Terrorists were using encryption technology to evade detection long before Snowden and the Paris attacks By Natasha Bertrand A wave of coordinated terror attacks that killed at least 130 people in Paris last week have had experts grappling with how French intelligence could have missed an operation that was most likely months in the making….
Category: Technology
The Civilian Guide to Fighting ISIS Online
Anonymous Publishes Guide to ‘Fighting ISIS Online’ Since the FBI and CIA Won’t In the wake of the Paris terror attacks, and several high-casualty acts of terrorism from the so-called Islamic State in the past week, Anonymous has come out with a series of guides for getting involved in the hacktivist group’s Operation ISIS…
How Active Camouflage will Make Small Drones Invisible
British company Plextek Consulting wants to make drones impossible for their targets to spot. And rather than having to choose between camouflage patterns optimized for rocky desert terrain or for dense vegetation, they have developed electronic panels to cover a vehicle with adaptive camouflage that could display different patterns at the flick of a switch….
Where Americans Can Be Tracked Without A Warrant
Since the Paris attacks, there is a growing concern by DHS and the FBI that ISIS are able to communicate via “Dark Comms” or communications that are so highly encrypted they cannot tracked or monitored, common sense would tell you that authorities are going to start casting the “Surveillance” net wider to compensate, meaning more…
TOR Browser Compromised by Feds?
Say it ain’t so! EVER SINCE A Carnegie Mellon talk on cracking the anonymity software Tor was abruptly pulled from the schedule of the Black Hat hacker conference last year, the security community has been left to wonder whether the research was silently handed over to law enforcement agencies seeking to uncloak the internet’s anonymous…
Why Your Secure Building Isn’t
Better Security through Penetration Testing My book, Red Team: How to Succeed by Thinking Like the Enemy, provides the first in-depth investigation into the work of red teams in the military, intelligence, homeland security and private sectors, revealing the best practices, most common pitfalls, and most effective applications of their work. Below is an adaptation….
Technology and Privacy: Signal, the Crypto App Comes to Android
SINCE IT FIRST appeared in Apple’s App Store last year, the free encrypted calling and texting app Signal has become the darling of the privacy community, recommended—and apparently used daily—by no less than Edward Snowden himself. Now its creator is bringing that same form of ultra-simple smartphone encryption to Android. On Monday the privacy-focused non-profit…
“Hamland” Security: Amateur Radio’s Place in Securing the Homeland
During times of disaster, homeland security resources at all levels of government are often stretched to capacity. The whole-of-government approach involving local, county, state and federal agencies is sometimes not enough, especially in the realm of communications. That is where a dedicated group of private hobbyists, known as amateur radio operators, or “hams” as they…
It is Time for the U.S. Military to Innovate like Insurgents
These three Army captains built a gun that kills drones. It took them ten hours and cost $150. What can the Army learn from them? The recently concluded meeting of the Association of the United States Army (AUSA) has become a yearly tradition for senior military leaders, congressional staff, and members of foreign armies to…
Facebook Friend or Terrorist: Who’s in Your Online Social Network?
As a law enforcement officer in Northeast Florida, the arrest of a 19-year-old local man named Shelton Thomas Bell got my attention. In January of this year, Bell was sentenced to twenty years in federal prison for conspiring and attempting to provide material support to terrorists. He burned American flags, recruited support locally, conducted “training…