1 September 2011) by The Laboratory of Cryptography and System Security (CrySyS) of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, of a new worm theoretically related to Stuxnet. After analyzing the malware, they named it Duqu and Symantec, based on this report, continued the analysis of the threat, calling it "nearly identical to Stuxnet, but with a completely different purpose", and published a detailed technical paper. The main component used in Duqu is designed to capture information such as keystrokes and system information and this data may be used to enable a future Stuxnet-like attack.

New biosensor made of nanotubes

2011-11-16T04:19:00.001-08:00

Standard sensors employ metal electrodes coated with enzymes that react with compounds and produce an electrical signal that can be measured. However,the inefficiency of those sensors leads to imperfect measurements. Now, scientists at Purdue University have developed a new method for stacking synthetic DNA and carbon nanotubes onto a biosensor electrode.

Carbon nanotubes, cylindrically shaped carbon molecules known to have excellent thermal and electrical properties, have been seen as a possibility for improving sensor performance. The problem is that the materials are not fully compatible with water, which limits their application in biological fluids.

Marshall Porterfield and Jong Hyun Choi have found a solution and reported their findings in the journal The Analyst, describing a sensor that essentially builds itself.

"In the future, we will be able to create a DNA sequence that is complementary to the carbon nanotubes and is compatible with specific biosensor enzymes for the many different compounds we want to measure," Porterfield said. "It will be a self-assembling platform for biosensors at the biomolecular level."

Choi developed a synthetic DNA that will attach to the surface of the carbon nanotubes and make them more water-soluble. "Once the carbon nanotubes are in a solution, you only have to place the electrode into the solution and charge it. The carbon nanotubes will then coat the surface," Choi said.

The electrode coated with carbon nanotubes will attract the enzymes to finish the sensor's assembly. The sensor described in the findings was designed for glucose. But Porterfield said it could be easily adapted for various compounds. "You could mass produce these sensors for diabetes, for example, for insulin management for diabetic patients," Porterfield said.

Operation Brotherhood Takedown

2011-11-14T03:28:00.001-08:00

Friday, the hacktivist collective known as Anonymous successfully disabled some prominent Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood website. Anonymous is targeting the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, claiming the Muslim Brotherhood is a threat to the Egyptian revolution.

Earlier in the week, the hacktivist group had made an announcement to launch a DDoS attack, “Operation Brotherhood Takedown,” on all Brotherhood sites at 8pm on Friday, 11 November and they delivered.

Anonymous announced Saturday that DDoS attacks on the Muslim Brotherhood would continue until November 18.

The Brotherhood claimed in a statement released on Saturday morning that the attacks were coming from Germany, France, Slovakia and San Francisco in the US, with 2000-6000 hits per second. The hackers later escalated their attack on the site to 380 thousand hits per second. Under the overload, four of the group’s websites were forced down temporarily.