Why You Need to Cover Your Webcam RIGHT NOW!

Your computer’s built-in webcam is easy to take for granted if you don’t use if very often. But just because you don’t take advantage of this amazing piece of technology — as a woman in Toronto was recently shocked to learn — doesn’t mean it isn’t being used.

Hackread reported previously that hackers use Remote Access Trojan (RAT) to gain access to unsuspecting users’ computers and record their activity, including webcam sessions. In a separate incident, a Canadian woman who had taken control of users’ webcams was arrested for spying.

This RAT malware is easily obtained by young and novice hackers through those with more experience. Called “ratters” because of the name of the malware they most often use, these hackers take control of a victim’s computer and electronic devices and then attack, according to Hackread.

An easy safeguard everyone can use to prevent their candid moments from being seen by prying eyes is to attach a small piece of any opaque tape, band aid, or other material over the webcam.

In fact, if you haven’t yet, maybe that should be the next thing you do.

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In A New Scientific Project US and Indian Students Will Be “Hacking Space” To Sustain Life On Earth

A group of students from India and the USA will soon begin working on a collaborative project entitled ‘Hacking Space: A student Partnership To Sustain Life on Earth’, to identify innovations originally developed for space travel that could help solve environmental challenges on Earth.

Today, astrophysics research is continuing to advance at an incredible pace, with many scientists now looking to the stars for new discoveries that can improve our way of life here on Earth. The latest edition to this effort is a collaborative project between Science City, Kolkata (a unit of National Council of Science Museums) and Chabot Space & Science Centre, California, USA.

For the project, 16 students, 8 from India and 8 from the USA, “will develop a series of demonstrations and activities exploring the solutions that space travel innovations offer for the environmental and sustainability challenges we face.”

The students, aged between 15-18, will spend one year thinking outside of the box to co-develop potential strategies to overcome both future and current environmental and sustainability concerns. Since the Earth’s population has reached seven billion people, a figure which is likely to exceed nine billion by 2050, humans need to begin adapting the management of the world’s already stretched resources to environmental changes.

The project, which will also involve a number of guest lectures and field trips, will be overseen by an advisory board “made up of local experts in the fields of space exploration, sustainable development and engineering.”

Primarily, the Hacking Space project is grooming the next generation of engineers and researchers by bringing together a community of high-school students and expert advisers. Crucial scientific skills such as researching, envisioning and developing concepts; as well as sharing and learning from both their own and their team’s research, will be significantly enhanced on completion of the project. Essentially, “These students will become the world’s future decision makers.”

The conclusion of the project will be a travel exchange in Spring and Summer of 2016, during which the team will share the work with the community in Kolkata and in Oakland, California.

The Hacking Space project is set to begin in September this year. Science City, Kolkata is inviting interested & motivated science students (in the age group of 15 to 18 years) to apply to this prestigious project. Applications must be submitted on or before the 7th August, 2015.

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Windows 10: The FREE Upgrade That Threatens To DESTROY US ALL

EVERYONE LOVES FREE CRAP RIGHT??!! And of all companies, it seems as though Microsoft the arch-villain of tech companies is the one distributing the FREEBIES!!! That’s RIGHT, grab that FREE UPGRADE to Windows TEN (they skipped 9, because THE NEW UPGRADE IS JUST SO AWESOME….. Annnnd FRREEEE). Let’s forget that debacle over  Windows 8, which was basically another FREEE downgrade to force you to use their App store and their Metro-whatever interface and  was universally hated. WINDOWS 10 IS FREEEE.

Thing is though, most people don’t read that all-important fine print. You know, that unimportant extremely long-winded bit of legalise designed specifically to bore you to tears before getting through the first paragraph… You see, in a   Newsweek report, it seems that Windows 10’s SPYWARE IS ALSO 100% FREE OF CHARGE. Get that extra bit of unnecessary bloat ware 2.0 so that Microsoft, that awesome company that is CERTAINLY LOVES GIVING FREE STUFF, actually gets to profit off of your private information!

Think those nude pics were going to get stolen by Hackers, Facebook and even the NSA?? Well, Microsoft intends to beat them ALL to the punch by getting your nude pics as soon as you click that Webcam on!

