By David Ponce

Syria’s uprising could take on a new twist in the coming days as news that hacker group Anonymous has gained access to Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad’s personal email account surfaces. Unfortunately for the leet pride of most of Anonymous’ hackers, they didn’t have to do much work to gain entry as Al-Assad’s password was simply “12345″. Once in, the group had access to 78 different inboxes belonging to either the president or his staffers. We have no doubt that these emails are being read as we type this and once the good bits start to surface, it’ll be interesting to see who gets embarrassed. We just need to look back a few months at the fallout from the WikiLeaks cables to see how damaging this type of information can be to governments worldwide.

We should soon find out more. In the meantime, if your password is something as stupid as “12345″ or even “password”, do yourself a favor and just go change it. It doesn’t even need to be anything too elaborate; a short string of hard-to-remember unrelated random characters is less secure than a longer string of say, a few related words. Like “idontlikerememberingpasswords”.

VIA [ Geek.com ]

By David Ponce

Because it’s well known that terrorists will openly talk about their plans on Twitter, the DHS and CIA monitors the service for keywords. This practice has led recently to the unfortunate detention and immediate deportation of two Brits visiting the States. And what were the evil, offending tweets that had them explaining themselves for 12 hours? Leigh Van Byran said:

“free this week, for quick gossip/prep before I go and destroy America?”

Destroy… as in “get trashed and party” as he explained to the Daily Mail. And Emily Banting offense? A Family Guy quote!:

“3 weeks today, we’re totally in LA pissing people off on Hollywood Blvd and diggin’ Marilyn Monroe up!”

So watch out, what everyone knew has been confirmed. A sense of humor is an automatic disqualification for anyone working at DHS, as is common sense, logic and any of the skills that everyone outraged at this story clearly has. And the message is clear: foreigners, watch what you say online. The dumbest stuff will come back and bite you.

[ The Daily Mail ] VIA [ DVice ]

By David Ponce

Products like this are certainly nothing new, but it’s nice to be reminded now and then that it is possible to don a little protection while avoiding the look-at-me-I’m-a-high-value-target look altogether. Miguel Caballero Bulletproof Men’s Polo Shirt features a cotton exterior for an attempt at a casual look, while the innermost layer is microfiber. It tries to keep you warm in the cold and wick the sweat away in the heat. The middle layer is the company’s proprietary bullet proof section, and comes in three flavors:

OPTION IIA: 9mm / 40 Smith and Wesson FMJ

OPTION II: 9mm / .357 Magnum / 38 Super / Mini Uzi submachine gun

OPTION IIIA: Uzi machine gun / MP5,MP9 submachine gun / 44 Magnum SJHP / Stab-proof

Some clients include “action hero Steven Seagal, King Abdullah of Jordan, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia, Prince Felipe of Spain.” A small degree of peace of mind comes at a hefty price, of course. It’s between $3,500 and $4,500.

[ Product Page ] VIA [ RedFerret ]

Following in the footsteps of Google and Mozilla, Facebook launched a program called “White Hat Bug Bounty Program” last July. The idea was to encourage hackers in the wild to find security holes in Facebook’s code and report it to the company for a reward. This reward takes the shape of the credit card you see above. As long as the vulnerability is disclosed to Facebook by following their Responsible Disclosure Policy and the hacker does not go public with the vulnerability information until the hole has been fixed, they are promised to get a reward of at least $500. There is no set maximum, though the highest amount paid so far is $5,000.

Possessing this card has become somewhat of a status symbol as only 81 of them have been doled out so far.

Ryan McGeehan, manager of Facebook’s security response team, told CNET in a recent interview. “Having this exclusive black card is another way to recognize them. They can show up at a conference and show this card and say ‘I did special work for Facebook.’”

As anyone who’s ever come across a hardcore hacker surely knows, it is respect and appreciation, almost as much as money, that can drive them. A token such as this is a smart move. Too bad the program was unable to prevent Zuckerberg’s personal photos from leaking into the wild.

By David Ponce

We’re not entirely sure what would be better: to come home to a house in ashes or to be texted of this fact as it’s happening. If you’re the type who’d rather know, the FireText fire alarm can be setup to send a predefined text message to up to 4 recipients. It’s quad-band GSM and is battery powered so there’s no wiring needed.

It’s £90 or about $140.

[ Product Page ] VIA [ Geeky Gadgets ]

By David Ponce

This is a great idea. The MyRingGuard is a prototype silicone and plastic ring that sends a distress text message along with your exact GPS location to a pre-determined set of people in case of emergency. They can then decide to either come to you, call 911 for you or walk around their apartment while flailing their arms, in agony over how to best come to your help. Say you’re out running late at night and trip and injure yourself. Or you fear for your safety for whatever reason. Instead of reaching for your phone just press your thumb to your index finger and the ring will communicate through Bluetooth and send out those distress signals. Think of it as a sophisticated panic button.

