Technology Blogs (217)

Rights activists, journalists and lawyers around the world have been targeted with phone malware sold to authoritarian governments by an Israeli surveillance firm, media reports say.

They are on a list of some 50,000 phone numbers of people believed to be of interest to clients of the company, NSO Group, leaked to major news outlets.

It was not clear where the list came from - or how many phones had actually been hacked.

NSO denies any wrongdoing.

It says the software is intended for use against criminals and terrorists and is made available only to military, law enforcement and intelligence agencies from countries with good human rights records.

It said the original investigation which led to the reports, by Paris-based NGO Forbidden Stories and the human rights group Amnesty International, was "full of wrong assumptions and uncorroborated theories".

But it added that it would "continue to investigate all credible claims of misuse and take appropriate action".

The allegations about use of the software, known as Pegasus, were carried on Sunday by the Washington Post, the Guardian, Le Monde and 14 other media organizations around the world.

Pegasus infects iPhones and Android devices to enable operators to extract messages, photos and emails, record calls and secretly activate microphones and cameras.

What do we know about the people targeted?
Media outlets working on the investigation said they had identified more than 1,000 people spanning over 50 countries whose numbers were on the list.

They include politicians and heads of state, business executives, activists, and several Arab royal family members. More than 180 journalists were also found to be on the list, from organizations including CNN, the New York Times and Al Jazeera.

Many of the numbers were clustered in 10 countries: Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Hungary, India, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Morocco, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, according to the reports.

When contacted by the outlets involved in the investigation, spokespeople for these countries either denied that Pegasus was used or denied that they had abused their powers of surveillance.

It was not clear how many of the devices on the list had actually been targeted, but forensic analysis of 37 of the phones showed there had been "attempted and successful" hacks, the Washington Post reported.

This included people close to Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered while visiting the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, in October 2018 and his body dismembered.

The investigation found that spyware was installed on his fiancée's phone days after his murder, and that his wife's phone was targeted with spyware between September 2017 and April 2018.


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There's everyday people, and then there's gorgeous.

Gorgeous can be really gorgeous, but it also can be someone *else's* gorgeousness, and being used as a hook to reel you in.

A handy little online tool (and there are many similar) is ReverseImageSearch.





For example, this one profile caught my eye.



Gorgeous, to be sure. Curious, I right-clicked on the image and "copy image location."

This is what you copy, to paste into the URL box at the ReverseImageSearch utility.

You might get a CAPTCHA challenge on some of these pages and a selection of search engines. I find that Bing, Google and Baidu are pretty much useless.

Yandex, however, a Russian search utility, seems to have good results.

What did you find using the sample profile, hmmm?

Your results may vary, but this resulted in reaching a Russian website, actually, at least two. One to Yulia's photos, and another to My Photos. Not England.

I just seen where a report by the government was due out by 6/25. In fact, I have been reading a couple articles about this report. It is theorized that the report will most likely not contain any sort of confirmation about aliens existing. The consensus of these articles conclude that most likely the leaked UFO footage will still not have any conclusive information of their origins.

Back in the day, I have shared my UFO experience on here. Since then, a buddy of mine told me he and a friend had seen the same triangle shaped craft. He even elaborated a little more on it...more than I shared locally here...he said that he could feel a vibration throughout his body. I told him, that is exactly what I felt as well.

Now reading this most recent article, it included some footage of the leaked videos of the UFOs. I was somewhat surprised to see that one of the videos showed a triangle shaped craft.

As I said, it is most likely the upcoming report will not conclude alien life, and with me and my friend not seeing any physical aliens, it would be somewhat foolish to conclude aliens were flying that triangle. However, with my personal experience, it was not only me who had witnessed this event. My ex-girlfriend had also witnessed it, and their was something strange that had happened to us at the end of our experience...even at the beginning of it when I first seen the craft.

When I first seen it, it had appeared to be the full moon. I mean, it looked exactly like a full moon. For a split second I had thought it was the full moon until I had realized that was impossible. That night, it was severely storming out. I rationalized to myself, how could that be the full moon...it was storming and hence cloudy out. As soon as I thought that, the "full moon" had disappeared and then the craft had exposed itself to me. It almost seemed as if it read my mind. In fact, the timing of everything...I would swear it read my mind.

The second weird unexplainable thing that happen. After the craft revealed itself to me, I freaked out and yelled for my girlfriend. She had made it upstairs, next to me by the window, by the time the craft had slowly hovered over our heads about 30 feet in the air and stopping. The next thing we recall is standing face to face to each other in the center of our room. We had no conscious recollection of how we got there and no memory of how that craft left.

