Anonymous protests planned over government surveillance

Monday’s targets include TrapWire and INDECT, which the shadowy group says track and profile citizens.

Protesters in Canada may get into trouble for wearing the Guy Fawkes masks they’re known for if a protest escalates to a riot. That’s because Canada's House of Commons last week approved a bill that bans people from hiding their faces during riots.

The bill was championed by a lawmaker who said it was a response to last year's Stanley Cup riots in Vancouver, during which often-masked vandals smashed and lit fire to the city after their professional hockey team lost to the Boston Bruins, reports the security firmSophos .

While the bill doesn’t apply to peaceful demonstrations, anyone convicted of covering his or her face during a riot or unlawful assembly could get up to 10 years in prison.

The sponsor says the bill doesn’t aim to limit freedom of expression or peaceful protest, but to protect people who want to enjoy their activities safely and freely.

While it’s true there have been several notable Canadian riots involving masked people in recent years, Sophos points out that masks have also been used to protect protesters.

Last year, for example, in a video posted to the Internet, masked members of Anonymousvowed to release the names and addresses of an unspecified number of people associated with the drug syndicate known as Los Zetas -- which has been attributed with thousands of deaths and gruesome acts of retribution, such as beheadings -- unless the drug lords released a member of Anonymous they kidnapped from a street demonstration in Mexico's Veracruz state.

As for the issue of the government using technology to track and profile citizens, Anonymous has been outspoken.

Source: pcworld.com

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iPhone hacker 'Comex' let go from work with Apple

Comex said he forgot to reply to an email from the company, but revealed few other details

The famed iPhone hacker "Comex," who engineered ways to hack Apple's mobile operating system, is no longer doing work for the company, according to Twitter postings.

"So...no point in delaying. As of last week, after about a year, I'm no longer associated with Apple," wrote Comex, who has more than 196,000 followers.

He wrote the reason is that he failed to respond to an email from the company. It's rare but not unprecedented for someone who has a hacked a company's software to end up working there. Comex couldn't be immediately reached for comment.

Later on Thursday he tweeted: "Now I feel like a big damn drama queen."

Comex is widely respected in the iPhone hacker realm for his work with the JailbreakMe applications, which exploited Apple's software to allow the installation of programs not vetted by the company in its App Store, a modification known as "jailbreaking." Apple doesn't like the practice, although it is legal in the U.S. under an exception to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

In July 2011, Comex and his team released JailbreakMe 3.0, which used a pair of vulnerabilities to install unauthorized software on iOS versions 4.3.3 and prior. It worked with the first and second versions of the iPad and the iPhone.

Comex also delivered in July 2010 with JailbreakMe 2.0, which also used two vulnerabilities to exploit iOS. Apple patched the problems shortly after JailbreakMe 2.0 was released.

Elite iOS hackers are still at work to develop a jailbreak for iOS 6, Apple's latest version which was released last month. A "tethered" jailbreak exists, but an iOS 6 device must be connected to a computer when the attack occurs.

The more graceful way is to engineer an untethered jailbreak. iPhone hackerssaid at the Hack in the Box security conference last week that Apple has improved the security of iOS making it more difficult, but not impossible, to eventually perform an untethered jailbreak.

Source: computerworld.com

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