Monday, 10 October 2011

How NOT to redact a PDF - Military radar secrets spilled

The UK Ministry of Defence has been caught out again by a schoolboy error - not knowing how to properly redact a PDF.
As Naked Security has explained before, if you're an organisation that is making public an internal document, you best make sure that you have deleted or blacked out any personal, confidential or actionable information.
The act of obscuring the sensitive information is known as "redaction", and it needs to be done properly if you want to keep something secret.

For instance, simply putting black text on a black background does not stop people from cutting-and-pasting the contents.

When a 22 page PDF document called "Air Defence And Air Traffic Systems Radar Transportation Study – Part 2" was published on a parliamentary website, it was hoped that its more sensitive contents would be properly redacted.
But, as the Daily Star reports, although there were sections "blacked out", the contents could easily be recovered simply by cutting-and-pasting.
Last time the MOD made this mistake it was related to nuclear submarine secrets, one hopes that they have learnt their lesson by now and provided an easy-to-understand guide for staff on how to properly redact documents.
If you want to learn how to properly redact Adobe PDF files, here's a good guide describing how to do it with Acrobat X Pro.
Remember that simply marking text will not actually remove it from your sensitive PDFs. You also have to apply redactions!
Graham Cluley @'naked security'

Mental Health

The WHO Mental Health Atlas 2011 represents the latest estimate of global mental health resources available to prevent and treat mental disorders and help protect the human rights of people living with these conditions. It presents data from 184 WHO Member States, covering 98% of the world’s population. Facts and figures presented in Atlas indicate that resources for mental health remain inadequate. The distribution of resources across regions and income groups is substantially uneven and in many countries resources are extremely scarce. Results from Atlas reinforce the urgent need to scale up resources and care for mental health within countries.

Mental Health Atlas 2011

World Mental Health Day: 10 October 2011

World Mental Health Day raises public awareness about mental health issues. This year the theme is "Investing in mental health". Financial and human resources allocated for mental health are inadequate especially in low resource countries. The majority of low- and middle-income countries spend less than 2% of their health budget on mental health.

Via

dangerroom Danger Room

Could the Predator drone virus be the military's own doing? bit.ly/oazhST // Not the first person I've heard float this theory.

Sunday, 9 October 2011

Rep. Peter King (R-NY): Do Not Allow Any Legitimacy For Wall Street Protests, Or It Will Be Like 1960s Again

Speaking with right-wing radio show host Laura Ingraham on Friday, Rep. Peter King (R-NY), the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, blasted the media for providing fair coverage to the Occupy Wall Street protests. “They have no sense of purpose other than a basically anti-American tone,” he said. King also explained that he is “old enough to remember what happened in the 1960s when the left-wing took to the streets and somehow the media glorified them and it ended up shaping policy.” He added, “We can’t allow that to happen.”
King is right that the 99 Percent Movement, with “occupation” actions from Sacramento to New York City and beyond, mirrors the broad-based protest movements of the 1960s. Back then, millions of American engaged in street protests which eventually led to the end of legal racial segregation, the creation of Medicare and Medicaid, as well as other successful programs to reduce the level of poverty and human suffering in America. The same protest movement King fears also led to the development of the Environmental Protection Agency, the birth of the mainstream feminist and gay rights movement, and the end of the wars in Indochina.
It might seem natural that King is an opponent of the 99 Percent Movement. He has spent much of his career in Congress placing the corporate interest over the public interest. For instance, King made a high-stakes legislative move to block health benefits for the rescue workers who developed cancer as a result of their heroic work during after the 9/11 terror attacks. He blocked the money because it was paid for by ending certain tax loopholes for foreign corporations. Indeed, like many of his GOP colleagues, King placed the foreign wealthy one percent over the people who risked their lives rescuing people at the World Trade Center.
Lee Fang @'ThinkProgress'

The NYPD, now sponsored by Wall Street

'No corporation is buried in Arlington Cemetery'

Via

'This is Patriotic': marching on Wall Street

Salah ban: Theresa May’s serious problem with the truth

Who Invented Bitcoin?

Porn Is No Longer A Leading Indicator of Web Innovation

7:08 (09/10/11)

Alan Grayson Steals the Show on Real Time w/ Bill Maher

Brilliant!

♪♫ AA Bondy - Killed Myself When I Was Young

Better Pacifiers (1923)

'Better pacifiers don't exist, now or ever.
He's ready to suck until old age.
Sold everywhere
REZINOTREST'
Via

Für mein Deutscher Freund :)

ROFL!!!

XXX

(Thanx Ron!)

