Foul Tech Sours

In a previous post titled " Gaps In the Fourth Amendment -- Exploited? ", I shared with you an assignment I did for my security class. The assignment briefly discusses electronic privacy and how the Federal Government takes advantage of loop holes within laws that are put in place to protect the privacy of American citizens. NSA's MUSCULAR has been in the news for a while now, and I believe it is a prime example of government exploitation of flaws in privacy laws. In case you do not know what MUSCULAR is, as far as we know it is a project that enables NSA and Britain's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) to copy "entire data flows across fiber-optic cables that carry information among the data centers of the Silicon Valley giants" ( http://www.washingtonpost.com ). This means that millions of records from internal networks belonging to large companies such as Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft are sent back to data warehouses at NSA HQ. At the time of ...

While the bottom line (net revenue) is important to a businesses finances and success, several companies realize that in order to increase this number it is important also important to increase efficiency.  Having an impact on overall efficiency begins from the bottom up: the employees must be satisfied with not only themselves, but their work environment. While providing benefits, flexible schedules, and relaxing dress codes have been common ways to make employees "feel good", a new method is slowly but surely beginning to enter the business world. Formally, Bring Your Own Device (known as BYOD) policies allow employees to bring their personal mobile devices, such as laptops, smart phones, or tablets, to access company information and data in the work environment. BYOD is beginning to have an impact on several companies in the United States and around the world.  While this trend may appear intimidating and currently raises ...

The concept of a web search engine is nothing new to the society in which we live. The first Internet search engines go back as far as the early 1990's, and have evolved into what they are today: software code that is designed to find user input string on the world wide web. While we think of common search engines, like Google  and Bing , as useful and friendly resources there are less common search engines that can be used to cause harm and exploit poor security. Specifically, the search engine Shodan  searches the "back channels" of the world wide web.  The search provides data about devices linked to the Internet, such as traffic cameras, printers, web cameras and routers. A simple search can pick up on nearly any device connected to the Internet.  Several demonstrations of the search have been performed, and it has been around for approximately three years. Searches using Shodan have presented results that include command and control systems fo...