[00:39.110 --> 00:42.910]  You're watching HNNCast with Space Rogue on the Hacker News Network.
[00:48.610 --> 00:50.470]  HNN is sponsored by...
[00:50.470 --> 00:51.550]  Astaro.
[00:52.370 --> 00:53.670]  Simplifying security.
[00:55.030 --> 00:56.350]  Become a sponsor.
[00:56.930 --> 00:59.570]  Email sales at hackernews.com.
[01:01.550 --> 01:03.770]  This is Space Rogue for the Hacker News Network.
[01:03.950 --> 01:06.890]  And this is HNNCast for the second week of December, 2009.
[01:07.450 --> 01:09.130]  Our top story this week...
[01:09.130 --> 01:14.990]  A Moxie Marlin Spike, who recently warned the public about flaws in SSL, has created the WPA Cracker.
[01:15.530 --> 01:26.250]  Wi-Fi-protected access networks are vulnerable to dictionary attacks, but running a respectable-sized dictionary over a WPA network handshake can take days or even weeks on a standalone machine.
[01:26.250 --> 01:34.950]  The WPA Cracker operates on a 400 CPU cluster that will run a network capture against a 135 million word dictionary.
[01:35.390 --> 01:38.210]  This reduces the crack time to an average of 20 minutes.
[01:38.610 --> 01:40.790]  Finally, a good use for the cloud.
[01:43.800 --> 01:54.960]  Last week, we told you about the security breach at the climate research unit at East Anglia University in the UK that resulted in a 61 megabyte zip file being passed around a few FTP sites.
[01:55.720 --> 01:59.720]  Well, the lightest twist in this ClimateGate story is that the Russians did it.
[02:00.100 --> 02:04.260]  The zip file first appeared on an FTP server in the town of Tomsk in Russia.
[02:04.580 --> 02:10.840]  The Russian Secret Service, the FSB, has been known to recruit cyber vandals from the town of Tomsk in the past.
[02:11.360 --> 02:20.680]  Add to that some people claiming that this is an extremely sophisticated attack, and not the work of amateurs, and that the proximity to the climate summit in Copenhagen is not a coincidence.
[02:20.680 --> 02:35.300]  However, a detailed analysis of the technical information contained within the files, and emails themselves, conducted by Lance Levson, shows that the files were probably collected by an internal administrator and was not a secret government conspiracy.
[02:35.800 --> 02:36.700]  But who knows?
[02:36.940 --> 02:38.480]  Maybe the Martians did it.
[02:39.400 --> 02:53.000]  Jim Atkinson of the Granite Island Group, a frequent speaker at various security cons on the topic of electronic surveillance countermeasures, was arrested on December 1st on larceny charges after a Switzerland-based business claimed they'd never received the goods he promised.
[02:53.520 --> 02:59.160]  As a result of the arrest, Atkinson's license to carry firearms was suspended, forcing him to turn in his weapons.
[02:59.860 --> 03:03.760]  Unfortunately, he also turned in ammunition for weapons that he wasn't supposed to have.
[03:04.500 --> 03:14.740]  This caused the police to get a search warrant to look for the missing weapons, who then found a small stockpile of items, including smoke grenades and an M72 light anti-tank weapon.
[03:15.540 --> 03:20.040]  Atkinson has now pleaded not guilty to over 16 charges and is out on bail.
[03:20.460 --> 03:23.980]  If you've ever met Jim, you'd realize that none of this is really all that surprising.
[03:24.280 --> 03:35.740]  An Israeli mobile security firm that a month ago offered $100,000 in gold to anyone who could break its voice encryption technology has upped the ante to $250,000.
[03:36.660 --> 03:46.620]  Gold Lock posted a sample of an encrypted voice conversation on its website and is offering the golden reward to anyone who can crack it and send the company a transcript of the call.
[03:47.180 --> 03:54.640]  The problem with these challenges is that no matter how high you make the prize money, there is always someone else who will pay more for a successful attack.
[03:54.640 --> 04:04.860]  Why should I take your $250,000 in gold and disclose my vulnerability when someone else will offer me $300,000 in cash, probably, to keep it quiet?
[04:05.480 --> 04:10.160]  You are not proving the effectiveness of your security, you are just increasing the value of the exploit.
[04:11.300 --> 04:14.420]  We'll be back with more HNNCast right after these messages.
[04:30.880 --> 04:32.830]  Welcome back to HNNCast.
[04:33.440 --> 04:36.640]  This past Thursday, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 2221, the Data Accountability and Trust Act.
[04:40.400 --> 04:47.900]  This, while multiple state attorney generals are cracking down on those involved with last month's HIPAA violation, and new medical records breach have been discovered.
[04:48.480 --> 04:52.710]  The lawsuit we mentioned last week against Computer World Inc.
[04:52.860 --> 05:02.140]  for a string of insufficient PCI installations, multiple university breaches of student records, a public school breach of student records, an Irish bank breach of U.K.
[05:02.300 --> 05:07.660]  customer data, and then there are all the high-profile leaks at Yahoo, HSBC, and the TSA.
