"Secret Service paid TJX Hacker $75,000 a Year"

According to Wired, a convicted hacker and credit card thief was paid to work undercover for the U.S. Secret Service. A convicted accomplice told Wired that Albert Gonzalez was paid $75,000 a year in cash as a confidential informant to the U.S. Government.

Though the Secret Service would not comment, a former federal prosecutor told Wired that the payment was not unusual. He compared it to "million-dollar payouts" to informants involved in organized crime investigations. According to Department of Justice guidelines, agents are required to advise confidential informants that payments "may be taxable income that must be reported to appropriate tax authorities".

Albert Gonzalez was arrested in 2008 and accused of running one of the largest identity theft crimes in U.S. history. After his arrest Gonzalez lead instigators to more than $1 million buried behind his parent's home.

Gonzalez will be sentenced on Thursday. The government is seeking a 25 year sentence.

Disgruntled Hacker [Debt Collector] Disables More Than 100 Cars Remotely

Pay Technology's Webtech Plus

Cleveland-based Pay Technologies is a company that sells hidden wireless black boxes that allow car dealers to remotely disable a car’s ignition, or trigger the horn to begin honking, as a not-so-gentle reminder that a payment is due. The Webtech Plus responds to commands issued through a central website, and relayed over a wireless pager network.

A car dealer in Austin Texas began receiving complaints from hundreds of stranded customers late last month. According to the dealership's manager, the complaints stopped several days later, when he reset all the Webtech Plus employee passwords. Then police obtained access logs from Pay Technologies, and traced an IP address to a former employee. Police say he hacked into the dealership's computer system to deactivate the starters on the cars and set off their horns.

To call the suspect a "hacker" is really an insult to hackers. On the other hand, anyone who's ever spoken with a debt collector probably isn't very surprised by allegations of unethical behavior.

According to the dealership, the employee's account had been closed when he was terminated last month, but they allege he got in through another employee’s account. They claim he was working his way alphabetically through a database of all 1,100 customers whose cars were equipped with the device.

Attn. MPAA: There are much worse ways to copy movies than with a computer.

In 2007 prosecutors in Anchorage Alaska accused 34 year old stripper Mechele Linehan of plotting a murder based on the 1994 movie "The Last Seduction". Life so closely imitated art, said prosecutors, that they even tried to have the movie played for the jury.

Rockstar Games Grand Theft Auto

In 2008 a teenager confessed that he was trying to imitate scenes from the video game "Grand Theft Auto" when he robbed a murdered a taxicab driver in Bangkok Thailand. Movies like "The Deer Hunter" (1978) are even believed to have inspired several "copycat" suicides in the late 1970's and early 80's.

All of this may seem like fodder for censorship advocates, but that debate has largely come and gone in favor preserving the First Amendment's right to free speech. Wise as the framers of the U.S. Constitution may have been, few would accuse them of being clairvoyant. After all, who could have predicted the impact the Internet would some day have on both the precept of free speech and the concept of privacy?

Though many speak of the "right to privacy", it is not, at least as far as the U.S. Constitution is concerned, a right at all. It is, nonetheless, an ethos that has long been coveted by Americans, and is implicit in the Fourth Amendment's:

...right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures...

Of course, mention the term "search" to most people today, and it's far more likely to conjure thoughts of friends lists", home pages and e-books, than actual people, houses and papers. And while, in just the past few years, popular culture has come to embrace the sharing of intimate, private and personal details with virtual strangers, the desire to remain "secure" seems to be very much alive in the 21st Century. In fact, more than any other, the Fourth Amendment has played a central, albeit contested, role in the litigation of hi-tech criminal evidence.

I know what you watched last summer...

So, what does all this have to do with your Netflix queue? Though Americans, and many other people around the world, may be willing to voluntarily divulge personal information, either in trade for modern conveniences and services, or increasingly, for a sense of online significance, we're not quite as enthusiastic when it's taken from us and shared without any tangible return. It's no longer a secret that the monetary value of data has been pre-calculated into the return on investment (ROI) of so many of today's business models, but consumers still tend to expect a certain level of security. In recent years the bar has been set pretty low. Still, it may surprise many to learn that "anonymous" usage data can be deciphered into personally-identifiable intelligence, as proven by a pair of researchers at the University of Texas using what was thought to be anonymous user data provided to contestants in the three-year $1 million "Netflix Prize" to improve the site's recommendation results.

The UT's results brought both unwanted attention from the Federal Trade Commission and a lawsuit from a private firm, resulting in Netflix's decision last week to cancel a planned sequel to the prize awarded last year.

