Here's a story about how easy it is for the FBI to listen in on phone calls in the US. Not about legality, just how to push a button and listen, log originating and receiving phone numbers, send for translation and analysis.
Another article I read via slashdot implied that the system has trouble with Skype, portable phone numbers and I think obfuscation of the caller ID data.
Is this credible, or is there a reason to present this info in Wired.com, a mainstream magazine's blog.
Along the same lines there is much speculation about the leak of the B52 armed with 6 nuclear-tipped cruise missiles landing at Barksdale air base, the launch pad for bombing in the middle east. Was it serving an agenda (seems obvious) if so what is the intention of the message, etc.
The US policy is control of all battle spaces, earth sea air space and informational, so we will probably see a lot more of this as time goes on.
Denial of service to websites and networks has been going on for a while, and the storm worm has been estimated to have infected millions of defenseless computers connected to the Internet.
Control of these masses of computers lets spammers use them to send out spam email, or send destructive data packets to targeted servers which fail due to all the incoming requests -- this is called Denial of Service aka DoS attacks.
So a new idea, maybe this unprecedented spam network isn't just for spam -- it could be someone else at the controls. *Blink blink*...
Although we are using the Internet to communicate, there are varying levels of understanding about how this stuff works, how it can be exploited or shut down by hackers and so on.
Post a Comment