Monday, August 09, 2021
New Report Today from ArsTechnica: "Glowworm Attack"
New “Glowworm attack” recovers audio from devices’ power LEDs
A new class of passive TEMPEST attack converts LED output into intelligible audio.
Researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev have demonstrated a novel way to spy on electronic conversations. A new paper released today outlines a novel passive form of the TEMPEST attack called Glowworm, which converts minute fluctuations in the intensity of power LEDs on speakers and USB hubs back into the audio signals that caused those fluctuations.
The Cyber@BGU team—consisting of Ben Nassi, Yaron Pirutin, Tomer Gator, Boris Zadov, and Professor Yuval Elovici—analyzed a broad array of widely used consumer devices including smart speakers, simple PC speakers, and USB hubs. The team found that the devices' power indicator LEDs were generally influenced perceptibly by audio signals fed through the attached speakers.
Although the fluctuations in LED signal strength generally aren't perceptible to the naked eye, they're strong enough to be read with a photodiode coupled to a simple optical telescope. The slight flickering of power LED output due to changes in voltage as the speakers consume electrical current are converted into an electrical signal by the photodiode; the electrical signal can then be run through a simple Analog/Digital Converter (ADC) and played back directly.
. . .
The strongest features of the Glowworm attack are its novelty and its passivity. Since the approach requires absolutely no active signaling, it would be immune to any sort of electronic countermeasure sweep. And for the moment, a potential target seems unlikely to either expect or deliberately defend against Glowworm—although that might change once the team's paper is presented later this year at the CCS 21 security conference.
The attack's complete passivity distinguishes it from similar approaches—a laser microphone can pick up audio from the vibrations on a window pane. But defenders can potentially spot the attack using smoke or vapor—particularly if they know the likely frequency ranges an attacker might use.
Glowworm requires no unexpected signal leakage or intrusion even while actively in use, unlike "The Thing." The Thing was a Soviet gift to the US Ambassador in Moscow, which both required "illumination" and broadcast a clear signal while illuminated. It was a carved wooden copy of the US Great Seal, and it contained a resonator that, if lit up with a radio signal at a certain frequency ("illuminating" it), would then broadcast a clear audio signal via radio. The actual device was completely passive; it worked a lot like modern RFID chips (the things that squawk when you leave the electronics store with purchases the clerk forgot to mark as purchased).
Accidental defense
Despite Glowworm's ability to spy on targets without revealing itself, it's not something most people will need to worry much about. Unlike the listening devices we mentioned in the section above, Glowworm doesn't interact with actual audio at all—only with a side effect of electronic devices that produce audio.
This means that, for example, a Glowworm attack used successfully to spy on a conference call would not capture the audio of those actually in the room—only of the remote participants whose voices are played over the conference room audio system
READ MORE > https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/new-glowworm-attack-recovers-audio-from-devices-power-leds/
Fearless TechDirt: Monday Morning Smack-Down on U.S. Press Coverage of Mega-Mergers and "Growth for Growth's Sake" Mindset
US Press Softsells The Real Scope Of AT&T's Merger Incompetence, Ensuring It Will Happen Again
from the not-with-a-bang-but-with-a-whimper dept
All told, AT&T lost 9.5 million customers in just over four years. Not exactly the kind of "domination" the company envisioned. Meanwhile, employees also paid the price. Despite billions in regulatory favors (killing net neutrality and broadband privacy rules) and a $42 billion tax break from the Trump administration for literally doing less than nothing, AT&T has also laid off more than 50,000 employees since 2017. The company also took an axe to several well-loved brands (Mad Magazine, DC's Vertigo Comic imprint) as its executives crashed and bounced their way around unfamiliar businesses.
Last week AT&T finally completed its spinoff of DirecTV. Kind of a sad little whimper to the company's original vision. Yet somehow, much of the sterile news coverage of the whole mess doesn't capture the real scale or scope of the failure.
> The New York Post, for example, can't be bothered to mention a single layoff or a cite a single AT&T misstep.
> The same thing over at CNET, where the final chapter in AT&T's ugly saga is framed in this detached, oddly clinical way, completely avoiding pointing out AT&T incompetence or the human wreckage these deals left behind. This is how spending $200 billion on mergers that resulted in massive layoffs and utter organizational chaos is described by the outlet:
"The DirecTV transaction is just one of two major media shake-ups at AT&T, which is in the process of restructuring itself after spending billions of dollars acquiring media companies in recent years."
This is kind of the status quo in American megamerger business coverage.
Many major outlets are simply terrified of offending advertisers or sources at these companies. So they'll happily parrot most pre-merger promises of "synergies," but when things go south (as they usually do in mindless telecom and media consolidation) they just... don't mention the real world human impact at all, then hope nobody notices. I tend to notice having covered telecom and media for 20 years, and witnessed more bungled, regulator rubber stamped megadeals than I care to remember.