It's not hard to imagine how this sort of data could be exploited to peddle shoes to people who have rented all six seasons of "Sex in the City", or BestBuy ads targeted at fans of NBC's "Chuck".

Dreamworks Minority Report (2002)

It's no longer extraordinary to see similar data exploited in the process of investigating crimes either. Certainly the viewing interests and habits of the individuals mentioned above have been considered relevant discovery by law enforcement. In these cases, there's little, if anything, to decipher.  Anything that Netflix knows about you, your account, and your viewing habits, is subject to a warrant, and, with or without much imagination, could be incriminating. How many of us haven't seen a good fictional car case, a well-written murder plot, a scripted street-fight, or a perfectly executed crime? The consumption of such fiction could be hazardous to your defense, if it proceeds similar accusations.

Now, imagine the same evidence available to anyone, without a warrant, subpoena, or probable cause. Perhaps someone at the FTC had the movie "Minority Report" in their queue.

WARNING: Portions of this video may be disturbing to automotive enthusiasts.

A brother and sister from Diamond Bar were arrested on suspicion of insurance fraud after investigators found a video on the Internet that appears to show their high-performance 2009 Nissan GT-R sports car crashing during a street race.

Investigators say Jay Chen, 21 from Diamond Bar, California first reported to his insurance company that his sister crashed his 2009 Nissan GT-R supercar on the 10 Freeway on March 16, 2009, but later withdrew the claim. They say his sister, Tracy Chen, corroborated the story. Months later, according to insurance investigators, Chen filed another claim (estimated at $76,000 in damage), saying that he had crashed the same car on the 60 Freeway in Riverside. Having received information from a body shop that they had the damaged vehicle on their premises for several months, an investigator turned to the Internet and discovered evidence the California Insurance Commission calls "key to building the case" against the Chens. Both have been booked on charges of felony insurance fraud.

More @ San Gabrel Valley Tribune (http://www.sgvtribune.com/news/ci_14666391) & California Department of Insurance (http://www.insurance.ca.gov/0400-news/0100-press-releases/2010/release040-10.cfm)

Recently, I had a wonderful opportunity to play a game of hi-tech "phone tag" on the streets of San Francisco with Reporter Martin Kaste from NPR's "All Things Considered". Late last Summer I was  asked if I would be willing to sit down for an interview for a story he was researching about location privacy. But, instead of agreeing to meet Kaste, I told him he had to find me.

With the aid of his GPS-equipped smart-phone, some software, a little patience, and a good pair of walking shoes, he was able to "tag" me sipping a latte outside a coffee shop on Market St. Of course, with my own GPS, and software-equipped smart-phone, I was able to see him coming. What follows are the fruits of that encounter:

Digital Bread Crumbs: Following Your Cell Phone Trail

Jeff Fischbach is a little bit like those guys in The Matrix — when he puts on his shades and looks at the world, he sees data.

Walking down the street in San Francisco, he points out all the devices that record people's comings and goings: digital parking meters, apartment intercom systems, digital security cameras...

Audio and transcript: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=114241860&ft=1&f=1019

What do you call the sacrifice of one person's privacy in an attempt to save the privacy of over 1300? If you're a bank, you call it collateral damage.

When I was a kid I earned my first paycheck passing out fliers for a neighbor who was starting a pool cleaning business. With my first $13 in hand, my grandfather took me to the a bank in walking distance to my home, got me a tour of the vault from the branch manager, a neat pouch to hold all my coin, a full explanation of the principals of savings and loans, and helped me open my very first savings account. Believe it or not, back then, all my account information was stored on a double-sided index card behind the teller.

Today, things are much more complicated. Gone are the index cards and passbooks, most of the employees, tellers and branches, a good deal of the service, interest-bearing accounts with only $13 in them, and a lot of the customers' money. Today, it's all computerized, and most banks even attach various penalties to discourage human contact.

I know an awful lot about electronic data systems, but I don't pretend to fully understand how the modern banking system works. Sometimes, I think I do--from a mechanical (as opposed to financial) perspective. But then something convinces me that I don't. For instance, you know how every so often your bank emails its customers' names, addresses, Social Security numbers, and loan information to Gmail?

To be completely honest, I didn't know they did that either, until I found out recently that The Rocky Mountain Bank in Wyoming had sent 1,325 such records to the wrong Gmail account. (Mind you, most would have trouble imagining who could possibly be the right recipient.) Once the error was noticed, the bank attempted to contact the recipient to request immediate destruction of the email and its attachment. When the bank received no response, a request was made to Google for the recipient's identity. Citing its privacy policy, Google refused to provide the information requested, and the bank filed suit.

