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By Dr. Mercola Big Brother is watching. No kidding. And the warning is coming from none other than Google, which says government spies may be spying on you. Some believe the Google announcement may be related to the recent discovery of the data-mining virus named "Flame." In a June 3 New York Times article, Andrew Kramer and Nicole Perlroth write1: "When Eugene Kaspersky, the founder of Europe's largest antivirus company, discovered the Flame virus that is afflicting computers in Iran and the Middle East, he recognized it as a technologically sophisticated virus that only a government could create. He also recognized that the virus, which he compares to the Stuxnet virus built by programmers employed by the United States and Israel, adds weight to his warnings of the grave dangers posed by governments that manufacture and release viruses on the internet. "Cyberweapons are the most dangerous innovation of this century," he told a gathering of technology company executives... While the United States and Israel are using the weapons to slow the nuclear bomb-making abilities of Iran, they could also be used to disrupt power grids and financial systems or even wreak havoc with military defenses." Mr. Kaspersky claims he was called in to investigate the new virus on behalf of the International Telecommunication Union, an agency of the United Nations. The virus was allegedly erasing files on computers belonging to the Iranian oil ministry. What makes the Flame virus a major potential concern for common citizens of the world is the fact that it's the first virus found with the ability to spread wirelessly by attaching itself to Bluetooth-enabled devices. Once there, it can not only trace and steal information stored on those devices; according to Kramer and Perlroth the program also contains a "microbe" command that can activate any microphone within the device, record whatever is going on at the timepresumably whether you're actually using the device or notand transmit audio files back to the attacker. This, clearly, has huge privacy implications were it to be deployed against civilian populations.
InformationWeek Security recently offered the following advice3:"... Microsoft has been working quickly to patch the certificate bug exploited by Flame. Notably, Microsoft released an update Friday [June 8] for Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) 3.0 Service Pack 2 (SP2), which according to the release notes "strengthens the WSUS communication channels ... [by] trusting only files that are issued by the Microsoft Update certification authority." Microsoft is also set to issue an update Tuesday--as part of its monthly Patch Tuesday--that will further update all supported versions of Windows to block Flame. Security experts are recommending that all users install the update as soon as possible, since attackers will likely attempt to use the certificate vulnerability before it becomes widely patched. "Apply the certificate patch released a week ago today if you haven't done so already," said SANS Institute chief research officer Johannes B. Ullrich in a blog post. "This way, no patch signed by the bad certificate should be accepted tomorrow. Patch Tuesday is one of the best dates to launch such an attack, as you do expect patches anyway." When installing the update, however, do so preferably only if using a trusted environment. "Avoid patches while 'on the road.' Apply them in your home [or] work network whenever possible," said Ullrich. "This doesn't eliminate the chance of a 'man in the middle' (MitM) attack, but it reduces the likelihood." For users who must update while on the road, perhaps because they travel frequently, always use a VPN connection back to the corporate network, said Ullrich, since hotel networks can be malware and attack hotbeds. "Hotel networks and public hotspots frequently use badly configured HTTP proxies that can be compromised and many users expect bad SSL certificates-because of ongoing MitM attacks," he said."
And code-breaking is crucial, because much of the data that the center will handlefinancial information, stock transactions, business deals, foreign military and diplomatic secrets, legal documents, confidential personal communicationswill be heavily encrypted. According to another top official also involved with the program, the NSA made an enormous breakthrough several years ago in its ability to cryptanalyze, or break, unfathomably complex encryption systems employed by not only governments around the world but also many average computer users in the US. The upshot, according to this official: "Everybody's a target; everybody with communication is a target."[Emphasis mine] That about says it all. And for those of you still under the mistaken belief that the US government does not have the authority to spy on its citizens, consider the following: "... [The NSA] has undergone the largest building boom in its history, including installing secret electronic monitoring rooms in major US telecom facilities. Controlled by the NSA, these highly secured spaces are where the agency taps into the US communications networks, a practice that came to light during the Bush years but was never acknowledged by the agency. The broad outlines of the so-called warrantless-wiretapping program have long been exposed... In the wake of the program's exposure, Congress passed the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which largely made the practices legal. Telecoms that had agreed to participate in the illegal activity were granted immunity from prosecution and lawsuits. What wasn't revealed until now, however, was the enormity of this ongoing domestic spying program. For the first time, a former NSA official has gone on the record to describe the program, codenamed Stellar Wind, in detail... As chief and one of the two cofounders of the agency's Signals Intelligence Automation Research Center, [William] Binney and his team designed much of the infrastructure that's still likely used to intercept international and foreign communications. He explains that the agency could have installed its tapping gear at the nation's cable landing stationsthe more than two dozen sites on the periphery of the US where fiber-optic cables come ashore. If it had taken that route, the NSA would have been able to limit its eavesdropping to just international communications, which at the time was all that was allowed under US law. Instead it chose to put the wiretapping rooms at key junction points throughout the country... thus gaining access to not just international communications but also to most of the domestic traffic flowing through the US. The network of intercept stations goes far beyond the single room in an AT&T building in San Francisco exposed by a whistle-blower in 2006. "I think there's 10 to 20 of them," Binney says... The eavesdropping on Americans doesn't stop at the telecom switches. To capture satellite communications in and out of the US, the agency also monitors AT&T's powerful earth stations... ... Binney suggested a system for monitoring people's communications according to how closely they are connected to an initial target. The further away from the targetsay you're just an acquaintance of a friend of the targetthe less the surveillance. But the agency rejected the idea, and, given the massive new storage facility in Utah, Binney suspects that it now simply collects everything..." To learn more, I highly recommend reading the featured Wired article5 in its entirety. It's a fascinating read, but it will not likely make you sleep better at night. The full article is available on their website and is free to view.
Beginning the first week of June, Google will warn you every time it picks up activity on your computer account that looks suspiciously like someone trying to monitor your computer activities. Google won't say how it figured out that state-sponsored attackers may be attempting to compromise your account or computer. But it's promised to let you know if it thinks Big Brother is tuned in to what you're doing. As recently reported on the New York Times' blog6, the warning will pop up at the top of your Gmail inbox, Google home page, or Chrome browser, stating: "Warning: We believe state-sponsored attackers may be attempting to compromise your account or computer." According to a Google blog post by Eric Grosse, VP of Security Engineering at Google7: "If you see this warning it does not necessarily mean that your account has been hijacked. It just means that we believe you may be a target, of phishing or malware for example, and that you should take immediate steps to secure your account. Here are some things you should do immediately: create a unique password that has a good mix of capital and lowercase letters, as well punctuation marks and numbers; enable 2-step verification as additional security; and update your browser, operating system, plugins, and document editors. Attackers often send links to fake sign-in pages to try to steal your password, so be careful about where you sign in to Google and look for https://accounts.google.com/ in your browser bar. These warnings are not being shown because Google's internal systems have been compromised or because of a particular attack."
financially-driven industry agendas that have absolutely nothing to do with optimizing health and longevity.