What you’re seeing is a screenshot of what happens when you try to access the CIA’s website — CIA.gov — as of the time of this posting. As per usual, Anonymous is taking credit for the takedown.

No, the outage probably won’t last for a long period of time, but even if Anonymous is erroneously taking credit for the site being down, the connection is being interrupted by some entity. As the news of this particular takedown spreads, it will inevitably lead back to the “is Anonymous helping when they do things like this,” and while that’s valid, the ease at which they, or whatever entity they are covering for, accomplishes these takedowns says a great deal.

For one, these nuisances, even if they are using tools developed by “real hackers,” have a knack for taking down big targets and doing it in a very public manner:

Furthermore, these takedowns are making an absolute mockery of the security the United States government uses to “protect” their multitude of sites. This isn’t a small, random government department being temporarily removed from the Internet, it’s the CIA, perhaps one of the most infamous, most powerful acronyms in world, especially the one we currently reside in.

And Anonymous, or whatever group they are covering for/taking credit for, is toying with their secure web presence.

The only problem is, the CIA has many more resources than these hacker groups do, and if they find out who is responsible, we’ll probably never find out about it, but the world will, in all likelihood, have one less hacker to worry about.

H/t to Boing Boing for the heads up.

Science has found a way, according to MSNBC, to convert the sugars in a cockroaches belly into electricity through a fuel cell. Once fuel cells are shrunk enough to be non-invasive to cockroaches, they can be implanted to power sensors or recording devices.

Daniel Scherson, a chemist at Case Western Reserve University, explains how the nightmare fuel will be powered. A rechargeable battery is inserted alongside a biofuel cell that would store the small amount of energy it generates.

“If you want to be futuristic, one may use the energy stored to try to control the neurological system of the cockroach and then you might be able to (control) the cockroach (with) a joystick,” Scherson told MSNBC.

The alarming research points to a future of cockroach spies. Controllable cockroaches scurrying around being not only disgusting, but also spy equipment from the CIA.

Looking deeper into the research, the scientists reveal that a cockroach’s diet is the main power source behind the electricity it can generate. This makes other forms of harnessing electricity, such as through movement, obsolete.

The fuel cell developed by the team uses a series of reactions by enzymes to break down the sugar into electricity. The first enzyme breaks down the sugar produced by the cockroach into two simpler sugars. The second enzyme oxidizes the two simple sugars. This releases electrons that are funneled together to electrodes.

The team tested it by inserting prototype electrodes into the belly of a female cockroach. The biofeul cell 0.2 volts of electricity. While not a huge amount, it’s the first baby step to the creation of robot cockroach monsters.

The scientists have noble goals for now with this new found technology. They hope to equip social insects like bees or ants with sensors that can detect dangerous chemicals.

The battery operating at 0.2 volts is enough to send a message by a few inches. Theoretically, you could line up a bunch of ants and play a wicked game of telephone to spy on potential criminals.

This does bring into question what science will do once they develop true robot cockroaches or ants that can’t be killed by radiation or big guns. The world will not end with zombies, but rather robot cockroaches. Regardless, the technology is still pretty impressive. It just terrifies me.

According to information acquired by the Associated Press, the CIA has established a center for monitoring all the social media chatter across the globe. The operatives, numbering in the hundreds, comb through Tweets, Facebook posts, blog postings, and chat rooms in order to find information that could be helpful to international operations.

They can go through upwards of 5 million tweets per day.

From Arabic to Mandarin Chinese, from an angry tweet to a thoughtful blog, the analysts gather the information, often in native tongue. They cross-reference it with the local newspaper or a clandestinely intercepted phone conversation. From there, they build a picture sought by the highest levels at the White House, giving a real-time peek, for example, at the mood of a region after the Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden or perhaps a prediction of which Mideast nation seems ripe for revolt.

Apparently the CIA team, or “vengeful librarians” as they are called, saw the whole Egyptian uprising thing coming from a mile away. They just couldn’t accurately predict when it would happen. They knew that social media would be the “game changer” in the region – a prediction that has been proven correct in the last year.

