Fox Lake Police Lieutenant Charles Joseph Gliniewicz whose death in September ignited a manhunt for his alleged yet unidentified killers has now had his cause of death redetermined to be a suicide (archived). Gliniewicz's motive for commiting this killing is alleged to stem from fear that his theft of equipment and funds would be discovered. Living police officials allege that among other actions Gliniewicz stole money from the department's "Police Explorer" youth program, which Lieutenant Gliniewicz directed and mentored and used the money for his own purposes (archived). Qntra can not determine the veracity of these allegations though an unsolvable killing of an officer would create opportunity for surviving members of the department to commit their own improprieties and hang the blame on the deceased. If this is indeed a suicide Lieutenant Gliniewicz would not be the only Illinois police officer to kill himself while on duty in the month of September 2015. Caseyville, Illinois Police Sergeant and one time interim chief of that department Scott Miller shot himself in his squad car with his department issued firearm (archived) after 21 years working in that department though no criminal acts were attributed to him posthumously yet.
Micon Gets Probation and $25,000 Fine
Reports are surfacing that Brian Micon who plead guilty to operating an unlicensed gambling site in June has been sentenced to two years of probation and a 25,000 United States dollar fine. The fine was negotiated earlier along forfeitures of computing equipment, 900 United States dollars, and 3.0996 Bitcoins. The only item to be determined during the sentencing was the length of his probation.
Bull Farmer Killed in Shootout While Protecting Life
Jack Yantis of Council, Idaho was killed by sheriff's deputies while defending one of his bulls from execution by those same sheriffs. The bull had been mauled earlier by a Subaru station wagon. The injured, disoriented, and likely concussed bull sought the attention of emergency responders who instead focused their efforts on the protected occupants of the Subaru which had attacked him. In Idaho livestock including bulls have the right of way on all roadways inside the state, and the Subaru occupants under the law had liability for the cost of treating the bull's injuries. By the time Yantis arrived to tend to his wounded bull, sheriff's deputies had made the decision to kill it for their convenience. The Associated Press reports that the official story from the Idaho State Police is that Yantis and both deputies all discharged their weapons even though Yantis was the only person struck down by gunfire (archived). No information has yet been made public on the value derived from the bull's use as a stud nor on the market value of the bull. Mr. Yantis was murdered in the defense of his property and his livelihood.
Ohio Ballot Measure Seeks Creation of Protected Monopoly
A ballot measure being voted on today in Ohio would legalize marijuana while explicitly restricting permitted production to a cartel of 10 farmers. Another measure on the ballot today in Ohio would prohibit the use of ballot initiatives to create protected cartels.
IBM Approves Third Party OS/2 Distro
According to TechRepublic IBM has approved the marketing of a third party OS/2 distribution produced by an outfit calling itself Arca Noae (archived). The updated OS/2 is supposed to include support for more modern hardware including USB 1.1 and USB 2.0 along with ALSA sound. This development suggest that certain perennial buyers of Microsoft Windows might be in the market for a proprietary replacement.
Ransomware Ring Busted, "Decryptors" Rushed by Adware Vendors
Shortly after an FBI agent publicly encouraged ransomware victims to pay off their attackers, some arrests and leaks have lead to the release of a number of private keys maintained by some ransomware authors. Allegedly all of the keys for Coinvault and Bitcryptor ransomware have been acquired and persons alleged to have connections to the schemes have been arrested. Adware vendors Bitdefender (archived) and Kaspersky Labs (archived) have released free adware1 tools to decrypt files related to these ransomware products, though caution is advised as the decryption tools from these providers and those from others have the potential to be at least as malicious as the original ransomware.
It is important to accurately categorize software according to what it really does instead of what it is marketed as. Their free products advertise their paid products and their paid products advertise still more premium paid products. ↩
000webhost Penetrated: 13 Million Plaintext Passwords Compromised
It's been said before but it bears repeating that if you're not paying for a service, you are the service. Furthermore, if you are the service, you get what you pay for, which in the realm of digital security, means that free-loaders are free-basing if they think that their data is in any way secure. Continue reading
Busybox Drops systemd Support
In a commit dated October 22nd, BusyBox maintainer Denys Vlasenko announced the removal of systemd support from the minimalist unix toolkit (archived). Vlasenko offered as a comment on the commit:
systemd people are not willing to play nice with the rest of the world. Therefore there is no reason for the rest of the world to cooperate with them.
Qntra (S.QNTR) October 2015 Report
US DoD Extracts Guilty Pleas From Mom and Pop Competitors
The US Navy operating under the larger umbrella of the United States Department of Defense managed to extract guilty pleas from a husband and wife accused of marketing heroin on a United States warship (archived). The couple's marketing of heroin of course makes them competitors to the organized heroin operations occurring in the United States Department of Defense whose activity has lead to heroin overtaking many other drugs of abuse over the course of the United State's adventure in Afghanistan (archived).