Iranian Hackers Post Images Over JFK Airport From UAV That Was Hijacked In March • Hacker News Board

Re: Iranian Hackers Post Images Over JFK Airport From UAV That Was Hijacked In March

#81

Post by ChuckMcM » Sat, Jul 13, 2013, 10:34 PM UTC

dfc wrote: post #37

ChuckMcM wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually the challenge is drive-by injection not the site per-se. Chrome didn't flag it as such but if you spend time crawling the web you will notice that it is a not-unusual weapon in the arsenal to put up a web site, and have it inject visitors with a tracking cookie/script/trojan. Sort of a variation on honeypots. Thus it helps to be alert when popping into such sites.

Do not run JS or Flash on untrusted websites.

Or display any compressed image, or even download compressed javascript that you aren't going to run. A number of exploits that malwaredomains.com finds are objects that are either normally or optionally compressed, and constructed in such a way to exploit an issue with the decompression software used.

If I'm both curious and suspicious (so in my most tin-hatish of moods) I fire up a virtualbox instance with a clean image, look at the site, and then delete that virtual machine image. That seems to also have an unintended prophylactic effect since virus investigators like to run viruses in VMs so malicious payloads don't fire if they detect they are running in a VM (at least according to the F-secure blog).

But either way, my point was that just visiting a site that wants to get you is a risk, whether or not you think you are protected.

Re: Iranian Hackers Post Images Over JFK Airport From UAV That Was Hijacked In March

#82

Post by drivebyacct2 » Sat, Jul 13, 2013, 10:37 PM UTC

summerdown2 wrote: post #55

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He actually has a point, sadly. Visiting a "Jihadist" website, based on some arbitrary definition and interpretation from some cyber freedom fighter in DC, VA, or MD, is enough to get your "metadata" added to their graphs. You think Iranian sites with posts about hacking the US aren't on that list? I don't. It's not enough to get you a visit from the feds or anything, but it's almost certain that any competent intell…

Is this really the point we've reached? Where people with no intention of being a terrorist are bothered about visiting a site because they know everything they do is being observed? If we've reached the point of self censoring behaviour, then we're definitely in the Panopticon. The harder it becomes to break out of our filter bubbles, the more foreigners will look alien, strange and scary :(

>Is this really the point we've reached?

We've been here for a long, long time; the technology and laws have finally made it easy enough to do on a world-scale.

Re: Iranian Hackers Post Images Over JFK Airport From UAV That Was Hijacked In March

#83

Post by jeena » Sat, Jul 13, 2013, 10:44 PM UTC

achughes wrote: post #77

jeena wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this self censoring one of the main goals of a Orwellian society?

Yes, but to be Orwellian the self-censorship must be borne out of government intimidation. In this case the government hasn't intimidated anyone, we were just leaked information. Unless you want to argue that Snowden intentionally leaked the PRISM slides so that society would be intimidated by the governments reach, thus giving way to society censoring itself without them having to publicly punish people that were gu…

I'm not quite sure about that, people feel quite intimidated when they see how this government treats people like Snowden and Manning. I would argue that the self-censorship is one way to avoid being treated like them.

Re: Iranian Hackers Post Images Over JFK Airport From UAV That Was Hijacked In March

#84

Post by LoganCale » Sat, Jul 13, 2013, 10:44 PM UTC

weinzierl wrote: post #34

celwell wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

of course we do

I'm sorry, I don't believe that. I mean, all this Internet and telecommunication surveillance is one thing - and a bad thing for sure, but spying drones is in another ballpark. I'll just leave this here from Orwell's 1984: In the far distance a helicopter skimmed down between the roofs, hovered for an instant like a bluebottle, and darted away again with a curving flight. It was the police patrol, snooping in people'…

Border Patrol has 10 Predators in operation along the U.S. border. They're supposed to only be used within 30 miles of the border, but they loan them out to other agencies for more internal purposes all the time, including detecting fishing violations.

> According to the documents, CBP already appears to be flying drones well within the Southern and Northern US borders, and for a wide variety of non-border patrol reasons. What’s more — the agency is planning to increase its Predator drone fleet to 24 and its drone surveillance to 24 hours per day / 7 days per week by 2016.

There appear to be no privacy controls for citizens currently, but they may add them… eventually.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130705/17154023725/borde...

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/07/customs-border-protect...

Re: Iranian Hackers Post Images Over JFK Airport From UAV That Was Hijacked In March

#85

Post by marshray » Sat, Jul 13, 2013, 10:46 PM UTC

D9u wrote: post #76

marshray wrote: post #47

All I see are two images of nondescript buildings and cars labeled "FLIR Systems". Would an actual drone image used for reconnaissance over hostile territory waste a bunch of screen area on the manufacturer name of the camera? Also, there's some censored text in the upper left. I suspect that's the date and time. My guess is these pictures were lifted from promotional material like the "MicroSTAR" sheet just below it…

I thought "FLIR" meant "Forward Looking InfraRed?"