Windows 10 starts monitoring your activity as soon as you sign up for an account. It begins by saving all your basic info: your contact details, name passwords, race, religion and credit card details….

And then it starts doing what it was really programed to do (and I don’t mean provide you with really awesome features for FREE). Finding out this true purpose was certainly not easy, as one privacy expert stated, “there is no world in which 45 pages of policy documents and opt-out settings split across 13 different Settings screens and an external website constitutes ‘real transparency’.”

“More than 14 million devices are already running Microsoft’s Windows 10 after its global launch on Wednesday, but it’s unclear how many of their users read the company’s Privacy Policy and Service Agreement before downloading. Tucked away in the 45 pages’ worth of terms and conditions (effective August 1) is a substantial power grab: The company is collecting data on much of what you do while using its new software.

From the moment an account is created, Microsoft begins watching. The company saves customers’ basic information – name, contact details, passwords, demographic data and credit card specifics – but it also digs a bit deeper.

Other information Microsoft saves includes Bing search queries and conversations with the new digital personal assistant Cortana; contents of private communications such as email; websites and apps visited (including features accessed and length of time used); and contents of private folders. Furthermore, “your typed and handwritten words are collected,” the Privacy Statement says, which many online observers liken to a keylogger. Microsoft says they collect the information “to provide you a personalized user dictionary, help you type and write on your device with better character recognition, and provide you with text suggestions as you type or write.”

Basically, Microsoft gains access to your entire hard-drive. Your entire search history. Your PRIVATE email correspondences to other people. The words you type, even if you don’t save them. THEN, it intends to SELL ALL THAT DATA TO THE HIGHEST BIDDER (your government probably, or a large corporation). Hell, if your government hates you enough, Microsoft will GIVE your information to them FREEEE. Orwellian nightmare, eat your heart out. Oh, yeah, you get a “personal assistant” with the same name as the one from that video game franchise. To be fair, there are “options” you can pick to “reduce” the amount of data Windows 10 collects…. But I’m hardly convinced that there’s any way to be sure that Microsoft honors this decision other than to unplug from the Net.

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Recounting The Life Of Eccentric Visionary, Nikola Tesla

When you think of electricity, you think of Edison. When you think of radio, you think of Marconi. But there is one electrical genius who is all but nearly forgotten these days, a man who dreamed of giving the world an unlimited supply of energy — his name was Nikola Tesla, the master of lightning. Tesla was a visionary, a scientist who invented the technology that brought us alternating-current (AC) power transmission and electric motors, high-frequency (HF) communications, the basis for radio and television, remote controls, neon and florescent lighting, and X-rays.

Tesla: Master of Lightning recognizes a great man of science whose visionary genius and technical skill were countered by his lack of business acumen and eccentric personality; his life is an inspiring example of the power of one man to change the world with revolutionary ideas. The documentary tells the story of Tesla’s astounding intellect, his visions and inventions and pays tribute to this overlooked genius who died penniless in 1943.

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Get Ready To Meet Aliens: NASA To Produce ‘Definite Evidence’ of Alien Life By 2025

NASA’s chief scientist, Ellen Stofan, has confirmed that we are not alone in the Universe and that we are going to meet aliens in a decade or two. Where did we come from? Where are we going? Are we alone? We are going to have the answers soon.

“I believe we are going to have strong indications of life beyond Earth in the next decade and definitive evidence in the next 10 to 20 years. We know where to look, we know how to look, and in most cases we have the technology, and we’re on a path to implementing it. And so I think we’re definitely on the road. We are not talking about little green men. We are talking about little microbes,” Stofan said at a public panel in Washington.

Jeffery Newmark, interim director of heliophysics at NASA added, “It’s definitely not an ‘if’, it’s a ‘when’”.

But is extraterrestrial life really possible? NASA has its own reasons. One of them is the presence of water in our solar system: subterranean oceans on the moons of Saturn and Jupiter, crater pools on Mercury, and 50 per cent of the Mars’ northern hemisphere once had oceans a mile deep. Furthermore, over 4,000 rocky and mild planets which share a similar likeness to Earth have been found outside our solar system. There are at least 200 billion Earth-like planets in our galaxy, so NASA claims we could be on the verge of finding life on one of them.

