Category Archives: General

Game Developer Sentenced to Death in Iran

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A former US Marine born in Flagstaff, Arizona has 20 days to appeal the verdict of being sentenced to death or the decision will be final. The Iranian-American citizen, Amir Mizra Hekmati, was arrested for and convicted of espionage on a trip to visit family in Iran last August. His family has hired a lawyer with quite a bit of experience in negotiating with the government of Iran, and he is currently attempting to meet with Iranian officials.

Why was he charged with espionage? Hemkati developed a video game critical of Iran. He is accused of developing games to influence public opinion on US operations in the Middle East, and specifically Iran. Hekmati was a developer for Kuma Games, which has released a number of free, war-themed first-person shooters including Kuma/War, which features both real-world and plausibly fictional scenarios.

In one of the missions in the game, called “Assault on Iran,” the player infiltrates an Iranian nuclear facility in order to find proof that Iran is producing nuclear weapons. Other episodes include “The Fall of Sirte,” where players engage in the battle that culminated Gaddafi’s death, as well as “The Death of Osama Bin Laden.”

A confession in which Hekmati admits to the accusations was aired on Iranian television and also published in the Tehran Times.

“After (working for DARPA), I went to Kuma (Games Company),” the confession read in part. “This computer company was receiving money from the CIA to (produce) and design and distribute for free special movies and games with the aim of manipulating public opinion in the Middle East. The goal of the company in question was to convince the people of Iran and the people of the entire world that whatever the U.S. does in other countries is a good measure.”

“The Iranian authorities are denying that Amir is a United States citizen, despite the fact he was born in Flagstaff, Arizona,” Hekmati’s parents said in a statement released yesterday. “Amir did not engage in any acts of spying, or ‘fighting against God,’ as the convicting judge has claimed in his sentence. Amir is not a criminal. His very life is being exploited for political gain.”

Hekmati’s lawyer is Pierre Prosper, who previously served as ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues under the Bush administration. Hekmati’s trial took place a few months after the initial arrest, lasted half a day, and a verdict of death was handed down just a few weeks later. ”We also are troubled by the fact there’s been no transparency,” he told CNN, “so it is really hard to see what happened.”

The US State Department has denied that Hekmati was a CIA spy and has urged the Iranian government to release him “without delay.”

Source: Ars Technica

WikiLeaks Has a Leak Once Again: Database Appears Online

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WikiLeaks has once again lost control of its cache memory, which contains a quarter-million US State Department cables. This is the second time this year, and this time the leaked files are supposedly available online. These uncensored cables are contained in a 1.73GB password-protected file named cables.csv. Apparently, this file is now circulating the Internet according to Steffen Kraft, editor of the German paper Der Freitag. He announced last week this his paper had found the file and easily obtained the password in order to unlock it.

Unlike the original cables that WikiLeaks began publishing last fall, these cables are raw and unredacted, thus containing the names of informants and suspected intelligence agents that were blacked out of the official releases. Der Freitag stated that the documents include the name of suspected agents in Israel, Jordan, Iran and Afghanistan. It even mentioned that interested parties, such as the Iranian government or intelligence agencies, could have already discovered and decrypted the file in order to uncover the names of informants.

“The story is that a series of lapses as far as I can see on behalf of WikiLeaks and its affiliates has led to the possibility a file becoming generally available which it never should have been available,” confirmed former WikiLeaks staffer Herbert Snorrason, of Iceland, who left the organization as part of a staff revolt last year, and is now part of the competing site OpenLeaks.

The German newsweekly Der Spiegel confirmed the information about the exposed file and password. According to them, the cables were contained in an encrypted file that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange had original stored on a subdirectory of the organization’s server last year, which was not able to be searched for on the Internet unless someone already knew the location.

Assange stated that he gave the password for the file to an “external contact” in order for them to access the file’s content. With both the file and the password now online, the leak is complete. “The issue is double: on one hand there is the availability of the encrypted file, and on the other the release of the password to the encrypted file,” Snorrason told Threat Level on Monday. “And those two publications happened separately.”

Snorrason quickly added that the password leak was done “completely inadvertently.” He also declined to identify who leaked the password, as well as the circumstances of the leak. He did, however, state that it was someone who was neither with WikiLeaks nor OpenLeaks.

