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Russian Spies used Wi-Fi and Steganography
Jun 22nd
Some of the details are beginning to emerge about the 10 Russian spies that were captured in the US. According to an article on The Register, the spies communicated with Ad-Hoc Wi-Fi networks and hid messages in pictures using Steganography.
FBI agents monitored 28 year old Russian spy Anna Chapman as she communicated with a Russian government official. Anna would go to a book store and using her laptop, created an Ad-Hoc Wi-Fi connection to a Russian contact who was outside the store:
Surveillance agents nearby used “a commercially available tool that can detect the presence of wireless networks” to witness the creation of the ad hoc networks. NetStumbler is probably the most popular example of such software. Law enforcement agents were able to detect a particular MAC address – MAC address A – at the time that Chapman was observed powering on her laptop computer,” the complaint says. Law enforcement agents were also able to determine that the electronic device associated with MAC address A created the ad hoc network.”
The spies also embedded secret messages in pictures and uploaded them to sites where Russian officials retrieved them, and decoded the messages.
A New Jersey search uncovered a network of websites, from which the alleged spies had downloaded images. “These images appear wholly unremarkable to the naked eye,” the complaint explains. “But these images (and others) have been analyzed using the steganography program. As a result of this analysis, some of the images have been revealed as containing readable text files.”
It is interesting to see the tactics used by modern spies. Of course Russia is denying any and all involvement. Kudos to the FBI for taking them down.
India is a Spamming Hub
Apr 8th
Wonder where all those annoying spam messages come from? Who sends them? Well, you have got some answers here. Panda Security, a player in antivirus and preventive technologies segment, has stated in its report that India is the world’s number two spammer. Surprised? Even we were.
Panda Security has released a report stating that Brazil, India, Korea, Vietnam and U.S. head the list of countries from which most spam was sent during the first two months of the year 2010. With respect to the cities from which spam was being sent, Seoul was first in the list, followed by Hanoi, New Delhi, Bogota, Sao Paulo and Mumbai.
The five million emails analyzed by PandaLabs came from a total of almost one million different IP addresses. This shows that the spam is mostly sent from zombie computers belonging to a botnet. This way, the computers of the infected users themselves are those which send the spam. The cybercrooks have thousands of computers at their disposal, which do the dirty work for them.
Spam is nothing but a business and is used primarily either to distribute malware or sell/advertise all type of products. Therefore, as long as there are users, no matter if they are few, who trust these messages, it’s enough to continue betting on it.
Chinese Hackers Target Indian Government
Apr 8th
Cyber security researchers and analysts have uncovered the existence of a spy network based in China that was used to steal sensitive, classified government documents from India – as well data from the Dalai Lama’s office and the United Nations.
The “Shadow Network”, as this network is now known, has been traced to two people living in Chengdu, China.
China is largely believed to possess a Cyber Warfare Doctrine that is designed to achieve global “electronic dominance” by 2050. With a yearly budget of $55 million allotted for it and over 10,000 hackers working in tandem, China is second only to U.S. when it comes to cyber snooping prowess.
As more details emerge about the intentions of these hackers, it is clear that they had targeted the upcoming Commonwealth games in India. The idea was to make Commonwealth games an utter failure later this year. The plans included studying the network architecture of the entire Commonwealth games IT infrastructure. This includes ticket sales, online registration servers all of which would crash at the time of the inaugural ceremony. The hackers had also looked into tender documents for the Commonwealth games network infrastructure. Intelligence agencies feel this could be for studying vulnerabilities in the system for possible attacks.
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