Yes, it's also a brand name of a prominent manufacturer.

Re: Iranian Hackers Post Images Over JFK Airport From UAV That Was Hijacked In March

#86

Post by marshray » Sat, Jul 13, 2013, 10:47 PM UTC

qq66 wrote: post #73

marshray wrote: post #47

All I see are two images of nondescript buildings and cars labeled "FLIR Systems". Would an actual drone image used for reconnaissance over hostile territory waste a bunch of screen area on the manufacturer name of the camera? Also, there's some censored text in the upper left. I suspect that's the date and time. My guess is these pictures were lifted from promotional material like the "MicroSTAR" sheet just below it…

FLIR uses that text for price discrimination - the camera is much more expensive without the text.

Now there's an industry ripe for disruption. Must be patents.

Re: Iranian Hackers Post Images Over JFK Airport From UAV That Was Hijacked In March

#87

Post by dfc » Sat, Jul 13, 2013, 10:48 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #81

dfc wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do not run JS or Flash on untrusted websites.

Or display any compressed image, or even download compressed javascript that you aren't going to run. A number of exploits that malwaredomains.com finds are objects that are either normally or optionally compressed, and constructed in such a way to exploit an issue with the decompression software used. If I'm both curious and suspicious (so in my most tin-hatish of moods) I fire up a virtualbox instance with a clean…

I googled "site:malwaredomains.com compression" and nothing turned up. Can you recall any instances? Do you know where they get the data from? I must be missing something obvious but I don't see where the describe the how the list is created.

NB: I am not disagreeing with you I am just curious to look at some of the recent compression vulnerabilities.

Re: Iranian Hackers Post Images Over JFK Airport From UAV That Was Hijacked In March

#88

Post by lostlogin » Sat, Jul 13, 2013, 10:48 PM UTC

msoad wrote: post #33

lostlogin wrote: post #14

That page is so incredibly foreign to me - right justified, stuff from right appears on left, things from top on bottom etc. I'm surprised how striking I found it.

What if I tell you all your favorite website has right-to-left layout for right-to-left languages like Arabic, Hebrew and Farsi?

Which site are you meaning? Thinks like Google? Its made me realise how much I depend on so-called normal layouts for things like next page buttons etc. something I had never thought about really. Obviously I don't frequent many sites that are primarily in another language, Der Speigel is the only one I think. That site is left to right reading so it can follow the same formatting styles as English. I haven't noticed any German language related layout quirks there.

Re: Iranian Hackers Post Images Over JFK Airport From UAV That Was Hijacked In March

#89

Post by monkeynotes » Sat, Jul 13, 2013, 11:09 PM UTC

javert wrote: post #79

summerdown2 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this really the point we've reached? Where people with no intention of being a terrorist are bothered about visiting a site because they know everything they do is being observed? If we've reached the point of self censoring behaviour, then we're definitely in the Panopticon. The harder it becomes to break out of our filter bubbles, the more foreigners will look alien, strange and scary :(

My political ideals happen to align closely with the Founding Fathers, and I've been vocal enough about that to assume that if the feds care, they already know. So I just don't really care what they know about me anymore. If it comes to the point that it looks like they might start rounding up people like me, I'll flee the country, like a German Jew ideally would have in 1930s Germany. If it doesn't come to that poin…

If you ideals aligned closely with the Founding Fathers then the very fact your government is spying on the citizens would be something to care about, it would matter.

The 'it doesn't really matter what they know about me' attitude misses the whole point. The point is, it really matters that they are collecting data on citizens. The Founding Fathers would be disappointed to know that apathy was the downfall of their vision.

And where will you flee to? What kind of life do you think you'll have in a world where America sets the standard and all other governments follow suit? Citizens around the world shrugging and finding ways to tollerate the new paradigm whilst still living as comfortably as possible, because being monitored doesn't affect them.

Re: Iranian Hackers Post Images Over JFK Airport From UAV That Was Hijacked In March

#90

Post by monkeynotes » Sat, Jul 13, 2013, 11:19 PM UTC

achughes wrote: post #77

jeena wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this self censoring one of the main goals of a Orwellian society?

Yes, but to be Orwellian the self-censorship must be borne out of government intimidation. In this case the government hasn't intimidated anyone, we were just leaked information. Unless you want to argue that Snowden intentionally leaked the PRISM slides so that society would be intimidated by the governments reach, thus giving way to society censoring itself without them having to publicly punish people that were gu…

>In this case the government hasn't intimidated anyone...

I disagree, with the government having the 'you're with us or against us' polarizing attitude since 9/11 along with Gitmo and an official kill list I think the U.S. gov't is pretty intimidating for anyone who doesn't fall into line.

Just look at what happened in Boston. A whole city shut down, house to house searches, an unprecedented reaction in the west for a bombing. No where else has that kind of reaction been seen, even in the UK when the IRA was blowing shit up, at no time was a curfew imposed and houses illegally searched by a militarised police.

The US is an incredibly intimidating place at times.