The Balkan Chronicle

From hackers to security experts, the Balkan IT sector is booming

After hacking the Pentagon, NASA and Britain's Royal Navy for fun, TinKode got a real job as a computer security expert for a Romanian cyber safety consultancy.

TinKode was the name used by Romanian Razvan Cernaianu when he revealed security holes in government and corporate systems across the world, earning him a two-year suspended prison sentence.

US laser scanner to instantly know everything about you from 50 meters

The U.S. government is close to completing a laser-based molecular scanner that will know "everything" about your body, Gizmodo.com reported.

The scanner will be able to detect traces of drugs or gunpowder on a person's clothing, what the scanned people had for breakfast and even their levels of adrenaline from a distance of 50 meters.

Growth as the main theme of the SE European regional telematics conference

The telematics industry, with its rapid growth, is a bright exception in this time of economic crisis in Europe. How to keep the sales of telematics systems for vehicle monitoring and fleet management at a high level and use development potentials in Southeast Europe were key themes of the second regional event Telematics Conference, which was held in Ljubljana, Slovenia. 

One after the other presentations showed how the number of vehicles equipped with tracking devices continues to grow, as well as "machine-to-machine" communications which are expected to surpass communication among people by 2020. Visitors were able to learn about more applications of the telemetic systems in various industires. For example there are new trends in vehicle insurance known as  'pay as you drive', where data sent by the vehicle is analyzed by insurance companies and customers are then charged according to individual driving habits. Others spoke about further growth of mapping devices which utilize data sent by the customers, which is also used fro dynamic navigation which helps avoid traffic congestion. All of this and more is to show that future is much about the applications of telemtic systems and 'machine-to-machine' communication.

How deep packet inspection works

The phrase "deep packet inspection" has been cropping up quite a bit, of late, particularly with regard to the UK government's proposed web surveillance plans. But what is it, how does it work, and why should you worry about it?

In a nutshell, deep packet inspection is a type of data processing that looks in detail at the contents of the data being sent, and re-routes it accordingly. It can be used for perfectly innocuous reasons, like making sure that a feed of data is supplying content in the right format, or is free of viruses. Or it can be used for more nefarious motives, like eavesdropping and censorship. Between those two extremes is a grey area of datamining and privacy violation, and it's these aspects that are raising hackles in some parts of the web.

Is your office computer mouse spying on you?

Employers are taking to gadgets like the spy mouse to monitor their staff and even listen in on their conversations.

A report in The Sunday Times said there is a healthy market for these spyware devices, according to sellers.

Google faces fresh privacy investigations in Europe and U.S.

Google is to face new investigations in both America and the EU over using hidden computer code to violate iPhone users' privacy settings.

The search giant is alleged to have 'tricked' the web browser in iPhone, iPad and PC into sending information to Google.

The information was used to build up advertising profiles on Google account users, and caused outrage among privacy groups.

Google has faced increasing public hostility over its use of private data this year after its new 'privacy policy' allowed wholesale sharing of people's information.

12 million Apple codes stolen from FBI?

The FBI says there is "no evidence" that a hacker group gained access to 12 million identifying codes for Apple devices via an FBI agent's laptop.

But the AntiSec, a hacker group, posted a file on the internet on Monday that it said contained more than one million of Apple's so-called UDID codes.

Ongoing Middle East Cyber War: Hacker attacks websites of Israeli bourse, El Al

The websites of Israeli national carrier El Al and the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange were both offline on Monday morning just hours after they were reportedly threatened by a Saudi hacker.

Both sites had a temporary message posted which said they had been taken down for "maintenance."

Iran to unplug from Web to escape West’s ‘Internet monopoly’

Tehran plans to remove its key ministries and state bodies from the Internet next month, calling the worldwide web “untrustworthy.” The action is the first phase in a planned Iranian project to replace the Internet with a domestic intranet.

The country’s key ministries will be unplugged from the global network as early as September, in a move Tehran said is aimed at protecting sensitive intelligence.

Iran’s Ministry of Communications and Technology announced earlier this year that it would launch a domestic intranet to replace the Web. The system will reportedly be operational in 18 months.

German Hackers Are Building a DIY Space Program to Put Their Own Uncensored Internet into Space

There's more than one way to stick it to The Man. There's civil disobedience, subversive propaganda, political art, outright violent revolt--each possessing its own degree of difficulty and consequence. In a decidedly 21st-century twist, team of German hackers bent on fighting the powers that be has chosen a rather ambitious means of taking the power back: building a hacker-owned and -operated space program, complete with a constellation of communications satellites beaming uncensored Internet to users on the ground.