Modern Crime: Will Cyber-Assassinations Soon Be A Reality?

As we hurtle forward into the digital, connected future, ever more objects are becoming targets for hackers and malicious software.

Where once hacks only affected computers, they now bring down everything from cars to power grids and thermostats to secretive nuclear enrichment programs.

So how long until a hack doesn’t just cause a nuisance or monetary losses but actually kills someone?

One well-respected security expert thinks humanity will see its first death as a result of a hack within 10 years – and it may even have already happened.

“It could have happened already, but we don’t know. Stuxnet could already have killed people,” Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer for F-Secure, told Business Insider, referring to the sophisticated computer worm that targeted Iranian nuclear facilities that most people believe was developed by the American and Israeli intelligence services.

“We don’t know if it killed people, it’s possible because it caused centrifuges which are filled with uranium gas to break down in the middle of their spinning cycle, so if there are scientists in the room they could’ve died … I guess the Iranians would have told the world if Americans had killed people with the hack.”

“We as mankind crossed a line”

Hypponen is a highly regarded security expert who has been working in the field since the ’90s. He’s a regular public speaker on the subject, once tracked down the authors of the first ever computer virus, and has been profiled by Vanity Fair.

The security executive doesn’t think whether someone has died is what’s important. “The important part is the Americans and the Israelis must have understood what they were doing. It could kill people, and they did it anyway. And I think we crossed some line – we as mankind crossed some line – when they made that decision.”

Stuxnet isn’t the only time we’ve seen a hack with potentially fatal consequences. In December 2015, the Ukrainian power grid was taken offline by a devastating hack. Had it gone on longer, or had conditions been worse, it could have easily resulted in a death. “If the power outage had gone for longer, yeah, we would’ve had people starting to die for many different reasons. Hospitals starting to fail, or just people starting to freeze because it’s December.”

Like Stuxnet, nation-state-sponsored hackers are suspected, with investigators pointing fingers at a Russia-based team.

Read the Remainder at Business Inisder

Modern Crime: Inside a Russian Hacker Ring

A man with intense eyes crouches over a laptop in a darkened room, his face and hands hidden by a black ski mask and gloves. The scene is lit only by the computer screen’s eerie glow.

Exaggerated portraits of malicious hackers just like this keep popping up in movies and TV, despite the best efforts of shows like Mr. Robot to depict hackers in a more realistic way.

Add a cacophony of news about data breaches that have shaken the U.S. government, taken entire hospital systems hostage, anddefrauded the international banking system, and hackers start to sound like omnipotent super-villains.

But the reality is, as usual, less dramatic. While some of the largest cyberattacks have been the work of state-sponsored hackers-the OPM data breach that affected millions of Americans last year, for example, or the Sony hack that revealed Hollywood’s intimate secrets-the vast majority of the world’s quotidian digital malice comes from garden-variety hackers.

And for many of those cybercriminals, hacking is as unglamorous as any other business. That’s what a group of security researchers found when they infiltrated a ring of hackers based in Russia earlier this year, and monitored its dealings over the course of five months.

The researchers were with Flashpoint, an American cybersecurity company that investigates threats on the dark and deep web. Their undercover operation began when they came across a post on a Russian hacker forum on the dark web-a part of the internet that’s inaccessible to regular browsers-that read very much like a get-rich-quick ad you might find on Facebook.

Read the Remainder at Business Insider

Modern Crime: Thieves Steal $16K Worth of iPhones Using Nothing But A Blue Shirt

At Apple Stores, the display computers and phones may be locked down to tables, but the extra devices in the back aren’t.

And as it turns out, an enterprising thief needs only a blue shirt and a similarly attired partner to walk off with thousands of dollars in Apple products.

That’s exactly what happened in Manhattan last week when a thief posing as a one of the familiar-looking Apple Store staffers purloined 19 iPhones – worth $16,130 – from the SoHo Apple Store.

Police said the thief “dressed similarly” to store employees – who usually wear blue T-shirts imprinted with an Apple logo – and walked right into an electronics repair room at about 5:30 p.m. on June 1.

The man grabbed 19 iPhones from a drawer inside the room, worth a total of $16,130, then handed them over to another thief. That man hid the phones under his shirt, and the pair walked out of the store.

To recap: You don’t need to be a genius to rob the Apple Store, but it helps if you dress like one.

Read the Original Article at Business Insider

World War II History: 1965 Movie “Battle of the Bulge” Was So Bad Eisenhower Came Out of Retirement To Slam It!