The program was set up as an initiative of the 9/11 commission, and began seriously focusing hard on social media after the Green Revolution protests in Iran following the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Information from the center is given to President Obama for his daily intelligence briefing.

One of the huge goals of the operation is to monitor international response to U.S. actions – and that was tested when the U.S. entered into Pakistan and killed Osama bin Laden earlier this year:

After bin Laden was killed in Pakistan in May, the CIA followed Twitter to give the White House a snapshot of world public opinion.

Since tweets can’t necessarily be pegged to a geographic location, the analysts broke down reaction by languages. The result: The majority of Urdu tweets, the language of Pakistan, and Chinese tweets, were negative. China is a close ally of Pakistan’s. Pakistani officials protested the raid as an affront to their nation’s sovereignty, a sore point that continues to complicate U.S.-Pakistani relations.

The director of the program, Doug Naquin acknowledges that the chatter that they analyze daily might give them a little slant towards the “urban elite” in a particular area, since internet access (thus access to social media) is limited in many of the areas they monitor.

But the information pulled from this meticulous operation has already proved valuable. And as more people gain access to social media, the amount of information available to patrol will grow exponentially.

I guess the moral here is that your tweets and Facebook posts might have a much greater reach than you think.

That’s right, for a window of a few hours yesterday afternoon, cia.gov was inaccessible thanks to LulzSec. Accessibility of the site later on in the evening was sporadic at best for some. There’s been no evidence that any sensitive data was compromised in the attack, as it looks like, once again, LulzSec just did it for the lulz.

They also reminded followers that the cia.gov attack was rather simple, and that their attack on Sony titled “Sownage” was much more extensive –

LulzSec is a difficult one to pinpoint. Their motivations are not entirely clear; do their hacks fall in line with so called “hacktivist” goals? Their non-gaming targets (CIA, U.S. Senate and PBS) do seem to be slightly political in nature. Are they simply taking these sites down and posting information to show that they can?

Their “taglines” of sorts are things like “Laughing at your security” and “Wrecking your infrastructures since 2011.” Perhaps they are really are just doing it, as they say, for the laughs.

What do people think about LulzSec? Do they feel that exposing security flaws in high profile organizations’ sites is funny? Or do they think that hacking and DDos attacks are not the be played around with? A poll conducted on Sophos’ naked security blog reveals that opinions are pretty split. 43% of people say that these attacks are no laughing matter while 40% say that the attacks are funny, more power to them! These people say that LulzSec is doing good as well, but making serious points about security flaws.

But the fact that LulzSec is able to remain entirely unknown, and avoid any consequences for their hacks must really piss off the targets of their attacks. The fact that they are so open about everything must infuriate their opponents and delight their proponents. They definitely welcome the publicity, and with attacks coming almost every day now, it looks like LulzSec is now an undeniable force on the interwebs.

What do you think about LulzSec’s activities? Let us know in the comments.

And for your viewing pleasure, LulzSec has gotten its own Taiwanese animation video courtesy of Next Media Animation. The people at NMA are famous for their timely, news-based animations that sometimes have the tendency to fall on the weird end of the spectrum. Check the new one out below:

The "Railhead" program was created to improve the terrorist watch list and enhance the integration of U.S. terrorist intelligence from the nations 16 separate intelligence agencies. The majority of more than 800 private contractors from dozens of companies working on Railhead have been laid off.

"This is a critical national security program that has been plagued by technical design and development errors, basic management blunders and poor government oversight," said Chairman Brad Miller (D-NC). "The program not only can’t connect the dots, it can’t find the dots."

Railhead was supposed to update the National Counterterrorism Center’s (NCTC) terrorist intelligence database called TIDE Or Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment that was the backbone of the FBI’s consolidated terrorist watch list.

The Railhead program had been undergoing an internal technical implosion for more than one year. Public statements and sworn public testimony to Congress from senior officials within the NCTC and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence never revealed the growing technical problems, poor contractor management or lax government oversight that has led the program to be a colossal failure.

