Ruckman.net

Somehow I am reminded of a quote from the movie hackers which has a lot of George Orwell’s concepts from his book 1984.

“1984. Yeah right, Man, That’s a Typo. Orwell’s here now, he’s livin’ large.”

A recent white paper on Nokia Cellular phones not actually deleting your SMS messages after you delete them set off a few alarms in my head and some concerns for our privacy. You can read the paper HERE.

In short, if you connect to the phone and then pull a few .dat files off of it and then open them in a hex editor or use some Linux/Unix command line search tools you can recover all of your old deleted SMS messages. They are invisible to you and the phone, but they are there. This may even work on other phones. Makes me worry about my PPC6700 which has Windows Mobile 5 on it.

Why are they there? I’ll let you decide on that but I suggest you wait until you read a few more of my reminders below. You may have forgot some things in the past.

One thing you may have forgot is the index.dat files in windows. Unless you are a advanced user, like the advanced Nokia hacker, you cannot easily delete these files. These files are used by explorer as a database which runs as long as windows is active. It stores all of your search queries, web URLs, autocomplete, internet explorer history, cache, cookies, and recently opened files. These files remain even after a restart, and also after you clear any of your histories. They can be use to recover what you opened, what you looked up, and what you typed into forms even if you think it is erased. Why are these files there? Well, some people might say convenience and speed. But why does windows lock these files, and why is it so hard to delete them? Why are they hidden from the system? Everything is passed off as a feature to better help you live, but its true nature may be to invade your privacy.

What about the hidden code placed in Xerox printers not more than a couple years ago? You can find a article on it HERE. They found that color printers were adding a secret hidden code applied by adding yellow pixels around the page. They are so small the human eye can’t detect the anomaly. But computers or a special flashlight and magnifying glass can detect it and use it to track where the printout came from. It is a secret hidden barcode. The code was suppose to be a secret but they had no choice but to fess up after the code was discovered by the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation). It was discovered on printers from more than 10 years ago. That is a decade of use before it was discovered. What are they using now that we will find in another 10 years?

Not long ago, it was also discovered that Microsoft Windows had hidden special access codes built in to it for the NSA (National Security Agency). It was built into a Windows driver called ADVAPI.DLL which enables and controls a variety of security functions. There is a article on that HERE. Here is a small quote from that article:

“ADVAPI.DLL works closely with Microsoft Internet Explorer, but will only run cryptographic functions that the US governments allows Microsoft to export. That information is bad enough news, from a European point of view. Now, it turns out that ADVAPI will run special programmes inserted and controlled by NSA. As yet, no-one knows what these programmes are, or what they do.”

“Within the Microsoft organisation, access to Windows source code is said to be highly compartmentalized, making it easy for modifications to be inserted without the knowledge of even the respective product managers.”

This most likely means that the NSA can get access to your computer extremely easy invading your privacy and it also most likely means that your information although encrypted can be decrypted remotely before reaching its destination. Do you want your encrypted data read by anyone but who you want it read by? Another invasion of privacy? I think so!

I have also noticed a ton of traffic cameras appearing. Almost on every corner in our city there are traffic cameras pointing in all directions. I live in a slightly poor city (Toledo, OH) that should be doing things more important with its money. But the funds for these cameras came from somewhere.

You would think that these cameras are there to monitor traffic conditions, but I guarantee that they are not. I have seen them on intersections that get little to no traffic at all. So, traffic is not a problem at these intersections. Why are they there? They are there for surveillance on you and I. To watch us.

Does any of this ring a bell? Does the rantings of George Orwell come to mind? A book written and publish back in 1949 says it all. The date was just a typo.