Last year, former WikiLeaks spokesman Daniel Domscheit-Berg and another WikiLeaks staffer led a staff revolt at WikiLeaks following a rift with Assange, and finally left the organization and set up OpenLeaks.org. When they left WikiLeaks, they took the contents of the WikiLeaks server with them, which included the encrypted file. Last December, Domscheit-Berg returned most of what he had taken, including the file containing the cables.

Supporters of WikiLeaks released an archive of the data that Domscheit-Berg had returned, which he did as a public service to provide readers with access to everything WikiLeaks had previously published. Among the documents that Domscheit-Berg released was the encrypted file containing the cables. Several months later, the person to whom Assange had provided the password somehow ended up making it publicly available online. Der Spiegel did not state on why or how that person published the password, and Snorrason declined to say any more in fear of guiding people to the password.

“It’s not very obvious how the password was made available, and we’re not keen on making it any more obvious how or why it might have been published,” Snorrason said.

The encrypted file and the password went pretty much unnoticed until very recently. Der Spiegel implied that Domscheit-Berg or someone connected to his rival OpenLeaks organization was responsible for calling Der Freitag’s attention to the file and password in order to make a point that WikiLeaks is unable to properly secure the data it possesses. Domscheit-Berg did not respond to en e-mail that Ars Technica sent regarding a question from Threat Level on Monday.

WikiLeaks completely lost control of its database of cables, allowing some 130,000 to access them. Last year, as the organization and its media partners were beginning preparations to publish stories related to the cables, a WikiLeaks member gave the entire database to a freelance reporter, Heather Brooke. Brooke was not a member of the approved cabal of media outlets that had been given access to the documents. Her possessing these documents directly threatened to derail the plans that WikiLeaks and its media partners work out for publication. The Guardian newspaper in the UK made an agreement with Brooke that she wouldn’t publish any of the cables or stories related to them.

WikiLeaks responded to the leak on Twitter on Monday by writing: “There has been no ‘leak at WikiLeaks’. The issue relates to a mainstream media partner and a malicious individual.”

Source: Ars Technica

Alueron P2P Botnet 4.5 Million Strong

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The Alueron botnet, also known as TDL or TDSS, has reached the 4.5 million-strong status. As well, it has been deemed “practically indestructible.” Coreflood, Rustock, and Waledac are all bots that were successfully disrupted by law enforcement. However, Alueron has made disruption very difficult.

TDL-4, as it’s named, has been specifically designed to avoid destruction. This includes law enforcement, anti-virus software, as well as competing botnets. When installed, TDL-4 will remove other rootkits, something that most others aren’t capable of. This helps for TDL-4 to remain undetected, and users will more than likely not notice that their system is behaving strangely. To get an idea of how undetectable this botnet is, here is a graph:

Alueron has included peer-to-peer technology in the botnet code. The rootkit uses the Kad p2p network, used by filesharing software eMule. This is done to communicate between nodes, creating its own network of infected computers, and allowing the machines to communicate with each other without relying on a central server.

The reason this is done is to make it harder to take down the network. Usually, law enforcement agencies take over or take down the centralized command-and-control servers used to send instructions for the network. However, if they cannot do that, then these agencies will have to develop new means to taking down the botnet.

This isn’t the first time that rootkits have used peer-to-peer networks. However, they have never been used in such a large, public scale. This gives the botnet an extremely robust communications system that will be next to impossible to disrupt or take over. The techniques used to take down other botnets will prove to be almost completely useless against TDL-4.

As usual, this botnet is used for common spamming and DDoS attacks. However, the botnet’s operators have added someone interesting for users and supporters. For approximately $100 a month, users can use a PC in the botnet as a proxy for your Internet traffic, anonymizing your traffic. There is even a Firefox plugin to make it easier to use the proxy system.

Will law enforcement agencies be able to take down this botnet? Only time will tell.

Source: Ars Technica

MySpace Sold for Huge Loss

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Social networking is not always the get-rich-quick scheme. It’s not all fun and games, parties, and wiring in to code. Your ideas must be outstanding, unique, and superior to that of your competition. This is what Facebook has done to MySpace, improving on nearly ever aspect of social networking. That being said, MySpace has been sold.