According to court documents:

"On August 12, 2009, Plaintiff received a request from one of its customers for Plaintiff to send certain loan statements to a third-party representative of that customer. That same day, an employee of Plaintiff attempted to send the requested information to the customer’s representative via email. The next day, Plaintiff discovered that its employee had inadvertently sent the email to the wrong Gmail email address. In addition, Plaintiff discovered that attached to the email was a file containing confidential customer information for 1,325 individual and business customer accounts for customers other than just the customer who requested information. The confidential information includes names, addresses, tax identification numbers, and loan information for each of the 1,325 customer accounts.

After learning of its inadvertent disclosure of confidential customer information, Plaintiff tried to recall the email without success. It then sent another email to the Gmail address, instructing the recipient to immediately delete the prior email and the attached file in its entirety without opening or reviewing it. Plaintiff also requested that the recipient contact Plaintiff to discuss his or her actions. The recipient has not responded to Plaintiff’s email."

Ironically, in a case that pits the privacy interests of innocent parties against each other, the protagonists of this story had some privacy concerns of their own. The Bank's lawyers attempted to file their suit under seal -- which was denied by the U.S. District Court. Though not mentioned in the court's ruling on this issue, most states have security breach notification laws that require disclosure of any records that may have gotten into the hands of unauthorized individuals. Wyoming does, indeed, have such a law (40-12-502. "Computer security breach; notice to affected persons"). It states:

"(a) An individual or commercial entity that conducts business in Wyoming and that owns or licenses computerized data that includes personal identifying information about a resident of Wyoming shall, when it becomes aware of a breach of the security of the system, conduct in good faith a reasonable and prompt investigation to determine the likelihood that personal identifying information has been or will be misused. If the investigation determines that the misuse of personal identifying information about a Wyoming resident has occurred or is reasonably likely to occur, the individual or the commercial entity shall give notice as soon as possible to the affected Wyoming resident."

While the bank was compounding errors by ignoring its obligations to its customers and state law, their case against Google was being reviewed by another judge who ordered Google to disable the account, and disclose the recipient's identity.

The Rocky Mountain Bank maintains that it contacted the recipient more than once and requested that the individual respond to requests to "discuss his or her actions". The implication is that, had the recipient responded, this whole matter could have been handled amicably and honorably -- among gentlemen, as it were. I wonder if, from the perspective of the bank, its customers, or even the email recipient, a "discussion" would have really sufficed. I know, as a bank customer, John Doe's word that he had deleted all my personal information from his Gmail account wouldn't satisfy me at all. If I were in charge of bank security, I don't think I'd be very satisfied either. In either case, I suppose I would be demanding proof that had been deleted, never copied, forwarded, or printed, and probably some kind of connotative memory-wipe.

Years ago, I was consulted by a judge after a District Attorney's office "accidentally" obtained access to a defense lawyer's hard drive (quotes inserted to cite the provided explanation, not my personal feelings about the explanation). The negotiated remedy and order was an extensive forensic search of the DA's hard drives, and a complete wipe of their contents -- even when the search turned up no conclusive evidence that the DA had ever examined any privileged materials. But I doubt any accidental recipient would agree to that -- especially a civilian. And why should they?

Of course, no one knows, at this point, if the recipient ever saw the message. Many reading this web site would likely have dismissed it, and any subsequent messages from the bank as a phishing scam. The Rocky Mountain Bank even has a link to an oddly nondescript PDF addressing the subject of phishing scams.

There's really no reason to believe that the bank ever considered litigation to be an entirely avoidable option, no matter how cooperative the recipient might have been. Nor am I convinced that the court's decision has provided any comfort to the individual's who's privacy has been sacrificed -- including the one who's email account has been disabled, and personal information shared with a bank that's already demonstrated that they can't be trusted with the information.

So, if suing Google won't assure its customers' privacy and financial security, what should the bank have done? That's an easy one. Ask any programmer. They'll tell you: The only way to fix a 1D10T error is to upgrade your wetware and reboot.

How Twitter says they'll hide your location from twits with subpoenas.

Recently, Twitter announced that they would be adding geolocation features to their service, allowing users to embed their physical location in their Twitter feed. As not to alarm: Twitter has always maintained that this would be an opt-in feature. But, frankly, any web site you visit is privy to some information about your physical location by virtue of the IP address assigned to your computer by your Internet Service Provider (ISP) from a group of IP addresses reserved for your neighborhood. The logs kept by a web server, combined with a subpoena to the appropriate ISP, usually yield a street address for the subscriber assigned that IP address.

