As the steak warm flystruck hamburger meat that is 2016 United States Presidential election continues its multi-year sizzle on the grill of public opinion, leading candidates from both sides of the divide are hustling hard for clicks, likes, headlines, and anything else that their analysts can measure. Continue reading
Payment Card Industry Clings To SSLv3 And TLS 1.0 For Two More Years
Yesterday the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) announced it has decided to extend its deadline for the fiat payment card industry to abandon SSL version 3 and TLS version 1.0 all the way into June of 2018 (archived). Back in April they had tried to set a June 2016 deadline parties handling fiat payment cards to move up to at least TLS version 1.1 or higher in light of POODLE, SHA1 weakness, and other protocol level attacks. General Manager Stephen Orfei of the PCI SSC blames "business issues" for the extension. These extra two years create the potential for massive fraud involving intercepted payment card information, but massive fraud is an inherent part of the fiat system.
CMU Tor Attack Implicated In Mannion Arrest
In one of the more bizarre stories arising out of Operation Onymous and the Silk Road 2 takedown, Neil Mannion who was initially arrested back in November 2014, released, had news of his arrest retracted, was rearrested, and was now sentenced to six and a half years in prison has recently been fingered as a victim (archived) of Carnegie Mellon University's attack on the Tor network. The hazards of using the Tor Network for safety critical communications have been addressed previously on Qntra.
Fake Star Wars Torrents Already Popping Up On Trackers
With the release of the new Star Wars film numerous fake torrents are being uploaded that claim to be the film. Many can be superficially spotted by checking file extensions and employing healthy caution about claims of quality. For such a new release legitimate torrents will likely emerge advertising CAM, HDCAM, and Telesync quality. BDRIP and HDRIP will be unlikely until the film nears home media release. Several fake Star Wars torrents spotted so far came from uploader accounts which appear to have been farmed with some effort having previous credible uploads in a social engineering effort to avoid the superficial appearance of spreading malware or harvesting IP addresses for litigation. Remember to exercise caution and let people with less impulse control handle the dirty work of identifying the actual film torrents when they appear.
Police Department Thanks Pedophile Officer For Service
The late Detective Edward Abbott of the Manassas, Virginia police department shot himself in his home when other detectives arrived to arrest him for sex crimes against children. Abbot was also a youth hockey coach and once made the news for his desire to photograph a minor child's erect penis (archived) while investigating a "sexting" case. A search warrant to have that child taken to the hospital for injection with an erection inducing drug followed by photography was approved by a judge in that case. Abbott sued the child's lawyer for defamation when the lawyer relayed information to the public like (archived): Continue reading
New Terror Alert And Accelerated Anti-Internet Rhetoric
Today the United States Department of Homeland Security issued a new "National Terrorism Advisory System" bulletin (archived). The bulletin is the first in a new system of terror warnings in the United States. It offers a simple summary: Continue reading
Corpse of Vessenes' Fundnation Expels Janssens From Board
Oliver Janssens reported on Social media today that his fellow board members at the Vessenes' Fundnation expelled him from the board (archived). The circumstances leading to the expulsion followed a failed vote to disband the Vessenes' Fundnation in light of their breakneck march to insolvency. While this drama plagues the Vessenes' Foundation, the actual Bitcoin Foundation's work continues in providing stewardship over a reference Bitcoin codebase. Meanwhile other fiat backed groups incorporating words like "Digital Currency", "Council", "Blockchain", "R3", and "Chamber of Commerce" in their names have emerged trying to fill the void left by the late Vessenes' Fundnation in promoting scams and trying to subvert Bitcoin to fiat.
Withdrawal Fees For Changetip Starting
Today social media spamming service Changetip in a bid to generate revenue from users is set to begin charging a one percent withdrawal fee. For Bitcoin withdrawals the fee is on top of any transaction fee required to commit the withdrawal transaction to the blockchain. Changetip has struggled to maintain its early momentum in light of the general human aversion to spam, and they have even gone so far as to employ a /r/Bitcoin moderator in an effort to avoid complete shunning.
Third Of Americans Not Opposed To Political Violence
A recent piece in the Washington Post offers that up to a third of Americans living in the United States are willing to report to a survey taker that they either support or are indifferent to political violence (archived). As a point of contrast Muslims compose only 0.9% of the United States population. The piece's author Nathan Kalmoe mentions that maybe some people are politically disaffected, but spins the narrative that the likely driver for these results in his estimation is political rhetoric. Unmentioned was the materially declining quality of life in the United States driving political disaffection or the historical role political violence had in establishing the United States. Continue reading
Guardian Malware Article Redirects To Malware
Reports are emerging that an article at the Guardian titled "Cybercrime: is it out of control?" exposes readers to malware (archived). Continue reading