Last February, the Director of National Intelligence, J. M. McConnell and his Chief Information Officer, Dale Meyerrose, issued a report outlining the U.S. Intelligence Community’s "Information Sharing Strategy."

The report boasted,"NCTC has developed innovative solutions, including NCTC Online and Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, to increase information sharing and collaboration in support of the counterterrorism mission."

Internal Railhead documents reveal a very different image of the programs. An analysis has shown that the planned upgrades to the programs would diminish the ability to share terrorist intelligence data among federal agencies and profoundly limit the ability of counterterrorism analysts to conduct searches of databases.

Perhaps the most chilling information to come to light is that tens of thousands of potentially vital CIA messages going in the NCTC have not been properly reviewed or included in the existing TIDE database. Because of this it is impossible to tell if critical terrorist intelligence sits in a U.S. government file somewhere that has not been properly investigated.

Similar government failures occurred before the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and the September 11,2001 terrorist attacks.

"The collapse of the Railhead program appears to be the result of poor technical planning and design, potential contractor mismanagement and inadequate government oversight," said Miller.

"These same problems have emerged again and again on government programs as millions of dollars in taxpayer funding is squandered. At some point the government needs to learn how to manage its technology programs so that they actually perform as advertised. This episode is particularly disturbing since we are talking about the safety and security of 300 million American citizens," Miller added.
 

The National Security Agency has purchased servers on which Google provides search technology used to process information compiled by networks of intelligent agents around the globe.

Google is also offering search features for a site similar to Wikipedia, called Intellipedia, were agents can share and post information on a secure online forum. Intellipedia is accessible only to the CIA, FBI, National Security Agency and a number of other intelligence agencies.

"Each analyst, for lack of a better term, has a shoe box with their knowledge,"  Sean Dennehy, chief of Intellipedia development for the CIA, told the San Francisco Chronicle  "They maintained it in a shared drive or a Word document, but we’re encouraging them to move those platforms so that everyone can benefit."

Depending on their level of clearance agents can log on to Intellipedia and access three levels of information, top secret, secret, and sensitive but unclassified. Currently the site has 37,000 accounts with 35,000 articles making up 200,000 pages, according to Dennehy.

Google’s other government customers include the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Coast Guard, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the state of Alabama and Washington, D.C.

Mike Bradshaw, who heads Google’s federal government sales team, says the company sells nearly identical products to corporate clients as it does to government agencies.
"There were some wild accusations," Bradshaw said. "But everything we do with the government is the same as what we do with our corporate customers."

The Iraq war and the 9/11 terrorist attacks have been the most recent examples of situations where better availability of intelligence may have led to better choices being made, ones that could have preempted the losses of thousands of lives.

Government agencies are no strangers to insularity and a fiefdom mentality. What’s theirs is theirs, and they have never been real fans of sharing. That long-standing issue could get in the way of what should be a promising development for intelligence analysts throughout the federal bureaucracy.

ResourceShelf cited the opening of CIA Wire, the CIA’s contribution to the Library of National Intelligence (LNI). It may be intentional or happenstance that it opened four days ahead of the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy.

As a top-secret resource, access to the CIA Wire will be limited. A report at FCW.com said the full LNI initiative will launch by October 31st, and described the process of how requests for documents will be fulfilled:

Mike Wertheimer, assistant deputy director of national intelligence for analytic transformation and technology in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said that when intelligence community employees request a document from LNI, one of three things can happen:

They will receive a copy of the document. They will need to be cleared before obtaining a copy of the document. They will not be able to view the document.

“We will measure attribute-based access for the first time and then we can start to automate,” Wertheimer said. “LNI is just the starting point for us to get a handle on what we know and how we use it.”

Minimal information will be available in the form of metadata arranged in a "card catalog listing." Requesting the linked document starts the aforementioned verification process.

We found the mention of "available information" on LNI a telling phrase. It refers to the data an agency chooses to make available to the project, not just what the agency possesses.

