DIY Total Information Awareness spying for cheap with CreepyDOL

Psst, hey, I’m not trying to embarrass you and don’t look now . . . but you’re leaking, leaving behind a digital trail that Big Brother and your cash-strapped little brother can track while holed up in the relative luxury of his basement bedroom.

"Creepy Distributed Object Locator,” dubbed CreepyDOL for short, “allows anyone to track everyone in a neighborhood, suburb, or city from the comfort of their sofa.” Brendan O’Connor, who runs the security firm Malice Afterthought, called his presentation CreepyDOL: Cheap, Distributed Stalkingat Black Hat and Stalking a City for Fun and Frivolity at Def Con. Do you have a spare $500? He promised that if you deploy a network of cheap CreepyDOLsensors, then you can “move up from small-time weirding out to the big leagues of total information awareness.”

CreepyDOL is anotherinnocent looking device, but instead of simply pwning you, it provides DIY surveillance for the masses. It works by picking up wireless signals from smartphones and other mobile devices as people pass nearby the box.

It does much more than that as O'Connor wrote about testing the devices [pdf]:

We deployed CreepyDOL nodes to several different locations in a populous, well-travelled, section of Madison, WI. To prevent badness, we programmed the NOM system to look only for traffic from devices we owned; no “random stranger” data was collected at any time. With that constraint, we were able to capture a significant amount of useful data about the devices, including photographs of their owners, correlation between devices owned by the same person, and some “this is where he hangs out”-type data. 

“I take all this data, throw it together, and visualize it to show people with real faces and identities and histories moving around a map in 3D,” he told Forbes. "Even if you don't connect, if you are wired on a network, we will find you. If you are a person in a city, we will find you, and we will do it all for very little money."

What Andy Greenburg found to be “creepiest of all,” is that “O'Connor has even designed the software to grab the user’s photo if they visit a certain dating site that lacks SSL encryption, adding that to the target’s profile.”

O’Connor’s previous work includes the “Falling or Ballistically-launched Object that Makes Backdoors,” a $50 F-BOMB that provides cheap spying for stalkers, hackers or cash strapped feds. Last year at BSides Las Vegas, he presented Reticle that is like F-BOMB’s brain and the command and control for his latest DIY mass surveillance solution. Put them all together and you have CreepyDOL.

"This isn't even hard, and it should be hard, and that is pretty disturbing to me," O'Connor told Dark Reading. "People fix vulnerabilities when the kid on the street corner can abuse it. Maybe it's time to fix this now."

People are not going to stop carrying about mobile devices, but O'Connor said, “If every person on the planet can use this surveillance technology, I think we should start to design things not to leak information at every level. You leave behind a trail that can be tracked not just by the NSA or a law enforcement agency, but by any kid in a basement with less than $500.”

"This is really going to get out of control, but it's the future," stated Chris Wysopal, chief technology officer for Veracode. "Everyone is going to be able to track anyone, unless there are regulations."

Interested and have $570.80? Well if you buy “bulk,” enough for 10 nodes, then according to O'Connor's Black Hat slides [pdf], you can have government-type total information awareness for $57.08 per node. Broken down from the bulk buy, it means spending $25 for Raspberry Pi Model A, $4.61 for a case, $5.99 for a USB hub, $13.04 for two Wi-Fi chips, $6.99 for an SD card, $1.45 for the USB power adapter and wham bam thank you, ma’am. Then you, too, could spy to your little heart’s desire.

Would you get busted if someone were to find a node after you’ve hidden it in a public place? Probably not since:

O’Connor has taken special pains to make them difficult to tie back to their owner. Each spy node runs the anonymity software Tor to obscure the location of the central server that collects their data. All data stored on the boxes is encrypted–the cryptographic key is kept on a memory card that can be removed when the device is planted. And the computers are assembled from off-the-shelf parts to prevent any sort of supply chain analysis from revealing who built them, he says. 

Curious about why O’Connor created CreepyDOL? He said, “At some level I’m doing this because it’s interesting. But I’m also doing it to prove that this level of knowledge and detail isn’t only the province of intelligence agencies anymore. If you think that only the government, with millions and billions to blow on watching someone can create this problem for privacy, then we’re not going to solve it.”

