Social Engineering Task #5

My task this week to get a fellow players license plate. I actually did take a picture of  Admiral Chartreuse a while ago and was just waiting for when i got the card for it. But the teacher suggested that i should get another picture of another player but i was being lazy and i had lost the first picture i went ahead and took a another picture of his car.

Confusion and Chaos

Several days ago I changed the displayed name I use of the blog to be the same as one of the other users. I did not actually change my name, but rather only the displayed name, made several posts with the displayed name, and then changed my name back to my original name on the blog. I knew that one person in class was to target me for social engineering, so I opted to reverse the value of the social engineering, by counter social engineering, and displaying their name on my posts, and to pit one blog subscriber against another in order to induce some low-level confusion. Once someone clicked on my profile they would see the proper account data, but see a false posting name.

I did this to obtain extra points for social engineering aspect of the assignment, and for no other reason. It is unlikely that any person in class could in any way be harmed or hurt by my doing this, and it was purely done for a short duration manipulation.

Social Engineering Task #5

So my task was to get Admiral Charteuse to give me his glasses and hold them. This time I did use a total different and pretty straightforward approach. I went for it and gave myself a 50/50 chance to succeed. I asked him if he wanted to either tell me the brand of his phone or let me hold his glasses. Well guess what? He gave me the brand of his phone, so yea I failed miserably. I didn't have time to think a lot because I picked up the paper late in class. I guess next time I will use a different/sneaker approach. Didn't learn much from this experience other than, if you want to achieve something, you need to be at least above 50% sure that you are going to achieve it. On the other hand, I spotted some other player (Can't remember his alias) sneaking up on me after class, or trying to keep a distance or something. We'll see if I am right.

Privacy, Apple, and the FBI

I assert that there is a certain profoundness in the 1890 article that is missing from the 1975 article. The Harvard Law Review article (Harvard Law Review, Volume 4, No. 5 (Dec. 15, 1890), pp. 193-220 dates from a period with telephones were not in wide spread usage, and certainly telephones of a cellular or wireless nature had not yet even been conceived of when the article was written. The 1890 article cites what Judge Cooley calls the right “to be left alone” in reference to “… devices threaten to make good the prediction that “what is whispered in the closet shall be proclaimed from the house-tops” and while the writer speaks not of the telephone, but rather the concern is of cameras and stethoscopes, and it is the issue of these technological intrusions by either private or government entities which articulates this 1890 article to the present case of the FBI engaging in what is called “security theater” to unlawfully coerce Apple Corporation into creating a tool to permit the FBI to snoop on Apple iPhone users.

There is already a mechanism by which the FBI can obtain the information that are seeking, but evidence collected using the present system is specifically disallowed in U.S. criminal cases, as the present system violates, and has violated for years the 4^th Amendment restrictions opined by the Supreme Court of the United States. Thus, the FBI now seeks a different tool to collect the information in a quasi legal manner, and is trying to bully Apple into designing this software for the FBI, so that what the FBI does utterly illegally, can now have the taint reduced, although not fully removed from such evidence.

Indeed, the FBI seeks a tool that can be used and deployed with zero oversight of the courts, and no accountability other that the politically appointed supervisory agents within the FBI itself. The FBI has a long, long history of disreputable acts with surveillance equipment and tools used to break codes, and perform forensics investigations into technical matters. It is not merely a situation of a small number of rogue agents, who decades ago committed a single acts, in a confusing situation, but rather it is a more a matter of widespread modern wrongdoing, by the greater body of agents, running roughshod, wantonly over the rights of “The People” in the name of national security.

The authors Warren and Brandeis gaze forward in time from 1890 to 2016, and they see the rising tide of technological exploitations, before either the offending agency, or even the technology abused had even been created.

Social Engineering Task #5

My task was to get a fellow player to let me copy their homework for this class. At the end of class as I was approaching the professor for some clarifications on a previous assignment I saw that Dr. Green had the labs open and was printing it out. I approached him and asked if he had started on the lab yet and told him that I was stuck on a few of those questions. He told me that he hasn't started the lab yet so I asked him if he could help me out with a few of the questions when he finished it. I caught up with him later on after we left the classroom to talk some more about the lab and exchange emails so he could help me. I think it was a pretty effective strategy since we both wanted to finished the lab. Not sure what the moral stakes in this are. I could use this to persuade someone to do something by making them think they are being helpful. I felt bad while doing this since it felt like I was abusing someone's kindness.