MySpace was bought by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp for $580 million back in 2005. It started looking like a really good investment, as it became the popular social network for the next couple years. Then, the Facebook era came and took over really quickly. News Corp has finally decided that it must sell MySpace and get over the loss, selling for just $35 million.

Ars Technica advised the owners of Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to “get out now while the going is good.” However, that’s absolutely absurd. That’s like telling Apple to quit since they’re doing well. The reason MySpace failed is because it was unattractive, buggy, had terrible servers, was full of creepy pedophiles, and the entire layout was not convenient. Facebook utilized all of those things and made a brilliant social network. That being said, the only way Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter will go down the drain is if someone comes out with a new social network that is way better than theirs. It could be done, as I even have ideas, but it would take time. That being said, they would have warning once the project is released to back out if they feel they needed to.

I suppose the underlying difference is that the popular social networks out now were coded and put together by geeks, while MySpace was founded by an entertainment group, struggling to keep up with the new technologies. There is no room in the technological world for people pretending, as you will get bit in the ass when something new comes out and you haven’t the slightest idea how it works.

Source: BBC

Bill Gates Developing the Developing World

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On Sunday, Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, gave a magnificent speech. This speech, however, had barely anything to do with any computing. Bill Gates has a new passion, and that passion is medicine for the developing world. It was rather ironic, as the venue of the speech was Lindau Nobel Laureates meeting, which is focused on the future of medicine. Gates was named to the board of the Lindau Foundation, which runs the annual gathering of past Nobel Prize winners. Bill Gates gave a short talk of his own and appeared in a panel discussion.

Gates set up his speech by referring to what he called “the miracle of the microprocessor.” He said that it took roughly an entire generation to appreciate fully what the microprocessor had done for the world. He sees the same potential that the microprocessor had on the computing world that transformation in fields such as materials science, agriculture, energy, and health could yield. Gates stated that “if diseases of the poor attracted talent based on human impact of their solutions, they’d have five times the people working on them as they have now.”

Gates talked a bit about the role of foundations in the process of diseases. The funding structure works fairly well in the United States. The government funds basic research and then the commercial sector takes some of those ideas and developed products and services out of them. However, this doesn’t work for diseases of the poor, as there is no market to pay for the results. Gates feels that foundations can take the place of companies when it comes to some of the development costs in this area.

The Gates foundation has also chosen to fund some of the research that appears riskier than most governments are likely to fund. That’s a role that Gates sees as being increasingly important as budget constraints are forcing science budgets to flatline around the world. That will almost certainly cause funding agencies to increase their conservatism, focusing on established labs and projects that are highly likely to produce information. Without foundations, younger investigators and high-risk projects are likely to be passed by. The Gates Foundation’s funding evaluation process ensures that the people evaluating applications for scientific merit don’t see the records of the people who are doing the proposing, so there’s going to be less of a bias towards funding large, established labs.

Gates sees promise in two specific areas. One is the development of new insecticides, which help control the spread of mosquitos that carry and spread many diseases in the developing world. As their annoyance extends to the developed world, any results would seem to be ripe for commercial follow-up, though this aspect wasn’t mentioned by Gates. The second area is basic study of the immune system. Immune function is essential for the control of so many disease, and major results can have an impact well beyond their immediate area of focus.

Gates also mused a bit about what he had discovered about the scientific process. He said that not one group has all the necessary data and skills to build a complete picture. “You need both lab work and theory,” Gates suggested. And bringing disparate research groups together is one place where the technological progress he helped foster has played a significant role. “The ability to work at a distance is so much greater, which is good,” Gates said.

The Gates Foundation allocated $1 billion per year for 10 years to vaccine development. Vaccines are relatively neglected by pharmaceutical companies, as they bring in low profits compared to “blockbuster drugs.” Vaccinations are useful, especially in the developing world, where citizens don’t benefit from the high levels of sanitation and the sophisticated medical treatments available elsewhere. Bill Gates has personally supported and voiced his support for vaccine use, something that is controversial in the United States.