Secret U.S. Memo Made Legal Case to Kill a Citizen

Mace in the face at Air and Space

At a demonstration by the October 2011 Movement at the National Air & Space Museum, Smithsonian Protection Services security officers pepper sprayed protesters as soon as they entered the museum. They pepper-sprayed a young woman from Woodlawn, VA who is not part of the protest.
Demonstrators were protesting the drone exhibit at the museum, which represents the glorification of extra-judicial executions and the military industrial complex at a public institution.
The police closed the museum and have been telling the public that the building was closed due to a bomb threat.
http://october2011.org/
Video by Nathan Schneider
http://wagingnonviolence.org/author/nathanschneider/

HA!

(Click to enlarge)

(Thanx Samantha!)

Harry Moseley RIP

@harry_moseley harry moseley

My brave inspirational boy fell asleep in my arms at 11.10pm. Suddenly our world is a very dark and cruel place

Harry Moseley

Harry Moseley: Tributes as cancer fundraiser, 11, dies

RIP you brave wee soldier XXX

Well don't drive!

jeff_rock Jeff Rock

Hey musicians that put samples of police sirens in songs: those of us that drive would really appreciate it if you would stop doing that.

Banksy's latest

Via

leeranaldo Lee Ranaldo

Shit is fucked up and bullshit instagr.am/p/PgbrI/

Chaos Computer Club analyzes government malware

The largest European hacker club, "Chaos Computer Club" (CCC), has reverse engineered and analyzed a "lawful interception" malware program used by German police forces. It has been found in the wild and submitted to the CCC anonymously. The malware can not only siphon away intimate data but also offers a remote control or backdoor functionality for uploading and executing arbitrary other programs. Significant design and implementation flaws make all of the functionality available to anyone on the internet.

Even before the German constitutional court ("Bundesverfassungsgericht") on February 27 2008 forbade the use of malware to manipulate German citizen's PCs, the German government introduced a less conspicuous newspeak variant of the term spy software: "Quellen-TKÜ" (the term means "source wiretapping" or lawful interception at the source). This Quellen-TKÜ can by definition only be used for wiretapping internet telephony. The court also said that this has to be enforced through technical and legal means.
The CCC now published the extracted binary files [0] of the government malware that was used for "Quellen-TKÜ", together with a report about the functionality found and our conclusions about these findings [1]. During this analysis, the CCC wrote its own remote control software for the trojan.
The CCC analysis reveals functionality in the "Bundestrojaner light" (Bundestrojaner meaning "federal trojan" and is the colloquial German term for the original government malware concept) concealed as "Quellen-TKÜ" that go much further than to just observe and intercept internet based telecommunication, and thus violates the terms set by the constitutional court. The trojan can, for example, receive uploads of arbitrary programs from the Internet and execute them remotely. This means, an "upgrade path" from Quellen-TKÜ to the full Bundestrojaner's functionality is built-in right from the start. Activation of the computer's hardware like microphone or camera can be used for room surveillance.
The analysis concludes, that the trojan's developers never even tried to put in technical safeguards to make sure the malware can exclusively be used for wiretapping internet telephony, as set forth by the constitution court. On the contrary, the design included functionality to clandestinely add more components over the network right from the start, making it a bridge-head to further infiltrate the computer...

Continue reading
@'CCC'

Brian Eno at the Stop The War rally in London on October 8, 2011

Via

kpunk99 Mark Fisher

Watching Eno on Newsnight from a few days ago. He really has got nothing to say of any interest now. Same spiel for about 20 years.

Glinner Graham Linehan

That Steve Jobs thought LSD integral to his success is another validation of the Bill Hicks theory that drugs drive human evolution. #hurray

Glinner Graham Linehan

Not that everyone who takes LSD changes the world, as Ben Folds knows bit.ly/mQC9yr

Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend. - Albert Camus

Camila Vallejo – Latin America's 23-year-old new revolutionary folk hero

Netherlands to classify high-potency cannabis as hard drug

Pre-rolled joints at a coffee shop in Amsterdam. The Dutch government plans to classify high-potency cannabis alongside hard drugs. Photograph: Peter Dejong/AP
The Dutch government has said it will move to classify high-potency cannabis alongside hard drugs such as cocaine and ecstasy, the latest step in the country's ongoing reversal of its liberal policies.
The decision means most of the cannabis now sold in Dutch coffee shops would have to be replaced by milder variants. But sceptics said the move would be difficult to enforce, and that it could simply lead many users to smoke more of the less potent weed.
Possession of cannabis is technically illegal in the Netherlands, but police do not prosecute people for possession of small amounts, and it is sold openly in designated cafes. Growers are routinely prosecuted if caught.
Maxime Verhagen, the economic affairs minister, said cannabis containing more than 15% of its main active chemical, THC, is so much stronger than what was common a generation ago that it should be considered a different drug entirely.
The high potency cannabis has "played a role in increasing public health damage", he said at a press conference in The Hague.
The cabinet has not said when it will begin enforcing the rule.
Jeffrey Parsons, a psychologist at Hunter College in New York, who studies addiction, said the policy may not have the benefits the government is hoping for.
"If it encourages smoking an increased amount of low-concentration THC weed, it is likely to actually cause more harm than good," he said, citing the potential lung damage and cancer-causing effects of extra inhalation.
The Dutch justice ministry said it was up to cafes to regulate their own products and police will seize random samples for testing.
But Gerrit-Jan ten Bloomendal, spokesman for the Platform of Cannabis Businesses in the Netherlands, said implementing the plan would be difficult "if not impossible".
"How are we going to know whether a given batch exceeds 15% THC? For that matter, how would health inspectors know?" he said. He predicted a black market will develop for highly potent cannabis.
The ongoing Dutch crackdown on cannabis is part of a decade-long rethink of liberalism in general that has seen a third of the windows in Amsterdam's red light district closed and led the Netherlands to adopt some of the toughest immigration rules in Europe.
The number of licensed coffee houses has been reduced, and earlier this year the government announced plans to ban tourists from buying cannabis. That has been resisted by the city of Amsterdam, where the cafes selling cannabis are a major tourist draw.
@'The Guardian'

Julian Assange at Stop The War Rally London 8/10/11

Stop the War Coalition demo in London marks 10th anniversary of Afghan war

billmaher Bill Maher
Is there anything stupider in the whole world than newspaper cartoons of recently dead famous people meeting god in heaven?

Epilepsy as a door between worlds

Polly Borland’s Indescribably Creepy 'Smudge' Photographs

Who’d have thought that a stocking could make a photo look so singularly creepy? London-based photographer Polly Borland’s ongoing series Smudge employs a series of strange costumes and incongruous props to distort the bodies of its subjects, creating images that are both evocative and disconcerting. They’re all the more disturbing as you never see the faces of the people you’re looking at — they’re hidden behind wigs or make-up smeared stockings or Clockwork Orange-style masks. There’s definitely something sexual about the images, but crucially, they’re never explicit — you get the sense that some strange fetish is being implied or evoked, but you’re never quite sure what it is, and maybe that’s for the best. Borland’s work is well known in her native Australia and her adopted home of London, and the first US showing of the photos from Smudge is happening now at Paul Kasmin gallery in NYC. Click through to see some of the images on show.

♪♫ The Flaming Lips - The Spark That Bled (Hollywood Forever Cemetary 6-14-11)

Download 'The Soft Bulletin' Live 5/19/11 in Atlanta (Videos) HERE.
Via

German General Says NATO Mission Has 'Failed'

Wall Street protesters have little faith in US democracy

Discontent with the state of the US economy has drawn many protesters out to demonstrations in major cities in the United States.
The "Occupy Wall Street" movement that started in New York on September 17 has spread to over 90 other US cities.
As the 24-hour encampment continued in New York City on Friday, there were demonstrations around the country, including in Minneapolis, Minnesota; Chicago, Illinois; Austin and Houston, Texas; Atlanta, Georgia; and Washington DC.
Some Republican politicians are criticising the movement.
Republican House Majority leader Eric Cantor called the protesters "growing mobs".
But the protesters are not focused on the US' traditional political system.
"We need to dictate the policy up, not policy being dictated down," Jesse LaGreca, a protester on Wall Street, told Al Jazeera.
"We will be the leaders, and if there's any politicianss who wanna support us in passing policies that we support, then that's the best we to about gaining our support."
Katie Davison, another Wall Street protester, agreed.
"A candidate is sort of the old way of doing things," she told Al Jazeera. "We're looking for a new way of doing things that is more participatory and more meaningful. What that looks like we're still figuring out."
Anthropoligist, writer and protest organiser David Graeber, told Al Jazeera why he thinks young people in the US have reached an especially frustrating point.
In making a demand, you're essentially recognising the authority of the people who are going to carry it out," he said.
"Our message is that the system that we have is broken. It doesn't work. People aren't even discussing the real problems Americans face."

De La Soul Is Dead: Original Samples

De La Soul Is Dead was De La’s second album, released in 1991. Production, just as their first LP, is credited to Prince Paul. We got most of the samples in this set… only missing a few, indicated below. We’ve also included some bonus samples to a couple of ”A Roller Skating Jam Named Saturdays” remixes.
Download