BrickHouse Security Blog

With college looming over the heads of parents and students alike, concerns are starting to transcend worries about making friends and doing well in classes.  The reality is starting to embed itself into the minds of overprotective parents and overprotected kids- they will soon be vulnerable, oblivious, and trusting targets without the oversight of their parents or the protection of the nest. In order to make that transition a little easier, if only to be able to breathe a little easier, we’ve come up with a list of the top 10 security gadgets for college students starting classes in the Fall. [...]

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I was almost convinced, at the brink of acceptance, and mid nod when three of my co-workers stopped my chin from falling.

After hours of listening to my bosses explain to me the importance of “Twitter” and other social networking outlets such as “Facebook” and “MySpace” they had almost successfully recruited me for their team. I was enthusiastically signing up for a twitter account thinking of all the benefits and connections I was about to become a part of, when one question brought all of it to a screeching halt: What’s your twitter username? This seemingly harmless question, directed to three of my male co-workers, was the start of the end for me. After discovering that none of them had Twitter accounts I was shocked and the sting of betrayal pulsed through my veins. Why would my bosses lie to me? If they weren’t lying then why didn’t people they worked with every day not partake in what my bosses described as invaluable connection making?? Were they just trying to trick me? I was enraged with nothing but a primordial soup filled with feelings of confusion, pain, and anger and I knew that the only thing that would shed any sort of light on the situation was truth. And so my investigation began. [...]

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The panic rushes through your body as the pressure to make your final decision increases with every passing second.  15 minutes is all you have.  A weird, contrived facial expression envelops your face as you try to do the math.  It’ll take 20 minutes to walk. 15 minutes is the longest possible time you’d have to wait assuming that you JUST missed the bus.  It should take 6 minutes to get there by bus.  But, there is absolutely no way of knowing when the next bus is coming. This is starting to remind you of the physics problem on your final that made you fail for the year.  If one train is X distance from point A and another train going in the opposite direction is X distance traveling Y mph at which point will they fly?  Er. Well, it was something like that.  The confusion is taking over and you need to sit down.  Take a deep breath and calm down because the mayor of NYC has finally heard your cries for mercy and has decided to solve all of your problems.  The answer? Electronic countdown displays. [...]

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After countless FBI searches, deals with the mob, and 19 years, $300 million dollars worth of art have still not been recovered.

In 1990 the largest art heist in history was performed resulting in 13 masterpieces of art, from painters like Rembrandt and Manet, missing from the Isabella Gardner Museum in Boston. Running in circles like chickens without heads, officials were plagued by false leads, empty promises, chases across the globe from China to antique shops in Boston, and failing spirits. 19 years later they have made no arrests and are no closer to retrieving the stolen pieces. [...]

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Imagine that you are vacationing and get a phone call from your neighbor telling you that your alarm just went off, but there is nothing you can do about it. You don’t know what set it off and if it is just a fluke. You find yourself now wide awake, asking yourself why you got the alarm to begin with.

For iPhone users, the solution to this kind of situation lies in an application provided by CAVU Mobile Surveillance Solution. This app allows you to view live footage taken from any security camera on your iPhone, transforming it into a portable advanced home security system. With the CAVU Mobile Surveillance Solution, the next time a neighbor calls to tell you that your alarm has gone off again, you can automatically see what is going on inside your house on our phone- no matter where you are.

This application also lets you save footage on your phone, which is useful in case you need to show/reference the footage on the go. From your phone you can even control the position of the camera – providing you with multi-camera views.

If you’re thinking to yourself right now about how you wish you had been nicer to your neighbor, because then he/she would be more likely to actually call you to tell you that there is a good chance you’re being robbed- stop. This iPhone app also allows for poor neighbor to neighbor relations. It provides a self sufficient, independent of any neighbor, surveillance system on your phone to tell your that there is suspicious action going on.

