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For more than a year, UCSniff has provided everything a hacker needs to plug a laptop into a network and within seconds begin intercepting VoIP transmissions. But until now, the program has allowed eavesdroppers to reassemble the conversations only after they were concluded, a limitation that was far from the elite bugging capabilities shown in Mission Impossible and other spy thrillers.

“As the private call is in progress, we can see and hear what is happening,” said Jason Ostrom, a developer of UCSniff and director of Viper Labs, the research arm of security firm Sipera Systems. “There’s real-time violation of confidentiality.”

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With the proliferation of iPhones and other smartphones, plenty of businesses and individuals have sought to save money on roaming charges by routing calls over the internet instead of over carrier networks. Adam Boone, a vice president at Sipera, said one large, unnamed client logs more than 1 million minutes per month in such VoIP calls.

The problem, he added, is that many of the iPhone apps for VoIP calls don’t provide encryption capabilities, making the conversations ripe for eavesdropping. (Sipera plans to unveil a new product to protect such users next week).

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It turns any laptop into a man-in-the-middle node. A VLAN hopper then traverses the virtual local area network until it accesses the part that carries VoIP calls. UCSniff automatically injects spoofed address resolution protocol packets into the network, allowing all voice and video traffic to be routed to the laptop.

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The EU’s new foreign minister will have sweeping powers to conduct foreign policy, propose his own budget and name his own staff independently of other EU institutions, according to the latest EU presidency blueprint.

The 10-page Swedish report – obtained by EUobserver – was submitted to EU ambassadors on Thursday (22 October) and represents a synthesis of Stockholm’s consultations with the other 26 EU capitals in recent weeks.

The post of EU foreign minister or “high representative” for foreign affairs and a new EU diplomatic corps or “European External Action Service” (EEAS) are to be created following the entry into life of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty.

The Swedish paper envisages a minister in charge of a unique “sui generis” institution with its own section in the EU budget alongside the European Commission, the EU parliament and the Council, the Brussels-based secretariat which prepares regular meetings of EU ministers.

The foreign minister is to propose how much money he needs each year, authorise spending, appoint his own staff and take charge of the European Commission’s existing delegations across the world.

I’m so glad to see how well the European Union is doing with transparency, nepotism, accountability, tight spending policies and corruption.

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An amendment that would prevent the government from working with contractors who denied victims of assault the right to bring their case to court is in danger of being watered down or stripped entirely from a larger defense appropriations bill.

Inouye’s office, sources say, has been lobbied by defense contractors adamant that the language of the Franken amendment would leave them overly exposed to lawsuits and at constant risk of having contracts dry up. The Senate is considering taking out a provision known as the Title VII claim, which (if removed) would allow victims of assault or rape to bring suit against the individual perpetrator but not the contractor who employed him or her.

“The defense contractors have been storming his office,” said a source with knowledge of the situation. “Inouye either will get the amendment taken out altogether, or water it down significantly. If they water it down, they will take out the Title VII claims. This means that in discrimination cases, they will still force you into a secret forced arbitration on KBR’s (or other contractors’) own terms — with your chances of prevailing practically zero. The House seems to be very supportive of the original Franken amendment and all in line, but their hands are tied since it originated in the Senate. And since Inouye runs the show on this bill, he can easily take it out to get Republicans and the defense contractors off his back, which looks increasingly likely.”

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/22/frankens-anti-rape-amendm_n_329896.html

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• JP Morgan’s “cash position” was analyzed by a writer who published on SCRIBD, which showed that actual cash held has deteriorated radically.  By more than half in the last year.  The deterioration is continuing, not slowing.

• I am hearing repeated anecdotes from multiple areas that foreclosed property held by banks with multiple full-price offers that include a financing requirement are being sold instead to people with actual cash at radical reductions from that price.  This implies that these financing contingencies are regarded as not only potentially no good but factually no good, as if the banks know for a fact that the credit pipeline will (not might), within weeks or months (in the time required to close), disappear.  There is no other rational explanation for this behavior.

• Citibank’s credit-card terms change implies a willingness to accept and even provoke a complete and intentional destruction of their credit card business as a very high probability outcome, given that nobody in their right mind will accept a 30% interest rate who has an alternative.  The obvious implication is that only those who can’t transfer balances out will remain and if your credit is that impaired there’s a good chance you will default – either intentionally or otherwise.  This too implies foreknowledge of a near-complete impending freeze in the credit markets.

