Dragan on Security

If you want to monitor some area, office, room, you should visit this web site. Company 123 CCTV offers security camera surveillance equipment and various accessories (switchers & multiplexers, CCTV monitors, pan, tilt & zoom equipment, wireless trans. & receivers, camera cabling & wire, power supplies, and converters etc).

They also sell digital video recording - DVR Systems which includes DVR PC software and separate unit as possible solutions.

123 CCTV offers wireless cigarette cameras. These cameras are placed into cigarette box like package and offer you the ability to monitor just about any area. Simply plop the cigarette pack down onto any flat surface and point it in the direction you desire to view. Once done, the cigarette packs built-in 1.2GHz transmitter will automatically send the hidden video signals to the nearby receiving unit (included) which is able to be plugged into virtually any TV or monitor. It is able to transmit signals up to 1000 ft. line of sight or 500 ft. through walls and obstructions. As for the built-in hidden camera, it uses a 1 lux color 1/4″ CMOS, offering 380 lines of resolution with a 3.7mm (wide angle) pinhole lens that automatically adjusts to light changes.  Operating off of a regular 9 Volt battery this is truly an awesome covert camera.

There is also entire set of small hidden cameras for various applications and these cameras can be placed into, for example: wall clock, motion detector, smoke detector, computer speakers, clock radio, air cleaner, exterior motion light, toys etc.

Company says that their clients range from the Pentagon, to the home owner. Here is company’s partial list of clients.

Seems interesting if it is true - Tutorial: “Unlock” your iPhone with SuperSim - Hackint0sh.

IEEE Security and Privacy, issue July/August 2007 (Vol. 5, No. 4), has interesting article Encryption: Security Considerations for Portable Media Devices (subscription required).

Abstract

With the proliferation of removable media devices, such as iPods and USB drives, large amounts of an organization’s sensitive data can easily be removed. The author explores the complexities of protecting networks against removable media, including guidelines for purchasing encryption software.

This, recently updated page, is an index of password recovery procedures for Cisco products. For security reasons, the password recovery procedures listed, require physical access to the equipment. See: Cisco - Password Recovery Procedures.

There is news that the copy protection technology used by Blu-ray discs has been cracked by the same hacker who broke the DRM technology of rival HD DVD discs last month. The coder known as muslix64 used much the same plain text attack in both cases. By reading a key held in memory by a player playing a HD DVD disc he was able to decrypt the movie been played and render it as an MPEG 2 file.

The latest Blu-ray hack was performed by muslix64 using a media file provided by Janvitos, through the video resource site Doom9, and applied to a Blu-ray copy of the movie Lord of War. In this case, muslix64 didn’t even need access to a Blu-ray player to nobble the DRM protection included on the title.

Both HD DVD and Blu-ray use HDCP (High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection) for playback display authentication and similar implementations of AACS (Advanced Access Content System) for content encryption.

More details at Arstechnica article, Bruce Schneier’s blog, Freedom to Tinker blog, and The Register article.

Try to answer some of questions bellow:

• Do you have backup of data on your laptop?
• Are files on your laptop encrypted?
• Do you have biometric security on your laptop and do you use it?
• Are you careful when logging online in a wireless hot spot — such as in a hotel, cafe or airport lounge — as you may not be logging onto a valid wireless network?
• Do you have tracking services enabled?

Some guidelines and recommendations can be found in this article.

A “trusted computing” module (TPM) was found in Intel-based Apple computers, but the reason for it is unknown. Amit Singh, a member of Google’s technical staff, discusses the existence of the chip in his book, “Mac OS X Internals: A Systems Approach,” in which he also writes that there is no way for Apple’s Mac OS X to directly make use of the TPM; no DRM or similar restrictions are linked to the chip. “The TPM is an opt-in feature,” said Singh. “Apple can’t turn it on–nobody can, other than the user.” The TPM is a single chip that is made up of a random number generator, a small memory chip, and a low-power processor, plus a few other parts. It has no influence on the system due to a lack drivers that are aware of it in either the computer’s OS or its firmware. While it is possible for users to make use of the TPM, Singh’s best guess is that the chip is simply part of the motherboard package from Intel. Ross Anderson, a professor of security engineering at the Computer Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, does not believe that the TPM would be included without reason. Based on “software economics” and “Apple’s traditional business model,” he suggests “future use of the TPM, whether in OS X 10.5, 10.6 or later,” or “use directly by application software vendors, e.g. in Office 2007.” Anderson has been very critical of past trusted computing efforts, linking them to attempted, strict DRM restrictions, such as the prevention of the copying of purchased media files or the playing of a CD on more than one computer.

Sources: ACM TechNews, eWeek.

Read full chapter from Amit Singh’s book here.