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The internet is full of daft things. Animated cat GIFs, stupid headlines, NSA spies, etc.But the online world isn't just fields of mindless dreck. For instance, you could always take a crack at the web's toughest crypto-puzzle: the ever-baffling Cicada 3301. Appearing each year since 2012, these strange series of challenges have stumped clever netizens the world over. By solving the riddles, it appears you eventually get in touch with the quizmasters, who are no doubt interested in people with your skills.Now 2014's puzzle is underway after this image was linked to by this Twitter feed, which has been spewing...

The Obama administrationÂ’s interest in creating a streamlined application process [1] for Medicaid, CHIP, and subsidized health insurance via the state Obamacare exchanges has come at the expense of effective [2] security [3] and fraud prevention [4].As of January 1, 2014, this easing of requirements now includes the mandate that states accept applications completed entirely via telephone. Rather than require such applications be later accompanied by the electronic or mailed transmission of a signed document, HHS instead requires states to accept a spoken assent on a telephone call as the equivalent of an actual signature.Says J. Christian Adams, PJ...

Democratic senators are pleading with President Obama to abandon his proposal to trim Social Security benefits before it becomes a liability for them in the midterm elections. The president proposed a new formula for calculating benefits in his budget last year, in hopes that the olive branch to Republicans would persuade them to back tax increases in a broader fiscal deal. But Democratic lawmakers say Obama should shelve the idea now that they are facing a difficult midterm election where they need to turn out the liberal base to preserve their Senate majority. “I’m not sure why we should be...

Target has increased the estimate for the number of customers exposed in the massive hacking attack between Thanksgiving and December 14. It now appears at least 70 million consumers had their credit cards compromised. Also, Neiman-Marcus announced that they, too, were victims of a cyber attack over Christmas. And in an exclusive report, Reuters is saying that several other well known retailers were also hacked over the holidays. Neiman Marcus said an outside forensics firm discovered evidence on January 1 that indicated the retailer had been the victim of a cyber attack. It disclosed the breach nine days later, after...

Target's disclosure that hackers stole customers' names, home addresses, phone numbers and email addresses suggests that the crime was an inside job, a fraud analyst said Friday. The new batch of stolen identity information -- from up to 70 million additional Target customers -- is not stored on the point-of-sale devices used to pilfer the payment card data, said Avivah Litan, a fraud analyst at information technology firm Gartner. The fact that the thieves got access to a second data source makes it more likely they had the help of an insider.

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — North Carolina health officials said Friday that they had inadvertently disclosed the personal information of tens of thousands of children receiving Medicaid coverage, but were tight-lipped about precisely what caused the massive privacy breach. The state Department of Health and Human Services issued a written release saying that new Medicaid cards for nearly 49,000 children were mailed on Dec. 30 to the wrong people. The information on the cards includes the children’s names, Medicaid identification numbers, dates of birth and the names of their primary care doctors — personal medical data that is supposed to be...

This is a very interesting video about how pervasive internet surveillance is. This program was recommended: https://tails.boum.org/about/index.en.html Please, if anyone has anymore suggestions about security, feel free to enlighten me.

Federal auditors said Friday the Social Security Administration still struggles with a basic problem — figuring out who is dead and who is not. The question is a crucial one, since federal agencies rely on the administration to cross-match data on deceased persons and avoid paying out federally funded benefits to people who aren’t alive, or to establish accurate benefits for survivors. The administration also maintains a “Death Master File” that is available to the public. “SSA’s methods for processing death reports may result in inaccurate, incomplete or untimely information for users of its death data,” the Government Accountability Office,...

The previous two posts on this blog have featured stories about banks buying back credit and debit card accounts stolen in the Target hack and that ended up for sale on rescator[dot]la, a popular underground store. Today’s post looks a bit closer at open-source information on a possible real-life identity for the proprietor of that online fraud shop. Rescator[dot]la is run by a miscreant who uses the nickname Rescator, and who is a top member of the Russian and English language crime forum Lampeduza[dot]la. He operates multiple online stores that sell stolen card data, including rescator[dot]la, kaddafi[dot]hk, octavian[dot]su and cheapdumps[dot]org....

From 60 Minutes last night: Susan Rice: Lesley, it’s been worth what we’ve done to protect the United States. And the fact that we have not had a successful attack on our homeland since 9/11 should not be diminished. But that does not mean that everything we’re doing as of the present ought to be done the same way in the future.

