Category Archives: Security

Security

Secret Service Nabs Hacker Poo

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The US Department of Justice made an announcement on November 18th that gives only a shadow of the story of Lin Mun Poo. It says he is a Malaysian citizen who made a stop in New York on his way home from Europe. He was detained by the Secret Service not long after arrival.

A more complete version of events and allegations is found in his detention letter.

…the defendant appears to have traveled to the United States for the sole purpose of engaging in criminal activity; within hours of his arrival at JFK on October 21, 2010, United States Secret Service agents observed the defendant selling stolen credit card numbers for $1,000 at a diner in Brooklyn and arrested him shortly thereafter. In his post-arrest statement, the defendant admitted that the primary purpose of his journey to the United States was to meet with an individual who the defendant believed was capable of regularly providing the defendant with a large volume of stolen card numbers and personal identification numbers, which the defendant said he planned to use to withdraw cash from automated teller machines.

I see a problem in this story: Poo is made out in most reports to be a “career” criminal hacker. He is alleged to be very proficient stealing card numbers and identification from financial institutions. Why was he in a New York diner trying to find someone to give him stolen card numbers if he already had a way to get them remotely?

It seems foolishly risky for him to fly into the US. It would make some sense, in terms of risk, if he had to meet a buyer. That is how the allegation starts out — he has 400,000 card numbers and someone (the Secret Service must have set him up in a sting operation) offered him $1,000 for some amount of them.

Why would someone like Poo fail to use a mule for this operation on American soil? It is obviously high-risk — career-ending for a criminal. Why would he also fail to use a mule to make ATM withdrawals?

Maybe he could not figure out a mule system? That seems unlikely, given that he was said to have hacked into a bank anonymously. Even if I assume he could not figure out mule systems to sell his bounty of stolen card numbers, I have no good explanation for why he would need to arrive in the US to acquire more stolen card numbers.

The full story thus sounds like one of three things: a mule was arrested and has been made out to be a mastermind to block his escape, this criminal mastermind is actually not much brighter than a mule, or the Secret Service has been doing some top-notch social engineering to get a criminal mastermind to walk straight into their arms.

Security

PCI Deadline Extended for PABP v.1.4

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The PCI Security Standards Council gave notice today of a 90-day extension for the PABP (Payment Application Best Practices) expiration date.

After discussion with Payment Application vendors, the PA-QSA community and other stakeholders, the Council is extending this deadline by 90 days to March 2nd 2011. Accordingly, after March 2nd 2011, PCI SSC listed PABP v1.4 applications may only be used in pre-existing deployments.

This updated deadline recognizes the challenges many merchants and Payment Application end users have in implementing system changes over the busy holiday period, and allows the Payment Application vendor community to consider submitting new versions of their products for assessment against the new PA-DSS 2.0 standard that was discussed at our recent Community Meetings.

Neither the PA-DSS 2.0 standard nor the holiday period are any kind of surprise, so the Council may have had other reasons at this late date for extending the deadline.

Security

Anti-theft Bicycle Pole Elevator

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Looking for ways to make your bicycle safe and at the same time conspicuous? A site in Germany claims to have developed “the most secure bike lock in the world“.

It is based upon a wireless remote (Conrad 433 MHz transmitter SHT-7) and receiver module (Conrad 433 MHz SHR-7).

Some obvious security issues are the security of the radio signal, resistance to a long hook that could simply drag the lock down or lift the bike off the elevator, another device sent up to prevent the lock coming down…

History, Security

The Lies in George W. Bush’s Memoir

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Dan Froomkin at the Huffington Post has put together an excellent report called The Two Most Essential, Abhorrent, Intolerable Lies Of George W. Bush’s Memoir

In the period during which Bush claims he was wringing his hands about whether or not to attack, he and his aides were instead intensely focused on building the public case for what was, in their minds, an inevitability.

Although they call out two lies “among the many”, it seems to me they may be two parts of the same lie. There is a hint in the above quote. Here are the two:

History is likely to judge Bush most harshly for two things in particular: Launching a war against a country that had not attacked us, and approving the use of cruel and inhumane interrogation techniques.

I call it one lie because it seems to be two phases of the same general issue. Approving war crimes is a second phase, directly related to Iraq invasion. In other words, the cruel and inhumane interrogation of prisoners in the US was intended to prove, through confession, that Iraq had in fact attacked the US.

In “Decision Points,” Bush describes the invasion of Iraq as something he came to support only reluctantly and after a long period of reflection. This is a flat-out lie. Anyone who paid any attention to the news at the time knew Bush was dead-set on war long before he sent in the troops in March 2003. And there is now an abundant amount of documentation, in the form of leaks, unclassified memos, witness interviews and other people’s memoirs to prove it.

While the US President pulled “questionable intelligence” and forgeries from others to justify the initial invasion, in the first phase, he later followed-up by generating questionable intelligence later through his illegal interrogation methods to complete the lie.

Whether you call it all the same lie or two “most essential, abhorrent, intolerable lies”, the memoir is a study in how this President seriously, and carelessly damaged National Security.

Cheney’s life since leaving office has given additional clues. It has been pointed out to me that his presence is always known because the civilian airports in some areas are shutdown and a giant SAM (surface to air missile) unit is stationed at the runway from touchdown until he flies out again.

Similarly, you can tell when Cheney goes fishing because two black military helicopters buzz an otherwise quiet countryside. I assume one helicopter is to deliver him to the exact spot in the river he prefers and the other is to stock the river upstream with fish that he likes to catch.

These men continue to exhibit a habit or removing themselves so far from reality — creating a coddled life with heavily-subsidized (by taxpayer) security blankets and cherry-picked yes men — that they probably will never understand or appreciate the damage that their lies do to their country.