To give our analysts the best chance of heading off future threats, agencies need to do their utmost to make as much information available as possible. An analyst with proper clearances who could make a critical connection between disparate events should have the opportunity to do so.

Tuesday the 11th should be a grim reinforcement of that idea.

Are You Spying For Facebook?

Specifically, you can add the CIA to the list of those who have jumped onto the social networking bandwagon.

Social networks have been the focus of much speculation, banter, analysis and ire over the past six months, with special emphasis focused on the word-of-mouth marketing and SEO potential (inbound links) that these online communities can offer to both small and enterprise level companies looking to bolster their online presence.

Sites like LinkedIn have given focus to the professional aspect of social networking, providing employers with a new resource to find potential candidates to fill positions in their organizations.

The CIA has taken it a step further though, and is employing Facebook as a method of all-out recruitment.

Chaddus Bruce over at Wired has more on the nature of the positions the CIA is looking to fill and the Facebook group:

According to the CIA’s Facebook profile, the following criteria must be met in order to apply for a clandestine position within the organization:

In perusing these criteria, it occurred to me that I could be a prime candidate for one of these positions. Perhaps I should look into becoming a “spook” for the CIA.

Then again, how does anyone know that I’m not one already? Perhaps David Utter, Jason Lee Miller, and Mike Sachoff had better be a bit more careful about what they talk about here in the writer’s room.

One can never quite tell when Big Brother might be watching.

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Joe is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest ebusiness news.

Ever since its post-World War 2 founding, the CIA has been a magnet for interest from people ranging from serious academics to casual researchers. Their efforts to learn more about the undertakings of the spy agency became easier with FOIA, and more so with the debut of online search for unclassified information.

The Resource Shelf website reported an update to the CIA’s most requested FOIA documents, and its top 25 search queries. This update covers the month of December 2006.

Just as they did in November, UFOs topped the list of terms people hunted for at the CIA’s search site. Other queries that rated highly included ‘pbsuccess’, which refers to a report on CIA operations in Guatemala in the early 1950s, Iran, and Web 2.0.

That latter term brings up a few references to Soviet-era Russia; maybe the CIA sees Web 2.0 as a resurgent Communism effort? Should John Battelle and Tim O’Reilly, the major drivers of the phrase Web 2.0, start looking over their shoulders for nondescript vans following them around?

The top documents searched for in December contain some interesting information, but sadly no reports of Comrades Battelle and O’Reilly meeting with Russian agents in a vegan caf in San Francisco.

One report showed a look forward from the year 2000 toward ‘Global Trends 2015′, where non-government experts discussed topics like future warfare and the information revolution. To say they completely missed considering a 9/11 scenario would be understatement.

Another report focused on an airman who went missing over Iraq during the first Gulf War. Lieutenant Commander Michael Scott Speicher was the only pilot brought down during the first night of the air war. His body was never recovered.

Toward the end of the six-page report, those who compiled it presented a damning indictment of the mainstream media and its possible role in Speicher’s capture or recovery; investigators believe Speicher survived ejecting from his F/A 18:

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

Google Earths & Maps, led by Director John Hanke, will be grouped together under the company name Mappuls AG. Google says Endoxon’s engineering staff and technical resources will bolster Google Earth and Maps’ analysis capabilities and improve functionality of those services in Europe.

“The Endoxon team has demonstrated passion and innovation in online mapping and has developed compelling technology that will enhance our Google geo products worldwide,” said Hanke.

“We’re also excited about having a dedicated team in Europe that can bring a distinctively European focus to our Maps products in those markets.”

Founded in 1988, Endoxon has become known in Europe as a developer of mapping, mobile, data processing, cartography, and direct marketing services, as well as the developer of the Trinity software suite.

The company specializes in AJAX mapping technologies, geo-referencing data processing, and aerial and satellite imaging.

There’s been no word from France yet regarding the blatant attempt to anglicize the world, as was feared with Google Print for Libraries. No word yet from the conspiracy theorists either, though it’s obvious this is a CIA spying front corporation.

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