Currently the MyRingGuard is in the crowdfunding phase, not on your usual Kickstarter but on another social funding site. For $39 you can get a ring, though you’re free to contribute more to attain the stated $30,000 goal. However it appears to only work with Android powered phones at the moment.

[ MyRingGuard Funding Page ]

By David Ponce

There are now two “security flaws” with iDevices. The quotation marks are there because one is real, the other isn’t. First about the one that isn’t real. You can make calendar appointments, email and text through Siri on an iPhone 4S even when it’s locked. This is not a security flaw, it’s a feature. You don’t like that feature, you can turn it off through the settings. The entire point of Siri is to not have to access your phone while it’s locked! Anyway, now onto the real security flaw and this one is on the iPad 2. Uncovered by 9to5Mac.com, the flaw is explained in the video above. If you can’t access it for some reason, here’s how it works.

When on the lock screen press the standby button until you see the red slider for powering off the device. At that point, close the Smart Cover and take it off again. Press cancel… and you’re in! Now you don’t have complete access to the iPad 2, only the last screen before going on standby. If that happens to be the main menu, you can scroll applications but you can’t launch them. The problem is if you were in the middle of an email, or browsing something private, then that will show. This is a big issue.

Of course the word will eventually spread and the gap closed in a software update, but until then here’s a little fix. Go to Settings in the General tab and disable Smart Cover Unlocking. That should do it until a fix is out.

[ 9to5Mac ] VIA [ Techcrunch Gadgets ]

The idea that everybody recording everybody else makes for a safer, more accountable, world is taken one step further with remote video camera monitoring solutions like Stem Innovation’s new iZON (eyes on – get it?) security monitor. Using a clever rounded magnetic base that can be set on a flat surface or mounted to a wall, the iZON camera connects to your home or office’s wireless network providing you with a constant video feed of wherever you have the lens pointed.

You’ll need to download the accompanying Stem:Connect iOS app to monitor the feed from your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad, but you can also set it up to capture footage directly to a private YouTube account for perusing later. And besides just providing a window to your home or office while you’re away, the iZON’s software also allows it to serve as a remote tattletale, keeping track of suspicious sounds or movements and alerting you when something has been detected via push notifications. Available “soon” for $129.95.

[ iZON Remote Room Monitor ]

If you’re the paranoid type and have diligently worked to keep your personal details, including fingerprints, out of various government databases and the like, you might soon want to start wearing tin foil gloves as well. That’s because a company called Advanced Optical Systems has developed a device they call the AIRprint which can collect fingerprints from up to 6 1/2 feet away. It uses a pair of cameras that have just 1.3MP of resolution each, but adding polarized light into the mix apparently allows them to capture fingerprints that are detailed enough to be analyzed. MIT’s Technology Review explains how it works:

Slightly smaller than a square tissue box, AIRprint houses two 1.3 megapixel cameras and a source of polarized light. One camera receives horizontally polarized light, while the other receives vertically polarized light. When light hits a finger, the ridges of the fingerprint reflect one polarization of light, while the valleys reflect another. “That’s where the real kicker is, because if you look at an image without any polarization, you can kind of see fingerprints, but not really well,” says Burcham. By separating the vertical and the horizontal polarization, the device can overlap those images to produce an accurate fingerprint, which is fed to a computer for verification.

The current prototype has a few limitations in that it can only scan one finger at a time, it has to remain at a fixed distance in order to produce accurate results, and the processing time clocks in at around 4 seconds. But future versions will be able to handle multiple fingers at once, even if the person is in motion, in less than a second.

[ AIRprint Long Range Fingerprint Scanner ] VIA [ MIT Technology Review ]

You probably already have a paper shredder at the office for disposing of confidential documents, but since those often choke on something as small as a forgotten paperclip, you need something with a little more oomph if you hope to do the same with discarded hard drives. Like the IDEAL 0101 HDP from Duplo, which promises to pierce an unneeded old drive with up to 3 tons of force. PC Pro recently had one dropped off for testing, and they were kind enough to shoot a short video of the slow, agonizing carnage.

I wouldn’t go as far as to say the drive is left completely unreadable, I’m sure there are some data recovery facilities who could probably still pull a file or two off of it. But for the average office the damage it does is adequately fatal. I particularly like the ominous green light that comes on, the terrible cracking sounds and the fact that the now deceased drive is unceremoniously dropped into a bin below, like Sweeney Todd’s victims. At almost $3,300 (£1,995) it’s not the cheapest way to destroy a drive, but at the least there’s some perverse satisfaction to watching it do its thing.

[ IDEAL 0101 HDP ] VIA [ PC Pro ]