[05:08.100 --> 05:11.280]  These idiots can't even handle the data they do care about not getting out.
[05:12.780 --> 05:17.260]  So, along comes the House and passes this bill, completely watered down.
[05:17.580 --> 05:26.120]  The short of it is that the OCC retains sole jurisdiction over all banks, and non-profits, including education, are also exempt.
[05:26.120 --> 05:32.280]  That leaves medical records, which will probably be exempted to pass healthcare, and small businesses, the merchants.
[05:32.900 --> 05:35.280]  This just might pass the Senate after all.
[05:36.360 --> 05:39.520]  As a condition of his plea agreement, Segbeck, a.k.a.
[05:39.620 --> 05:40.780]  Soup Nazi, a.k.a.
[05:40.880 --> 05:41.960]  Jaguar, a.k.a.
[05:42.200 --> 05:43.600]  Kumbajani, a.k.a.
[05:43.920 --> 05:56.860]  Albert Gonzalez, a former administrator of the Shadow Crew Forum, and a former government informant, has pleaded guilty to breaking into Heartland Payment Systems, Hannaford Brothers, 7-Eleven, and two other unnamed national retailers.
[05:57.180 --> 06:03.940]  The guilty plea will allow for his New Jersey case to be moved to Massachusetts, where he faces at least 19 additional felony counts.
[06:04.640 --> 06:15.580]  Segbeck has already been forced to forfeit nearly $1.6 million in cash, his Miami condominium, a 2006 BMW, several laptops, three Rolex watches, and other items.
[06:17.080 --> 06:20.080]  Verizon's Motorola Droid smartphone has been rooted.
[06:20.880 --> 06:27.240]  Zynx Veritus posted the exploit Wednesday afternoon to a popular Droid message board, AllDroid.org.
[06:27.560 --> 06:36.120]  Owners of the Android 2.0-based smartphone can now attempt to install multi-touch support, enhanced themes, and other previously forbidden items into the phone.
[06:36.540 --> 06:43.040]  In addition, Android hackers have ported Android OS to the HTC Touch Diamond and HTC Touch Pro.
[06:43.040 --> 06:49.500]  They are still working on getting drivers ported over, but the OS itself runs just fine on these Windows mobile devices.
[06:50.620 --> 07:00.320]  A team from the University of Hamburg, Germany, has taken top honors at the International Capture the Flag competition, held at the University of California in Santa Barbara last weekend.
[07:00.880 --> 07:08.300]  Fifty-six teams from around the world, including numerous teams from Russia, competed in defending their own servers and attacking the servers of their opponents.
[07:08.760 --> 07:14.980]  This year, the teams had to trick simulated users into downloading their malware, so that they could be added to their simulated botnet.
[07:15.760 --> 07:25.040]  The websites of NASA's Instrument Systems and Technology Unit and Software Engineering Division were broken into in screenshots illustrating the hack posted online.
[07:26.400 --> 07:33.140]  Cyber intruders appear to have taken advantage of an SQL injection flaw and poor access control in mounting the attack.
[07:34.000 --> 07:42.020]  TinCode has taken credit for the attacks, and has been credited with 30 other defacements going back to July of this year, according to the archive at ZoneH.org.
[07:42.520 --> 07:47.140]  The affected websites are currently offline, presumably until NASA can get them fixed.
[07:48.260 --> 07:59.720]  Documents filed with the court on behalf of Rubico, aka David Cornell, indicate that his machine was infested with malware prior to the breach of Sarah Palin's Yahoo email account, of which he is accused.
[08:00.160 --> 08:05.720]  While the documents don't indicate it, I suspect this is in preparation of a the-malware-did-it defense.
[08:06.080 --> 08:11.560]  Yeah, I don't know too many pieces of malware that go around changing Yahoo email account passwords to popcorn.
[08:11.880 --> 08:13.080]  And good luck with that.
[08:13.700 --> 08:16.200]  At least two universities have recently been breached.
[08:16.580 --> 08:25.500]  The Eastern Illinois University Office of Admissions had a server breached with a virus possibly exposing the personal details of over 9,000 students.
[08:25.500 --> 08:35.670]  And the University of Nebraska's College of Education and Human Sciences at the Lincoln campus involved the names, addresses, and social security numbers of 1,400 Hinsdale High School graduates.
[08:36.290 --> 08:44.160]  The university's investigation revealed the computer had not been adequately secured, allowing unauthorized external access to the computer and its information.
[08:44.660 --> 08:46.780]  Gotta keep on top of those patches, people.
[08:48.380 --> 08:52.980]  Courtney was off this week, but we'll be right back with the H&M Quickies right after these messages.
[09:10.010 --> 09:11.710]  Welcome back to H&M Cast.
[09:11.930 --> 09:14.790]  And now for a few quick stories we found on the net this week.
[09:17.030 --> 09:22.430]  Lawyers for Solo, a.k.a. Gary McKinnon, have filed a last-ditch effort for judicial review to stop his extradition to the U.S.