Xbox One and PS4 hardware specs are ‘essentially the same,’ says John Carmack

Xbox One and PS4 hardware specs are ‘essentially the same,’ says John Carmack

At Quakecon 2013, John Carmack of Id Software (Doom, Quake, Rage) has spoken out about the PS4 and Xbox One, saying that their hardware is “essentially the same.” This comes at an interesting time, as Microsoft has just boosted the Xbox One’s GPU to keep up with the PS4′s significantly (~50%) more powerful GPU. In the same keynote talk, Carmack makes two other interesting observations: Three or four years ago, he thought thatIntel would make a play for the console space with its stillborn Larrabee GPU — or, alternatively, that the Xbox One and PS4 could easily have been based on “super-mobile architectures”, with “16 ARM cores” and “a whole bunch of PowerVR graphics cores.”

“It’s almost weird how close they are,” Carmack says of the Xbox One and PS4, which are both equipped with a virtually identical AMD CPU and GPU.  ”Whether they converged intentionally, or if they were surprised that they wound up having almost identical specs.” We’re fairly certain that the near-identical architectures are a coincidence, but a happy one for consumers and developers alike: By standardizing on x86 hardware, it will now be cheaper and easier to develop games that span multiple platforms (consoles and PCs), with the knock-on effect that the average quality of games should improve as developers can spend more time focusing on the games themselves, rather than fiddling around with architecture-specific foibles.

Earlier in the week we wrote about Digital Foundry’s interesting, but perhaps not very informative, benchmarking of “simulated” Xbox One and PS4 hardware. The results show that the PS4 GPU’s 50%-more-compute-units can provide a performance boost of around 25% over the Xbox One. If we dig into Carmack’s words a little more, he doesn’t explicitly say that their performance is exactly the same, but rather that their “capabilities” are. Basically, both consoles have access to the same shaders, the same OpenGL 4.2 and DirectX 11.1 support, and so on. The PS4 will almost certainly be faster than the Xbox One (even after the Xbone’s modest GPU MHz bump), but the real-world difference will probably be negligible.

Carmack’s comments about Intel’s Larrabee are a bit of a surprise. He admits that, three or four years ago, he thought that Intel might make a huge play for the console market, possibly manufacturing Larrabee-based parts for Sony and Microsoft at a price point that they couldn’t refuse. Larrabee was an interesting GCGPU architecture that attempted to use a mass of small, Pentium CPU cores to provide the kind of parallelism offered by Nvidia and AMD’s GPUs. For a variety of reasons, Larrabee sadly never arrived; instead, Intel performed a “strategic reset” and used the Larrabee tech to create Xeon Phi, a high-performance computing add-in card.

A prototype Larrabee die; each of the rectangular blocks is an individual CPU.

If you thought that Carmack was slightly off-base with the Larrabee idea, his speculation that the eighth-generation consoles could’ve been powered by ARM is perhaps slightly more realistic. Head-to-head, ARM CPUs and GPUs obviously can’t compete against x86, but if you cram in enough CPU and GPU cores, you could create an ARM-based console with acceptable performance. This would have the added advantage of making the consoles consume less power, and probably cost less. Presumably there would be an easier porting path from ARM-based smartphone and tablet games to the consoles, too.

Neither of those alternate histories came to pass, though. For the foreseeable future, AMD has won itself a seat at the gaming table. As Carmack points out, with every developer optimizing their games for the AMD APU in the PS4 and Xbox One, and thus PC games too, AMD might once again become a viable alternative to Intel in the PC gaming space.

For a lot of insightful commentary on the games industry, be sure to watch Carmack’s entire keynote. Kinect haters in particular will love Carmack’s comment that “Kinect is sort of like a zero-button mouse with a lot of latency.

Xbox One is built to last for 10 years while powered on, sources say

The PS4 remains small and sleek while sporting some truly impressive horsepower under the hood. On the other hand, the Xbox One is rather large and utilitarian — it’s not even as powerful as its smaller competition. Why? Well, it seems Microsoft learned its lesson with the high failure rates of Xbox 360s, and plans on keeping the hardware low-power, cool, and well ventilated. Reportedly, Microsoft wants each Xbox One system to last for ten years — even with the console turned on the entire time.

Sources inside Microsoft spoke to Eurogamer, and explained that Redmond is making reliability the most important factor of the Xbox One’s core design. With a huge fan and a righteous heat sink, it’s clear that Microsoft is being extremely conservative this generation. After the large and costly ordeal surrounding Xbox 360′s red ring of death, Microsoft isn’t fooling around this generation.

As a nice side benefit, the Xbox One is on track to be much quieter than the Xbox 360. With more efficient internals, improved cooling systems, and no requirement for spinning discs, your living room is going to sound much more tolerable than it was at the start of last generation. Early reports of the development hardware have the Xbox One labeled as completely inaudible unless you’re actually playing a game. During less intense activities like web browsing or watching a movie on Netflix, you might not even be able to hear the fans at all.