• The change in terms on credit accounts is NOT confined to Citibank.  I have received a fax from a customer of Infibank with substantially identical terms, in which both the standard and penalty rate was adjusted to 29.99%.  This strongly implies that whatever Citibank smells the problem is not confined to them.

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C.R. England, a nationwide trucking company, needed an administrative assistant for its bustling driver training school here. Responsibilities included data entry, assembling paperwork and making copies.

It was a bona-fide opening at a decent wage, making it the rarest of commodities here in northwest Indiana, where steel industry layoffs have helped drive unemployment to about 10 percent.

When Stacey Ross, C. R. England’s head of corporate recruiting, arrived at her desk at the company’s Salt Lake City headquarters the next Monday, she found about 300 applications in the company’s e-mail inbox. And the fax machine had spit out an inch-and-a-half thick stack of résumés before running out of paper. By the time she pulled the posting off Careerbuilder.com later in the day, she guessed nearly 500 people had applied for the $13-an-hour job. “It was just shocking,” she said. “I had never seen anything so big.”

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Among them was a former I.B.M. business analyst with 18 years experience; a former director of human resources; and someone with a master’s degree and 12 years at Deloitte & Touche, the accounting firm.

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Since whites set at 155 degrees and yolks set at 158, you have a tolerance of three degrees to work with, which translates to about 15 seconds in either direction. Use a timer!

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Lu Guang, a freelance photographer, took disturbing photos of the effects of pollution in China.
Birth defects and other problems affect heavily polluted villages, leading some to be called “cancer villages”. Industrial polluters are often protected by a lack of transparency. Zhang Jingjing, one of the few environmental lawyers in China, has difficulty encouraging pollution victims to exercise their rights. Hu Jingtao has promised to “curb the rise in CO2 emissions”, but whether or not any actual change has been enacted is yet to be seen.

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Unfortunately for Republicans and fortunately for Roger Ailes, a feedback loop has been created: As disaffected conservatives turn increasingly to Fox News, Fox News caters its programming to keep them coming back, turning, for instance, the Tea Parties into a daylong televised festival of rage. But given Fox’s well-earned brand identification with the Republican Party, and vice versa, that programming serves to promote a view of Republicans as angry white people who hate Puerto Rican judges. Which turns off independent voters, which further isolates the diehard rejectionist wing of the party, which increases the importance of Fox News in their lives as a reassuring voice telling them to be strong in the face of the barbarian hordes—or, as Glenn Beck puts it, “We surround them.”

The more viewers Fox attracts, the more voters the GOP repels. And the more voters the GOP repels, the more viewers Fox attracts. The most important part of the dynamic is that Fox News has no interest in doing anything other than attracting viewers. It will continue to ride this wave of anger and resentment irrespective of what impact it has on the Republican Party until it stops making them money. And yes, Barack Obama’s popularity is dropping, and the bloom is beginning to come off the rose. But the GOP hasn’t seen a concomitant rise in popularity: Just yesterday it hit the lowest approval rating it has seen in a quarter century, according to the New York Times.

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You know how in every movie, there’s a moment where the cast basically stops and says, okay, let me break it down for you: He’s actually her brother, and they don’t have a kid …

And you go, wait, wait, I got that! I didn’t need the exposition! I can follow a plot! But then somebody behind you goes “Ooooh!,” like they’ve just figured it out, and then they turn and explain it to their spouse, who still sounds bewildered.

The bewildered spouse represents about 40 percent of America, and a lot of them watch FOX. They’re never going to understand that Fox is not news, that what is being passed off as news is partisan spin, that Glenn Beck uses his status as a commenter, rather than a reporter, to just make shit up, and that the whole function of the station is propagandistic. You can show them documentary after documentary, piece of evidence upon piece of evidence that Fox relentlessly distorts, misstates and misrepresents the news to support a partisan agenda, and they won’t get it. Even if they concede you have a point, they’ll say that it just balances out the liberal media, because, in their world in which the most inane movie plot makes no sense, a conservative lie provides balance to a liberal truth.

The White House is right. But I’m right that most movies would be better if they didn’t drag the pacing to a screeching halt to explaint the story to the idiots. And, if movies did that, they would have an audience about 1/20th their current size.

The best way to make yourself unpopular is to take a moral stance that fools will never understand.

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The inside matters. Ok, a raise of hands, who amongst you pro-programmers has had trouble in the past explaining this to some manager? Ok, ok, just what I thought. Next time explain “vorm en kleur” and draw them this:

Tell them: “This is what we have. This is what we need.” and draw them:

If they don’t understand, just quit, seriously, run while you still can.