The right to Privacy

Privately is close to far range of darkness to light. Within the space of four walls no matter what work facility home and office grocery store or even MBTA transportation. We are born with the natural right of privacy. Upon having this birthright is issued with a certificate of a known birth and with eight digits on a card to id each individual as live stock. These vital statics are important to coexistence of our civilized society; while these two items initiate how a style of life is going to expand through accommodating everyday means. It’s a system set up to make you without you even knowing you where guided towards a direction. If you never obtained the material needed to exist then you would be a mere figment of an imagination. The system is set up to take a recorded account for actions of individual’s whom are born on this planet. Even those who go off the grid have already been accounted for and can be lost for years on lonesome means of a lost world that did exist with nomads venturing around the earth’s surface. “Gossip is no longer the resource of the idle but has become a trade of financial gain” (Samuel D. Warren & Louis D Bradeis p.196). Performing a search on the web has become a common market for search browsers who has made a gold mine of selling information to third-party advisers.  Web browsers are our new means of Webster’s dictionary, encyclopedia and immediate news information by the second which has left books for other means of use.

The Apple and DOJ war in regards to offering the FBI a backdoor to the popular device IPhone so it may offer leads to why the young married couple killed 14 people at a holiday party in San Bernardino, CA. If Apple brought the backdoor to the FBI to offer assistant towards the case it does not mean they will find what they are looking for in the phone. But by offering them the exempt to glance into the mind of a killers vision possibly on the IPhone of help give them leverage on why the killings occurred or prevent any new attacks. Justice is a moral character of each own but do I fully believe in the legal system yes. Do I feel by letting the FBI have an opportunity into the mind of a killer will help their cause of finding out why 14 people were killed yes. But the question is after this backdoor is open will it allow other back-doors to cracked open on a regular basis of whose moral ground of justice? Cause even though the justice system is set up to protect and serve. Sometimes it depends on what side of moral justice that justice itself is on.

Ethics Assignment # 4

In the article, The Right to Privacy, by Samuel D. Warren and Louis D. Brandeis, the importance of the privacy of an individual and his/her property (tangible and intangible) is discussed. If the authors of this article were alive today, they would one again render the fact on page 196 that “The press is overstepping in every direction the obvious bounds of propriety and of decency. Gossip is no longer the resource of the idle and of the vicious, but has become a trade.…It belittles by inverting the relative importance of things, thus dwarfing the thoughts and aspirations of a people.” The San Bernardino shooters murdered fourteen people, and injured twenty-one, but what about the other shooters that aren’t Muslim? White mass killers are never called “terrorists” by the media. The media never blew up the shooting at the Charleston church where Dylann Storm Roof killed nine African Americans, or Robert Lewis Dear who opened fire at a Planned Parenthood Clinic. They were not slandered like these two Muslim shooters are by the media. White male privilege is obvious, but it is not recognized. It is easier to see the faults of racial minorities and women than the prevalence of white males. Maybe because it is taught that it shouldn’t be acknowledged because there is guilt that comes with societal entitlement. How many shootings have been by white males and how many have been by racial minorities? Since 1982, “mentally ill” white men have committed 64% of the shootings. The media exploited the San Bernardino shooters, and their personal information because of their religion and the color of their skin. Television networks, journalists, Reuters employees, and neighbors were freely allowed to enter the home of the Malik family. The landlord broke open the lock on the door and let random people enter. Is that even legal?  The press is definitely overstepping decency. Family photos were rummaged on live TV. The media has exposed every single detail of their life on the news. FBI case with Apple is not even about trying to get to ISIS, it is about getting authority. Cracking into the information of this one phone is not going to make a difference because the shooters are still going to be dead and still “linked” to ISIS. Are we not already trying to stop ISIS? This information is not going to decide if we are still going to terminate ISIS. The media’s bigot bullsh*t and breeding hatred is not going to stop ISIS either. As stated in the article, “When personal gossip attains the dignity of print, and crowds the space available for matters of real interest to the community, what wonder that the ignorant and thoughtless mistake its relative importance…” on page 196. The FBI let everyone know what they were doing with the phone, what makes you think that they won’t let the data on the phone spread to the media? The FBI exposed every detail on the Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s life, as well as his family and deceased brother’s. The media is there to appease and captivate those that are curious and ignorant enough to buy into this. The FBI cannot be trusted.