So my conclusion is...yes...I cannot say conclusively there were aliens in that triangle-shaped craft, but, there was more than just that craft going on there that night...technologically wise. The vibration in my body I felt, how it was able to seemingly read my mind, and how we unconsciously got positioned face to face in the center of our room.

I hope that report can shed some light on that stuff as well. I suspect it will not and most likely downplay those leaked video footages as best they can.

I got a call this afternoon informing me there was an attack on a gas pipeline creating a shortage. My response was: "I didn't know we were pumping gasoline through pipelines"
Checking online there is conflicting information but Florida Governor Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergence following a temporary shutdown of the Colonial Pipeline - a major US fuel pipeline operator.

One news story stated it was a cyber attack that forced Colonial to shut down operations.
It also reports this is affecting the Northern part of Florida... 8 hours drive from here.

Gas is available in South Florida but panic buying has already this area and people are hoarding gasoline creating a shortage. Some stations being reported for gouging where average prices were $2.85 now jumping over $4 a gallon.

I'm headed to Miami on appointment Wednesday morning and filled my tank before sundown Tuesday. That should get me nearly 300 miles and get me into the weekend.

Cyber attack? Obviously, Colonial got short-changed on internet security.

Friday... 6pm and I'm unable to get any YouTube videos to play.
Checking my bandwidth connection and 3 sites confirmed I'm getting downloads greater than 50mbps.
C'mon YouTube, I've got some new helicopter gear and need to see a few setup tutorials.
It's dinner time... people get off the internet!

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N O D. } notes on Direction. } ...
.."the super bowl came from Montana".- Uncle Joe.
" the cotton bowl came from Dallas " - McBob
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Mcblogment $ ponsor.} Gematrix.org.
7 0 8...page Zero.
1204...here is justice.) the throne in heaven.
1912..the weapon is zeroed.
... epilogue of pop...
No Time./ ? ?
..point of know return./ KS.
Zero hour./ King

Spot is a robotic dog by Boston Dynamics and via their choreographer software they can get spot to dance.

All we are doing is switching pollution. Bottom line is solar power and wind power are barely making a dent in where electricity is generated from. Same idea with getting rid of coal fired power plants.
No matter how a power plant generates electricity using fossil fuels, it still is polluting.
Nuclear plants are few and hated. And there we have the issue of where to go with spent rods.
Cali wants to ban the sale of all new cars that aren't electric. We already have a power grid that is hanging on by it's eye teeth. Black outs and brown outs in the making.
Now everyone is supposed to plug in their electric car batteries to re-charge. Kick up that old power plant folks and burn some more coal or gas. Get that fracking going, sorry about those earthquakes and water
pollution.
All the solutions seem to be is swapping bad for bad.
People don't seem to think about where that electricity comes from they use. Nor what will happen to those batteries when they die. Or what pollution is being done manufacturing them.
Gasoline has improved, mileage has improved. Public transportation has not. The best solution is less flying, less driving. That is the point covid has made.
Cut out driving to a gym to run on a tread mill. Make a shopping list and get it all instead of making a breakfast drive to the store and then an evening drive to the same store.
I make few trips to shop. And when I do, I take my list, hit 8 stores in one afternoon and get everything I need or think I will for weeks. Get home tired, but so what.
How soon before the landfills are polluting with dead batteries. Do you recycle them? I know I don't. No place takes them around here.

The computer mouse is an important tool in my daily life.
I've tried lots of different brands of 'mouse-like' products including trackballs, joysticks, stylus pens and touch screens.

Depending on the setup there are 4 workstations in my condo plus a laptop and 3 workstations at my office. All of them were using the 'old standard' Microsoft wired mouse.
I like the shape, buttons and way it tracks. Wireless mouse? No thanks.
They are cheap... $10
Some products are in the $40 to $60 range so I'm getting a bargain at $10.

Actually, I prefer the accuracy of the old style mouse with a ball. Yeah, cleaning lint every other day didn't bother me. They are dinosaurs... no more are available on the planet.

The Microsoft mouse has a textured finish and after months of use I notice the left button would turn shiny. No problem, but I'm having to replace them when the wheel starts to skip.
Maybe there has been a change in manufacture as in 'they don't make them the same' and I'm replacing them in months and not years later.



Looking for a change, I've found a Logitech mouse for $10 that has a very similar shape and feel as the Microsoft mouse.

I bought 4 of them and put them into my main computers and will replace the others when the wheels begin to fail.