Source: Ars Technica

Don-8r : Collection Robot

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Don-8r is a robot specially programmed to collect change in large areas, not door-to-door scenarios, and just be simply adorable. It’s easy to collect change by a thing that’s so cute, even if it is a robot. Tim Pryde, a student at the University of Dundee, created Don-8r to help raise money for charity.

It’s quite charming. If it senses something around it, or maybe it just does it randomly, it says “hello” quite frequently. Persistence. And if you deposit change into it, Don-8r even says “thank you.” Should you grab it and it runs into you, it says, quite hilariously, “ouch.”

Here’s a video of Don-8r in action.

Source: Engadget

Recon Scout Throwbot

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This little guy has been used in Iraq and Afghanistan for the last few years. It is very small for a moving vehicle, measuring at 8 inches long and weighing in at only 1.2 pounds. This thing can sustain a lot of abuse before it is shut down, as well. Whether it be thrown a long distance or through a window, or even down a flight of stairs, this surveillance bot just keeps on rolling.

It’s been thought of recently to have firefighters and police use this. Imagine the lives saved by sending this through a burning building, quickly and without harm to any persons. Or perhaps sending this guy into a building held hostage. Those are two extreme scenarios. The Recon Scout Throwbot has just received a spectrum use waiver from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) so that it may not transmit video. So, it may not be too long before we start seeing these around and potentially saving lives with them.

Typical applications will include checking a building prior to forced entry; searching vehicle undercarriages for explosives; locating hostages, hostiles, officers, and bystanders before a rescue attempt; and searching for survivors in a burning building,” the FCC noted in the waiver of various portions of its Part 90 private land and mobile radio service rules. “The Recon Scout is used overseas by the US armed forces, and is credited with saving lives.

Of course, with every great idea comes controversy. Amateur radio hosts are worried that the Recon Scout Throwbot will operate on their spectrum, interrupting and interfering with their radio waves, a similar concept with GPS and 4G.

This quote comes from a police department from Ludlow, Illinois in an excerpt to the FCC:

As a Police Officer and a Trainer, I feel compelled to remind you that we do a very dangerous job and usually no one cares how many of us are hurt or killed as long as no innocent victims are hurt or killed. They give us an elaborate funeral and call us heroes for a week. Then we are forgotten. This is apparent in almost all Department Policy Manuals in one policy or another. We are the ones that are required to run into a building under fire to protect the innocent. I feel that it is everyone’s responsibility to approve any life saving tool that can keep us safe as we are rushing in under fire. . . . Please allow us to save ourselves in other ways. Please allow the waiver for multiple frequencies to allow us to go home to our families and friends just as anyone else would deserve.

The positive thing here is that the device was approved, so long as it meets a series of conditions. Only state and local police and firefighters can use the device. It can only be used during actual emergencies and for the training needed to be prepared for such conditions. The Recon Scout Throwbot cannot be used too near an Air Force or radar base. In the first year, only 2,000 devices can be sold, which is increased to 8,000 the second year.

Though there may be conditions and controversy, the Recon Scout Throwbot seems an essential tool to helping save the lives of not only innocent citizens, but the heros that do the work: police and firefighters.

Source: Ars Technica

Stealth Makes Crazy Super Keyboard

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Do you need a new keyboard? How about a $700 super heavy duty keyboard? If so, you’re in luck, because Stealth has made just that. This keyboard is cased in stainless steel, and has an optical trackball included. Cool, but why is it $700, other than the stainless steel? Well, this keyboard is freaking tough! You can douse it in water and it will still work. And that steel case insures that it won’t be easily destroyed. It also has some neat backlighting too. I wonder how many of these they’ll sell? I can’t imagine too many. But you gotta give them credit for being original.

Source: Stealth

University of Michigan Develops Crazy Small Display

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Retina display, eat your heart out. The University of Michigan has made a super tiny display. How small? 12×9 microns (1/6 the width of a human hair). We all know the Retina display is neat because it has smaller pixels, but this small display developed by UMich has pixels that are eight times smaller than that of Apple’s iPhone 4. Wow. Imagine a large display made of up a bunch of these small displays. The link below goes into much greater detail about the process of how this display works.

Source: University of Michigan