Archive for December 11th, 2017

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#44 in a series)

Monday, December 11th, 2017

This is outside of my usual area of coverage, but there’s a nice twist to it.

On Friday, former Massachusetts state senator Brian A. Joyce was arrested. There are 113 counts in the indictment, including “mail fraud, theft of federal funds, money laundering, scheme to defraud the IRS, 20 counts of extortion, seven counts of money laundering, and conspiracy to impair the functions of the IRS.”

“conspiracy to impair the functions of the IRS”. I love that.

The feds contend Joyce took money in exchange for official action, using his Senate office for private gain in a scheme that may have netted up to $1 million since 2010, according to the 102-page indictment.

But 113 counts? Man, dude is a bit of an overachiever there. What was his secret?

Would you believe…coffee?

Joyce received up to 700 pounds of free coffee, and roughly $125,000 grand in alleged kickbacks, from a Dunkin’ Donuts franchisee owner, who later claimed it was in exchange for legal services. Joyce passed out coffee at town hall meetings and to other senators, authorities said.
“No decaf,” Joyce told the franchisee owner in a December 2014 email for one request, according to the indictment. He added “We like k cups (sic) at my office if possible.”

I know, if you’re going to sell out for coffee, why not make it good coffee? But I don’t think my Texas readers understand the extent to which the Northeast runs on Dunkin’ Donuts. I think I’ve told the story before about traveling in that neck of the woods with some friends and co-workers, and the Dunkin’ Donuts every 100 yards becoming a running gag with us.

Posted in Law, Politics | Comments Closed

Is safe! Is not safe!

Monday, December 11th, 2017

Another thing I haven’t had a chance to blog before now:

Vaultek makes gun safes. Among their models is the VT20i, which has a fingerprint reader and Bluetooth. You can use Bluetooth and an app to unlock the safe.

And, yes, you already know where this is going, don’t you?

In this case, the responsible party is Two Six Labs. This is a pretty fascinating takedown.

High points:

  • “The manufacturer’s Android application allows for unlimited pairing attempts with the safe. The pairing pin code is the same as the unlocking pin code. This allows for an attacker to identify the shared pincode by repeated brute force pairing attempts to the safe.”
  • “There is no encryption between the Android phone app and the safe. The application transmits the safe’s pin code in clear text after successfully pairing.”
  • “An attacker can remotely unlock any safe in this product line through specially formatted Bluetooth messages, even with no knowledge of the pin code…the safe does not verify the pin code, so an attacker can obtain authorization and unlock the safe using any arbitrary value as the pin code.”

Even if you aren’t into guns, or safes, or gun safes, I think this is a pretty good “how do I go about banging on a Bluetooth device” primer.

Somewhat to their credit, Vaultek says they are offering a patch, though it looks like you’ll have to send your safe back to get it. (Vaultek says they’ll cover shipping both ways, which can’t be cheap.)

Edited to add: something from Vaultek’s site on this issue:

Either of these methods are not easily captured and require several factors to execute including time, the right equipment, and close proximity to the safe.

They also refer to the attack as requiring “special equipment”. The “special equipment” is an Ubertooth, which you can get here and here, among other places.

As for proximity, that’s a good question that Two Six Labs didn’t address: with the right antenna and Bluetooth adapter, how far away can you be to make a successful attack? Does anyone remember the “Picking Bluetooth Low Energy Locks from a Quarter Mile Away” talk from DEFCON 24?

(Yes, door locks have to be accessible from the outside, while your gun safe is almost certainly inside. Modern construction almost certainly attenuates the signal some. But how much? Could I drive through the neighborhood with a Sena UD100 or something very much like it, just sniffing for Vaultek safes? And then come back later to attack them?)

Posted in Android, Bluetooth, Guns, Radio | Comments Closed

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas II: Electric Boogaloo.

Monday, December 11th, 2017

I’d like to give a little bit of love and publicity to a few charities that I’ve seen mentioned by other bloggers. I haven’t given money to all of these organizations yet, so don’t consider this to be endorsements of these groups. But all of these have touched me in one way or another (and not in the Harvey Weinstein sense), so if you’re looking for a place to give, you might want to consider these.

Respectable Lawyer put up a series of tweets yesterday about HDAP: the Houston Diaper Assistance Program. Basically, HDAP gets diapers (for free, or at a low cost) to people who need them: families who are at 133% to 200% of the poverty line.

This is an all-volunteer organization run by local lawyers in Houston. Every penny goes to diapers. They distributed over 50,000 diapers after Harvey. But, of course, Harvey also put a strain on their resources, and they’re trying to recover from that. So if you feel like it, you can give here, or you can read more from Respectable Lawyer’s tweets, starting from the one linked above.

I learned about HDAP and Respectable Lawyer’s tweets from Popehat’s twitter. And speaking of Popehat, Ken has a list of alternative giving suggestions up at that site.

Last week, Bethany Mandel was fundraising for Liberty in North Korea and their Refugee Rescues program:

Thousands of North Korean refugees have escaped their country, but are now at risk of exploitation & capture because they cannot afford the 3,000-mile journey to a safe country. LiNK helps refugees make that journey. Read more here: https://www.libertyinnorthkorea.org/rescue-refugees/

It runs about $3,000 to get one refugee out of North Korea. Ms. Mandel has already met her fundraising goal (and I’m sorry I didn’t have a chance to retweet this last week) but anything you can give is still going to help people get out of a literal Communist hellhole.

Finally, The Bloggess is doing the James Garfield Christmas Miracle again this year. The whole thing is too long to explain here, but it basically amounts to: people who need help asking for help, and people who can help helping them out. Go to the linked post for more details.

Posted in Christmas | Comments Closed