A little side irony: the hundreds of billions of dollars (often taxpayer subsidized) AT&T and Verizon repeatedly throw at bungled mergers and doomed projects (crappy app stores, Go90, mobile payment platforms with the same names as terrorist organizations, news outlets that ban reporters from talking about important things) could have funded fiber to every home in America (a consistent, massive revenue source) several times over. That just gets forgotten as Congress bickers over whether $65 billion in broadband investment is wasteful.
Of course the press isn't the only one who will rabbit hole AT&T's failures. The regulators, politicians, judges, pundits, and think tankers that cheered on these deals will pretend none of this ever happened, and will never have to reckon with the real world harm of mindless consolidation and a "growth for growth's sake" mindset. In part because the US press generally won't require them to. If journalism is really about clearly explaining the truth to people, avoiding essential context because it might make your event donors, advertisers, and sources mad is... not that."
Filed Under: broadband, competition, content, mergers, spinoffs, telcos
Companies: at&t, directv, time warner
Quick Uptake from The Verge: Human-Made Consequences of Climate Change Are Here & Now...Nobody's Safe. It's Urgent and Getting Worse
New report reveals how the climate crisis is supercharging extreme weather
It’s the most comprehensive look yet at how humans have already transformed the planet
"We now have the clearest picture yet of how different the world is today as a result of human-driven climate change. The most comprehensive report to date on the physical science of climate change was published today by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
“Climate change is a problem that is here now. Nobody’s safe, and it’s getting worse faster,” Inger Andersen, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme said in a press conference today. “We must treat climate change as an immediate threat.”
Extreme events — from floods to heatwaves and droughts — have gotten worse, it says in a nutshell. And scientists are even more certain than they were before that humans’ greenhouse gas emissions, including carbon dioxide and methane (which makes up a majority of “natural gas”), are to blame.
“We’ve known for decades that the world is warming, but this report tells us that recent changes in the climate are widespread, rapid, intensifying, and unprecedented in thousands of years,” Ko Barrett, vice chair of the IPCC, said in an August 8th press briefing. “It is indisputable that human activities are causing climate change.”
The IPCC is considered a leading authority on climate science, and its new report has more than 230 authors from 66 countries around the world. Today’s findings are an update to a similar report in 2013, and they incorporate the body of research that’s been published in scientific journals since then.
Researchers have gotten a lot better at judging how much climate change affects individual weather events since 2013, which makes a big difference this time around. . .
“Extreme weather is occurring with more frequency across the entire planet,” Paola Andrea Arias Gómez, one of the authors of the IPCC report, said during yesterday’s press briefing. “We now can attribute that these changes are mainly driven by human activity.”
More bad news: without drastic action to curb the use of fossil fuels, things will get worse. . .
What does that mean for extreme weather?
Get ready for more “unprecedented” events — basically, things that have never happened before. The report authors outline five ways this is expected to happen in the future: extreme events will be even more extreme. They’ll be more frequent. There’s a greater chance of extreme events happening back to back or even different kinds of disasters happening at the same time. They’ll happen in places that surprise us. And the timing of these catastrophes will be unpredictable.
There are all sorts of other problems detailed in the new report, including vanishing ice, rising sea levels, and scary tipping points that could accelerate the pace of the climate crisis. There are also two more key reports expected to be published by the IPCC early next year: one that details how all of these changes to the planet will affect human life as we know it and another one that outlines potential solutions. Notably, today’s report is the only one that will be ready in time for the upcoming United Nations climate conference in November when world leaders are expected to discuss ratcheting up commitments to rein in their planet-heating pollution.
“This report is a reality check,” Valérie Masson-Delmotte, co-chair of the IPCC working group responsible for the report, said in a press release. “We now have a much clearer picture of the past, present and future climate, which is essential for understanding where we are headed, what can be done, and how we can prepare.”
Sunday, August 08, 2021
Surprising Take-Away After Some Face-to-Face Time with Mike Lindell
The MyPillow Guy Really Could Destroy Democracy
In the time I spent with Mike Lindell, I came to learn that he is affable, devout, philanthropic—and a clear threat to the nation.
Here is what you probably don’t imagine: an affable, self-made midwesterner, one of those goofy businessmen who makes his own infomercials. A recovered crack addict, no less, who laughs good-naturedly when jokes are made at his expense. A man who will talk to anyone willing to listen (and to many who aren’t). A philanthropist. A good boss. A patriot—or so he says—who may well be doing more damage to American democracy than anyone since Jefferson Davis.
I met Mike Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow, in the recording studio that occupies the basement of Steve Bannon’s stately Capitol Hill townhouse, a few blocks from the Supreme Court—the same Supreme Court that will, according to Lindell, decide “9–0” in favor of reinstating Donald Trump to the presidency sometime in August, or possibly September. I made it through the entirety of the Trump presidency without once having to meet Bannon but here he was, recording his War Room podcast with Lindell. . ."
READ MORE > Anne Applebaum writing in The Atlantic 29 July 2021
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Flash News: Ukraine Intercepts Russian Kh-59 Cruise Missile Using US VAMPIRE Air Defense System Mounted on Boat. Ukrainian forces have made ...
