Tag: security

Fingerprinting Phone Calls

yet another application for white noise analysis, this time to serve as a caller / route id for calls.

The tool is called PinDr0p, and works by analysing the various characteristic noise artifacts left in audio by the different types of voice network — cellular, VoIP etc. For instance, packet loss leaves tiny gaps in audio signals, too brief for the human ear to detect, but quite perceptible to the PinDr0p algorithms. Vishers and others wishing to avoid giving away the origin of a call will often route a call through multiple different network types. This system can be used to differentiate telephone calls from your bank from telephone calls from someone in Nigeria pretending to be from your bank.

Electrical frequency analysis

a forensic technique for validating audio recordings by comparing frequency changes in background mains hum in the recording with long-term high-precision historical records of mains frequency changes from a database. In effect the mains hum signal is treated as if it was a time-dependent digital watermark that can be used to identify the time at which the recording was created, and to help detect any edits in the sound recording.

Assange Profile

well-done profile

A number of commentators had wondered whether the video’s title was manipulative. “In hindsight, should we have called it ‘Permission to Engage’ rather than ‘Collateral Murder’?. I’m still not sure.” He was annoyed by Gates’s comment on the film: “‘There is no before and no after.’ Well, at least there is now a middle, which is a vast improvement.” Then Assange leaned forward and, in a whisper, began to talk about a leak, code-named Project G, that he is developing in another secret location. He promised that it would be news, and I saw in him the same mixture of seriousness and amusement, devilishness and intensity that he had displayed in the Bunker. “If it feels a little bit like we’re amateurs, it is because we are. Everyone is an amateur in this business.”

Al-Qaida Scammed

How, exactly, do you run a nuclear scam? It was a lucrative line of business for criminal groups in the former Soviet Union. “Sometimes they’re criminal gangs that have information that some material had come out from the, let’s say, the area of the former Soviet Union or some stockpiles and they will try to provide that material to other groups to sell. A lot of it is scam, you know, red mercury, whatever else.”

Russian mobsters scamming al-qaida repeatedly. lololol

Carriers are obsolete

Every single change in technology in the past 50 years has had “Stop building carriers!” written all over it. And nobody in the navy brass paid any attention. Let me repeat the key sentence here: Ships currently have no defense against a ballistic missile attack.

2024-01-22: Here we are, 15 years later, and nothing has changed. Like NASA, congress has focused more on spreading the work around than making it competitive

These suggestions seek to maximize competition between shipbuilders and suppliers. Single-use ships and shorter service lives will increase demand for new hulls and stimulate new supply. Ships with loosely coupled systems and modular components are easier for shipyards to integrate (and repair during a war). Testing components early and often makes it easier to qualify new suppliers. Iterative ship classes reduce program risk and the need for risk-tolerant contract structures like cost plus. These changes also make it easier to ramp up production during war.

Features like void spaces for torpedo and mine protection can only work if these competition measures increase productivity. Steel and air may be cheap, but labor is not.

Letting yards fail may be the most politically sensitive change. It will be a disaster if the Navy decides to toughen up on yards but waits until the ship is delivered in poor condition to lay the hammer down. The earlier Naval officers are in the yards and shops identifying problems, the less painful changes for the shipyard will be. Companies can fire bad managers or exit the business while some value remains.

The bottom line is getting officers out of their offices. The rest will follow.