For a cool $19.99 you can be your own FBI squad team, the C, the, S and the I in CSI Crime Scene Investigation, and most importantly, sure that your home is safe. [...]

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Advice given is much easier than advice taken – especially when it comes to texting and driving. In a new AAA survey, approximately 90% of people equate the dangers of drunk driving with the dangers of texting and driving. Unfortunately 21% of respondents admitted to having done what they had just declared as dangerous as drunk driving in the past month.

Another disturbing statistic was that 58% of respondents determined that talking on the phone while driving is a “very serious threat to their safety,” and yet 55% of respondents admitted to talking on the phone while driving in the past month. The discrepancies between the percent of people who think doing something that puts them in grave danger and the percent of people doing those things can be attributed to many things. For one, there is no national law against texting or e-mailing while driving. Second, there is a certain stigma surrounding drunk driving that isn’t present around texting/e-mailing and driving or talking on your cell phone and driving. [...]

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For some, online shopping is the perfect way to indulge a passion without ever stepping foot into a store. Avoiding hawk-like sales clerks, being able to see all of your choices on a 20″ widescreen, no lines, and being able to take as much time as you want to obsess about what you may or may not need are all the benefits of shopping online. The other fringe benefits include stolen identities, credit card theft, and even worse- not getting that new pair of shoes. Fear not- with the SmartSwipe, you can shop away without wondering exactly where the numbers you type into your computer are ending up. [...]

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With this new technology, anyone can rob casinos and become a multi-millionaire like George Clooney and his team in Ocean’s 11, 12, and 13.

At the most recent DefCon conference, a new hack was demonstrated, that involves hijacking IP video streams and seamlessly replacing them with new content. Basically they showed how Danny (George Clooney) and Rusty (Brad Pitt) were able to replace the video steam in the Bellagio’s vault to show them stealing “money” in Ocean’s 11.  This new hack allows anyone to gain access to an IP video surveillance feed and to see exactly what the camera is seeing.  But the key to this hack is that it not only lets you see whats going on, it lets you replace the footage with whatever you want, fooling the actual security guards into thinking that absolutely nothing is happening when you are in their vault.  Or, as in Ocean’s 11, the crew fools Benedict into thinking that people are stealing his money from his vault when they are really outside waiting for a squad truck to come bring them to their airplane.

Experts at the conference warned that most enterprises don’t have the tools necessary to prevent these attacks. The need for better security has increased as the popularity of IP video streams skyrocketed in the past few years.  For example, Dallas Cowboys Stadium just installed over 3000 of these video cameras.  An official at the conference said that “depending on how the network is configured, an attacker might be able to plug into the Ethernet jack in one of the Dallas Cowboys Stadium’s luxury boxes and conduct an attack.”

Hollywood heists may paint a glamorous picture of what these kinds of hacks can result in, but the reality is that instead of ending up sitting in first class eating caviar, you will be sitting in a grimey, smelly, sticky, and rather unpleasant jail cell waiting for your one phone call.

(via Privacy Digest)

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Previously used by high profile government agencies and rich biollionaires, GPS tracking devices are become more accessible and making their way to small towns across America.

Pioneering this endeavor is the homey town of North Brunswick, New Jersey where officials hope to install GPS tracking systems in all of their government owned township cars. [...]

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After three deaths, all that is left is a stream of videos on YouTube to provide a few scattered footprints that tell authorities what led George Sodini to take those first steps into L.A Fitness before his shooting spree.

George Sodini, 48, fatally shot three women on Tuesday upon entering a L.A Fitness before taking the gun upon himself.  Nobody knows exactly what promoted the shootings, nor what happened in the private gym, but clues left by him and inferences by those “close” to him give some insight into this killer’s mind.

Sodini had been attending weekly self-help meetings taught by Erin Micklow, 20, on how to date women.  When questioned, Micklow, a model and actress,  reported that Sodini was the perfect student and described him as “the most studious in the workshops.”  The workshops were designed to teach men how to “pick women’s brains” and to “know what they were thinking” in order to get a girlfriend. Micklow described the other men as much more “loosened up” by the end of the workshops, but Sodini appeared to be just as anxious and nervous as he was when he started.

