Saturday 14 June 2014

US files charges against Romanian hacker ‘Guccifer' for president hacks

gavel-keyboard
The US Department of Justice (DoJ) has indicted Romanian hacker "Guccifer" on numerous charges including allegations he stole sensitive data from two former US presidents.
Romanaian Marcel Lehel Lazar, 42, known in hacker circles as Guccifer, stands accused of hacking into the email and social media accounts of numerous high-profile victims.
The charges include attacks on family members of two former US presidents, a former US Cabinet member, a former member of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, and a former presidential adviser.
The indictment also accuses Lazar of impersonating a victim after compromising their account in July and August 2013. If found guilty of any of the charges, Lazar will face between two to 20 years in prison.
Lazar has already been found guilty of several cyber crimes in his native Romania. Romanian law enforcement arrested Lazar in January. The Romanian court sentenced him to four years in jail last week.
It is currently unclear if the US will seek Lazar's extradition and at the time of publishing the DoJ had not responded to V3's request for comment. However, Reuters has quoted an unnamed source as saying "the office had no knowledge of any US requests for Lehel's extradition".
Lazar is one of many hackers to have been arrested in recent months. The DoJ charged five Chinese officials with spying on US firms in May.
More recently, the Russian Interior Ministry announced it had stopped a hacker group responsible for a wave of cyber attacks locking Apple devices.

MIT can now track a heart rate through a wall with Wi-Fi signals


Parents could watch their baby’s heart rate from another room without using any kind of wearable device or special sleeping pad with a new development out of MIT that uses Wi-Fi signals to track the rise and fall of peoples’ chests.
Researchers at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory transmitted a low-power wireless signal through a wall and measured how long it took the signals to bounce back. Changes in the reflected signals allowed the team to measure movement, or even minute chest movements.
Based on a person’s chest rising and falling, the CSAIL group can determine their heart rate with 99 percent accuracy. The system can track up to four people at a time.
“It has traditionally been very difficult to capture such minute motions that occur at the rate of mere millimeters per second,” paper co-author Dina Katabi said in a release. “Being able to do so with a low-cost, accessible technology opens up the possibilities for people to be able to track their vital signs on their own.”
The CSAIL team has been perfecting its Wi-Fi tracking for a while now. It has also used radio signals for 3D tracking.
Along with baby monitoring, the system could also be used in search and rescue scenarios or to track your own health statistics.. The MIT team is now interested in expanding it so it can be used to track emotion, which is also linked to heart rate and breathing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3Atky2Jt_-4

A low-power signal is enough to track the rise and fall of the chests of up to four people, opening up applications like monitoring people during search and rescue operations or simply ensuring a baby is OK overnight.