CSC 210 Week 2

Researcher Wants To Charge Nokia, Sun For Phone Vulnerability
Published 8/12/2008

In this research article, Adam Gowdiak says he's descovered 14 vulnerabilty issues with the J2ME software application that is used to program the Nokia phones. Adam is willing to point out the flaws in the software application, but it's going to cost Nokia and Java big money. So why is this important? Hackers have now found out a way to attack these Nokia phones with simply just finding a phone number that belongs to these Nokia phones. The hackers put malicious Java applications onto the mobile device that allows the hackers to make calls from that phone, record conversations, and access the SIMS card.

The privacy issues that are dealt with this article are hackers getting your information and then destroying your phone. I think that if the hackers could record your conversation then that already is a big violation of privacy. The hackers could then post your conversation onto the web if they think it could get them big hits on their websites or make them popular. Also, another possible problem that I think would be the hacker having access to your SIMS card. The hacker could replicate that SIMS card and use it on their own phone, then have the owner of the phone billed for extra charges. Also if the hacker could make calls from the owners phone with out the owners knowledge, it could ring up the owners bill dramatically. Last but not least, when your phone bill comes in and it's over the roof expensively high, you will probably call your phone service provider and tell them that it was not you making all of those extra charges, but then you would not have any proof that it was not you doing it because the hackers were using your phone to do all of those things. I think this is a big invasion of privacy and almost like identity theft.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/vulnerabilities/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=210002897

CSC 210 Week 1

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/08/18/gps.tracking/index.html

Is GPS a high-tech crime-fighting tool or Big Brother?
Published and updated 8/18/08

This article that was found on the CNN website talks about law enforcement using a GPS to track criminals. What law enforcement officers can do is place a GPS device benief of a suspected criminal's vehicle to monitor their movements in real time. When the suspected criminal finally does a wrong act, the officers are allowed to arrest the criminal. There are a lot of ethical issues that are involved within this new technology movement. One of them is not telling the suspect about having a warrant that they're being tracked. Another one would be tagging an innocent person and then catching them doing a wrongful act. I can see the benefits of this technology being used this way and I can also see the cons. In the article it states that officers used the GPS technology to track a previously convicted rapist's van and his whereabouts. After monitoring his actions, police arrested him and the crimes began to stop. The technology had been used for a great cause to stop a rapist, but then some of his rights were taken away when they began to monitor him, such as privacy. I think that law enforcement should have the rights to place a GPS device on an old convicted criminal to narrow the choices down. Then after the convicted criminals should be the suspected person, then after the suspected person, should be chosen innocent people who seems to have a connection to the crimes. I also think that the GPS should only be used for serious crimes that deals with life and death situations. I can see that the purpose of this new technology is for good purposes too, so I believe it would be appropriate to use it.