After the murder, videos made by Sodini surfaced on the Internet.  Some were made as assignments of the workshops, like tours of his home, and others were of the workshop itself.  Online diaries of Sodini’s revealed that he was hopelessly lonely and desperate for companionship.  He seemed completely void of any glimmer of hope that he would be able to attract a women and was quoted saying, “There is something BLATANTLY wrong with me that NO person will tell me what it is.”  The diaries also detailed his plan to attack women in the gym.

The shooting victims were taken to three local hospitals, where three of the women were pronounced dead. Allegheny County Police Superintendent Charles Moffatt says that police have no knowledge of whether Sodini had mental health issues or not, and are still puzzled by the sudden outbreak of violence stating, “I can’t ever make sense of murders.”

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Silver is the new amber ever since a 77 year old man disappeared into the woods and died.

William Young, suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, was declared missing after taking the family’s car for a drive and never returning home.  Countless search parties, dozens of worried family members and friends, and 5 days later his car was found in a bay.  The next day his body was found 5 miles from the car, drifting away from the initial point of impact.

William Young’s tragic story broke down the traditional barriers of safety alert systems.  Local police officials responded to the inundation of worry for elders suffering from dementia with a volunteer search and rescue effort, named  “Silver Alert,” honoring Young.   The Silver Alert has already been adopted in several states scattered throughout the U.S, including Florida, North Carolina, Texas.  Imitating the idea of the “Amber Alert,” the “Silver Alert” hopes to get as many elderly people suffering from dementia registered with local authorities, making it much easier for them to distribute information to the public and other authorities in an emergency.

Another vital feature of this program is the use of GPS tracking devices.  With new technology, GPS tracking devices can be placed in family cars or on bracelets or necklaces that can be worn by the elderly.  In cases of missing children, and now, missing elderly people, reaction time is key.  A second can make the difference between finding them at the side of the road and finding them at the bottom of a bay.  GPS tracking devices enables people to find the fastest route available back to their loved ones.

GPS tracking devices can also be used to give elderly more freedom.  Family members can set up a GPS fence around the community or any predetermined area they felt comfortable having their family member roam free in.  If the elderly person left that area, family members would get a text message, and the GPS would help them track down the person.

Had this technology been in place when William Young went missing his family may have been able to save him, and police are doing everything they can to ensure that other families will get the chance that the Young’s didn’t have.

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According to a study, the average age at which children get their first cell phone is 8. That is third grade, which is only three years after their very first day of school. From this moment on their cell phones will become an extension of their bodies- permanently attached to their hands. It’s uncontrollable- children are growing up much faster than they were before the technological revolution. The need for control over these devices is paramount as the age of first acquiring a phone decreases and technology makes it easier for them to obtain more sophisticated phones. The solution? Websafety Software. [...]

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The results that stem from Twitter and other social media networking sites include invaluable connections, countless conversations about similar interests, exposure to the public and…crime?

Twitter is one of the fastest growing social media networking websites in the world, recently reaching over 13 million users.  It embodies everything people want: it’s quick, fast, and free. With the efficiency of the site also comes the immediate dangers.  You’d be surprised how much could go wrong with just 140 characters. [...]

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With technology exploding out of every hole on earth, hackers are finding ways to hack the anything they can get their fingers on and they have found their next victims: keyboards.

In a report written by Digital Society, Apple keyboards are exceptionally easy and vulnerable to infiltrate.  These keyboards may only have a small of amount of actual “technology” in them (8Kb of flash memory and 256 bytes of RAM), but hackers are prepared to delve into the unseen and small crevices of technology to disrupt the lives of users.  It’s like an addiction, at first they were content with hacking computers, then cell phones, and now, they’ll even resort to keyboards to get their fix. [...]

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