by Micheal Delamere | Aug 12, 2014 | Crime, Surveillance & Security
What Is a Bug-Out-Bag?
A bug-out-bag (or BOB) is a survival bag (usually a rucksack) that contains the most important items you will require to survive after a disaster. The idea is to have the bag packed and ready to go, so you can grab it quickly, get out the door and get long-gone should a disaster happen.
What Should Go In the Bug-Out-Bag?
When planning your bug-out-bag you need to consider the three things that are vital to survival: water, shelter, and fire (in that order). Food is important, but not vital. Remember the (simple) rule of three, you can survive: 3 minutes without air, 3 days without water, and three weeks without food. In an extreme survival situation, I would also add 3 hours without fire and shelter. Below is a list of items. (in no specific order) you should consider adding to your bug-out-bag. Where possible we have included direct links to high-quality recommended products. We either have experience with these products, or they come very highly recommended by others.
Read More
by Micheal Delamere | Jul 22, 2014 | Cyber Threats, Data Breaches
Cyber Security is now part of all our lives. “Patches” and other security updates arrive for phones, tablets, and PCs. Consultants remind us all not to open unknown files or plug unfamiliar memory sticks into our computers. The bosses of some Western firms throw away phones and laptops after they have been to China assuming they have been hacked. And yet, as our special report this week points out, digital walls keep on being breached. Last year more than 800m digital records, such as credit- and debit card details were pinched or lost, more than three times as many as in 2012. According to a recent estimate by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a think-tank, the cost to the global economy of cybercrime and online industrial espionage stands at $445 billion a year—about as much as the GDP of Austria.
Now a new phase in this contest is emerging: “the internet of things”. This involves embedding miniature computers in objects and connecting them to the internet using wireless technology. Cisco, a technology company, predicts that 50 billion connected devices will be in circulation by the end of the decade, up from 11 billion last year. Web-connected cars and smart appliances in homes are becoming more common, as are medical devices that can be monitored by doctors many miles from their patients. Tech companies are splurging cash: witness Google’s punt on driverless cars and the $3.2 billion it has spent buying Nest, a maker of smart thermostats.
Read More
by Micheal Delamere | Jul 20, 2014 | Surveillance & Security
MEXICO CITY — A vaunted plan to create a new security force, known as the Gendarmerie, has been watered down sharply in the past two years but is about to come to fruition.
Sometime in late July, the government of President Enrique Pena Nieto will put the 5,000-member Gendarmerie into action, National Security Commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubido said Friday.
The force will not be anywhere near the scope of what Pena Nieto outlined while running for president back in 2012. At that time, he suggested the new force might have up to 50,000 officers.
Since then, the government has steadily scaled back its vision of the force. By February 2013, a previous national security commissioner, Manuel Mondragon y Kalb, forecast 10,000 gendarmes. Four months after that, Interior Secretary Miguel Angel Osorio Chong announced the force might have only 5,000 people.
In a briefing with foreign reporters Friday, Rubido said Friday that gendarme recruits are getting final training in Colombia. Other nations that have provided assistance include Spain, France, and the United States.
by Micheal Delamere | Jul 10, 2014 | Surveillance & Security
Many mobile device users rely on simply deleting the private information on the storage card of the phone before selling it, in order to ensure that sensitive details are not passed to the new owner. However, items are stored persistently, and unless they are corrupted through overwrite action, they can be recovered.
Avast carried out an experiment with 20 Android phones purchased through eBay, and then tried to find out how much of the deleted information could be retrieved.
The results showed that a numerous amount of items belonging to the previous owners could be recovered by using a mainstream utility.
According to their report, they managed to bring back more than 40,000 photos, and learned about over 1,000 Google searches, more than 750 email and text messages and over 250 contact names and email addresses.
By putting together these bits and pieces, cybercriminals can learn important details about the potential victim and start targeted phishing campaigns with a high rate of success, which could bring them a pretty income.
Blackmailing activities can also be deployed by the criminals, as Avast says that more than 750 of the images retrieved were with women in various stages of nakedness.
Among their findings were the identities of four previous owners, which can also be leveraged to conduct nefarious activities against them.
by Micheal Delamere | Jul 10, 2014 | Surveillance & Security
Rising kidnappings, the discovery of mass graves, and security force shootouts with alleged Zetas members have created a security storm in the state of Veracruz in southeast Mexico, but what lies behind this streak of violence?
On July 2, authorities discovered a clandestine grave containing at least eight bodies in a southern municipality of Veracruz, reported Animal Politico. This followed the June discovery of 12 mass graves in which at least 31 bodies were unearthed.
Accompanying these chilling finds has been a series of shootouts in urban areas of the state, reported Proceso. On July 5, security forces killed six alleged criminals in the city of Veracruz, while three alleged members of the Zetas criminal organization were killed in nearby Orizaba. A day earlier, police killed four suspected Zetas near the coast, including the group’s alleged Veracruz plaza chief — the local leader in charge of that territory.
