Security quotes : a FSB (successor to the KGB) analyst on Google Earth

"Lt. Gen. Leonid Sazhin, an analyst for the Federal Security Service, the Russian security agency that succeeded the K.G.B., was quoted by Itar-Tass as saying: "Terrorists don't need to reconnoiter their target. Now an American company is working for them." A great quote, and I find it totally true. The point is, not to look for high-resolution imagery, but to harness the power of OSINT, improve their confidence by observing the targets "from the sky", and actually plan and coordinate its activities on huge territories. AJAX anyone? :)

However, the public has always been good at bringing the real issue to the rest of the world. There have been numerous attempts to spot sensitive locations, and I wouldn't be myself if I don't share the joys of the Eyeball Series with you. Of course, in case you haven't come across the initiative earlier. However, the way it gives terrorists or enemies these opportunities, it also serves the general public by acting as an evidence for the existence of espionage sentiments, here and there. Echelon's Yakima Research Station was spotted on GoogleMaps, originally by Cryptome, see the dishes there? Any thoughts in here? Can Microsft's Local Live with its highly differentiated bird eye view on important locations turn into a bigger risk the the popularity of Google's services?

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Google Earth,Google Maps,satellite imagery,OSINT,security,terrorism Continue reading →

Keep your friends close, your intelligence buddies closer!

Too much power always leads you to the dark side!

Cryptome has yesterday featured a excerpt from "State of the War : The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration" shredding more light on what the NSA used to be before 9/11 and how things changed at a later stage. In case you really want to find out more about the entire history of the NSA, go though "The Quest for Cryptologic Centralization and the Establishment of NSA, 1940-1952", and some of the most remarkable NSA released publication entitled "Eavesdropping on Hell : Historical Guide to Western Communications Intelligence and the Holocaust, 1939-1945".

My opinion - With no guards, the gates are always open. But who will watch the watchers when they start watching us?!

Even though, as Marine Corps General Alfred M. Gray have put it years ago "Communications without intelligence is noise, intelligence without communications is irrelevant", and so is privacy in the 21st century, period.

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NSA, intelligence, eavesdropping, CIA

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What's the potential of the IM security market? Symantec thinks big

Yesterday, Symantec, one of the world's leading security, and of course, storage providers aquired IMlogic, a leading provide of Instant Messaging security solutions. How sound is this move anyway? Doesn't Symantec already have the necessary experience in this field?

IMlogic has never been a build-to-flip company. Dating back to 2002, it has managed to secure important customers, Fortune 1000 companies as a matter of fact, and acts as a prefered choice for many of them. And given that enterprise IM is exploding, and so it home use, the real-time nature of this type of communication has always been acting as a hit-list in my mind. Client based vulnerabilities, social engineering attacks, auto-responding malware, and many other issues are among the current trends. How huge is the potential of IM security, or is it me just trying to think big in here, compared to Symantec's simple product line extension ambition?

Besides acting as another propagation vector for future malware releases, IM usege worldwide is already outpacing the most common form of Internet communication -- the email. A Radicati Group's research report entitled "Instant Messaging and Presence Market Trends, 2003-2007" indicates the same. The group predicts that :

- 1,439 million IM accounts in existence by 2007
- a very significant increase in corporate imlpementation of IM, from 60 million accounts today to 349 million in 2007.
- that's a degree of monopoly, as always!

Lucky you, Symantec!

With fear of being a pessimist, I have though witnessed how unique organizations and teams got eventually swallowed by the corporate world. And it's their know-how that I truly miss these days. You can though, still go through Symantec's constantly updating list of acquired companies, and it's evident they are fully committed to continue being a market and knowledge leader. I also recommend you read a great aricle at eWeek entitled IM Threats : The Dark Side of Innovation to find out more about the current trends. What's your attitude about them?!

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Happy New Year folks!!

Dear friends and visitors,

Happy New Year and sincere apologies for the lack of updates on my blog recently. It's not that I have somehow stopped brainstorming on how to put my knowledge into neat posts, rather, I didn't have the time that I wanted to provide an in-depth overview of they key topics I had in mind :-)

I wish you all the best in 2006, thank for your feedback on my ideas, and keep ridin' on the road of intellectual exploration! Continue reading →