Dennis Publishing's security labs saw Microsoft Security Essentials fail to detect 39% of the real-world malware thrown at it. Dennis Technology Labs (DTL) tested nine home security products on a Windows 7 PC, including Security Essentials, which is distributed free to Windows users and built into Windows 8 in the form of Windows Defender. While the other eight packages all achieved protection scores of 87% or higher - with five scoring 98% or 99% - Microsoft's free antivirus software protected against only 61% of the malware samples used in the test. -snip- Norton Internet Security received the strongest protection rating...

Reuters reports that the NSA paid massive computer security firm RSA $10 million to promote a flawed encryption system so that the surveillance organization could wiggle its way around security. In other words, the NSA bribed the firm to leave the back door to computers all over the world open. Thanks to documents leaked by Edward Snowden, we already knew the NSA played a central role in promoting a flawed formula for generating random numbers, which if used in encryption, essentially gives the spies easy access to computing systems. A piece of RSA software, bSafe, became the most significant vector...

Documents provided to the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform reveal that the Obama administration knew of security vulnerabilities within Healthcare.gov prior to Oct. 1, but launched the website anyway. Chairman Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) said Health and Human Services (HHS) officials showed a “disturbing lack of judgment” by going ahead with the site’s launch and putting Americans’ personal information at risk. Results of a security assessment conducted by a contractor on the site, MITRE Corporation, found that 19 security vulnerabilities remained unaddressed on Oct. 1. Eleven of the 19 vulnerabilities “significantly impact the confidentiality, integrity and/or availability of...

The European Union on Monday pledged "unprecedented" levels of support to both Israel and the Palestinian Authority in the event that the two parties reach a final status agreement which would include the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state in Judea and Samaria, along with the ethnic-cleansing of at least 100,000 Jews in communities throughout the region. Commending US Secretary of State John Kerry for his efforts in launching direct talks between the two, EU foreign ministers said the 28-nation bloc would "contribute substantially" to post-conflict arrangements to ensure the sustainability of a peace deal. "The EU will provide an...

Daniel_Stuckey writes "Earlier this year, it was London. Most recently, it was a university in Germany. Wherever it is, [artist Aram] Bartholl is opening up his eight white, plainly printed binders full of the 4.7 million user passwords that were pilfered from the social network and made public by a hacker last year. He brings the books to his exhibits, called 'Forgot Your Password,' where you're free to see if he's got your data—and whether anyone else who wanders through is entirely capable of logging onto your account and making Connections with unsavory people. In fact, Bartholl insists: "These eight...

It's becoming increasingly clear that when President Obama arrived at the Nelson Mandela memorial service in Johannesburg, South Africa Tuesday, he stepped into an atmosphere so chaotic, disorganized, and unsafe that under any other circumstances the White House and Secret Service might well have insisted the president not appear. FNB Stadium, where the memorial was held, seats 95,000 people. Even with a steady rain and thousands of empty seats in uncovered areas, there were tens of thousands of people in the area with the president. It appears most of them got in without going through any security. "There were no...

Peshawar, the Provincial doctors association has ended their protest after meeting with chief minister Khyber Pukhtoonkhawa Parvez Khattak. The announcement comes after a meeting in chief minister house on Saturday night. According to the detail groups of the doctor’s coordination committee has met the chief minister and discuss issues of the doctor safety & security. They also inform the CM KPK about the current situation of the doctor’s protest and said that doctors in KPK feel insecure after the kidnapping incident of Dr Amjad Takweem & Dr Mujahid Bangash. After these doctor kidnapping incidents provincial doctor associations & young doctors...

Soliciting advice from experts, aka, freepers in general. Subject: Hunting property security. I am looking for advice from experts here concerning some type of wireless camera, both indoor and outdoor, to provide real time observation to a remote computer, cell phone, and ipad. My goal is to see what is going at a property located a hundred miles away. I have internet service to the property but I need a way to observe what is going on inside the living area and outside. Is there a reliable wireless system out there that a freeper can recommend?

It wasn’t quite cold enough to need a vest on a mid-November Texas morning, but Matt Dossey was wearing one anyway. Made of heavy-weight beige canvas, the vest just might have been concealing a pistol. There was no way to tell. Perhaps that was the point.

by John UrbanTop Right NewsThe cost of our broken borders has hit Texas hard. Illegals and cartel criminals have flooded across the border like never before, assaulting ranchers and overwhelming law enforcement. It got so bad, as immigration website Stand With Arizona reported, ranchers in the Rio Grande Valley stocked up on AK-47s to defend their property and lives from border violence. And the state deployed expensive gunboats to patrol the Rio Grande, as Border Patrol activities were cut back by the Obama Administration. Fed up with the federal government’s failure to stop the massive flow of illegal aliens, human trafficking and drug smuggling, Texas officials...