Tag Archive for: Ability

Inclusivity: The utilisation of design and ability – BCS



Inclusivity: The utilisation of design and ability  BCS

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DoD, State Lack Ability to Flag Cell-Site Simulators


U.S. Department of Defense Press Secretary John Kirby participates in a news briefing at the Pentagon August 13, 2021 in Arlington, Virginia.

U.S. Department of Defense Press Secretary John Kirby participates in a news briefing at the Pentagon August 13, 2021 in Arlington, Virginia.
Photo: Alex Wong (Getty Images)

A slew of federal agency heads and the nation’s top intelligence official are being pressed to respond to what one influential senator is calling an “abysmal failure” by the U.S. government to defend its own employees from unauthorized cellphone surveillance.

“It has been a matter of public record for decades that phones can be tracked and calls and text messages intercepted using a device called a cell site simulator, which exploits long-standing security vulnerabilities in phones by impersonating a legitimate phone company’s cell towers,” Sen. Ron Wyden wrote Thursday in a letter to the director of national intelligence; heads of the FBI and CISA—the agency charged with defending critical systems; and the presumptive next chair of the Federal Communications Commission.

“While the threat posed by this technology has been clear for years,” Wyden wrote, “the U.S. Government has yet to meaningfully address it.”

Among other concerns in the letter, both the Departments of State and Defense have confirmed to Wyden’s office, he said, “that they lack the technical capacity to detect cell site simulators in use near their facilities.”

Cell-site simulators are cellphone surveillance devices that can sometimes fit in a suitcase and effectively hack phones remotely by exploiting a number of common design features. One such feature is the tendency hardcoded into a cellphone to always seek out the cell tower that’s emanating the strongest signal. While this is crucial to saving battery power and ensuring calls are properly routed, it can also be a critical weakness. By transmitting an even stronger signal—or in the case of LTE networks, on a higher priority frequency—cell-site simulators can force nearby phones to drop their connections and connect instead directly to the device.

This kind of attack is not as easy as it used to be. The “handshake” between a phone and a cell tower is a multi-step protocol, which the simulator must emulate perfectly. Older…

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U.S. Cyberattack Hurt Iran’s Ability to Target Oil Tankers, Officials Say – The New York Times

U.S. Cyberattack Hurt Iran’s Ability to Target Oil Tankers, Officials Say  The New York Times

WASHINGTON — A secret cyberattack against Iran in June wiped out a critical database used by Iran’s paramilitary arm to plot attacks against oil tankers and …

“cyber warfare news” – read more

Netflix, Which Has Previously Touted Its Ability To Compete With Piracy, Joins Australian Antipiracy Efforts

We have for some time been covering the rapid expansion of antipiracy and site-blocking efforts in Australia. Between the movie and music spaces, these efforts have been spearheaded by a couple of local entertainment groups, such as Village Roadshow and Music Rights Australia, and the typical suspects from the US, such as the MPAA, RIAA, and various movie and music studios. The ramping up of those efforts continues to date, with recently updated copyright laws being used by those groups to request massive site-blocking for torrent and streaming sites, with the courts generally rubber-stamping all of them.

To date, a glaring non-combatant in all of this has been Netflix. And that hasn’t been some huge surprise, either, given that Netflix has long had a history of touting its own ability to both compete with piracy and make use of its cultural effects, and the rest of the entertainment industry painting Netflix as some kind of problem for the industry itself. And, while Netflix’s tone on piracy has certainly begun to change, that made it somewhat jarring to learn that the company was suddenly diving into the Australia anti-piracy fray with both feet.

Over the past two years, many of the world’s largest torrent and streaming sites have already been blocked, but the work is far from done. A new application recently submitted at the Federal Court of Australia requests ISPs to block dozens of websites.

The complaint comes from Village Roadshow as well as several other prominent movie companies such as Disney Enterprises and Universal City Studios. For the first time, Netflix Studios has joined in as well, as Computerworld notes.

As stated, Netflix is now a part of the MPAA, which perhaps explains why it is now in on these enforcement efforts. This appears to be something of a move of solidarity with the industry, as the focus of this particular complaint is pretty heavy on sites accused of distributing Asian content.

Interestingly, the court order has a strong focus on Asian content. Several of the targeted sites, such as BTBTT and 123kubo.org, are predominantly popular in Asian countries. In addition, the list also includes many anime sites such as Animeultima.to and Ryuanime.com.

The latter is likely due to the fact that the Australian distribution group Madman Anime Group is listed as one of the applicants as well.

So, again, there’s something of a all-for-one and one-for-all flavor to all of this. Still, being a member of the MPAA doesn’t require Netflix to join in on these legal efforts at site-blocking. As is typical in these complaints, the torrent and streaming sites are painted as having only one purpose: to commit copyright infringement. On that basis, the complaint seeks the blocking of 86 websites.

But the new part of this is Netflix’s involvement. Why it suddenly feels the need to join the ranks of those seeking site-blocking is an open question, particularly when it has built a business model out of being more convenient and reasonable an option than piracy itself.

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