So, are we really expected to leave the Xbox One on for ten years? If Microsoft ships rock-solid hardware with an effective sleep state, there’s seemingly no good technical reason to power it all the way down. More importantly, we’ll likely be stuck with this generation for a long time. If you remember, Sony’s Kaz Hirai promised a ten-year lifespan for the PS3. By the time the PS4 launches, seven of those years will have already passed, and the Xbox One will launch a jaw-dropping eight years after the 360. Both Sony and Microsoft seem content to ride out these long console generations, and squeeze as much out of each platform as possible.

Microsoft’s problem with this always-on expectation won’t be technical, but social. When the Xbox team started designing its next-gen console, they clearly had “always-on” in mind. From the controversial internet check-in, to the Kinect requirement, to this most recent revelation, it’s clear that Microsoft believes your digital life should be always-on. With all of the recent privacy issues involving the NSA and tech companies, Microsoft will have a devil of a time persuading users to learn to accept an always-on living room device with cameras and microphones pointed at their families

Sony’s Xperia Z Ultra is a powerful phone that’s too large for your hand

Mobile phones started off their life as rather large devices, but the industry worked hard to miniaturize them, and after years and years of progress, managed to produce tiny, powerful phones. Now, as smartphones take over the mobile device industry, their screens become larger, increasing the size of the devices once again. At the moment, this trend culminates in Sony’s newly announced Xperia Z Ultra, an enormous 6.4-inch smartphone.It’s strange to think that the industry spent around a decade minimizing the size of mobile phones — even creating the flip phone so we could halve the space our phones occupy — only to be working diligently to increase the size of them once again. This time, at least, large, pretty screens are an arguably worthwhile reason to increase our phone size, and Sony’s Xperia Z Ultra certainly supports that notion with its 6.4-inch 1080p Triluminos (essentially Sony’s Retina, more or less) display. Though the Ultra is certifiably enormous for something marketed as a phone, it’s still quite thin at 6.5mm, but due to its sheer size, it still weighs a hefty 212 grams for a genre of device traditionally used with just one hand.

Regardless of how ineffective-for-a-portable-phone the size of the device might seem, it does stock some powerful components within its guttyworks, specifically Qualcomm’s 2.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800. Along with the top-of-the-line SoC, the Ultra comes with 16GB of on-board storage (11GB of which is available), but if that seems a bit low the phablet has a MicroSD slot that can house a 64GB card. The Ultra will be LTE capable — though which bands have not been disclosed as of yet — and will sport a 2-megapixel front-facing camera, and an 8-megapixel rear facing camera that can take HDR images and video.

The screen, aside from being large and pretty, is also able to recognize more than just a capacitative stylus, as it will accept input from a pen with a tip larger than 1mm, or any graphite pencil — though you likely won’t want to be writing on your new phablet. The phone is also dust- and waterproof to a degree, with IP55 and IP58 ratings.

The original Xperia Z — the one that isn’t a result of mad phone science — suffered from poor battery life of only around three to four hours of use. The battery in that phone — which has a smaller 5-inch screen — has a capacity of 2,330 mAh. The Ultra upgrades the battery (as it probably should, due to the upgraded screen) capacity to 3,000 mAh, so hopefully the life has been extended along with it.

The Xperia Z Ultra will run the latest version of Android, 4.2 Jelly Bean, when it releases sometime toward the end of this year. Price and a more solid release date have not yet been announced, but the “phone” will initially release in white, purple, and black colors, so you can start planning your new, matching wardrobe right now.

Even though phablets seem ever-present, they’re more a niche market at the moment, barely taking any ground from hand-sized smartphones, as well as tablet-sized tablets. Regardless of the practicality of a 6.4-inch phone, Sony’s Xperia Z Ultra does have some impressive guts under the hood going for it. Whether it’s enough to hoist the phablet scene to the forefront, though, remains to be seen.

Now read: Is Apple preparing to release an iPhone phablet?

The best in mobile web design tactics

With the explosion in popularity of smartphones and tablets, mobile web design has experienced similar growth. Because so many rely on their mobile devices to surf the Web, it’s become imperative for many companies to offer mobile websites that are easy to navigate and offer the same content offered by their regular websites. Because of this, mobile website design is an industry that is experiencing increasing demand.

For any who wish to set up a mobile website for their customers and subscribers to follow, there are a few key elements to keep in mind to ensure that you will be providing your users with an efficient and user-friendly mobile website.

