MIT Develops 6th Sense Technology

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And now: The Manchurian Microchip

Every once in a while, an article comes along that’s way too interesting to just post a segment of. Please read this entire article and tell everyone you know!!

By Robert Eringer
DailyArtisan.com
Click here for the original article

Former FBI agent
Robert Eringer

NOTE: Robert Eringer (pictured at left) worked as a spy for the FBI for 10 years beginning in 1993. Robert was responsible for bringing American CIA Traitor Edward Lee Howard to capture which he wrote about in his book, Ruse. Robert now writes for the Santa Barbara News-Press  where the article below was first featured on the Manchurian Microchip.
The Santa Barbara News-Press provides access to subscribers only. We feel this article is newsworthy and should be seen by the masses. With that in mind, Mr. Eringer has given Daily Artisan his blessing to run his article.

The geniuses at Homeland Security who brought you hare-brained procedures at airports (which inconvenience travelers without snagging terrorists) have decreed that October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month. This means The Investigator — at the risk of compromising national insecurities — would be remiss not to make you aware of the hottest topic in U.S. counterintelligence circles: rogue microchips. This threat emanates from China (PRC) — and it is hugely significant.

The myth: Chinese intelligence services have concealed a microchip in every computer everywhere, programmed to “call home” if and when activated.

The reality: It may actually be true.

All computers on the market today — be they Dell, Toshiba, Sony, Apple or especially IBM — are assembled with components manufactured inside the PRC. Each component produced by the Chinese, according to a reliable source within the intelligence community, is secretly equipped with a hidden microchip that can be activated any time by China’s military intelligence services, the PLA.

“It is there, deep inside your computer, if they decide to call it up,” the security chief of a multinational corporation told The Investigator. “It is capable of providing Chinese intelligence with everything stored on your system — on everyone’s system — from e- mail to documents. I call it Call Home Technology. It doesn’t mean to say they’re sucking data from everyone’s computer today, it means the Chinese think ahead — and they now have the potential to do it when it suits their purposes.”

Discussed theoretically in high-tech security circles as “Trojan Horse on a Chip” or “The Manchurian Chip,” Call Home Technology came to light after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) launched a security program in December 2007 called Trust in Integrated Circuits. DARPA awarded almost $25 million in contracts to six companies and university research labs to test foreign-made microchips for hardware Trojans, back doors and kill switches — techie-speak for bugs and gremlins — with a view toward microchip verification.

Raytheon, a defense contractor, was granted almost half of these funds for hardware and software testing.

Its findings, which are classified, have apparently sent shockwaves through the counterintelligence community.

“It is the hottest topic concerning the FBI and the Pentagon,” a retired intelligence official told The Investigator. “They don’t know quite what to do about it. The Chinese have even been able to hack into the computer system that handles our Intercontinental Ballistic Missile system.”

Another senior intelligence source told The Investigator, “Our military is aware of this and has had to take some protective measures. The problem includes defective chips that don’t reach military specs — as well as probable Trojans.”

A little context: In 2005 the Lenovo Group in China paid $1.75 billion for IBM’s PC unit, even though that unit had lost $965 million the previous four years. Three congressmen, including the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, tried to block this sale because of national security concerns, to no avail. (The PRC embassy in Washington, D.C., maintains a large lobbying presence to influence congressmen and their staffs through direct contact.)

Image from bbc.co.uk

In June 2007, a Pentagon computer network utilized by the U.S. defense secretary’s office was hacked into — and traced directly back to the Chinese PLA.

A report presented to Congress late last year characterized PRC espionage as “the single greatest risk to the security of American technologies.” Almost simultaneously, Jonathan Evans, director- general of MI5, Britain’s domestic security and counterintelligence service, sent a confidential letter to CEOs and security chiefs at 300 UK companies to warn that they were under attack by “Chinese state organizations” whose purpose, said Mr. Evans, was to defeat their computer security systems and steal confidential commercial information.

The Chinese had specifically targeted Rolls-Royce and Shell Oil.

The key to unlocking computer secrets through rogue microchips is uncovering (or stealing) source codes, without which such microchips would be useless. This is why Chinese espionage is so heavily focused upon the U.S. computer industry.

Four main computer operating systems exist. Two of them, Unix and Linux, utilize open-source codes. Apple’s operating system is Unix- based.

Which leaves only Microsoft as the source code worth cracking. But in early 2004, Microsoft announced that its security had been breached and that its source code was “lost or stolen.”

“As technology evolves, each new program has a new source code,” a computer forensics expert told The Investigator. “So the Chinese would need ongoing access to new Microsoft source codes for maintaining their ability to activate any microchips they may have installed, along with the expertise to utilize new hardware technology.”

No surprise then that the FBI expends much of its counterintelligence resources these days on Chinese high-tech espionage within the United States. Timothy Bereznay, while still serving as assistant director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division, told USA Today, “Foreign collectors don’t wait until something is classified — they’re targeting it at the research and development stage.” Mr. Bereznay now heads Raytheon’s Intelligence and Information Systems division.

