Showing posts with label NSA backdoor.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NSA backdoor.. Show all posts

Tuesday, 15 September 2015

What is Surveillance and What it should be!

My main motive for this article is to try to understand that what is surveillance is and what it has become. The surveillance meaning and what it is being actually implied nowadays.


Surveillance is a act of watching over a asset without there permission aiming to fetch the information in form of data. The huge majority of computer surveillance involves the monitoring of data and traffic on the Internet.
You can check the Wikipedia article surveillance for more info.
here is the link




Surveillance is very good fighting against terrorism, Cyber War, cyber terrorism etc etc... but when it comes to the right of spoof free Internet no one else is monitoring your connection then it becomes a human right. I believe every human on planet earth should have equal right of accessing Internet freely without any hesitation that his connection and his access point over the network is being monitored which later on can be aimed to any direction while any investigation done by any Federal Agencies for any other issue.


 Mass surveillance is being done all across the world is devastated it is clear now that most of the Agencies which are working on the ground are not taking user privacy seriously.
When this happened busy people coming out of their own organizations and making the confidential documents public which type thing should be know by all citizens, an act of doing so is called whistle-blowing.

Surveillance policy should be drafted in a way that every Surveillance request must be approved by some kind of jury before implementation.Surveillance without permission is like setting a wild horse free it can hurt somebody.

Example Edward Snowden one of the most famous whistle-blower he uncover the truth about the secret government mass surveillance program called prism.  and several other which were quality user privacy all across the world not only in United States.
Edward Snowden highlighted the key element facts that he disclosed and this segment of Ted Talk.


TED talk of Edward Snowden  here

Director of National Security Agency responded to the Ted Talk of Edward Snowden in this way you can see in this following video

NSA response to the TED talk with Edwards Snowden. here

We need to take back control over the Internet as we speak we cannot let anybody violate our privacy.

Here are things which we can do to fight against this kind of surveillance or Internet monitoring.


1- Every website and web service should implement SSL connection it is kind of Web encryption between the website and the user this connection is secure via public key the SSL is very very hard to break it will take millions of years for a normal computer to decode a message if he tries around 10,000 combinations of keys per second.

2- The second thing we can do we can use of VPN virtual private network for our Internet connection this is a secure tunnel for a secure channel between your computer and the  and the Internet server
This provider encrypted session between server and your system has no one can spoof hijack in between.
checkout torproject.org

3- Keep your operating system up to date for the latest security patch available.


4- Install the advanced antivirus and anti Malware softwares for example-Kaspersky, AVS.
     ( you don't need anti-virus no linux but still might need anti-malware.

5- Do not use torrent website over VPN because that disclose your real IP.

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Note- All the ideas and information is generally available on web, this article about is collection of my own ideas and views and thought about surveillance. I do not represent any party.
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Monday, 23 February 2015

After Open Source Software it's time for Open Source Hardware


These day we are seeing tremendous increase in revealing of several malware attacks are embedded in our hardware by different secret services, I think its time for a new revolution as per today's need and its the Open source Hardware.
In 1994 Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds started a revolution by giving this world Open Source and soon the most secure, trust able, customisable operating system Linux was introduced. It was important because market was dominated by Microsoft for our need of operating system people had no option rather than to use windows.
 Well this is the time where we need another revolution by the name of open hardware because now we can not trust our regular manufacturers of IT equipments because they get involve in dirty work of violating people life's privacy by creating and embedding security holes in the firmware of there hardware products.
This needs to be stopped

wikipedia definition of open source hardware
Open-source hardware (OSH) consists of physical artifacts of technology designed and offered by the open designmovement. Both free and open-source software (FOSS) as well as open-source hardware is created by this open-source culture movement and applies a like concept to a variety of components. It is sometimes, thus, referred to as FOSH (free and open source hardware).

why?

what reason can be given after this year since the 2013 Snowden leaks, Russian security firm Kaspersky has presented a report that the National Security Agency (NSA), the snooping agency for the United States has been involved in a globally-organised hacking campaign aimed at the firmware of hard drives.

Kaspersky report says that NSA implemented a backdoor in the firmware of hard drives, this backdoor is a complex algorithm that can give direct access to all data stored in drive to any remote user, not only this this algorithm can even produce a small malware from itself that system thread level that can do lot more then just access file it can send them and more.Hard drives manufactured by as many as 12 major HD manufacturers are currently infected. The operation has been dubbed as “Equation Group” by researchers of Kaspersky Lab and took help of hackers to secretly intercept a package in transit, booby-trapped its contents, and sent it to its intended destination. Kaspersky had dubbed the group as Equation Group because it is apparent use of heavy encryption tools and algorithm's, obfuscation methods and advanced delivery mechanism of the communication.

Kaspersky report notes that somewhere in mid 2002 or 2003, Equation Group members used the Oracle database installation CD to infect multiple targets with malware from the group’s extensive library.

As per Kaspersky the number of victims of this cyber snooping operating can range in ‘tens of thousands of victims’ in over 42 countries spread around the world.  NSA apparently used this method to infect PCs primarily in Iran, Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Syria and Mali at the top of the list.

The NSA victims centred in critical fields including aerospace, nuclear research, government, telecommunications, Islamic activists, energy, and industries, financial concerns, encryption technologies and infrastructure supply chains. Kaspersky researchers say it is difficult to arrive at a absolute number of infections done by the Equation Group because of a self-destruct mechanism built into the malware. so if anyone tries to fetch it out of drives for reverse engineering or other purpose it destroyes itself completely.

After all these events open hardware will help people to trust there system and be tension free that no one has private access to our data 

there many more such hardware backhood implanted by NSA if you want a list visit this wiki page

So who is manufacoring opensource hardware well here is a small list but this not all this industry needs a initiative in open hardware along with innovations to boost up the current senarios of sales and prooducts.

Computer open source hardware list

If this violation of users privacy continues then may be people will loose faith in all the USA based hardware manufacturer so they better audit there products before that happen.

ITS TIME FOR ANOTHER REVOLUTION "THE OPEN SOURCE HARDWARE" TO PROTECT OUT RIGHT OF INTELLECTUAL PRIVACY AND SECURITY
i think its time when Richard Stallman might need to change his phrase's about open source its not just about software anymore

As the advocates of open source draw new users into our community, we free software activists must shoulder the task of bringing the issue of freedom to their attention. We have to say, “It's free software and it gives you freedom!”—more and louder than ever. Every time you say “free software” rather than “open source,” you help our cause.

LOVE PEACE OPENSOURCE 

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Proper way to install nvidia 390 if you see any error in the process look below; command  sudo apt purge --autoremove '*nvidia*...