The 1965 movie “The Battle of the Bulge” is generally considered by war movie buffs to be the most inaccurate war movie ever made. It stars Henry Fonda leading a large cast of fictional characters (though Fonda’s Lt. Col. Kiley was based on a real U.S. troop). The film was made to be viewed on a curved Cinerama screen using three projectors. Watching it on DVD doesn’t give the viewer the intended look, which especially hurts the tank battle scenes, according to the film rating website Rotten Tomatoes.

There are so many inaccuracies in the film that it comes off as interpretive instead of dramatic. In the film’s opening, a precursor to the errors to come, the narrator describes how Montgomery’s 8th Army was in the north of Europe; they were actually in Italy. The inaccuracies don’t stop there.

The weather was so bad at the launch of the German offensive that it completely negated Allied air superiority and allowed the Nazi armies to move much further, much fast than they would have had the weather been clear. In the 1965 film, the weather is always clear. When the film does use aircraft, the first one they show is a Cessna L-19 Bird Dog, a 1950s-era plane.

Despite the time frame of the real battle, December 1944- January 1945, and the well-documented struggles with ice and snow in the Ardennes at the time, there is no snow in the movie’s tank battle scenes. Also, there are few trees in the movie’s Ardennes Forest.

In an affront to the men who fought and won the battle, the film uses the M47 Patton tank as the German King Tiger tanks. The filmmakers show US tanks being sacrificed to make the Tiger tank use their fuel so the Germans will run out. The US didn’t need to use this tactic in the actual battle, as the Germans didn’t have the fuel to reach their objectives anyway.

Speaking of tactics, a German general in the film orders infantry to protect tanks by walking ahead of them after a Tiger hits a mine, which ignores the fact that a man’s weight is not enough to trigger an anti-tank mine and therefore none of them would have exploded until tanks hit them anyway.

Other inaccuracies include:

• The uniforms are all wrong.
• Jeeps in the film are models that were not yet developed in WWII.
• Salutes are fast, terrible and often indoors.
• The bazookas used in the films are 1950s Spanish rocket launchers (the film was shot in Spain)
• American engineers use C-4, which wasn’t invented until 11 years after the war’s end.
• Soldiers read Playboy Magazine from 1964.

The technical advisor on the film was Col. Meinrad von Lauchert, who commanded tanks at the Bulge — for the Nazis. He commanded the 2nd Panzer Division, penetrating deeper into the American lines than any other German commander. Like the rest of the Nazis, he too ran out of fuel and drove his unit back to the Rhine. He swam over then went home, giving up on a hopeless situation.

The reaction to the movie was swift: That same year, President Eisenhower came out of retirement to hold a press conference just to denounce the movie for its historical inaccuracies.

Read the original article on We Are The Mighty. 

 

World War II History: 8 Famous People Who Served on D-Day

Monday was the 72nd anniversary of D-Day.

On June 6, 1944, the Allies embarked on the crucial invasion of Normandy on the northern coast of France. Allied forces suffered major casualties, but the ensuing campaign ultimately dislodged German forces from France.

Did you know these eight famous individuals participated in the D-Day invasion?

James Doohan

Actor James Doohan is beloved among Trekkies for his portrayal of chief engineer Montgomery “Scotty” Scott in “Star Trek.”

Years before he donned the Starfleet uniform, Doohan joined the Royal Canadian Artillery during WWII. During the Normandy invasion, he stormed Juno Beach and took out two snipers before he was struck by six bullets from a machine gun, according to website Today I Found Out. He lost part of a finger, but the silver cigarette case in his pocket stopped a bullet from piercing his heart.

David Niven

Academy Award-winning British thespian David Niven became a lieutenant-colonel of the British Commandos during the Second World War. In the D-Day invasion, he commanded the Phantom Signals Unit, according to the New York Post. This unit was responsible for keeping rear commanders informed on enemy positions.

After the war, he declined to speak much about his military experience.

Yogi Berra

Famed baseball catcher Yogi Berra helped to storm Normandy by manning a Naval support craft. The vessel fired rockets at enemy positions on Omaha Beach.

The New York Post reports that Seaman Second Class Berra manned a machine gun during the battle.

 

Medgar Evers

In 1963, activist Medgar Evers was assassinated due to his efforts to promote civil rights for African Americans. Decades earlier, Evers served in the 325th Port Company during WWII, eventually rising to the rank of sergeant. This segregated unit of black soldiers delivered supplies during the Normandy invasion, according to the NAACP.

Read About the Remaining 4 at Business Insider