Keep mobile restrictions in mind

One of the main issues you may have when designing a mobile website is that everything must conform to mobile standards. This can especially be a problem if you already have an existing website and want your mobile website to contain the same content and links. It’s important to remember not only that the mobile website will be displayed on a smaller screen, but that mobile devices have limited functionality as compared to a desktop PC or a laptop.

A mobile website, therefore, should let the browser get directly to the reason they are browsing from their phone. In many cases, excess frills will be unnecessary. Many of the best mobile websites keep things direct and to the point.

Be familiar with your crowd

As with any aspect of any business, you need to be aware of your target audience when designing a mobile website. To this end, it’s also important to know what type of devices people will be using when they’re doing mobile browsing. This can be a key element when it comes to the website design phase. By using various methods of research or using analytics, you can ascertain which types of smartphones and tablets are most commonly used by your audience.

Another very helpful fact to know is whether the majority of people who will be visiting your mobile website have Internet connections that are reliable. This particularly crucial information if people will be using your mobile website in order to do things such as filling out forms. By being familiar with your target audience and their mobile device usage, you can ensure that you are using the information to provide people with the best mobile web design.

Maintain information consistency

If your business already has a regular Internet website and you’re intent on creating a mobile website as well, it’s paramount that you don’t change the core content. With the popularity of mobile device usage continually rising, more and more people are using their smartphones and tablets to perform the same online tasks they would typically perform on a laptop or desktop PC. You want online browsers to have a smooth and pleasing experience when they visit your regular website.

It’s important that people have the same experience when visiting your mobile website. Your mobile website should mirror your main website in as many ways as possible while still accommodating mobile device limitations. By doing so you’ll be showing that you company is consistent and reliable while being able to adapt to ever-changing technological trends.

Record Breaking Price Paid At Auction For First Apple Computer - But This Collector Owns Two Of Them!

Hi, I'm David Greelish, Computer Historian. If you missed it, another Apple 1 computer went to auction recently, on Saturday, November 24th. This is the second high profile auction for an Apple 1 in the last two months, and the third in the last five months. This recent, working example of computer history sold for €491,868 ($630,000) at a German auction, easily surpassing the existing record. The last record-breaking price was set at Sotheby’s in New York in June 2012 for a sale price of $374,500. There was also an auction at Christie's in the UK on October 9th, but that non-working Apple 1 failed to sell for a minimum of £50,000 ($80,062). Here is a list -

High Profile Auctions:

$630,000 (€491,868) | November 2012 | Breker

$374,500 | June 2012 | Sotheby’s (first sold on eBay, see A)

$212,267 (£133,250) | November 2010 | Christie’s (first sold on eBay, see B)

eBay Auctions:

$75,600 | June 2012

$22,766.66 | September 2010 (A)

$42,766 | March 2010

$50,000 | November 2009 (B)

$17,000 | September 2009

Thanks to Mike Willegal for his excellent online resource, the Apple 1 Registry -http://www.willegal.net/appleii/apple1-originals.htm

Also recently, I had the chance to sit down with a local computer collector here in my area (Roswell, Georgia, outside of Atlanta). He is Lonnie Mimms, and he has two Apple 1s, and use to have three. One of his Apple 1s work, while the other does not. Let's start off where I ask him about his Apple 1s. This interview was conducted before the recent Apple 1 auction:

Another Apple 1 Goes to Auction - already?!

But wait, the previous one didn’t even sell at the last high profile auction with Christie’s!

That’s true, but this one works, and there’s a very interesting video of it doing so.

Everything you see is included in the “set” - the keyboard, tape player and monitor. Plus some items signed by the “Woz,” Steve Wozniak. It’s certainly a very desirable Apple 1.

The auction has a starting bid of 70,000 euros ($90,638) and is being held at the German auction house Breker - http://www.breker.com/english/index.htm

That last Apple 1 at auction was held at Christie’s in the UK on October 9th. It had a reserve price of at least 50,000 pounds ($80,071) and the high bid was only 32,000 pounds ($51,245), so it did not sell. It didn’t work however, and this upcoming one does, so it will be interesting to see what happens. In my last article, I discussed the wild price inflation for these recent Apple 1s at both eBay and high profile auctions, yet there is a wide valuation difference between the eBay auctions and the high profile ones. How will this one turn out - stay tuned!

Oh, I almost forgot, the auction will be held on Saturday, November 24 at 4 AM ET / 1 AM PT. There are 707 items to be auctioned off at that time, with the Apple 1 being lot 20. Lot 19 is an HP 150 Touchscreen computer from 1983, and lot 21 is an original MITS Altair! There are also dozens of cool old calculators, typewriters and other interesting scientific items, so take a look - LINK.