Meanwhile, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope will launch in 2018 to scope out the atmospheres of nearby ‘super-Earth’ alien planets. The next Mars rover, scheduled to launch in 2020, will search for signs of past life and store samples which will potentially return to Earth for analysis. NASA is also planning a mission to Europa, which may launch as early as 2022, to find out whether the icy moon is habitable.

Additionally, NASA hopes to land astronauts on Mars in the 2030s. “I’m a field geologist; I go out and break open rocks and look for fossils. Those are hard to find. So I have a bias that it’s eventually going to take humans on the surface of Mars — field geologists, astrobiologists, chemists — actually out there looking for that good evidence of life that we can bring back to Earth for all the scientists to argue about,” Stofan remarked.

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“Who’s Our Daddy?” — Some Inventions by Nikola Tesla

Throughout history there have been men and women that have stood out; some are remembered at the drop of a hat, others take a little mental jogging and some are just plain forgotten. Nikola Tesla fits all three categories. There are those that refer to him as ‘the father of modern times,’ others claim that he was a farce that rode the coat tails of other scientists.  If we push it all aside and look at the man, the ideas and the actual accomplishments, you can come up with your own opinion.

Nikola Tesla was born the son of a priest (father) and an inventor (mother) in 1856; about 30 years before the first gasoline-powered car graced us with its presence.  Although his father wanted him to follow a religious path, it was his mother that captured his mind. He attended universities in both Austria and the Czech Republic and, like many inventors, he was full of ideas but after failing to spark interest in Europe, he left his home for America in 1884 at the age of 28. He arrived with the clothes on his back and a letter of introduction to Thomas Edison.  Tesla worked for/with Edison for the next year until money got in the way. While Edison was driven by the marketing and monetary success, Tesla was driven by the science and how it could help the world. Need I go any farther with this train of thought?

Being the driven man that Tesla was, he continued to think, build and even file patents while working a manual labor job just to survive. He caught his first break in 1887, with the invention of the AC (alternating current) electrical system and the solution to distributing power across the nation.  This changed the face of the world…

Now, Tesla had some momentum and was able to show the world tangible ideas… the professionals lined up, the public lined up and other scientists ganged up.  “What? Why? How?” Let’s look at some of the marvels that came out of this man’s head.

The year? 1895. Tesla designed one of the first AC hydroelectric power plants in America, at Niagara Falls. The following year, it was used to power the city of Buffalo, New York, an almost magical success publicized throughout the world. With this milestone and the mass reporting of it, the alternating current system would quickly become the predominant power system of the 20th century throughout the world — pushing Edison’s expensive DC system out the door. See where this was going? Despite the roadblocks of being a poor immigrant, being constantly blocked by big money such as Edison, Carnegie and even Albert Einstein at times, he persevered and gained the support of George Westinghouse.

So, what other awesome things came from Nikola Tesla?

X-Rays: Although Tesla took the first, clear x-ray of a booted foot from 8 feet away, instead of trying to beat Roentgen to the “props,” he helped him develop it.

The electro-magnetic motor: It drives everything from a CD player to the cooling fans at a nuclear power plant.

The Tesla coil (or transformer): That little black box that you plug into the wall to charge your smart phone, along with many other devices, is a type of modern day Tesla coil.

The remote control: He built and demonstrated a radio-controlled boat (“telautom automatics”) at Madison Square Garden.

Wireless transmission of electricity (recently accomplished by Japanese researchers): sending power through the air without wires.

Tesla also built the first electric car, which has now been revisited by the motor company bearing his name.

These are just the tip of the iceberg. There are literally thousands of pages on Tesla’s inventions and ideas… never openly taught. Why? Suppressed by big money and fame… or so it would seem.

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The All Seeing Eyes of The NSA & Their Invasion on Internet Security

When NSA training documents covering the “Sustained Skype collection” were leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden, privacy concerns over encryption services were finally confirmed. Internet users across the globe began to question the reality of just how secure their encryption services were.