SmarterWare's Gina Trapani (formerly of Lifehacker.com) is attending the Twitter Conference in LA. She's posted updates explaining how Twitter plans to deploy this service and how they intend to protect its Twitter geolocation users from subpoenas. According to Gina, "Twitter will scrub geo-data stored in tweets more than 14 days old to avoid getting subpoena’d about a user’s location in the past. They will outright delete the location information from their database, not just anonymize."

She also reports that while,

"Twitter usually encourages developers and applications to cache data, in the case of geo, they recommend dropping historical location data so that application developers don’t become a subpoena target, either. They also recommend 'fuzzing' location and time data, so that instead of knowing that Joe Smith was at 8th avenue and 15th street at 2:11PM Eastern time on March 7, 2008, you only show that Joe was in Brooklyn on that day. The geodata-scrubbing isn’t a permanent solution. They are looking into ways to store this data in a 'safe' (anonymized?) way in the future, so they won’t always scrub +14 day old data, just at first."

Purging data that isn't mission critical, but likely to be subpoenaed makes a lot of sense. After all, no one writes "Satisfy search warrants in a timely, efficient, and effective manner" into their corporate mission statement.

While I'm convinced that Twitter's motivation is for the sanctity of the corporation, rather than its user-base, it is a step in the right direction. In fact, the direction is so right that one has to wonder why all personally identifiable user data isn't "scrubbed" every 14 days from most online services. Of course, Twitter's raison d'être, is -- among other things -- to give it's user's messages some life and legacy. It's likely that most of those users would also like to take credit for their various flashes of 140 character brilliance.

Not so, however, every time an individual fires off an instant message (IM), or searches Google. Most instant messaging services, for instance, don't store messages after they are sent, but they do store the sender and recipient's IP addresses, with their account information, and the time they logged in. While Google relies on demographic data, such as geography, income, and search interests, in order to sell ads, it doesn't need to be personally attributable to me. Companies like Google, Yahoo!, Facebook, MySpace and AOL are not in the subpoena response business. But, all of these companies employ subpoena compliance personnel, who add to the cost of doing business, but contribute nothing to the bottom-line. Worse yet, where nearly every individual in these companies, in some way, does something, either directly or indirectly, to add to the end-user experience, subpoena compliance often works in direct opposition to that objective.

As many companies learn when they're sued, subpoena compliance is often so expensive that it's cheaper to settle. A company can't be forced to produce what they don't have. And, with some significant exceptions, a company can't be forced to archive what they don't need.

By the way, I'm not just an end-user of all the services listed above, I'm also one of the twits writing the subpoenas.

One body. One suspect. Two theories. A laptop. A birdcage. A bloody crime scene. Two trials. Two hung juries. No convictions. One unsolved mystery.

From Investigation Discovery:

"When a beloved music professor -- David Stagg -- discovers the dead body of his long-time partner, Bill Jennings, he claims he's walked into the aftermath of a tragic suicide. But as investigators descend on the scene, they immediately realize that this reported suicide is clearly a homicide. Is it possible the professor is behind this vicious crime, or has he been falsely accused? The forensic experts on each side battle it out. Which side will you agree with?" (60 min. - First aired 9/14/2009 on Investigation Discovery / Discovery ID's "Forensics: You Decide)

Suicide letter, or coverup?

Friends from the couple's active social group were in total disbelief. Few could imagine David Stagg involved in the murder of his long-time partner. Forensic evidence was inconclusive. Though blood evidence was found throughout the crime scene, no blood or defensive wounds could be found on David Stagg. An unknown set of fingerprints were found at the scene. Computer evidence from Jennings' laptop showed--at least from Jennings' perspective--a tumultuous relationship. But, enough to justify a motive for murder?

There were also a series of suicidal emails and typed letters left by Jennings that charted a history of both love for Stagg, and deep emotional turmoil. And, one final letter--typed on April 24, 2004, the night of the murder--would become one of the most contested pieces of evidence that two juries would have to consider.

On one thing, both sides agreed: Bill Jennings did not take his own life.

The embedded four-minute clip above is edited from the one-hour Investigation Discovery episode dedicated to the Bill Jennings murder, investigations, and trials.

I have worked for both attorneys, Tom Bath and Scott Toth, had many encounters with the Johnson County Crime Lab and the Heart of America's Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory (HARCFL), and kept in contact with other experts from both sides. This case demonstrates that, even when some of the best experts from the most highly technical fields agree on the evidence, it still may not be enough to tell a jury who's responsible.

My entire interview was shot early in the morning on February 28, 2009 in Las Vegas, NV. I was scheduled to meet the crew in Los Angeles the day after I finished a trial in Vegas. The trial ran so long that I missed my return flight and needed to come back to court first thing the next morning. I purchased a razor and a toothbrush on the way to my hotel, and steamed my suit in my shower at the Golden Nugget. The crew from Siren's Media was, coincidentally, in Las Vegas on the 27th interviewing someone else, and seemed overjoyed to stay a little longer.

