Hack the Planet

The UK Ministry of Defence has come under attack from a hacker who is allegedly threatening to target military satellites unless a £3 million ransom is handed over. According to a story in today’s Daily Mail, the hacker has already seized control of one satellite, altering its course. The satellite in question is said to be involved in co-ordinating bombing raids on Iraq. Other targets for the hacker have been GCHQ - the spying operation that listens in on telephone calls and other communications - and a number of UK operations overseas. Officers...

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Stateside Perspective on CyberCrime Powers

The US Senate has passed a bill to strengthen the hands of federal prosecutors who fight computer crime by removing some of the more common hurdles in prosecuting online miscreants.One provision would eliminate a requirement that prosecutors prove illegal activity has caused at least $5,000 in damage before they can bring charges of unauthorized computer access. The threshold often proves problematic in pursuing cyber crime because a single incident may spread the damage across hundreds of thousands of victims. Because the harm is so dispersed,...

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Insecure Wireless and the Terrorist Email

Indian police raided the Mumbai home of an American expatriate after someone used his open wireless network to send an email that took responsibility for a bomb blast that killed at least 42 people... We've often argued that Wi-Fi bandwidth is like air, and the oft-repeated warnings about people leaching off unsecured networks was so much hysteria. This experience goes to show there are down-sides to any share-and-share-alike philosop...

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3G Phonebook

our friends at QUANTAQ have just updated their SUBSCRIBER IDENTITY MODULE (a.k.a. the humble "SIM card") analysis toolkit - USIM-DETECTIVE v2. This is a powerful tool to allow evaluation of the registers and ephemeral data stored upon SIMs, suport for 3G (USIM) devices, option to view acquired information (including phonebook contacts and numbers, SMS text messages, deleted text messages, call records) and structure the data into a number of different report forma...

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Cell Site Analysis Evidence

CSA evidence is the practice of providing location based information about a given mobile telecommunication device (typically a humble mobile phone).Interesting ruling from the Northern Ireland Court of Appeal in the matter of THE QUEEN v RICHARD DAVID McCARTAN and BARRY DAVID SKINNER - which was reported in the press back in 2002 as the 'Sports Car Murder'Simply put, the courts took the view that the appellants' failure to provide some form of explanation as to why their mobile telephone were in a given locale, ultimately undermine their own appeal...

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Freemasons Hall

Free expert lecture on computer evidence at the Freemasos Hall in Manchester on the 12th March 2008. Contact Lincoln House Chambers to reserve a place. secret handshake option...

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Expert Lecture @ No5 Chambers London

Last week we ran a highly successful expert lecture at the London set of No5 Chambers. Set on the sixth floor of a building overlooking the surrounding city as the sun began to set, the venue could not have been better. The session explored the science of 'cell site analysis' - determining the relative location of a given mobile communication device - and was attended by over sixty leading lights from the solicitor and advocate communiti...

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e-Crime gets politicial

At the recent e-Crime Congress the Shadow Home Secretary discussed the new Green Paper calling for action and powerful change in relation to e-crime. Over 500 top law enforcement officials from around the world plus the Heads of Security for much of the City of London and the remaining UK-based-multi-nationals were in attendance.Presently the state spends only £3.5 million on the 58 staff of SOCA E-Crime directorate (non-classified answer to a direct question from the Home Affairs Select Committee). Compare this to the £4.5 billion cost of the...

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