Monthly Archives October 2014

Hard Drive Firmware Implant IRATEMONK

Hard Drive Firmware Implant IRATEMONK

10/26/2014 | By: Preston Hood | 1 Comment

Here is yet another one of the NSA’s firmware implants which can be used to replace your current hard drive’s firmware. This allows the NSA to gain complete control of your hard drive and through the use of other exploits they would be able to gain complete access to your system.   What It Is IRATEMONK is a firmware implant that replaces your current hard drive’s firmware and is used as a backdoor into your system. IRATEMONK gains execution through the Master Boot Record (MBR) substitution. IRATEMONK supports the following hard drive vendors: Western Digital, Seagate, Maxtor, and Samsung. IRATEMONK
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Categories: Information Technology, IT Security, and Preston Hood.
Tags: Bitlocker, DEITYBOUNCE, dm-crypt, EXT3, FAT, IRATEMONK, Master Boot Record, MBR, NSA, NSA Devices, NTFS, TrueCrypt, and UFS.

2703(d) Orders

10/20/2014 | By: Preston Hood | No Comments

This is my first article that deals with the legal side of things in the IT security world. To start off I would first like to state that I am not a lawyer, I am not your lawyer, and I am certainly not the US governments’ lawyer. With that said some of the research that I do before I write articles like this one contain a lot of legal documentation that, in some ways, is a bit confusing to me. If a lawyer or someone who happens to have a lot of knowledge in law happens to be reading this
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Categories: Information Technology, Legal, and Preston Hood.
Tags: 2703(d), 2703(d) Orders, Court Order, Court Orders, Jacob Appelbaum, and Law.
Cyberbullying – In Memory Of Amanda Todd

Cyberbullying – In Memory Of Amanda Todd

10/10/2014 | By: Preston Hood | 1 Comment

This article is going to be a bit different than my usual articles. Today I am going to be writing about cyberbullying. Let me just start by saying I don’t think that cyberbullying is a very big problem in the “real world” because in the “real world” there are so many other problems that need to be solved. In the “real world” there are big problems such as Governments, Mass Surveillance, and Terrorism to worry about, not to mention all of the other (smaller) problems and hardships such as making enough money to pay next month’s mortgage. With that said
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Categories: Information Technology, Preston Hood, and Social Issues.
Tags: Amanda Todd, Amanda Todd Legacy, Amanda Todd Legacy Society, Cyberbullying, IT Bullying, and Tyler Clementi.
Dell PowerEdge Servers BIOS Exploit DEITYBOUNCE

Dell PowerEdge Servers BIOS Exploit DEITYBOUNCE

10/06/2014 | By: Preston Hood | No Comments

DEITYBOUNCE is a software exploit that exploits the BIOS on Dell PowerEdge servers, utilizing System Management Mode (SMM) to gain periodic execution while the Operating System loads.   What It Is As I said above DEITYBOUNCE is a software exploit that exploits the BIOS on Dell PowerEdge servers. To re-flash the BIOS on a target machine the NSA uses ARKSTREAM. ARKSTREAM is used to implant DEITYBOUNCE and its payload or the implant installer. Once DEITYBOUNCE has been implanted onto the target system its frequency of execution (dropping the payload) is configurable and occurs when the system is powered on. It
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Categories: Information Technology, IT Security, and Preston Hood.
Tags: ARKSTREAM, BIOS, DEITYBOUNCE, Dell, Dell PowerEdge Servers, Dell Servers, JETPLOW, NSA, NSA Devices, and RAID.