The document that revealed data collection from a supposed secure program used by X million users where encryption is featured, raised questions about just how far the NSA’s prying eyes reached. Denying users of their privacy unfettered was now a bitter realty. Under order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), Microsoft who acquired Skype in 2011, were to make themselves available as a source of data to the NSA, providing unhindered, a supply of information.

This is one example of many, of the growing concerns surrounding data encryption services and security for the internet user. Those in the inside circle of hacking and IT in general, already understand the risks that some encryption services carry. They understand that the NSA have a firm grasp on accessing our data via whatever means they have available to them. But what the lay person needs to understand is that although the NSA and their associates, such as the Five Eyes alliance (Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the US) have an established and powerful cryptanalysis service, Snowden stated in 2013 that “properly implemented strong crypto systems are one of the few things that you can rely on.” But he also went on to say “unfortunately, endpoint security is so terrifically weak that NSA can frequently find ways around it.”

The problem herein lies with the properly implemented part.

According to an in-depth article by Spiegel Online, there are some real threats to the NSA, posing problems for their analysis teams. Truecrypt is one program, used for encrypting files on computers. However, as their site states, their development halted in May 2014 after Microsoft withdrew support for Windows XP. Off-the-Record (OTR) is another protocol that can be used for encryption of instant messaging in an “end-to-end encryption process.” OTR is not a failsafe but it does propose some headaches for the NSA on occasion. The idea is to use ‘layers’ of protection. An example would be TOR to conceal your IP, in conjunction with OTR for encryption to chat. The more layers the better.

Conducting homework on a personal level is essential for the internet user to understand the importance of encryption services. Using one method is fast becoming redundant. Using multiple programs in conjunction with each other to increase a resistance to prying eyes is a vital component to privacy. Being aware of closed systems, Spiegel suggests, is a good start. Closed software programs include Apple and Microsoft. Google, Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, YouTube and PalTalk are also among internet companies where Prism[2], an NSA program can also access data unhindered.[3]

The threat against privacy on the internet remains one of the largest talking points to date. GCHQ, the NSA, the Five Eyes alliance and Prism are but a few of the organizations actively seeking new measures means to continually break through encryption services. The key is to be aware and healthily paranoid when putting into place your own personal security measures.

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NSA - Quantum Computing To Crack Encyption

The internet uses and depends on a secure and uncrackable encryption method.

Without it people’s data could be easily seen, altered, traced and stolen including online purchases or money transfers. But there is no need to worry as this encryption is practically impossible to crack. The most common encryption method is RSA. RSA uses public keys and relies on the difficulty of computers to use a bruteforce type of method to keep on randomly trying different numbers until it gets the right one, the larger the prime number the longer the longer it will take a computer to get it correct. The prime numbers used in RSA range from 1024 to 4096 bits making the time to guess the answer near to infinite

The RSA encryption method comes from how classical computers work, in a classical computer data is stored in electronicle states known as bits and is shown as either a 0 or a 1 each bit only stays in one state at any given time and this is what results in making brute force attacks considerably longer.

Now let’s talk about quantum computing, “the strange and counterintuitive behaviour of particles is used to encode and compute data sets”, quantum results such as super positioning states and entangled states to allow quantum computers to encode data in Qbits instead of regular bits. Qbits is basically a bit that can exists in multiple states at the same time allowing you to carry out multiple operations on the same bit. This allows the computer to now carry out mathematical algorithms.

Shor’s algorithm is an algorithm that allows the factorisation of prime numbers which cannot normally be done. This allows a cracking method that can much more easily crack any encryption method that relies on prime numbers.

The NSA’s $79.9 million program named “Penetrating hard targets” researches quantum computing and uses it to their expense. Currently the largest integer to ever be factorised with a quantum computer was 143 in 2009 by Nanyang Xu at the University of science and technology of China in Hefei. Whilst this is a long way from cracking a 1024 bit system it is practical that the NSA with all their time and money could make this happen a lot sooner than expected. In the future we will find out if the NSA manages to build a quantum computer and if they manage to crack a 1024 bit system.

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