The B-roll was "reenacted" in the wee hours of the morning before the court opened, in the server room of a client's law office, across the street from the Clark County Regional Justice Center. (No, that is not actual work product in the background.) The interview was shot first--in a quiet space about the size of a walk-in closet. My client--who asked to remain nameless--was kind enough to send someone to let us in before office hours.

In the "credit where credit is due" department: The video was captured to a thumb-drive from live television using a $99 stand-alone Pinnacle Video Capture device. It was edited using Avidemux a free open-source video editing program that I highly recommend. The entire process took about an hour and a half in a coffee shop, from raw MP4 video to YouTube upload.

You probably won't find much sympathy for Elane Cioni. A mistress scorned, she's been convicted of hacking into the email account of her former-boss, the man with whom she was having an affair, and then his wife, his other girlfriends, and even his kids. (I suppose, that doesn't engender much sympathy for her main-target either.) But, you might be surprised to find out Cioni's not a very good hacker.

You might also be surprised to learn that there's a market for professional hacking and, similar to many legitimate professions, the jobs are going offshore. When it comes to password hacking, those who can, do. Those who can't, outsource. When Cioni wanted back into her boyfriend's life she turned to one of an increasing number of web sites with offers like this:

"Need to monitor your Child? Your Spouse? Your Boyfriend/Girlfriend? We Hack Passwords for $100 USD. We Crack all major web based emails. This include Hotmail, Yahoo! AOL and Gmail. We Provide Proofs Before payment."

Passwords for $100

One particular web site even states: "This unique service is 100% legal".

The Washington Post conducted an interview with the FBI to find out why these services remain online. "The FBI is aware of these illegal services," spokesman Paul Bresson said, "and we have been successful in the past in identifying criminal activity and working with prosecutors to bring indictments. Users of these services should know that just because a product is marketed on the Internet doesn't mean it's legal."

While Cioni had an agenda, the same password could have granted her access to her victims' bank accounts, insurance policies--access to practically any service that allows individuals to "log in". Once access has been gained, she could have reassigned passwords, and even rerouted email communications, effectively allowing her to assume the individual's identities. Fortunately, that wasn't her agenda. But, it's unknown how many of the nation's tens-of-millions of identity theft victims had their passwords purchased.

Making a case against Cioni wasn't very difficult. Of course, it helped that she mentioned things to her boyfriend that only someone who would have read his email would have known.  And, she used her own PayPal account to pay for the password hacking service. In case that wasn't enough, IP address records were subpoenaed from her Internet Service Provider (ISP), and her computer was searched to find fragments of her targets' email cached to her hard drive.

Then again, Elane Cioni is not a very good hacker.

You can listen to below an NPR interview on this topic, and hear more about this story:

Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/06/AR2009090602238.html)

You're not one of those people who leave their wi-fi network open to anyone who passes by, are you? You realize, of course, that--beside the obvious security risks to your computers, your network, your passwords, email, accounting files, your bank account, private identity, maybe even sensitive medical information--that anything someone else does on your network will be traced back to you--the resident and ISP subscriber? Say, for example, the kid next door decides to use your "lightning fast DSL" to download, or worse--share--his music collection via Bit Torrent. The RIAA subpoena will be addressed to you. Or, suppose someone driving by decides to stop and explore his sexual curiosities where they can't be traced back to his network. The search warrant will be addressed to you.

But, that's not your problem, right? Because your wi-fi network is encrypted, right? I remember, back in the day, I used to brag that it would be easier to poach my cable connection from the street than hack my wi-fi, because I was using WEP encryption (cracked in 2001), a MAC filter (easily spoofed), AND I cloaked my SSID (worthless). Since then, came WPA, and more recently WPA2.

Linksys settings for WPA2 wireless secruity.

If I lost you at "lighting fast DSL", then the following probably is your problem: Computer scientists in Japan have developed a way to break the WPA encryption system used in wireless routers in just one minute. For those keeping up, presumably you upgraded your router firmware some time back, or purchased and configured a new router to utilize WPA2--which is, so far, considered to be secure.

While the availability of the hack certainly makes for a very reasonable and plausible deniability and is bound to be tested in the courts by way of a defense--especially for the purposes of challenging a search warrant--my recommendation would be to lock your wireless router, and make certain that you're using the latest Wi-Fi security protocols. If that means hiring a professional--trust me, they're cheaper than legal fees. Remember, no wireless router comes secure out-of-the-box.