[09:22.510 --> 09:25.210]  to face charges of breaking into numerous NASA computer systems.
[09:25.810 --> 09:30.830]  One final demonstration in support of Gary is scheduled for December 15th outside the home office.
[09:31.210 --> 09:35.450]  Hey, if you happen to be there, send us some pics, or even video, we'd love to use it.
[09:36.350 --> 09:46.190]  Government security contractor Northrop Grumman has joined with Carnegie Mellon, MIT, and Purdue to launch a research consortium focused on fixing the most vexing problems in information security.
[09:46.570 --> 09:57.390]  The new Northrop Grumman Cybersecurity Research Consortium, or NGCRC, will sponsor ten projects and grant graduate fellowships in the initial phase of the multi-million dollar effort.
[09:58.010 --> 10:01.310]  A new variant of the CoopFace worm is spreading via Facebook.
[10:01.670 --> 10:04.410]  This one promises a video Christmas-themed greeting.
[10:04.870 --> 10:09.930]  It then presents a captcha to the victim, threatening to reboot the system if the captcha isn't solved.
[10:10.610 --> 10:15.490]  CoopFace, of course, uses the solved captcha to open a fake Facebook account to continue spreading.
[10:15.750 --> 10:18.070]  Hey, all I want for Christmas is CoopFace.
[10:18.890 --> 10:27.490]  A new variant of the Zeus banking trojan has been spotted in the wild using the popular Amazon service EC2 as a CNC channel for infected machines.
[10:27.750 --> 10:32.510]  This follows Facebook, Twitter, and other new communications channels being used for command and control.
[10:33.110 --> 10:42.010]  Other malware has also been found to use the Twitter trending topics as a seed to generate pseudo-random domains that are then registered and used as command and control.
[10:43.050 --> 10:51.210]  Two Kansas men have been charged with making over $1 million by buying computer networking gear in China and passing it off as products from Cisco Systems.
[10:51.570 --> 10:54.910]  The pair sold the counterfeit goods on eBay and other online shops.
[10:57.050 --> 11:07.070]  Two L.A. traffic engineers, who pleaded guilty to breaking into the city's signal system and slowing traffic at key intersections as part of a labor protest, have been sentenced to two years of probation.
[11:07.790 --> 11:17.450]  The leaderboards for Modern Warfare 2 for the PlayStation 3 appear to have been compromised, with some players showing playing time in the tens of thousands of days or some having negative kills.
[11:17.870 --> 11:20.690]  Last we checked, Sony and Activision had not fixed the problem.
[11:21.630 --> 11:28.630]  Version 3.3.2 of the Metasploit framework has been released and now includes 463 exploit modules.
[11:34.170 --> 11:46.050]  Former leader of the Electronic Tribulation Army, Ghost Exodus, a.k.a. Jesse William McGraw, currently is awaiting trial for breaking into the HVAC system of his employer and will now have to wait a little bit longer due to a continuation in his trial, at least until February 16th for his day in court.
[11:46.930 --> 11:56.950]  Unfortunately, it looks like Hackers on a Plane 3.0, which had hoped to ferry a group of U.S.-based hackers to the 26th Chaos Communications Congress in Germany later this month, has been cancelled.
[11:57.470 --> 12:00.430]  Hopefully, it will return for another European-based con soon.
[12:01.630 --> 12:11.670]  As we reported last week, the International Information Retrieval Guild has reformed and is once again looking for artists, couriers, former IIRG members, suppliers, and even storage.
[12:11.990 --> 12:15.210]  You can contact them at IIRG at yahoo.com.
[12:16.170 --> 12:18.510]  And now for this week's Stock of Shame.
[12:18.790 --> 12:23.230]  The list of all known open vulnerabilities were as cataloged by the Zero Day Initiative.
[12:23.630 --> 12:33.930]  But first, before we list all the vulnerabilities, it looks like someone is watching because HP, the continuous bottom dweller of the stack, has fixed 11 open high-risk vulnerabilities.
[12:34.410 --> 12:35.250]  Good work!
[12:35.530 --> 12:38.470]  But unfortunately, they're still the bottom dweller.
[12:38.970 --> 12:40.550]  Got some more work to do, HP.
[12:40.910 --> 12:41.710]  Here's the list.
[13:35.120 --> 13:37.200]  That's it for this week's HNNCast.
[13:37.400 --> 13:44.380]  And just a reminder, if you can't wait a whole week for the next episode of HNNCast, check out the Breaking News section on HackerNews.com.
[13:44.380 --> 13:48.020]  I've been your host, Space Rogue, and this has been the Hacker News Network.
[13:52.000 --> 13:56.880]  Remember, if you have any news you think we should report, send it to news at HackerNews.com.
[14:00.460 --> 14:02.440]  You have been watching HNNCast.
[14:02.640 --> 14:04.800]  This is Space Rogue for the Hacker News Network.
[14:09.780 --> 14:12.320]  Funny dude, funny dude, funny dude, bad things.