A rootkit you can't uninstall by ZDNet's Phil Windley -- Last night I was reading an article about the birth of the DC-3, one of the world's classic airplanes. What caught my attention was the fact that the DC-3 was designed and built just 30 years after the Wright brothers made their first flight. The DC-3 was arguably the first modern airliner in form [...]
The article above is interesting. And it points at a very serious problem. Might also help explain why we are willing to think it a sign of 'progress' that we are only going to take 15 years to go back to the moon, when it took us less than that to go from first satelite to first man on the moon. How did we get so afraid?
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Tangled up in spying controversy
Narus Says It Was Unaware Its Tracking Software Aided The Nsa
By Elise Ackerman
Mercury News
The engineers at Narus weren't intending to create Big Brother's dream machine when they began writing software a decade ago to help phone companies send out more detailed bills.
But as the Mountain View company's code became more and more sophisticated, customers began to discover new uses for software that was originally designed to monitor and analyze network traffic.
Now Narus finds itself at the center of a legal fight over domestic spying.
Five months ago, President Bush confirmed he had signed a secret order in 2002 authorizing the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans' international phone calls and e-mails.
Advocacy groups attacked the administration in the nation's courts, including in San Francisco, where the Electronic Frontier Foundation sued AT&T for allegedly collaborating with the NSA.
This week, the EFF filed documents contending Narus' software, which allows operators to re-create any sort of Internet-based communication, was plugged into AT&T's network as part of a massive surveillance program conducted by the NSA.
AT&T has declined to respond to allegations it collaborated with the NSA program.
Last week, the EFF filed a declaration from former AT&T technician Mark Klein alleging that AT&T assisted the NSA in spying. Klein said he learned that a computer containing Narus' software had been installed in a secret room in the company's Folsom Street office in San Francisco sometime after October 2003 to monitor ``people's e-mail, Web surfing or any other data.''
On Monday, AT&T asked San Francisco Federal Judge Vaughn Walker to disregard Klein's declaration and to order the EFF to return more than 140 pages of confidential company documents the group had also filed with the court.
Narus executives confirm AT&T is a customer but say they do not know how the telecommunications giant uses its software. ``Once our customers buy our product, it's relatively opaque to us,'' said Steve Bannerman, vice president of marketing.
Narus CEO Greg Oslan said the company's software is designed to allow carriers to monitor all Internet traffic, including Web searches, e-mail content and attachments, and Internet phone calls.
There are business reasons for this: AT&T could decide to charge a customer more if they're putting more strain on the network, such as by downloading movies.
There are also security reasons: As the Internet is increasingly used for new purposes such as watching TV, new ways of spreading viruses and other malicious online behavior are popping up.
For example, Narus says viruses can hitchhike on encrypted Internet phone calls. Traditional security software can't spot these invisible intruders, but Narus can. ``We provide a unique level of protection,'' Oslan said.
Brian Partridge, an analyst with the Yankee Group, said the software provided by Narus is key for carriers seeking to improve quality and to ensure new Internet-based phone service and other offerings are safe.
Narus was founded in 1997 and has more than 100 employees around the globe. Some of the world's largest phone and Internet carriers have signed up as Narus customers, including T-Mobile, U.S. Cellular, Brasil Telecom, Korea Telecom, Telecom Egypt, Saudi Telecom and Shanghai Telecom, according to the company.
Arnold Ness, chief technical officer of IBM's Americas Next Generation Network Team, said Narus' ability to intercept traffic -- the capability allegedly used by the NSA -- is critical to U.S. carriers that must comply with a federal mandate to be able to intercept digital traffic by next April.
``Given the times we live in, terrorism is something we need to be able to deal with and track down,'' Ness said.
Bannerman said the company has built multiple protections into its intercept technology to ensure the software will not mistakenly target the wrong person or target someone for longer than a warrant specifies.
``Carriers care a lot about what traffic is going over their pipes,'' he said. ``They need to make sure that nefarious people like terrorists and criminals aren't leveraging Internet technologies to avoid law enforcement.''
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But the part of the article that most struck me was the terrible cost of the obsession with safety and sticking to 'what we know'. it seems that socially we have to nearly stagnate wompletely before serious inovation can break out again. It is a shame but probably simply human.
bulllllll.
i can buy a cell phone so small that my fingers can barely dial the numbers, and it can even show me desperate housewives if i'm so inclined. a satellite can read my license plate from outer space.
a 1975 mercedes can run on used french-fry oil.
i've posted a few articles lately on rfid technology being used in credit and debit cards, and also the coming revolution known as contactless payment - our bank accounts linked to our fingerprints.
visa and all the rest are running headlong into this, and the technology is not yet secure. are we going to accept it? probably. they'll give the card away with purchases of nike shoes or chevron gas or whatever.
this is big business. we're not living in a democracy by any stretch of the imagination. never have been.
pass the nuts, mandi!
With respect to the moon shot......
(Doing my best Andy Rooney...)
Did you ever wonder.......
Proof of Moon Shot evidently failed>