Susanne Posel
Occupy Corporatism
Verizon cell phones have an integral flaw that allows hackers and government spooks to spy on customers. Find out another way they are turning your cell phone into a tracking device.
Security Firm: Hackers Can Break Into Your Verizon Phone
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Tom Ritter and Doug DePerry from iSEC Partners have discovered that the Verizon Wireless Femtocells have an integral flaw that allows hackers to spy on customers.
Femtocells are used to boost a cellphone signal when in poor reception areas, which make it easy for hackers to syphon text messages, photos and phone calls.
Although Verizon issued an update that fixed the problem, Ritter and DePerry claim that hackers can still get in; depending on their skill ability.
Ritter explained : “We see everything that your phone would send to a cell phone tower: phone calls, text messages, picture messages, mobile Web surfing.”
In 2012, Verizon filed with the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) to use femtocells “to increase system capacity.”
Ritter pointed out: “This is not about how the NSA would attack ordinary people. This is about how ordinary people would attack ordinary people,.”
Femtocells are the size of a wireless router and can be purchased at Best Buy.
Ritter stated : “Everything we did can be done with free software you can download online — nothing terribly special.”
Hackers, even ordinary ones, can be involved in government programs.
The National Security Agency (NSA) has a comprehensive program which also turns our public and private colleges into scouting grounds for a team of American grown hacker community.
The NSA is focusing on colleges and universities within the US. Four schools have already been singled out as official Centers of Academic Excellence in Cyber Operations.
The NSA wants an elite team of “computer geniuses” that are trained in hacking before they obtain their college degree. The students selected to train under this program will not be privy to the impact their work will have on cyber intelligence, military capabilities and law enforcement’s expansion of spying on Americans.
In April, The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released job listings for hackers and other “online professionals” that can assist the US government in protecting national security in cyberspace.
The cybersecurity internship program “is designed to give current students an opportunity to work alongside cyber leaders with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Interns are recruited from the nation’s top undergraduate and graduate programs to put their academic achievements and intellect to use.”
At the University of Maryland a degree in cybersecurity can easily be obtained which qualifies any American to be trained to serve the homeland in cyberspace. Many other colleges offer similar degrees accredited by DHS.
Collaborating with colleges across the nation, DHS has been hoping to hire more than 600 cybersecurity “pros” since 2012. Familiarity with digital coding is a must.
Janet Napolitano stated last year that children as young as kindergarteners should be trained to think of serving as the next generation of cybersecurity agents for the US government.
Napolitano explained that the DHS is “working to develop the next generation of leaders in cybersecurity while fostering an environment for talented staff to grow in this field. We are building strong cybersecurity career paths within the Department, and in partnership with other government agencies.”
Indeed, the advent of a “federal civilian workforce” that can perform on missions in cyberspace is being actively sought by DHS. The Task Force on Cyberskills requires “[establishing] a two-year, community-college-based program that identifies and trains large numbers of talented men and women to prepare them for mission-critical jobs in cybersecurity.”
Army, Navy and Air Force academies are training students in sophisticated cyberwarfare exercises in a concentrated focus on developing the next generation of “cyber-soldiers” to protect civilian computer networks, utilities corporations and domestic financial institutions.
Hackers can also be employed by governments to gather information about their enemies.
This network is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars for “ordinary” hackers to acquire digital data on governments and their intelligence agencies.
These hackers can be hired to point our security flaws with in the NSA or attack the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRG).
Howard Schmidt, former cybersecurity coordinator for the White House, stated: “Governments are starting to say, ‘In order to best protect my country, I need to find vulnerabilities in other countries.’ The problem is that we all fundamentally become less secure.”