The PRC’s intelligence services use tourists, exchange students and trade show attendees to gather strategic data, mostly from open sources. They have also created over 3,500 front companies in the United States — including several based in Palo Alto to focus on computer technology.

Back in 2005, when the Chinese espionage problem was thought to be focused on military technology, then-FBI counterintelligence operations chief Dave Szady said, “I think the problem is huge, and it’s something we’re just getting our arms around.” Little did he know just how huge, as it currently applies to computer network security.

The FBI is reported to have arrested more than 25 Chinese nationals and Chinese-Americans on suspicion of conspiracy to commit espionage between 2004 and 2006. The Investigator endeavored to update this figure, but was told by FBI spokesman William Carter, “We do not track cases by ethnicity.”

Excuse us for asking. We may be losing secrets, but at least the dignity of our political correctness remains intact.

Oh, and Homeland Security snagged comic icon Jerry Lewis, 82, trying to board a plane in Las Vegas with a gun — no joke.

This Sunday on 60 Minutes: A look into mind-controlled technology

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Conceptual images of the new touch screen Apple “Brick” tablet

I was browsing around Digg today and came across some artistic interpretations of what the new Apple “Brick” (working title) will look like (from CultOfMac.com). I’m very impressed! Check it out: Looks pretty sweet! Do you think we can expect these out by the holiday season?

Image from CultOfMac.com

How Grandma Sees the Remote…

Facebook tops MySpace in unique visitors

By Kevin Allison
Financial Times – FT.com
June 22, 2008
Click here for the original article

Facebook, the fast-growing social network, has taken a significant lead over MySpace in visitor numbers for the first time, according to one popular measure of internet traffic.

Facebook attracted more than 123m unique visitors in May, an increase of 162 per cent over the same period last year according to ComScore, a company that monitors websites. That compared with 114.6m unique visitors at MySpace, Facebook’s leading rival, whose traffic grew just 5 per cent during the same period, ComScore said.

The findings mark the first time that Facebook, launched in 2004, has taken a significant lead in unique visitors, after ComScore’s April traffic figures showed the rivals in a virtual tie. They come at a time of change inside Facebook, as the one-time upstart attempts to transform itself into a leading media company. Several members of the original executive team have left the company in recent weeks.

The departures include Adam D’Angelo, chief technology officer and personal confidant of Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s 23-year-old founder and chief executive; and Matt Cohler, Facebook’s first official hire, who was in charge of product development.

Mr Zuckerberg has appointed Sheryl Sandberg as his second-in-command. Ms Sandberg, who helped develop Google’s lucrative advertising business, is expected to play a crucial role in the development of Facebook’s revenue model.

The management changes come as the company is under pressure to justify the $15bn valuation it drew last year in an investment round with Microsoft.

Facebook is a private company and does not disclose official sales or profit figures. But people close to the company have claimed that it made $150m in sales last year. That figure is expected to grow to $300m-$350m this year as it attempts to broaden its revenue stream.

Counting unique visitors is just one way to measure the website popularity. Many sites, including Facebook, measure audience engagement by tracking the number of repeat, or “active” users of their sites, leaving out those who visit a site once and never return. MySpace claims to have about 110m active users, Facebook about 80m.

Ubuntu: Bill Gates Loves It!

McCain doesn’t know how to use a computer?

Video at the Huffington Post…

Awesome website helps you find your lost cell phone — PhoneMyPhone.com

By Adam Pash
Lifehacker.com
May 7, 2008
Click here for the original story
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Misplaced your cell phone around the house and don’t have another phone on hand to call it up to locate it? Give your number to web site PhoneMyPhone and they’ll instantly ring you up. Aside from instant calling to locate your phone, PhoneMyPhone will also schedule phone calls at specific times, similar to previously mentioned Popularity Dialer, to get you out of that boring meeting or awful date if you need it. As for sounding off the ring when you misplace your phone—it may not get a pizza to your door like Google Maps used to, but the easy-to-remember PhoneMyPhone should ensure a quick recovery from the recesses of your couch cushions.

What If Every Child Had A Laptop?

Lesley Stahl Reports On The Dream And The Difficulties Of Getting A Computer To Every Child

By Lesley Stahl
60 Minutes
(CBS) This segment was originally broadcast on May 20, 2007.
It was updated on Nov. 30, 2007.
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There’s a new laptop on the market that’s being snapped up by parents looking for a unique holiday gift for their kids. It’s only $200, and it isn’t like any computer you’ve ever seen. But there’s a catch: in order to buy one for your child, you also have to buy one for a child in a poor country.

And that was the whole point behind these new laptops: to get them to kids in the most impoverished places, so they can become educated and part of the modern world.

As correspondent Lesley Stahl first reported last spring, the laptop, called the XO, was the brainchild of Nicholas Negroponte, a professor at MIT.

Two years ago he founded a non-profit organization called “One Laptop Per Child,” through which he recruited a cadre of geeks to design a low-cost computer specifically for poor children.

Negroponte had a dream, a big one: that every child on the planet have a laptop, and along with it, the possibility of a better future.

Negroponte’s dream was born in Cambodia.

Click here for the full video segment